The four people, all black, arrested in Chicago in connection with the livestreamed beating and abuse of a mentally disabled white man, have been charged with hate crimes (and a host of other charges). Police initially said they weren’t sure that the victim was actually targeted because he was white, despite the comments captured on the video.
Defending their report that Russia was responsible for hacking and releasing information from the Democratic Party to attempt to influence the presidential election, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper responded to President-elect Donald Trump’s general dismissal of the evidence by saying there’s a difference between being “skeptical” and “disparaging” the intel community. Their unclassified report explaining the hack will be publicly released next week.
Former Sen. Dan Coats (R-Indiana) is going to succeed Clapper, according to sources talking to several different media outlets. Coats is a notable supporter of mass surveillance authorities, so that should be taken as an indicator of the incoming administration’s attitude.
Trump was deposed today—the legal kind of deposed, not the political one—to answer questions about a lawsuit connected to a chef who backed out of plans to open a restaurant in one of his hotels.
Today’s argument for school choice: A principal in Kentucky took students’ phones and then sold any pornographic images he found on them (meaning the pics were of teens).
Sears is joining Macy’s in closing a bunch of stores. Sears Holding will be shutting 150 Kmart and Sears locations in 40 states.
The union for the United States Postal Service has managed to force Staples to end its program where non-union private employees of the office supply store provided mail services.
It appears Newt Gingrich was right in his outrage at the hypocrisy surrounding the kidnapping and abuse of a mentally-ill white teen by four young black assailants. Despite the suspects shouting “fuck Donald Trump” and “fuck white people”, Chicago police said today that they do not believe the attack was motivated by race, more likely due to his “special needs.”
As a reminder, this is what Gingrich, said earlier on Fox and Friends: “If this had been done to an African-American by four whites, every liberal in the country would be outraged and there would be no question that it is a hate crime.” He added that “we are right at the edge of a terrible period — which I know President-elect Donald Trump wants to avoid — of having a deep bitter division in the communities in a way that makes America very hard to govern.”
And to address these divisions the country must first admit there is a problem on both sides; alas not only do the authorities refuse to at least approach what happened objectively, so does the Obama administration itself.
On Thursday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at the daily White House briefing that it’s “too early to tell” if the four Chicagoans who kidnapped and tortured a mentally challenged teenager committed a hate crime, despite the quite clear audio track that accompanied the violent kidnapping.
“I’ve seen the video through news coverage, and I know local officials, law enforcement officials are investigating this matter based on reports I’ve seen there,” Earnest said in response to a question from Fox News’ Kevin Corke. “They are still conducting an investigation into the disturbing images we saw in that video. They do demonstrate a level of depravity that was an outrage to a lot of Americans.”
When asked about Obama’s take of the video, Earnest said that he hadn’t “spoken to the President about it, but I am confident he would be angered by the images that are depicted on that video.”
When Corke asked a followup question about whether or not it was a hate crime, Earnest responded that it’s “too early to tell.”
“I don’t know where the investigation will lead,” he continued. “Our expectation would be that local law enforcement would follow the facts, and I wouldn’t speculate at this point the degree that federal officials would get involved in considering those kinds of crimes.”
Which is odd, because roughly at the same time, the local police charged the four “depraved” perps with engaging in a hate crime.
President Obama has declared January 2017 to be National Stalking Awareness Month. “Every year, stalkers deny too many people the comfort and safety they deserve, violating our basic expectation of dignity and respect for all,” starts the presidential proclamation, issued December 28. “This month, we join together in support of victims to raise awareness of this threat and reaffirm the importance of ensuring every person can live free from fear of violence, harassment, and any form of stalking.”
That all seems innocuous enough, the kind of feel-good pronouncement that means little in terms of concrete action but won’t do much damage, either. But then Obama drops this: approximately one in six women and one in 19 men will be victims of stalking. Seems a little high, no? According to Obama’s unsourced statistic, more than 16 percent of U.S. women will be stalked in their lifetimes.
The closest thing to such a fact among federal data comes from a 2014 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, based on data collected in 2011 through the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS). The 2011 NISVS data encompasses interview with 12,727 American adults, who were asked about their experiences with rape, sexual assault, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and stalking. Based on those interviews, researchers concluded that “an estimated 4.2 percent of women and 2.1 percent of men were stalked in the 12 months preceding the survey,” and “an estimated 15.2 percent of women and 5.7 percent of men have been a victim of stalking during their lifetimes.”
But “stalking” as defined by the CDC may fall short of many people’s idea of stalking. In the agency’s estimation, physically following someone or surveilling them by other means isn’t a prerequisite for being a stalker; simply sending an unwanted text, social-media message, email, or phone call will do.
Certainly, a string of unsolicited and unwelcome communications from someone could rise to the level of stalking. Messages that are menacing, or persistent, may elicit the same feelings of fear and anxiety that being physically stalked engenders. But for the CDC’s purposes, unwanted communications must merely occur once to be counted as stalking. Ditto for someone approaching a “victim” unsolicited on just one occasion. Here’s how the poll primed respondents for the stalking questions:
I’m going to ask you some detailed questions about times when you may have been contacted, followed or harassed. When answering, please think about anyone who may have done these things to you, including romantic or sexual partners, other people you knew, or strangers. Please do not include bill collectors, telephone solicitors, or other sales people.
Respondents were then asked how many people had ever watched or followed them from a distance, spied on them with an electronic device, broke into their homes or cars just to “let you know they had been there,” approached them in public when they didn’t want to be approached, left them an unwanted text or voice message, contacted them with an unwanted phone call, sent them unwanted emails or social-media messages, or given them unwanted letters or gifts. The report on this survey claims that respondents must have experienced more than one type or instance of these behaviors from the same perpetrator to have been counted as stalking victims, but a questionnaire described in the report as the complete survey text contains no follow-up questions about stalking after these that would determine prevalence from the same perpetrator or the respondents emotional response to the behavior.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) relied on a slightly less expansive definition of stalking. For DOJ counting purposes, stalking behaviors—this includes “making unwanted phone calls, sending unsolicited or unwanted letters or e-mails,” following or spying on the victim,” showing up at places without a legitimate reason,” waiting at places for the victim, “leaving unwanted items, presents, or flowers,” and ” posting information or spreading rumors about the victim on the internet, in a public place, or by word of mouth”—must have occurred on two or more separate occasions and the target must have felt fearful for their own safety or that of a family member.
Using this rubric, data collected as part of the 2006 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) led to an estimate of 3.4 million U.S. stalking victims annually. With a U.S. adult population of about 220,995,170 in 2006, that puts the prevalence of stalking victims at about 1.5 percent annually.
“The most common types of stalking behavior reported by victims were receiving unwanted phone calls from the offender (66 percent), receiving unsolicited letters or email (31 percent), or having rumors spread about them (36 percent),” according to DOJ. Broken down by gender, 2.2 percent of women and 0.8 percent of men were estimated to experience stalking in a given year.
It appears China chaos is finally starting to spread. Liquidity freezes and currency spikes…
Offshore has exploded higher – erasing all the losses post-Trump…
We get the feeling this is appropriate…
The USD Index is getting hammered…biggest 2-day drop since June 2016
China comments sparked a bloodbath in bitcoin…
And Treasury bond yields have plunged… (how do you say "policy error" in Chinese?)
ADP's miss this morning seemed to spark a less exuberant tilt…
For the 3rd day in a row, stocks dumped into the European close and ramped after…Once again today stocks rallied into the close and VIX was pressured lower but Dow 20k remains elusive (perhaps the machines can make it tomorrow on payrolls print)
Nasdaq rallied on the day but Trannies slipped back to unch on the year… Nasdaq record high
Trump had some notable effects on Time-Warner, Toyota, and Mexican Peso…
NOTE the last chart above – as Banxico intervened early but was stymied by Trump tweets pushing the peso back towards record lows.
The dollar weakness was dominated by Yuan strength…
The entire Treasury yield curve is now lower in 2017 with 30Y collapsing…
Silver remains the year's biggest winner (with gold close) and crude just in the red for 2017…
Crude tumbled on inventories data then rallied on two headlines saying that Saudi production cuts were happening…
One day after Macy’s announced it would fire more thousands of workers after another holiday spending debacle, and will shut down dozens of stores as the overhyped consumer recovery fails to materialize for the 7th consecutive year, today struggling Sears Holdings, owner of K-Mart announced that the near-insolvent, anachronistic retail chain has obtained some more last-second liquidity after selling its Craftsman brand to Stanley Black and Decker for $900 million. That was not enough however, as Sears needed another billion dollar which it got courtesy of its controlling shareholder Eddie Lampert who gave the company a $1 billion loan.
The company, which has been near death for years and years, issued the latest dire warning about its holiday business on Thursday, when it announced same-store sales fell as much as 13% in November and December, compared with a 2.1% drop at Macy’s Inc.
Meanwhile, it now appears that instead of a long-overdue “big bang” bankruptcy, Sears will continue instead melting away with periodic closures of its thousands of badly run, inefficient stores. And indeed, this morning Sears said it would continue to shrink by closing 108 Kmart and 42 Sears stores, including the original Kmart location that opened in Garden City, Mich., in 1962. Over the past decade, the company has closed or sold more than 2,000 stores, or two thirds of its locations.
So is your neighborhood Sears or KMart store one of the 150 that are about to shut down as the heat around the melting Sears ice cobe is raised by one more degree? Find out on the chart below.
We focus this video regarding the potential upside for stocks versus the considerable downside risk for investors. All Technical Analysis is flawed and backward looking, it is a Critical Thinking flaw to extrapolate the future from the most recent past. I want to know the next market move, and not still be stuck on the most recent market move. And the most important fact of all is valuations, stocks are in a bubble right now due to Central Banks extreme monetary policies.
I have news for you we already had the “Inflation Trade” from 2008 to 2016, now we are setting up for the Market Crash Trade from 2017 until Stocks find a bottom based upon fundamental valuations that are sustainable long term. Central Banks have all shot their wad, they are loaded to the gills with assets, which once the decline comes, and people (including central banks) start experiencing losses on their portfolio holdings, selling begets selling, and the Stock Markets around the Globe start crashing like the Tulip Market did, and every bubble market since the beginning of time.
This always plays out the same way every single time. Silicon Valley has already started crashing, the Brick and Mortar Retailers are going through their own systemic recession, the financiers who own this real estate are headed for bankruptcy court, I think the Oil Market still has major systemic headwinds, the automobile industry I expect is next to enter a major decline period, and Healthcare and the Medical System is about to go into its own recession because Healthcare is unaffordable by a large margin. Throw in the added dynamic that all countries globally are carrying way too much debt since the financial crisis, and central banks have done all they could to inflate asset prices.
I put a recession starting this year at around 50%, and Donald Trump is the most unstable leader we have ever had as President of the United States. Economics and the Fundamentals matter and given my analysis the upside potential for stocks versus the downside risk has never been greater. The stock market and financial markets globally right now are like investing in the last stages of the Tulip Market Bubble right before it Crashed!
I repeat who is left to buy, do you really want to buy stocks after all this buying has taken place since the financial crisis by Central Banks? It isn`t whether the S&P 500 can go to 2300 or not? The reality is that stocks are in a bubble, and looking at all the central bank buying over the last 8 years it is no wonder; just look at all these central bank balance sheet charts. Stocks are overvalued, and not by just a little bit, but by at least 50% by my models and that is based upon current global economic growth. If we enter a global recession which I put at around 65% over the next 16 months, think in terms of taking out the 2000 and 2008 stock market bubble highs/support areas in the markets. In short, the downside risk exposure for long only investors has never been greater in the history of financial markets.
When I hear market pundits talk about the emergence of “The Inflation Trade” I just shake my head at how stupid people (professionals who make a living in the industry) are from a basic competency standpoint. What we have just witnessed in Financial Markets given the 2.5% global growth dynamics since 2007 is the “Greatest Inflation Trade” in the history of Modern Financial Markets. Professionals in my industry really lack basic critical thinking skillsets, just a little smarter on average than Sales personnel.
When it comes to Stock Market Bubbles, the crash always cleans out the industry carcasses, only to be replaced by equally dumb personnel, and the entire cycle that is ‘financial markets stupidity’ repeats itself similar to a standard business cycle. Given the basic IQ and Critical Thinking Abilities of most people in this industry, it should scare the hell out of you as an investor when you hear this “I don’t see how you can’t be bullish in this environment” given the considerable history of financial markets and their propensity for crashing, and the current valuations versus the fundamentals of most stocks right here, coming to the ending stages of an eight year business cycle.
We are long overdue for a good old fashioned recession to clean out the financial market excesses of the last 8 years of insane stupidity.
Institutional Holdings information is filed by major institutions on form 13-F with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Sector Weighting
Energy
9.15%
Basic Materials
4.05%
Industrials
12.71%
Consumer Cyclicals
13.95%
Consumer Non-Cyclicals
10.5%
Financials
9.39%
Healthcare
13.32%
Technology
19.71%
Telecommunication Services
3.48%
Utilities
3.74%
This never ends well for Financial Markets, and this time will be no different, the fascinating psychology of asset bubbles and how fortunes are lost never gets old in my book! Capital Destruction is a fascinating concept, if you really think about it.
No Russian attempt to hack Vermont power grid found … Burlington Electric Department now says code associated with Russian hackers wasn’t on its employee’s laptop. Someone browses the internet on his work laptop. The laptop connects to a potentially malicious IP address. Nothing happens. -CNet
On Friday evening, there was a report that a Russian hacker had penetrated the US electrical grid, but on Monday the allegation had been retracted. This is significant because such allegations often do not receive the same coverage the initial allegation.
The idea that the Russians are regular and significant hackers of such things as the American elections has been made but not proven. However, various entites in the US including the CIA have made these allegations nonetheless.
As a result of CIA fingerpointing in particular, along with regular media pickups by such prominent media as the Washington Post, many believe the allegations have been proven when they have not been.
More:
On Friday evening, however, a similar and apparently benign event led to a report that Russian hackers may have penetrated the US electrical grid through a Vermont utility.
The report, written by The Washington Post and summarized by CNET News, said Burlington Electric Department had found code associated with Russian hackers on an employee’s computer. Initially the Post reported the hackers had penetrated the grid, but then said the code was isolated to a single employee laptop.
Further investigation further downplayed these reports. Eventually it was realized that the computer “had only visited an internet address that is sometimes associated with malicious activity.”
According to later Post reporting, the newspaper initially leaked the story without proper fact checking. The paper did not have all the information and should have waited for officials to investigate further.
Eventually investigators did discover malicious code but not fom Russia. It was software called Neutrino “commonly used by cybercriminals to deliver malware.”
Burlington Electric Department did say on Saturday it found “the malware” on the laptop, but that wording now appears to have been removed from the utility’s initial statement.
As stated above allegations continue to be made against the Russians without proof. Additionally, follow up stories never get the play of the originals.
It seems obvious at this point that the CIA and Trump have entirely different positions when it comes to Russian maliciousness, which Trump downplays while the CIA works to advertise it.
But the issue is even more serious than that.
The larger issue is one we’ve been talking about for 15 years or more. The CIA is accountable to overseas banking interests in the City of London, not to American intelligence operations. The latter accountability is just a smokescreen.
The split has now become public knowledge and Trump is being directly threatened as a result.
Just minutes after James Clapper finished explaining why Russia is America’s arch enemy to congress, president-elect Trump has announced that he is choosing former Indiana Republcian Senator Dan Coats as his Director of National Intelligence.
As The Washington Post reports, Coats, who is seen as a traditional Republican, served two stints in the Senate and was ambassador to Germany during George W. Bush’s presidency.
The Indiana Republican’s most recent term in the Senate ended earlier this week when the 114th Congress concluded. He also served in the chamber from 1989-1999.
The New York Times notes that Mr. Coats is a mild-mannered conservative who served on the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees.
He would be stepping into a position that some in Mr. Trump’s orbit believe is superfluous. Mr. Trump has named a more hard-charging conservative, Representative Mike Pompeo, to be his director of central intelligence.
The choice of Mr. Coats comes as Mr. Trump is taking public swipes at American intelligence agencies.
The price of oil has surged, which has pushed the market higher, and generated a healthy wealth effect for those who have equity exposure. And now it’s time for the hangover. As GasBuddy warns in its 2017 Fuel Price Outlook, motorists are about get some sticker shock in 2017 and will shell out $52 billion more over the course of the year compared to 2016 as the national yearly average rises to $2.49 per gallon.
Aside from gasoline prices that are forecast to be higher than 2016, highlights include:
$355 billion will be spent on gasoline in the U.S. over the course of the year, $52 billion more than last year. That’s a considerable jump given that motorists saved $39 billion on gasoline in 2016 versus 2015.
The seasonal switch from ‘winter-blend’ to ‘summer-blend’ as mandated by EPA and the Clean Air Act will bring a spike at the pump later this winter and spring, with the national average gas price rising between 35-60 cents between mid-February and a peak, likely to occur in May.
$3 a gallon gasoline will be seen in at least the nation’s largest cities: Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Seattle, with a strong possibility of such prices also appearing in a majority of the nation’s twenty largest metros.
“The list of factors being mixed into the yearly forecast has never been larger. This year will see a new administration take over, perhaps the most oil-friendly in some time, and with so many unknowns in regards to policy changes, we’ll be keeping a keen eye on such along with taxation changes. But forecasting fuel prices, especially this year, remains a challenging balance of science and art,” said Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy.
Additional components that have the potential to weigh on retail gasoline prices include federal and/or state tax changes, Middle East volatility, currency fluctuations, refinery maintenance and/or unscheduled outages, weather events, and shipping/transportation snafus.
“In recent years the ‘price at the pump’ continues to garner more media attention serving as an economic barometer on Main Street that stirs opinions from a broad swath of consumers from coast to coast,” said Gregg Laskoski, senior petroleum analyst. “Forecasting the direction of that ‘barometer’, the potential trouble-spots and how the trends are likely to translate into dollars and cents affords us the opportunity to share insights that help everyone save money, even when prices are climbing.”
* * *
Remember when Janet Yellen, and all the tenured economists in her circles said that plunging gas prices are great for the consumer? Well, we are about to find out just how bad for the consumer rising prices will be.
According to a lawsuit filed in L.A. Superior Court by former employee Anthony Pompliano, Snapchat has been faking its growth numbers in order to boost its value in an upcoming IPO. Pompliano, Snapchat’s “growth lead”, says he was hired away from his position at Facebook to provide confidential and proprietary information about Facebook’s systems and was subsequently fired, after only three weeks on the job, for blowing the whistle on the company’s growth misrepresentations with several higher-ups. Per Variety:
“Snapchat’s leadership saw Mr. Pompliano as an impediment to their planned IPO because he refused to turn a blind eye to Snapchat’s misrepresentations,” the lawsuit alleges.
Pompliano also alleges that after he was fired, Snapchat set about smearing his reputation.
“His opportunities have been compromised significantly,” said Pompliano’s attorney, David Michaels. “He’s had difficulty securing employment. It would be a red flag to an employer that you were there for three weeks and were terminated. We believe when they make the inquiry to Snapchat, they hear a bunch of lies.”
While much of the lawsuit it blacked out, it seemingly points out specific metrics that were allegedly misrepresented in the company’s IPO documentation.
The lawsuit goes on to allege that Pompliano was fired after he was deemed to be “an impediment to their planned IPO” and after repeatedly refusing to violate the terms of his confidentiality and non-solicitation agreements signed with Facebook.
The full lawsuit, which unfortunately will not automatically self destruct after 3 seconds, can be viewed below:
The four people, all black, arrested in Chicago in connection with the livestreamed beating and abuse of a mentally disabled white man, have been charged with hate crimes (and a host of other charges). Police initially said they weren’t sure that the victim was actually targeted because he was white, despite the comments captured on the video.
