Poll: 62% of Americans Think an Ebola Outbreak Is Likely in American City; Tea Party Supporters Most Likely To Say Outbreak Is “Very Likely”

In August, 40 percent of Americans thought an Ebola outbreak in
the United States was likely, today that number has surged to 62
percent who believe an outbreak is likely, according to
the latest
Reason-Rupe poll.  This includes 23 percent who believe it
is “very likely” and 39 percent who say it’s “somewhat likely.”

Thirty-six percent of Americans say an Ebola outbreak in the US
is unlikely, including 25 percent who say “not too likely” and 11
percent who think it’s “not at all likely.”

Americans with more education are less likely to believe Ebola
will spread in the US. For instance, 65 percent of those with high
school diplomas or less believe an outbreak is likely compared to
59 percent with college degrees and 46 percent of those with
post-graduate degrees.

Perception of Ebola risk does vary by political beliefs as well.
Fifty-eight percent of Democrats believe an Ebola outbreak is
likely, compared to 69 percent of Republicans. This percentage
rises to 73 percent among tea party supporters. Interestingly, tea
party supporters are almost twice as likely as regular Republicans
to believe such an outbreak is “very likely.”

The Reason-Rupe national telephone poll, executed
by Princeton Survey Research Associates International,
conducted live interviews with 1004 adults on cell phones (503) and
landlines (501) October 1-6, 2014. The poll’s margin of error
is +/-3.8%. Full poll results can be found here. including
poll toplines (pdf) 
and crosstabs (xls).

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Why Screening for Ebola By Taking Temperature CAN’T Work

The Los Angeles Times explains why trying to screen Ebola victims by taking their temperature won’t work:

A person could pass body temperature checks performed at the airports by taking ibuprofen or any common analgesic. And prospective passengers have much to fear from identifying themselves as sick, said Kim Beer, a resident of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, who is working to get medical supplies into the country to cope with Ebola.

 

“It is highly unlikely that someone would acknowledge having a fever, or simply feeling unwell,” Beer said via email. “Not only will they probably not get on the flight — they may even be taken to/required to go to a ‘holding facility’ where they would have to stay for days until it is confirmed that it is not caused by Ebola. That is just about the last place one would want to go.”

 

***

 

The potential disincentive for passengers to reveal their own symptoms was echoed by Sheka Forna, a dual citizen of Sierra Leone and Britain who manages a communications firm in Freetown. Forna said he considered it “very possible” that people with fever would medicate themselves to appear asymptomatic.

 

It would be perilous to admit even nonspecific symptoms at the airport, Forna said in a telephone interview. “You’d be confined to wards with people with full-blown disease.”

In other words, Ebola carriers who fail to take something to lower their temperature are signing their own death warrants.

The incentive to cheat is so high – life or death – that testing through temperature alone is totally worthless.




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German Journalist Blows Whistle On How The CIA Controls The Media

Submitted by Michael Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

“I was bribed by billionaires, I was bribed by the Americans to report…not exactly the truth.”

 

– Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor of one of Germany’s main daily publications, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Some readers will see this and immediately dismiss it as Russian propaganda since the interview appeared on RT. This would be a serious mistake.

Whether you want to admit it or not, CIA control of the media in the U.S. and abroad is not conspiracy theory, it is conspiracy fact.

Carl Bernstein, who is best known for his reporting on Watergate, penned a 25,000 word article in Rolling Stone after spending six months looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press during the Cold War years. Below is an excerpt, but you can read the entire thing here.

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

 

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty?five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go?betweens with spies in Communist countries.

 

Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without?portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring?do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full?time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad.

 

In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.

Like any good intelligence agency, the CIA learned from its mistakes upon being exposed, and has since adjusted tactics. This is where the concept of “non-official cover” comes into play. The term was recently described by German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, in a blistering RT interview. Mr. Ulfkotte was previously a respected journalist for one of Germany’s main dailies, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), so he is no small fry.

“Non-official cover” occurs when a journalist is essentially working for the CIA, but it’s not in an official capacity. This allows both parties to reap the rewards of the partnership, while at the same time giving both sides plausible deniability. The CIA will find young journalists and mentor them. Suddenly doors will open up, rewards will be given, and before you know it, you owe your entire career to them. That’s essentially how it works. But don’t take it from me…

 

If this peaked your curiosity, read about Operation Mockingbird.

Also see my post: How Hollywood Became “Propagandist in Chief” by John Pilger




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There Is No Mystery To Today’s Selloff

There is no surprise to why stocks are selling off today.

If anything, it was yesterday’s surge that was quite shocking and caught everyone by surprise, paradoxically doing more damage to investor sentiment than an orderly decline would have done as it once again spooked retail investors by the senseless and very whiplashy moves the market is now subject to. Case in point: after yesterday’s multi-year euphoria, investor sentiment is back to record lows.

As for the two violent selloffs this week: there is no mystery. Recall that Deutsche Bank warned late in the summer this would happen for one simple reason: there are just three more weeks of POMO left after which the Fed’s balance sheet flatlines, and with it, the S&P500. The only question is whether those who “sell ahead of everyone else”, manage to take the S&P far below “unchanged”, as prior QE ends have done, proving once again that it is all about the flow not the stock, and as a result the Fed will once again have to resort to even more QE.

Recall from August:

The risk sell-off we’ve seen in recent weeks frustrates us a little as the chart we’ve published most this year has pretty much predicted that tougher times would come around July. We’ve been paying it a lot of attention for over a year now but decided to wait until the autumn before we raised the warning flags. The chart in question (included in today’s pdf) is the one showing the Fed balance sheet and the S&P 500 (as a proxy for risk generally). As you can see, since the Fed balance sheet was used as an aggressive policy tool post-GFC, the graph suggests that the S&P 500 is well correlated with the size of the Fed balance sheet with the former leading the latter by 3 months. Given that the Fed have recently signalled that they will likely be finishing expanding their balance sheet in October, 3 months before that was July. This is important as virtually all of the mega rally in the last 5 years has come in the Fed balance sheet expansion periods. The other periods have been more challenging for markets.

 

And then this a week ago:

The risk sell-off we’ve seen in recent weeks frustrates us a little as the chart we’ve published most this year has pretty much predicted that tougher times would come around July. We’ve been paying it a lot of attention for over a year now but decided to wait until the autumn before we raised the warning flags. The chart in question (included in today’s pdf) is the one showing the Fed balance sheet and the S&P 500 (as a proxy for risk generally). As you can see, since the Fed balance sheet was used as an aggressive policy tool post-GFC, the graph suggests that the S&P 500 is well correlated with the size of the Fed balance sheet with the former leading the latter by 3 months. Given that the Fed have recently signalled that they will likely be finishing expanding their balance sheet in October, 3 months before that was July. This is important as virtually all of the mega rally in the last 5 years has come in the Fed balance sheet expansion periods. The other periods have been more challenging for markets.

Another way to see it:

In other words, want to blame someone? Blame the Fed. But don’t forget to also blame the Fed for the most artificial and rigged “bull market” rally in history from those distant 666 lows, which, if the Fed is indeed out, are coming back. But of course, the Fed is never out: all it takes is one market crash and the Princeton economists will be right back to micromanaging the terminally broken US capital markets and economy until there is nothing left.

 




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Where is Kim Jong-un? Rumors of Coup, Illness Swirl.

Thirty-six days. That’s how long North Korean
Dear Leader Kim Jong-un has been out of the public eye. Tomorrow
marks the 69th anniversary of the founding of the
nation’s ruling party, and rumors are swirling about Kim’s health
and North Korea’s political future.

Aptly nicknamed “The Hermit Kingdom,” not a lot of information
comes out of North Korea, and what does must be taken with a grain
of salt. Plenty
of bogus stories, like the
execution-by-120-dogs one earlier this year, make the
rounds in Western media.

Nevertheless, here’s what people are saying.

“The betting is that the increasingly obese Kim is merely
suffering from a physical ailment, most likely gout,”
according to Bloomberg Businessweek. In the
31-year-old’s last appearance he was limping. This fanned rumors
that Kim fractured an ankle from
weigh gain and wearing high-heeled shoes.

He missed a
significant parliament meeting late last month, which began
raising eyebrows.

Remco Breuker, professor of Korean studies at Leiden University
in the Netherlands,
tells Australia’s ABC today that “we’re not sure where he
is or what’s happening,” but one possibility is that “he’s been put
under house arrest.”

Vice, which previously documented Dennis Rodman’s
journey to North Korea,
reported one week ago that Jang Jin-sung, “formerly a key
member of Kim Jong-il’s propaganda machine” who was at a conference
of exiled elites, said that Kim is no longer in control, and the
powerful Organization and Guidance Department has essentially taken
power. “On one hand, it’s people who want to maintain a regime
monopoly. On the other hand, it’s not like people are fighting
against the regime, but in a policy sense they want to take
advantage to get influence. It’s not actually consciously civil
war, but there are these two incompatible forces at play.”

The notion that Kim isn’t at the wheel anymore was bolstered
this past weekend when two of the nation’s most senior officials
made an
abrupt and surprisingly friendly visit to South Korea.

Another rumor this week is that Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, may
be in temporarily in control.

From
CNN today:

Victor Cha, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and
International Studies who previously handled the North Korea
account with the National Security Council, says Kim Yo Jong began
surfacing publicly earlier this year at party functions.

“Clearly it’s an effort to slow-track her into becoming somebody
who is important within the system,” Cha says. “I can see how it’s
possible that she’s in some sort of temporary position. It’s very
difficult for the North Korean system to run without one of the Kim
family at least titularly in charge. So, if Kim Jong-un is
indisposed, she’s really the only available body that’s left, in
terms of a direct Kim family line.”

On the other hand, “a source with access to the secretive
North’s leadership” apparently
told Reuters today that “Kim Jong-un is in total control” and
that he simply pulled a tendon while conducting military
exercises.

Likewise, The Washington Times quote a U.S.
intelligence official who
says, “”The fact that Kim
Jong-un is out of sight is not necessarily an indication
that he’s not in control of the country. Despite the rumors, there
are many indications that the country is functioning as it normally
does.”

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Consultant the San Francisco Pension Fund Asked Whether it Should invest in Hedge Funds, Runs a Hedge Fund

Screen Shot 2014-10-09 at 11.40.21 AMMost Liberty Blitzkrieg readers will be familiar with the common fee structure for hedge funds known as “2 and 20.” What this simply refers to is the fact that a manager will take as a fee 2% of the assets under management, as well as 20% of the profits (above a high-water mark). While many people would balk at giving up such a high percent of profits, when the industry first got going several decades ago the managers were so few and the returns so huge, that high net worth individuals were happy to pay up for alpha.

Fast forward several decades, and the hedge fund industry is extremely crowded and competitive. What’s worse, in such a central bank manipulated market, it has become extraordinarily difficult for hedge funds to outperform and generate the desired “alpha.” Nevertheless, people that go into this business generally go into it for one reason. To make a shit-ton of cash. So in a world of poor performance, the hedge fund industry needs to earn more from the 2% and less from the 20%. In this world, performance actually takes a backseat to assets under management. As long as you can get your assets under management high enough, you can earn hundreds of millions on fees alone. After all, 2% of $10 billion = $200 million per year in fees alone.

continue reading

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Prohibition Strikes Again: Illegal Alcohol Kills 21 in Pakistan

Except for a few busybodies yearning
for the halcyon days of the Volstead Act, even otherwise delusional
drug warriors concede that legal alcohol isn’t a terrible idea
(if
for the wrong reasons). But for our
allies in Pakistan, it’s a different story. Alcohol is illegal
for Muslims in the deeply religious country, leading to the
predictable congeries of negative consequences—such as death from
the Pakistani equivalent of bathtub gin.
The Washington Post reports:

In a span of 24 hours this week, at least 21 people died in
Karachi from drinking toxic liquor, health officials said
Wednesday. The victims represented a cross section of residents in
Pakistan’s largest city, and officials are worried that the death
toll will mount.

Officials are hopeful they will catch the culprits who distilled
the toxic spirits. But just as capturing drug kingpins
doesn’t do much to stem the flow of narcotics, it’s unlikely
that a government crackdown will have any effect on the burgeoning
industry:

Officials say bootlegging has become a multimillion-dollar
industry in Pakistan since alcohol consumption was banned in 1977
under then-Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

Pakistan used to have fairly liberal alcohol laws, until a
growing religious conservatism took root in the ’60s and ’70s:

Still, in the ensuing decades, underground establishments sold
beer and wine in cities such as Islamabad. But many of them closed
after thousands of students with links to conservative
preachers launched a wave of terror against “un-Islamic”
activities in the capital in 2007.

Righteous teetotalling crusades against tipplers haven’t decreased
alcohol consumption—they’ve just forced it underground, making
drinking more dangerous. Not even the prospect of 80 lashes can
deter the thirsty.

Other Muslim countries such as
Iran have similar alcohol policies—and
similar problems. There, the high price of smuggled liquor has
driven many to buy homemade booze. Last year,
a bad batch killed seven and hospitalized dozens.

This should come as no surprise, given the abundant evidence
from America’s own ignoble experiment in alcohol prohibition. In
countries with legal alcohol, no one needs to worry about their
Skol vodka being any more toxic than it’s supposed to be—as long as

prohibitive taxes don’t drive the market into the shadows, that
is.

The benefits of legalization extend to other drugs. In Colorado,
marijuana stores now offer
a wide range of potency in their products to entice customers.
They are bowing to consumer kings with lower tolerances who don’t
want to fall into a zonked-out paranoia a la
Maureen Dowd. Gone are the days buying schwag from a guy in the
alleyway who doesn’t know a sativa from salvia.

If puritanical prohibitionists in Muslim countries refuse
to learn the right lessons from alcohol and marijuana prohibition,
they can look forward to more disasters like those in
Karachi.

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Poll: 78% of Americans Want Congress to Vote on Use of Military Force Against ISIS Before Midterms

The latest
Reason-Rupe poll finds 78 percent of Americans want
Congress to return from their recess to vote on the authorization
for use of military force against Islamic State fighters, also
known as ISIS, in Iraq and Syria. Sixteen percent say Congress
should not return before their recess concludes in November, and 7
percent don’t know what Congress should do.

With Congress’s 19 percent approval rating, it is perhaps less
surprising Americans feel Congress left DC without a vote to avoid
accountability. Fully 63 percent of Americans say members of
Congress haven’t voted on the authorization of military force
because they don’t want to put their vote on the official record.
Only 15 percent of Americans think Congress hasn’t voted because it
believes President Obama does not need their authorization for
military action, and 8 percent felt Congress simply hasn’t had
enough time yet to hold the vote.

This is a rare non-partisan issue in which overwhelming
majorities of Democrats (77%), Independents (78%), and Republicans
(83%) feel Congress should weigh in on this important decision.

Younger Americans are considerably more likely than older people
to give Congress the benefit of the doubt. Fully 72 percent of
Americans over age 55 think Congress has delayed holding a vote to
avoid putting their vote on the record, compared to 53 percent of
millennials.

The Reason-Rupe national telephone poll, executed
by Princeton Survey Research Associates International,
conducted live interviews with 1004 adults on cell phones (503) and
landlines (501) October 1-6, 2014. The poll’s margin of error
is +/-3.8%. Full poll results can be found here. including
poll toplines (pdf) 
and crosstabs (xls).

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60 People Locked In Building After 4 Suspected Ebola Cases Near Paris

Following news of the death of a British man in Macedonia from Ebola, RTL reports that 60 people are locked inside a Department of Medical and Social Coordination (DASS) building in Cergy-Pontoise (on the northeast edge of Paris) following Ebola-like symptoms in 4 people.

 

 

 


As RTL reports,

The premises of the DASS in Cergy-Pontoise (Val-d’Oise) is currently curly. Authorities suspect an Ebola case and locked sixty people.

 

An attending physician on the premises has been warning noting troubling symptoms in four people who had returned from Guinea.

 

Specific first aid arrived on the scene there for over an hour, a perimeter was set up and a crisis enabled prefecture.

 

Workforce of UAS equipped accordingly are expected on site a moment’s notice.

It appears the reach of this deadly disease is growing..

 

*  *  *

And then there’s this…




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30 Year Auction Closes With Small Tail At Lowest Yield Since May 2013

If yesterday’s 10 Year auction was very weak, despite the market reaction post the Fed minutes ramping the paper to highs not seen since last May, moments ago the Treasury concluded this week’s auctions by selling another $13 billion in the August 30-Year reopening, in another relatively weak issue, which priced at 3.74%, a small 0.2 bps tail to the 3.72% When Issued. In any event, the high yield of just over 3% was the lowest since the May 2013 Taper Tantrum freak out. As a reference, the lowest the 30 Year has sold at auction was 2.58% in July 2012 at the peak of the European debt crisis and just before Draghi uttered the magic words “whatever it takes.” The internals were also somewhat weak, with the Bid To Cover dropping from 2.67 to 2.404, just below the 2.44 TTM. And yet, unlike yesterday’s 10 Year when the Direct takedown crashed to multi-year lows, today’s Direct allotment was a decent 21.5%, well above the recent average, and in line with some of the higher Direct bids in recent years.




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