iftttwall

Job creation has been a key focus of the Trump administration which has blamed outsourcing to lower cost countries like Mexico and China for the stagnant wages of the middle-class working folks of America’s Midwest.

The only problem with that theory is that certain industries in the U.S. are actually struggling with extreme labor shortages but can’t fill positions either due to skill gaps or an entitled millennial workforce that would rather live in their parents basement for the rest of their life than take a “blue collar” job that doesn’t value their BA in Anthropology.

According to a recent analysis from the American Trucking Association (ATA), the OTR Truckload industry is one area where employers are expected to face a huge labor shortage of as much as 175,000 by 2024.

There are many reasons for the current driver shortage, but one of the largest factors is the relatively high average age of the existing workforce. The current average driver age in the OTR (Over-the-Road) TL (Truckload) industry is 49. In addition, the industry has historically struggled to attract all segments of the population as just 5.8% of truck drivers are women.  This share has been essentially unchanged over time.

 

In 2014, the trucking industry was short 38,000 drivers.  The shortage is expected to reach nearly 48,000 by the end of 2015.

 

If the current trend holds, the shortage may balloon to almost 175,000 by 2024.

 

Per the ATA, replacing retirees accounts for nearly half of the 890,000 new drivers that will need to be hired over the next 10 years.  

 

Of course, one problem is that, like most other “main street” jobs, real annual wages for truck drivers have actually declined over the past 10-15 years. 

 

But as Steve Viscelli, a sociologist and fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Robert A. Fox Leadership Program, points out, the real wage deflation for truck drivers is massively underestimated by the grueling nature of the industry’s owner-operator model that consistently demands more from drivers without pay increases.

ATA largely blames the grueling demands of a job that puts workers on the road for long periods. But Steve Viscelli, a sociologist and fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Robert A. Fox Leadership Program, says the shortage is the product of an industry labor model that relies heavily on inexperienced drivers and independent contractors.

 

Drivers typically receive training from big trucking companies or schools affiliated with them. Those who become independent contractors sign lease-to-own deals to purchase their vehicles, often with those same companies. But the terms are onerous, and drivers owe so much that they may end up working 70 or 80 hours a week just to pay back what they owe and cover expenses such as fuel and insurance. Drivers are suing some companies that use this model, saying they should be classified as employees rather than contractors.

 

Even those working as employees have a hard time making ends meet, partly because they are only paid for the miles they drive, not time waiting to load and unload their rigs or sitting in traffic. Mr. Viscelli recounts a 16-hour day spent crawling through traffic in the New York area, only to get stuck at a New Jersey rail yard for the night. That day he drove 215 miles and earned $56.

Of course, if the following chart from MacroTourist holds true then the whole driver shortage may just work itself out ‘naturally’ over the next couple of years.

Not many instances in past 35 years where US heavy truck sales declined >25% from previous peak and economy was not in #recession http://pic.twitter.com/5OA417VTrg

— MacroTourist (@Gloeschi) March 3, 2017

 

And then there are also those pesky robot trucks…

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

Via Justin Raimondo of AntiWar.com,

Everyone is suddenly talking about the Deep State – the configuration of spy agencies, career bureaucrats, and overseas spooks whose murky omnipresence has been brought to light by President Trump’s contention that he was “wiretapped” by his predecessor.

With his usual imprecision, Trump managed to confuse the issue by ascribing the surveillance to Barack Obama, and so naturally spokesmen for the former President had no trouble batting this charge away. But as a former Obama speechwriter put it:  “I’d be careful about reporting that Obama said there was no wiretapping. Statement just said that neither he nor the [White House] ordered it.”

And then there’s the word “wiretapping”: this brings to mind the old-fashioned physical “bug” that our spooks used to plant on their target’s phone lines, installed in the dead of night. But that isn’t how it’s done anymore. As Edward Snowden revealed, the National Security Agency (NSA) scoops up everyone’s communications, and stores them in a database for later retrieval. Loosely-observed “rules” are supposed to make it hard (but not impossible) for the spooks to spy on American citizens, but the reality is that there are plenty of times when such information is scooped up “incidentally,” and in those cases the identities of those spied on must be redacted.

Except not anymore.

As the New York Times reported on January 12:

“In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.

 

“The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws. These include collecting satellite transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, and messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches.

 

“The change means that far more officials will be searching through raw data…”

And it looks like Obama administration officials made good use of this loosening of the rules after Trump’s victory. As the Times reported on March 1, after Trump won they were combing through the unredacted raw data looking for evidence of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign:

“In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election – and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians – across the government.”

Their goal: “to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.” And they apparently didn’t wait for the investigators, as a stream of reportage about “intercepts” involving Trump associates, such as former National Security Council advisor Michael Flynn communicating with Russian officials, found its way onto the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. The source of this intelligence is the key to understanding what happened. The Times tells us:

“American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials – and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin – and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence.

 

“Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates.”

Forget about looking for a FISA court application to spy on Trump & Co.: it wasn’t necessary. Such archaic remnants of a free society as a warrant were blithely bypassed: “Seventeen different government agencies shouldn’t be rooting through Americans’ emails with family members, friends and colleagues, all without ever obtaining a warrant,” warned American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Patrick Toomey at the time the NSA rules were thrown out.

But nobody was listening – including Trump and his supporters, who generally approve of government spying in the name of “national security.” And so the way was cleared for the anti-Trump coup plotters to do their dirty work. As the January 12 Times story reported:

“Under the new system, agencies will ask the N.S.A. for access to specific surveillance feeds, making the case that they contain information relevant and useful to their missions. The N.S.A. will grant requests it deems reasonable after considering factors like whether large amounts of Americans’ private information might be included and, if so, how damaging or embarrassing it would be if that information were ‘improperly used or disclosed.’”

All the leakers had to do was comb through the material gathered by the NSA and cherry-pick what looked incriminating – although, to be sure, if they had a smoking gun we would surely have known about it by now. But the lack of such was no obstacle to their goal, which was to give the #NeverTrump cause a banner around which to rally post-election – “The Russians did it!” – and create a dark cloud of suspicion over Trump’s presidency as being somehow illegitimate.

The new rules on disseminating raw NSA intercepts went into effect on January 3, after then Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed on: the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had previously signed on December 12. And if we look at the reportage coming out of the media, that’s when the stories detailing the content of intercepts and other intelligence started hitting the front pages.

It’s difficult to see how anyone could deny that the Surveillance State did a number on Trump. Two days after the loosened NSA rules went into effect, the Washington Post ran a story headlined “US Intercepts Capture Senior Russian Officials Celebrating Trump Win”:

“Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome.”

Citing "intercepted messages and conversations among senior Russian officials in Putin’s inner circle" a January 6 Reuters report informed us that:

“The CIA has identified Russian officials who fed material hacked from the Democratic National Committee and party leaders to WikiLeaks at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin through third parties, according to a new US intelligence report, senior US officials said on Thursday.”

On January 20, the day Trump took power, the New York Times ran a front page story headlined: “Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides”:

“American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said.”

On February 9, the New York Times reported on the conversations between Flynn and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kisylak:

“Weeks before President Trump’s inauguration, his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, discussed American sanctions against Russia, as well as areas of possible cooperation, with that country’s ambassador to the United States, according to current and former American officials.”

The story cites the transcript of the conversation. How did the Times reporters get hold of this information? They cite “Federal officials who have read the transcript of the call.” How did those officials get hold of the transcript of a private conversation of an American citizen who was not yet a government employee? The new rules governing raw unredacted NSA intercepts made possible an interagency effort to disseminate and examine intercepts and other material, and there was a concerted effort to uncover anything that could be used against Trump.

On January 19, the McClatchy news service reported on the “get Trump” campaign launched by US law enforcement agencies:

“The FBI and five other law enforcement and intelligence agencies have collaborated for months in an investigation into Russian attempts to influence the November election, including whether money from the Kremlin covertly aided President-elect Donald Trump, two people familiar with the matter said.

 

“The agencies involved in the inquiry are the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and representatives of the director of national intelligence, the sources said.”

To be clear: during the election, six law enforcement agencies were engaged in a systematic attempt to undermine the Trump campaign, at a certain point utilizing unredacted raw intelligence collected by the NSA and other agencies, all the while leaking like a sieve to their media camarilla.

And this campaign was international in scope, as pro-Clinton nutbag Kurt Eichenwald reported on February 15 in a story headlined: “US Allies Conduct Intelligence Operation Against Trump Staff, Intercepted Communications”:

“The Western European intelligence operations began in August, after the British government obtained information that people acting on behalf of Russia were in contact with members of the Trump campaign. Those details from the British were widely shared among the NATO allies in Europe. The Baltic nation has been gathering intelligence for at least that long, and has conducted surveillance of executives from the Trump Organization who were traveling in Europe.”

In a panic that their free ride would be over if Trump’s “America First” agenda was implemented, our European NATO “allies” worked in close coordination with the Washington cabal to subvert the US election process far more effectively than any Russian effort. And they didn’t need a FISA court to approve their spying on the Trump campaign.

Which brings up an important issue: there has been much ado about reports of a FISA court application, supposedly denied, and one that was narrowed and allegedly approved: the BBC, the Guardian, and the lunatic “reporter” Louise Mensch have all maintained that this was the case. Yet, as I have shown above, no such approval by the FISA court was ever required, although it would have a) made it much easier for the coup plotters to do their dirty work, and b) would have shielded them from any legal consequences. However, the fly in the ointment is that this would leave a paper trail that, once elected, Trump could simply declassify.

So the FISA issue is, I believe, a false trail, a distraction away from what really happened. They didn’t need the FISA court. They didn’t need a warrant. They simply opened a “back door” that, contrary to reports, had not been closed by the “USA Freedom Act,” and – unleashed by the relaxation of the rules previously governing dissemination of NSA intercepts – simply went through it.

Finally, we have another interesting “coincidence”: the brouhaha over NSA chief Admiral Michael Rogers, who top Obama administration officials wanted to fire, which started because Rogers traveled to Trump Tower to meet with the President-elect. The ostensible reasons given – various breaches of security – were odd: after all, why fire him just as Obama was leaving office? In short, the intensity of the campaign to fire him was out of all proportion to his alleged misdeeds. Aside from the security issue, the very fact that he was visiting Trump was supposedly a major issue: we were told “There’s only one President at a time.” But why shouldn’t someone who might be asked to continue to serve meet with the President-elect?

In retrospect, the visit – and the disproportionate anger it provoked from the Obama crowd – makes perfect sense. If the NSA was being used as a source for the campaign to delegitimize Trump, and build a case that the President-elect is a “Russian puppet,” as Hillary Clinton put it, then Rogers’ may have been trying to distance himself from the effort: “It wasn’t me, Boss!”

The campaign to frame up and discredit Trump and his associates is characteristic of how a police state routinely operates. A national security apparatus that vacuums up all our communications and stores them for later retrieval has been utilized by political operatives to go after their enemies – and not even the President of the United States is immune. This is something that one might expect to occur in, say, Turkey, or China: that it is happening here, to the cheers of much of the media and the Democratic party, is beyond frightening.

The irony is that the existence of this dangerous apparatus – which civil libertarians have warned could and probably would be used for political purposes – has been hailed by Trump and his team as a necessary and proper function of government. Indeed, Trump has called for the execution of the person who revealed the existence of this sinister engine of oppression – Edward Snowden. Absent Snowden’s revelations, we would still be in the dark as to the existence and vast scope of the NSA’s surveillance.

And now the monster Trump embraced in the name of “national security” has come back to bite him.

We hear all the time that what’s needed is an open and impartial “investigation” of Trump’s alleged “ties” to Russia. This is dangerous nonsense: does every wild-eyed accusation from embittered losers deserve a congressional committee armed with subpoena power bent on conducting an inquisition? Certainly not.

What must be investigated is the incubation of a clandestine political police force inside the national security apparatus, one that has been unleashed against Trump – and could be deployed against anyone.

This isn’t about Donald Trump. It’s about preserving what’s left of our old republic. I don’t want to live in a country where anonymous spooks with access to my most personal information can collect it and release it to their friends in our despicable media – do you?

via http://ift.tt/2n1Q6C9 Tyler Durden

Via Brandon Smith of Alt-Market.com,

It is an unfortunate reality that most people tend to be oblivious to massive sea changes in geopolitics and economics. You would think that these events would catch the immediate attention of everyone as they happen, but usually it is not until they realize that the microcosm of their personal lives is subject to the consequences of the macrocosm that they wake up and take notice.

There are, however, ways to train yourself to pick up on signals within the news cycle and within political and financial rhetoric; signals that indicate a great shift is perhaps on the way. Sometimes these initial signs are subtle, sometimes they are as subtle as a feminist slut-walk. I would point out that over the next few months there are dangerous correlations so numerous and blatant in the economic sphere that I would almost rather watch a marching gaggle of frumpy feminists wearing nothing but electrical tape than bear witness to the mayhem that is about to strike the unwitting public.

What am I talking about? Well, let’s go through the list…

Federal Reserve Meeting March 14-15^th

As my readers know well, I have been warning since before the election that the Fed would use a Trump presidency as an opportunity to pull the plug on near-zero interest rates and remove a primary pillar supporting stock markets — stock buybacks made possible by free overnight loans to numerous banks and corporations. Without QE and low interest rates the equities bubble will inevitably implode.

 

Corporate earnings certainly aren’t holding up stocks, neither is GDP or consumer spending. The Fed is the only determining factor of the ongoing bull market. Anyone who claims otherwise is probably a mainstream analyst or overzealous day trader with a vested interest in keeping the illusion going.

 

It is not surprising to me at all that the “rate hike odds” for March have been increased by mainstream analysts to 90% in the span of a week. I don’t know why anyone uses these arbitrary odds as an indicator of anything. I’ve been receiving emails all month asking me if I still believe the Fed will hike rates while the odds are “so low.” Look, the Fed does not make decisions at these meetings. They make decisions months in advance and the meetings are window dressing.

 

Too many people operate under the delusion that the central bank wants to continue propping up stocks, which is why they cannot grasp why the Fed would raise rates. In reality, the stage has been perfectly set to allow the bubble to implode. When the elites have a perfect scapegoat, they use it, and conservative movements represent that perfect scapegoat today.

The important thing to remember, though, is the timing of this particular meeting…

 

U.S. Debt-Ceiling Suspension Ends March 15^th

So, in case you weren’t tracking the economic situation two years ago, the U.S. government almost went bust (in a sense) in 2015. The debt ceiling sets limits on how much the government can borrow to fund itself, and that limit was hit hard under the Obama administration after he managed to nearly double the national debt during his tenure. Congress passed legislation to allow borrowing to continue until March 2017, and of course, much of that capital was “borrowed” from the Federal Reserve, which, of course, creates it out of thin air. With the return of the debt ceiling, the question is — will Congress be able to extend and delay again? With Trump running on a platform of fiscal responsibility, CAN they extend again?  Do they even want to, or is this an engineered crisis event?

 

Once again, the timing of all this is a little odd. The Fed is raising rates into the first year of the Trump presidency leaving equities increasingly open to destabilization. In addition, the government might not be able to continue borrowing from them, or there will be a renewed extension but the costs of borrowing will run much higher. In either case, this month seems to pronounce the beginning of something; a considerable move away from the standard operating procedures that the elites have been using for the past several years. With such changes come consequences, always.

 

Formal Initiation Of Brexit On March 15^th

The skeptics have been telling me for months that even though I was right about the Brexit vote victory the elites “would never allow” the British to leave the EU. Well, it doesn’t look that way to me so far. Theresa May plans to formally notify the EU of British exit on March 15^th triggering two years of negotiations which will undoubtedly send economic shock waves throughout the globe on a regular basis.

 

Of course the Brexit will move forward! Why not? Globalists need a continuing atmosphere of crisis to distract the masses from their great global reset, and they need multiple scapegoats for the economic disaster that their reset will cause. Enter conservative movements in Europe; once again the perfect target to pin a crisis on.

 

French Elections Start April 23^rd, End May 7^th

Yet another election in which the EU hangs in the balance. Recent polls indicate that Marine Le Pen, the designated “populist" candidate, is falling behind. I have to ask, though, have we not learned our lesson yet on the meaninglessness of political polls? I think most of us have.

 

I believe Le Pen will be one of the final two candidates to move on to the election in May, and though I am not as certain as I was on Brexit and Trump, I am going to go ahead and predict a Le Pen win. If there is any sizable terrorist event in the next couple of months in the EU, or expanded Muslim riots, she is a guaranteed win. This brings up the very real prospect of a “Frexit” in the near future, and analysts should expect that a Le Pen win will be met with some panic in the financial world.

 

Potential Italian Election Move On April 30^th

The Italian political process is a little confusing to me, but what I can tell you is that this spring or early summer you will probably be hearing a lot more about it. Former Italian prime minister and current Italian Democratic Party leader Matteo Renzi is set to decide on a the date for a leadership vote, which may come as early as April 30^th. The outcome of this vote will likely decide how soon the next official Italian election will take place.

 

The election is required to be held before May 2018, but there is increasing pressure to hold elections in 2017, perhaps even this coming summer. I would not be at all shocked to see a surprise announcement of an early Italian election after the leadership vote is held.

 

Why should anyone care? The consensus is that Renzi’s party will be overrun by anti-EU factions and that this may result in a kind of “Italiexit.” The outcome of Italy’s series of votes and political restructuring will have wide reaching effects on the psychology of the markets for many months to come.

 

German Federal Election Held September 24^th

Yes, even Germany is quaking this year in the wake of a potential “populist” tsunami. Angela Merkel is exceedingly unloved by her own people lately as her approval ratings collapse. Once-silent sovereignty champions in the country are becoming more and more vocal about Merkel’s rather insane open immigration policies which were the key element that drew millions of Muslims into the EU. It was the German government’s promise of endless entitlement programs that created the incentive for the mass migration in the first place, and now, finally, the German people are fed up with the complete lack of cultural assimilation and what many see as the destruction of western values.

 

I do not think that Germany will abandon the supranational concept of the EU regardless of the outcome of the election, but the removal of Merkel would signal a less agreeable Germany, which would exacerbate the already tottering European Union. Meaning more economic uncertainty in 2017.

If You Thought 2016 Was Weird…

If you thought 2016 was weird, I suggest you get comfortable with the surreal because it is not going away anytime soon. 2017 is a veritable treasure trove of falling elevators, and I haven’t even covered half of the issues facing the economy this year. But what about the macro-analysis?

To summarize, it seems to me that many of these events, stacked so closely together, are not coincidental in their timing. As I have noted in articles such as The Economic End Game Explained, globalists have been openly planning for decades to set in motion a vast financial overhaul and the launch of a single global economy and currency (the seeds being planted starting in 2018). If this is still their timeline, then it would follow that they would need a series of fiscal earthquakes designed to shake up the “old world order” to make way for a “new world order.”

Perhaps each of these events will result in a “stable” outcome and there is nothing to be concerned about. That said, I don’t believe in chance. Most geopolitical outcomes are influenced by internationalist players, which makes the outcomes of these events predictable. This is what made the Brexit predictable, and it is what made Trump’s victory predictable. Everything about the confluence of political and economic events in 2017 suggests to me a festering crisis atmosphere.

As I have always said, economic collapse is a process, not a singular moment in time. This process lulls the masses into complacency. You can show them warning sign after warning sign, but most of them have no concept of what a collapse is. They are waiting for a cinematic moment of revelation, a financial explosion, when really, the whole disaster is happening in slow motion right under their noses. Economies do not explode, they drown as the water rises one inch at a time.

via http://ift.tt/2n1knRp Tyler Durden

We have just lived through the most spectacular global bull
market run for the fixed income markets.  This bull market rallied the bond market to
the lowest yields ever!  Over a third of
all global fixed income was trading with a negative yield.  The most accommodative central bank policies
made heroes out of bond fund managers. Bond investors that stayed fully
invested with fingers crossed, hoping for the greater fool theory to eventually
take them out of their overvalued position were rewarded handsomely.  These bond managers are now managing hundreds
of billions in assets, have attained rock star status in the investment
community and are living the life of Riley.  After such a spectacular run that has spanned
a decade, most fixed income participants have never witnessed losses in their
bond portfolios, never mind a bear market that lasts some time and delivers a
good amount of pain.

This recent back-up in yields has left many bond investors
confused, nervous and unsure what to expect. Well, rest assured, I’m here to
assist. After 25 years managing bond portfolios and trading trillions of
dollars in the bond market, I believe I have perfected my timing model that identifies
when a bond market selloff has run its course.

This proprietary model stands out for being unique,
intuitive and void of the quantitative modeling mistakes and biases.  The model is quite qualitative,
psychologically driven and keys off the 7 stages of a bear market for bonds:

Stage 1: Shock.  You
can’t lose money in the bond market, right? 
Wrong.  Losses from the recent
bond market selloff will be staggering.  What has been significant double digit returns
over the last decade has ended.  Yields
have jumped higher and are still historically low.  Longer duration portfolios can be down over
10% in the past couple of months.  Losses
have materialized in the most liquid sectors and will eventually spread to less
liquid bonds.  Many participants are
dumbfounded, scratching various places but the itch doesn’t subside.  The market is at the end of this stage and
there’s six more stages to travel.

Stage 2: Pain and Remorse.  As bond managers and investors watch their
bond portfolio decline in real time, the losses hurts.  But the real pain starts once these managers
issue their clients statements and the bewildered clients look to the managers
for answers.  This gut wrenching pain of
disappointing investors and having a tangible negative impact on their beings
is a visceral hurt.  These managers and
investors realize they, not the markets, are the source of these losses.  There is an overwhelming feeling of guilt for
these losses and that they were not, somehow, avoided.  Should these managers have told their
investors large potential bond market losses compensated by little to no or
negative yield probably wasn’t the soundest investment? Have you ever heard a
manager say you’d be better off taking your money back? Bond yields continue to
rise with no bounces.

Stage 3: Anger and Bargaining.  Bond managers will get irate and phones will
be broken. Misplaced anger for losses that are accumulating will keep managers
and investors frozen, unwilling to cut their losses.  They start to talk about all the things they
will do if markets reverse to limit their exposures.  Too late.  Everyone is making the same bargains.  This stage sees one last parabolic rise to
higher bond yields impacting less liquid bond markets the most.

Stage 4: Depression and reflection. As losses deepen, the
market comes to the conclusion there is no bounce in bond prices.  The prior low yields reflected a mispricing in
the market brought about by exorbitant enthusiasm.  Another financial bubble to go down in the
history books.  Once confident and
jubilant managers who knew no losses are reclusive, downtrodden and distant.  Being a mortal human as opposed to a bond
managing deity is humbling.  Bond yields
still grind higher and liquidity remains poor. There is a dearth of confidence.

Stage 5: The Beginning of a New Beginning.  Depression starts to lessen and lucky shirts,
ties, socks and rocks start to come out of the drawers and closets.  The flickering thoughts of a better future
inside and outside of the financial markets begin to appear.  Could there be an end to this ugly chapter?  Bond yields are still inching higher and
liquidity remains poor.

Stage 6: Rebuilding & Reflection. New financial conferences
on what went wrong in the bond market and how to avoid it in the future pop up
globally and are fully attended.  Surviving
bond managers, albeit with much smaller assets to manage, talk about the bear
bond market and how obvious and avoidable it was.  Plans are bounced around for new strategies.
Of course, these are strategies that learns from the past.  Volatility in bond yields has now dissipated
and shallow rallies occur.

Stage 7: Acceptance and a New Beginning.  Investors and managers agree that the bond
strategies of the past were wrong and new strategies are implemented. Small
amounts of money trickle in the markets. As profits start to materialize,
confidence gets restored.  The first
managers to show profits becomes known as the new and improved bond guru du
jour.  The market has stabilized to a new
range of yields and a normal amount of volatility.  Slowly, liquidity is returning encouraged by
the beginning of positive reported earnings.  Stage 7 closes the bond market bear cycle and
begins what I am sure will be the beginning of a new (and never to outdone by
prior) bond bull market.

Bond bull market dynamics have ended and bear market
dynamics will be the norm for some time.  The over-subscribed quantitative, backwards
looking models, high volume traders and bond investors that closed their eyes
and played a fool’s game are now feeling pain and guilt.  They invested in the most overvalued market
and were caught when the market turned.  It
was like playing musical chairs and the music just stopped.  Tragically, there is a plethora of players and
only one chair left.  Investors discarded
fundamental value investing and pursued other flawed strategies for too long.
They now must experience these seven stages before they can have closure for
their missteps.

The market is just entering stage 2. The most liquid sectors
have come under intense pressure.  Less
liquid bond managers are holding their breath with their fingers on the sell
button looking for the first crack in their lofty prices.  If that button gets pressed, stage 2 will be
in full swing. So buckle up.  As we
travel down this long and windy bear market road for the bond market, it will
have many bumps and a couple pot holes.

 

 

Investment veteran and published author, Michael Carino,
prophetically called the timing and amplitude of the recent move in global bond
markets publishing “Global Bond Markets – Skydiving Without a Parachute.”  Michael has spent the last 25 years managing
fixed-income hedge funds and trading of over a trillion dollars of investments.
 He is the CEO of Greenwich Endeavors, a
financial service firm.  He feels
compelled to get his unique and under-reported views on the markets out to the
public.  It’s time a voice
contrarian to other self-interested, behemoth Investment Managers’
voices are heard.

via http://ift.tt/2n1djnN Greenwich Endeavors

Hillary Clinton came out looking sharp this evening — donning a devil’s red toga and new bobbed haircut — telling her fellow sisters to ‘stand up and resist’ for planned parenthood and jobs etc.

During tonight’s show with Tucker Carlson, he debated a young lady who was leading the ‘Day Without a Woman’ movement — which called for women to boycott WHITE MALE BUSINESSES ONLY. I know that sounds absurd, right? After all, if this is a women’s movement, why the fuck do chinese and black men get a pass on their boycotts? If this were a reasonable feminist movement, they’d say ‘fuck all men, equally’ (pun not intended) — instead of just the white ones. I will tell you now, this is NOT NICE! SAD!

Regarding the stats she quoted, they’re based on stats provided by the World Economic Forum, which derives a score parsing through data regarding economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment. I do not pretend to be an expert on this subject matter. More importantly, I am not under the disillusionment like many of my male peers out there that America is a beacon of equality amongst races and gender. This country is fucked 10 ways ’till Sunday. Based on the stats provided by the World Economic Forum, the United States is ranked #45.

We are ranked #1 in education for females, but when it comes to political empowerment, we’re on par with shitholes like Kazakhstan, Vietnam, China and UAE.

The top 5 ranked nations are Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Ireland. The rankings actually say Rwanda, but I’ve used my editorial powers to reject that horseshit — considering their educational attainment is ranked 110.

The bottom 5 ranked nations are islamic hell holes, naturally: Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Chad.

Moral of the story? As advanced westerners, we should help spread the proliferation of women’s rights by IMPORTING REFUGEES FROM ALL OF THE WORST OFFENDING NATIONS IN THE WORLD, when it comes to women’s rights.

(drops mic)

Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

 

via http://ift.tt/2n8N2kb The_Real_Fly

In what could be the beginning of ripples from The Fed's jawboned 'certainty' of a March rate-hike, Chinese money market liquidity conditions appear to be drying up once again as overnight offshore yuan rates surge 142bps to one-month highs.

Additionally,  1-week CNH Hibor +1.05 ppts to 4.53017%; and 1-month CNH Hibor +70bps to 4.9395%

 

At the same, spot offshore Yuan rates have plunged to their lowest since January 4th's massive short squeeze.

 

As it appears 2017 is Shangahi Accord Redux time – (China 'agrees' to weaken the Yuan against non-USD currencies, while "stabilizing" the Yuan against the USD… until that breaks)

 

The question is – will a sudden renewed but of volatility in credit markets (high yield crashed this week), commodity markets (crude and copper collapse this week), emerging market stocks (tumbling), and now China money markets, be enough to stall a determined Fed, and crush their credibility once and for all?

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Dear Bernie Sanders, it is our great pleasure to introduce to you, “Flippy”, the burger-flipping robot that will soon replace all those fast food workers that you’re working so vehemently to get fired via your efforts to introduce artificially high $15 per hour minimum wage rates.

“Flippy”, a robotic kitchen assistant, is the creation of Miso Robotics, an engineering firm specializing in “adaptable robotics” for commercial kitchens. Miso’s goal is to develop technology that can handle hazardous, tedious and time-sensitive aspects of cooking, from flipping burgers to frying chicken, cutting vegetables or final plating…in other words, all of the minimum wage restaurant jobs where employee costs just skyrocketed courtesy of economics-challenged politicians.

 

Per Nation’s Restaurant News, ‘Flippy’ is no longer just a concept as it won its first major contract with CaliBurger which vowed to roll out the burger-flipping technology in all of its 50 global locations by the end of 2019.

“The application of artificial intelligence to robotic systems that work next to our employees in CaliBurger restaurants will allow us to make food faster, safer and with fewer errors,” said Miller. “Our investment in Miso Robotics is part of our broader vision for creating a unified operating system that will control all aspects of a restaurant, from in-store interactive gaming entertainment, to automated ordering and cooking processes, ‘intelligent’ food delivery and real-time detection of operating errors and pathogens.”

 

The chain declined to reveal the cost of Flippy, saying Miso Robotics is working with customers to determine the best pricing model.

 

“The price will be in line with the productivity benefits Flippy provides to restaurant owners,” said a spokesperson.

And while Caliburger declined to reveal the cost of “Flippy”, we’re going to go out on a limb and assume they wouldn’t be rolling out the technology unless they were getting a decent ROIC on their investment…just a hunch.

Here are some videos of “Flippy” in action:

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Via Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

The problem very quickly became what Integral Metatheory calls a “legitimation crisis,” which it defines as a mismatch between Lower-Left (or cultural) beliefs and the Lower-Right systems (or actual background realities, such as the techno-economic base). The cultural belief was that everybody is created equal, that all people have a perfect and equal right to full personal empowerment, that nobody is intrinsically superior to others (beliefs that flourished with green). Yet the overwhelming reality was increasingly one of a stark and rapidly growing unequality—in terms of income and overall worth, property ownership, employment opportunity, healthcare access, life satisfaction issues. The culture was constantly telling us one thing, and the realities of society were consistently failing to deliver it—the culture was lying. This was a deep and serious legitimation crisis— a culture that is lying to its members simply cannot move forward for long. And if a culture has “no truth,” it has no idea when it’s lying—and thus it naturally lies as many times as it accidentally tells the truth, and hence faster than you can say “deconstruction,” it’s in the midst of a legitimation crisis.

 

– From the post: How a Breakdown in Liberal Ideology Created Trump – Part 1

My primary theme thus far in 2017, has centered around the observation that no constructive opposition to Trump currently exists in America. All we have from “the resistance” (corporate Democrats, corporate media and the deep state) thus far are endless conspiracy theories about Trump and Russia. This clownish opposition doesn’t actually stand for anything, and remains fully committed to continuing down the disastrous path we’ve been on this entire century. Simply being opposed to something isn’t going to cut it any longer, and there’s increasing evidence that the public is starting to catch on to the total fraud that is the establishment Democratic Party.

Jimmy Dore does an excellent job exposing this sham in the following clip. Make sure to watch the entire thing, it gets better and better:

Unless the Democratic Party begin to stand for something, it will remain dead opposition. If you want some evidence, just take a look at this incredible chart from The Huffington Post:

As you can see, the real plunge happened right after the election when it became clear that Democratic leadership would remain in place, and rather than admit failure, began to harp non-stop on Russia conspiracy theories. This tactic clearly isn’t working.

It’s not just the Huffington Post poll either, the evidence is everywhere. As Matt Stoller showed in a tweet earlier today.

Democratic Party is less popular than GOP and Trump. And Pence blows everyone away. https://t.co/QkbAyvmwUx

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 8, 2017

There’s a huge opening for a new political party in America. It’s low hanging fruit.

I’m ready.

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In the aftermath of the Trump accusation that Obama wiretapped his phone during the election, an allegation which the flagbearers of the “truthful” (according to their various advertising campaigns) anti-Trump media wave, namely the Washington Post and the New York Times have vehemently denied, an unexpected victim has emerged over the past few days: the New York Times itself.

The reason is that while the NYT has repeatedly criticized and denied Trump’s allegation, it itself had written an article on January 19 titled, in the print version, “Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides’, and online “Intercepted Russian Communications Part of Inquiry Into Trump Associates“, by reporters Michael Schmidt and Michael Shear, which paradoxically corroborated much, if not all of what Trump himself said, and quotes the usual anonymous source who said that “wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House” as part of an investigation into “the business dealings that some of the president-elect’s past and present advisers have had with Russia.”

So with various conservative blogs taking the NYT to task over this seeming contradiction, and even the WaPo’s own fact-checker seemingly confused…

Does Times Reporting Support Donald Trump’s Wiretap Claim? https://t.co/e0DJkhXzrV

— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) March 8, 2017

… today the NYT’s public editor, Liz Spayd felt compelled to address its January 19 article which, implicitly, substantiated much of Trump’s allegation, and to explain why that’s not the case.

She starts by saying that “Trump’s assertions, however overinflated, nonetheless echo certain aspects of The New York Times’s reporting from recent weeks. That, in turn, has allowed his administration to assert that the basis for his claims rests, in part, on reporting by The Times.”

On the surface, there are similarities. Both The Times and Trump have referred to wiretaps. Both have referenced White House knowledge of the investigations. And both have described efforts by officials from the Obama administration to involve itself in the continuing investigations of Trump and Russia.

Maybe Trump is not a completely raving lunatic after all. So where are the differences:

For one, as The Times (and others) has made clear, these investigations have been conducted by the F.B.I., intelligence agencies and Congress, not by Obama himself. The Times has also said Obama administration officials sought to spread intelligence about a possible link between Trump and Russia to ensure a trail of evidence for investigators, but it said Obama himself was not involved. And no Times reporter has claimed that any warrants have been issued to spy on Trump or his associates.

And there it is again: several months after we thought we would never again hear the old “Obama had no idea what was going on excuse”, it strikes yet again, only this time we find it very difficult to believe that Obama, who expanded the distributions of confidential NSA data to multiple offices just weeks before his final day in office, had no clue that Trump was being wiretapped.

There’s more, and this is where things get delightfully Orwellian, because as Spayd “explains”, the confusion is really just a function of readers being confused because, well, it’s complicated:

Distinguishing between Trump’s assertions and The Times’s reporting is essential. Yet readers at this juncture may be understandably confused on what is true and not in one of the most important ongoing news stories in the country.

More details about this pervasive “confusion” fanned by none other than the NYT itself:

Several readers have written in this week saying they’re having a hard time squaring The Times’s own past reports of wiretapping with the paper’s assertions that there is no firm evidence that any warrants for wiretaps have been issued. Readers also expressed confusion with The Times’s assertion that it would be illegal for a White House to receive information about such investigations, when its own wiretapping story in January said the Trump White House was given some information from intercepted communications.

 

“For months now the NY Times and many other mainstream news sources has been running stories based on anonymous leaks saying that a massive investigation was going on into Trump and company’s Russian dealings based on wiretaps and intel intercepts,” wrote John Penley of Asheville, N.C. “Now Obama officials are saying this all never happened so my question is this: Why have the NY Times and others been saying it has for months now basing their stories on anonymous leaks?”

So to eliminate the confusion, here is the NYT’s explanation of how the wiretapping of Trump and/or his associates, which eventually made its way to the White House – as per the NYT – didn’t really happen.

I reached out to editors in the Washington bureau to seek their help in clarifying the difference between Clapper’s — and The Times’s — assertions that no warrants had been issued, and the reference to wiretapping in the January story.

 

Elisabeth Bumiller, the bureau chief, said the January story was referring to information picked up from wiretaps and other intelligence collected overseas, a process that requires no warrants.

Still confused? Don’t worry: the NYT even has a Q&A to help you out of your cognitive dissonance predicament”:

There’s a lot to parse. And doing so, in a way that is clear to readers, is not easy when the subject matter is complicated and the information that reporters receive comes under strict terms of how it can be used. One reporter, Charlie Savage, produced a helpful Q. and A. explaining the law around wiretaps and key terms. But it didn’t try to show how Trump’s claims line up against The Times’s past reporting.

Sarcasm aside, what the NYT’s long-winded explanation boils down to is that Trump’s inner circle was wiretapped, but the difference is whether Obama knew about it or not. And if anyone harbors any gullible thoughts that the president who lied to the public about his knowledge of Hillary’s email server – arguably the biggest fiasco of her presidential campaign – but is telling the truth when he says that he has no idea whatsoever that someone, somewhere was in fact wiretapping Trump as the NYT reports, then we wish you all the best as you click away on all the other NYT “Q&A”s to help you in your misery.

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Via Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform blog,

In Part One of this article I exposed the establishment narrative of a strong economy as rubbish by providing hard data regarding imploding gasoline usage, failing bricks and mortar retailers and plunging restaurant sales.

“Inflation may indeed bring benefits for a short time to favored groups, but only at the expense of others. And in the long run it brings ruinous consequences to the whole community. Even a relatively mild inflation distorts the structure of production. It leads to the overexpansion of some industries at the expense of others. This involves a misapplication and waste of capital. When the inflation collapses, or is brought to a halt, the misdirected capital investment—whether in the form of machines, factories or office buildings—cannot yield an adequate return and loses the greater part of its value.Nor is it possible to bring inflation to a smooth and gentle stop, and so avert a subsequent depression.” – Henry Hazlitt – Economics in One Lesson

Inflation is the opium of the masses. The establishment’s interest in dumbing down the masses through government controlled public school indoctrination couldn’t be clearer than examining the chart below. The average non-thinking, math challenged, iGadget distracted, media controlled pawn thinks their household income has risen by $6,000 since 2008 because they have no understanding of Fed created inflation.

Even using the ridiculously downward manipulated CPI concoction shows the median household has lost ground. While median income has remained stagnant since 2000, the CPI is up 44%. Using honest inflation numbers would likely double that figure. Stagnant incomes with living costs 40% to 80% higher doesn’t exactly match the rhetoric of a strong economy being propagandized by the Deep State and their fake news media outlets.

Even the BLS can’t hide the inflation ravaging middle class families and senior citizens on fixed incomes. And those fixed incomes are fixed at zero, as they get .20% on their savings and no increases in their Social Security payments. CPI is now 2.5% higher than one year ago, above the magic central banker 2% goal. It has been raging at an annualized 4.4% rate over the last three months. It is poised to go even higher in the next few months.

Yellen and her intellectual yet idiot cohort of ego maniacal central banker brethren pretend they know the ideal rate of inflation to keep the economy running just right. See how well they’ve done since 1999, with two massive bubbles destroying the lives of millions and the mother of all bubbles (stocks, bonds, real estate) currently continuing to grow before it’s predictable incineration of wealth.

The Big Lie about the need for inflation has been pounded into the heads of the weak minded by the Fed, Wall Street shysters, fake news media outlets, and TV entertainers disguised as journalists and financial experts. This country became a worldwide industrial power while sustaining mild deflationary conditions for almost two hundred years. It wasn’t until the birth of the welfare/warfare state in the 1960s when corrupt politicians and spineless central bankers decided they needed guns, butter, and entitlements.

Closing the gold window in 1971 and allowing politicians to run up the national debt from $400 billion (34% of GDP) to $20 trillion (106% of GDP), while making $200 trillion of unfunded entitlement promises, has been the result. Total credit market debt has risen from $2 trillion in 1971 to over $65 trillion today. Total global debt has surpassed $217 trillion, or 325% of global GDP. The only way to make these disastrously horrible decisions seem palatable has been to produce inflation at prodigious levels in order to make the debt appear payable. It’s not.

Inflation and its supposed benefits is an example of how the Deep State has perfected the teachings of master propagandist Edward Bernays.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.

Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” – Edward Bernays – Propaganda – 1928

Of course, the pliable public has been convinced government debt doesn’t matter because we owe it ourselves, or some such nonsense. They have also been convinced by Madison Avenue maggots and Wall Street shysters that luxury automobiles, McMansions, Rolex watches, 72 inch home theaters, iGadgets, and a myriad of other “essential” material possessions purchased with debt actually constitute wealth. Keeping up with the joneses has been brainwashed into the minds of the ignorant masses as their only true goal in life.

The result is consumer credit of $3.8 trillion, the highest level in history. Since the 2008 financial crisis, created by the fraudulent issuance of mountains of subprime debt by Wall Street banks and stimulated by the easy money Fed, hundreds of billions of subprime student loan and auto debt have been dispensed to artificially boost GDP. This scheme was concocted by the Obama administration, Yellen, and their Wall Street puppeteers to bamboozle the public and temporarily jolt the economy. It failed.

Over 25% of all student loans are in default. Six million Americans are delinquent on their auto loans. The taxpayer bailout when the student loan “crisis” suddenly hits will exceed $500 billion, as Obama has doled out loans to every functionally illiterate college wannabe in the nation. You’d think the payoff from doling out $700 billion in student loan debt would be more knowledgeable young people imbibed with the inspiration to change the world with their newfound intelligence and training.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The $700 billion has produced illiterate, violent social justice warriors who despise free speech, can’t add, can’t write a sentence, and are virtually unemployable. But they are good at protesting, burning things, and being outraged by anyone they disagree with. This student loan debacle has been a purposeful scheme to artificially lower unemployment and provide the appearance of economic recovery, as the loan money has been used for iGadgets, booze, hookers and blow. Mission accomplished Obama!!

“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.” –  H.L. Mencken

The one area of consumer credit which has not reached its previous bubble peak is credit card debt. After Wall Street wrote off $300 billion (funded by taxpayer TARP funds) they began issuing credit cards like candy, again. But consumers have been slower to whip out the plastic like the pre-2008 days. That’s why bricks and mortar retailers have closed thousands of stores and ghost malls across suburbia are the norm.

So it begs the question as to why credit card debt has increased by $160 billion (up 20%) since its 2010 low. The answer is simple when you take into account the stagnant wages and rising cost of living documented earlier. Credit card defaults are so low because they are the only thing sustaining millions of families across the country.

In case you haven’t noticed, the purveyors of credit on Wall Street, out of the goodness of their evil black hearts (they’ve paid $321 billion in fines since 2008 without admitting guilt or having one executive jailed), have convinced every level of government, every utility company, landlords, and educational institutions to accept credit cards for payment. Before 2000, all these bills had to be paid with cash on hand.

Now you can pay your IRS bill, real estate taxes, monthly cell phone bill, school tuition or rent (with outrageous fees) with a credit card at 15% interest. Nothing like turning a $2,500 real estate tax payment into a $4,000 real estate tax payment, over time. It’s the American way.

Desperate households across the land aren’t clinging to guns and bibles. They’re clinging to credit cards as their only lifeline in this failing empire of debt, deception, and delusion. When the next inevitable financial crisis strikes “unexpectedly” and even the low paying, no benefits Obama jobs disappear, even their five credit cards won’t keep them from getting kicked out on the street again.

This isn’t just my pessimistic doom persona rearing its ugly head. My ponderings are based on common sense, an honest assessment of the real situation in this country and an understanding of the ebbs and flows of history. H.L. Mencken had similar views on government and the American people during the last Fourth Turning.

“In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms.” – H.L. Mencken

Based on anecdotal and hard verifiable data, the average American family is in the midst of a recession, if not a depression. No amount of propaganda, misinformation, fake government data, or fake news can cover-up the facts. Donald Trump was elected president, not by misogynist, white, racist, xenophobes, but by families (men and women) who have been screwed over by the establishment for decades and left impoverished, hopeless, and depressed.

He won the election because radicals like you and me decided to send a message to the arrogant, evil, globalist ruling class that we are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore. Despair of the silent normal majority is what propelled Trump to victory. Choices have consequences.

“History offers no guarantees. If America plunges into an era of depression or violence which by then has not lifted, we will likely look back on the 1990s as the decade when we valued all the wrong things and made all the wrong choices.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

In Part Three of this article I will assess the early days of the Trump presidency, the full court press by the Deep State to bring him down, his unrealistic economic plans, and how our overvalued stock, bond and real estate markets will eventually crash, leading to the next leg down in this Fourth Turning.

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