Tag: finance

Authored by Duane Norman via Free Market Shooter blog,

Back in March, the NRA detailed how WaPo‘s very own “fact check” had to rebut the claims from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) that a firearm “silencer” makes a weapon “quiet”:

In the meantime, although the popular name of this accessory is a silencer, foes of the law such as Gillibrand should not use misleading terms such as “quiet” to describe the sound made by a high-powered weapon with a suppressor attached. We wavered between Two and Three Pinocchios, but finally tipped to Three. There is little that’s quiet about a firearm with a silencer, unless one also thinks a jackhammer is quiet.

However, as PA Gun Blog pointed out, gun control groups (in conjunction with the MSM) went on a Memorial Day weekend push to demonize suppressors in the eyes of voters.  As the NRA also pointed out, WaPo’s editorial board went against its own “fact check”, and in the absence of facts, chose to editorialize against firearm suppressors instead:

And it is the general public upon whose behalf Congress is supposed to legislate, not the tens of millions who participate in shooting sports. Even a marginal increase in risk to the population cannot be justified, unless the harms to the minority from current policy are very severe and there are no means to reduce them other than the proposed legislation.

Nowhere in their article did they mention any increased risk to Americans from suppressors, and chose to use a flimsy opinion to back up its own already established facts.  The NRA used WaPo’s own facts in conjunction with CNN’s to destroy their editorial narrative:

Effective how, exactly? Well, according to the Post, “Silencers are almost never used in murders and other crimes under the current restrictive law, but certainly they would be used in more crimes if there were more of them in circulation.”

 

But in fact suppressor use in crime hasn’t perceptibly increased at all, even as the number of suppressors legally owned in America has nearly doubled in the last three years (the Post itself put the current number at “about 900,000,” while CNN reported it was 571,750 in March 2014). Figure in the mountain of unprocessed applications, as ATF struggles with a months-long backlog, and the actual number legally in circulation would already be considerably higher.

 

And if the HPA were to become law, retail sales of suppressors would still have to be processed by federally licensed dealers, with the buyer undergoing a background check and filling out the associated paperwork that would allow for tracing of the device if it were recovered at the scene of a crime.

Sebastian of PA Gun Blog sums this one up nicely…

I’m happy to see that gun people in the comments are coming armed with facts and shooting down every argument opponents make. It strikes me that they don’t really have any good arguments against the Hearing Protection Act.

…because our favorite Monsanto lobbyist turned “stay-at-home mom” for gun control Shannon Watts presented absolutely no facts when The Hill prompted her to over memorial day weekend, instead editorializing a similar emotional plea to WaPo’s:

“It’s all semantics,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

 

“Focusing on the name distracts people from the real conversation,” Watts said. “They did the same thing with the debate over whether to use the term ‘assault rifles’ or ‘semiautomatic rifles,’ and then the whole conversation shifted to ‘What are we going to call these things?’”

No surprise there; in failing to use facts to support a suppressor ban, she forgot how The New York Times, one of the most anti-gun liberal MSM publications of all, very publicly rebutted the “assault weapons” she cited for The Hill, referring to the entire term as a “myth”:

But in the 10 years since the previous ban lapsed, even gun control advocates acknowledge a larger truth: The law that barred the sale of assault weapons from 1994 to 2004 made little difference.

 

It turns out that big, scary military rifles don’t kill the vast majority of the 11,000 Americans murdered with guns each year. Little handguns do.

In fact, even with a coordinated push from many mainstream media outlets to get out the gun control crowd’s word, just as many are realizing the weakness of their argument.  The Hill, the very same outlet that gave the gun control crowd one of its memorial day voices, previously allowed pro-gun champion John Lott to publish an opinion piece (which actually read far more as “demonstration of facts” than opinion) on the gun control lobby’s repeated misuse of statistics:

The tally of 969 deaths is the result of triple and even quadruple counting. Michigan — by far the worst state according to VPC numbers — supposedly suffered 78 homicides and 390 suicides. Supposedly, Michigan was the site of over 40 percent of all deaths attributed to permit holders.

 

The main problem is that pending cases are counted in the same way as convictions. The Michigan State Police report the number of pending cases and convictions each year.

 

In any case, permit holders committed suicide at just 38 percent of the rate of the adult Michigan population as a whole.

 

Concealed handgun permit holders are also much more law-abiding than the rest of the population.

 

In fact, they are convicted at an even lower rate than police officers. According to a study in Police Quarterly, police committed an average of 703 crimes (113 firearms violations) annually from 2005-2007.

 

This is likely to be an underestimate since some news reports may have been missed and not all police crimes receive media coverage.

As is the problem with concealed carry reciprocity, it remains to be seen if there are enough votes in the Senate to overcome the 60-vote threshold to advance legislation legalizing firearm suppressors.  That is likely the reason we haven’t seen the legislation advanced to a vote, but Republicans could be delaying a vote until next year’s midterm elections, in the hopes of putting Democrats in vulnerable districts in the difficult position of voting against their own constituents.

As The New York Times stated, handguns are used in most murders; of the approximately eight thousand firearm murders annually, over two thirds are confirmed to have been committed with a handgun, with less than 8% being confirmed as being committed with a rifle, shotgun, or other type of weapon.  This is due to handgun concealability, which makes them popular among criminals.

Most suppressors nearly double the length of average handguns, and render them difficult if not impossible to conceal.  How many criminals do you think would voluntarily attach a suppressor to their handgun just to reduce the sound by a small fraction, leaving the firearm still as loud as a jackhammer?

The fact is, gun control’s coordinated media blitzes and less-than-factual pleas for more regulations are no longer working.  Gun control relies on emotion instead of reason, and one billionaire throwing money at gun control groups to fund their existence is not going to change the fact that the “silencer” is a creation of Hollywood movies, and it will take more than a repeal of ridiculous restrictions on suppressors to get the gun control crowd wound up. 

If only there was a guy like Obama around to get the media behind the gun control cause.  Oh wait…

via http://ift.tt/2s2cVHh Tyler Durden

A month ago, China 5s10s curve inverted for the first time ever, flashing warning signs of an imminent recession (but technical, liquidity factors were offered as excuses for this shift in the belly of the curve). The curve then double-inverted (with 3s10s inverting) seemingly confirming fundamental fears. And now, China's yield curve is inverted from 1Y to 10Y for the second time in history.

China's $1.7 trillion government-bond market is turning curiouser and curiouser…

The yield on China’s one-year government bond climbs 6 basis points to 3.66%, rising above the 10-year yield of 3.65%, ChinaBond data show. 

This is only the second time that the yield curve has inverted in data going back to 2006, with the first coming during a record cash crunch in June 2013.

As The Wall Street Journal recently wrote, such a “yield-curve inversion” defies normal market logic that bonds requiring a longer commitment should compensate investors with a higher return. It usually reflects investor pessimism about a country’s long-term growth and inflation prospects.

Perplexed traders and analysts offered up many excuses…

“Many of us are scratching our heads for an explanation because this kind of curve inversion is absolutely not normal,” said Wang Ming, a partner at Shanghai Yaozhi Asset Management Co., a bond fund that manages 2 billion yuan ($289.66 million) in assets.

 

“The inversion is a form of mispricing in the bond market,” said Liu Dongliang, senior analyst at China Merchants Bank . “The fact that no one is taking the bargain despite the higher yield on the five-year bond just shows how depressed investors’ mood is.”

 

“It’s really difficult to predict when the selloff or such anomalies will end because China’s bond market is reacting to the regulatory crackdown only and is no longer reflecting economic fundamentals,” said China Merchants Bank’s Mr. Liu.

But of course, the reality is – without massive and continued credit creation, there are very large questions about just how 'dynamic' Chinese growth could be and while technical flows are certainly part of the reasoning for short-end yields rising, the question is, why wouldn't the rest of the world pile in to 'reach for yield'… unless the fundamentals really did have them worried?

The nature of the inversion (higher yields, higher funding costs, and leverage pressure) is starting to reflexively impact the real economy (and hence the chances of dramatically lower growth/recession), as The FT reports Chinese corporate bond financing hit a record low in May, as a market rout discouraged new issuance while a wave of previously issued notes came due.

The combination of tight liquidity and a regulatory crackdown on leveraged investment in bonds has hammered China’s debt market in recent months.

Net corporate bond financing — new issuances less maturities — totalled negative Rmb217bn ($31bn) in May, well below the previous record low of negative Rmb89bn in February, according to data from Wind Information.

 

A “regulatory windstorm” led by China’s ambitious new banking regulator, Guo Shuqing, has targeted banks’ use of borrowed money to invest in bonds. The People’s Bank of China has also drained liquidity from the money market, making it more expensive for banks to borrow from each other to fund bond purchases.

 

“Banks’ demand for bonds has drastically reduced. The shock has been pretty large,” said Xu Hanfei, chief fixed-income analyst at China Merchants Securities in Shanghai. “Pressure has spread from the liabilities side to the asset side,” he said, referring to the impact of higher funding costs on demand for bonds.

 

“In the context of the increasing financing difficulty for bonds and non-standard (shadow bank) products, issuers of low quality are more severely impacted, and the corresponding credit risks tend to increase,” Haitong chief economist at Jiang Chao wrote this week.

Investors are also nervous about rising credit risk.

According to a survey of investors by Haitong Securities, only 5 per cent of bond investors are “optimistic” about low-rated corporate bonds. Companies cancelled or postponed 400 planned bond sales worth Rmb390bnbn in the year to May, up from Rmb286bn in cancellations a year earlier, according to Wind data.

But apart from that, we are sure everything is fine in the world's biggest/second-biggest economy.

via http://ift.tt/2rRJk18 Tyler Durden

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

The unanimous very smart person take on Trump’s firing of James Comey is that it’s a political disaster which will lead to total ruin and possibly his impeachment. I disagree.

 

The key factor that will determine how this ultimately turns out hinges largely on whether or not there was actual coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to sway the election through hacking or other nefarious means. Personally, I don’t think there was, which is why I don’t expect Donald Trump to be removed from office. The consensus view right now is that Trump’s firing of Comey offers further circumstantial evidence that he’s trying to cover up coordination with Russia in order to end the ongoing investigation. This is certainly a possibility to consider, but it’s definitely not the only possibility, nor is it the most likely explanation.

 

– From last month’s post: The Consensus Echo Chamber Take on Trump Firing Comey is All Wrong

I’ve been warning incessantly for months that the Democratic Party is on the verge of blowing itself up in a mushroom cloud of Russia conspiracy theorizing. Many high profile Democrats, corporate media hacks and partisans of all shapes and sizes have spent Donald Trump’s first six months screeching about how the President is a Russian agent who conspired with Putin to rig the election against Hillary Clinton. Of course, if there is any truth to this claim Trump should justifiably be tossed from office. The problem is we haven’t seen any proof, most likely because none exists.

You can already see Democrats trying to pivot to, “but Trump tried to obstruct justice.” Sorry, but based on what I’ve seen so far, this just ain’t gonna fly. The public’s expectations have been far too intentionally and incessantly inflated by Democratic politicians and corporate media pundits. Anything less than proof of collusion between Trump and Russia to influence the 2016 Presidential election will likely be seen as a win for Trump. This is what happens when you’re really stupid strategically and decide to put all your eggs in the Russia conspiracy theory basket.

As such, despite there being all sorts of investigations going on, I don’t expect anything to emerge that will lead to an impeachment of Donald Trump. Considering what we know about how domestic spy agencies operate, I strongly believe we’d have leaked proof by now if Trump colluded with Russia to influence the election.

That said, the Democrats will never let this go because it would force them to talk about real issues like Wall Street, oligarchy and imperial foreign policy, but they don’t want to do that. That’s the dirty little secret. Since the Democrats largely agree with Trump on many of his most heinous policy stances, they have to come up with an overseas bogeyman to obsess about. That’s what this has been about since day one. As such, there continues to be no functioning opposition party in American at this time. Unfortunate, but true.

Enough of that though, let’s get to the point of this post, the Comey testimony. We knew today would probably be a good one for Trump last night when a prepared statement was released. An interesting analysis was written by Sean Davis over at The Federalist. Here are the first few paragraphs:

Ahead of former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, the committee released the seven-page prepared statement Comey provided on Wednesday. While it’s clear that Comey and his allies believe the statement is proof that President Donald Trump acted inappropriately, and perhaps even illegally, the statement itself is a much bigger indictment of Comey’s own behavior over the last six months. Not only does Comey’s statement corroborate Trump’s claim that the former FBI director told him three times that the president was not being investigated by the FBI, it also reveals the Beltway game Comey was playing with the investigation.

 

In his statement, as my colleague Mollie Hemingway noted earlier today, Comey acknowledges the accuracy of Trump’s claim — included in the letter announcing Comey’s firing — that Comey had on three separate occasions informed Trump that he was not being investigated by the FBI. The corroboration of the claim by Comey himself is by far the most newsworthy nugget from the lengthy statement. But several other claims from Comey also do far more to indict Comey than they do to implicate Trump.

 

The most damning aspect of Comey’s prepared testimony is his admission that he deliberately refused to inform the public that Trump was not being personally investigated by the FBI. Comey’s justification for this refusal to publicly disclose material facts — that those facts might change — is laughable, especially in light of Comey’s 2016 two-step regarding the investigation of Hillary Clinton.

 

“I did not tell the President that the FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change,” Comey claims.

 

Recall that in 2016, Comey had no problem 1) publicly exonerating Hillary Clinton despite the fact that the authority to charge (or not charge) someone with a crime lies with federal prosecutors, not the FBI; 2) using the same press conference to excoriate Clinton’s behavior; 3) telling Congress that the investigation of Clinton was closed; and then 4) announcing days before a presidential election that the FBI had reopened the case and was once again investigating Hillary Clinton. Yet we’re supposed to believe that James Comey had grave moral concerns about disclosing facts that may be subject to change? Please.

 

If anything, Comey’s latest statement only highlights why Trump was justified in firing Comey in the first place. Comey, according to his own testimony, repeatedly told Trump that the president was not being investigated by the FBI. Not only that, Comey also told Congress that Trump was not being personally investigated. How on earth is it inappropriate, in light of those facts, for the president to ask for those facts to be made public by the very individual asserting them? Trump’s exasperation looks far more justifiable given the behavior to which Comey admits in his own testimony, largely because Comey’s tortured explanation for refusing to publicly explain those facts, even after disclosing them to Congress, holds so little water.

It’s this last part about how he informed Congress which will prove most harmful to Democrats. It seems many of them knew Trump wasn’t being personally investigated yet still went around yelling and screaming about how he’s a Putin puppet. This is not a good look, and non-partisan Americans will see right through it with complete disgust.

Next, we arrive at the most damaging aspect of the testimony for Democrats, and the Obama administration specifically; which we know couldn’t prosecute an elite criminal if their lives depended on it. The revelations about Loretta Lynch instructing Comey to use Clinton campaign talking points to describe the Hillary email investigation is unquestionably shady. Even Comey thought so.

The Daily Caller reports:

Loretta Lynch, the former attorney general under Barack Obama, pressured former FBI Director James Comey to downplay the Clinton email server investigation and only refer to it as a “matter,” Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday.

 

Comey said that when he asked Lynch if she was going to authorize him to confirm the existence of the Clinton email investigation, her answer was, “Yes but don’t call it that. Call it a matter.” When Comey asked why, he said, Lynch wouldn’t give him an explanation. “Just call it a matter,” she said.

 

Comey added later that he was concerned about that direction as it was false. He was further concerned because it aligned with the Clinton campaign’s spin on the investigation.

 

Lynch’s order, Comey said, “concerned me because that language tracked the way the campaign was talking about the FBI’s work and that’s concerning.”

 

“I don’t know whether it was intentional or not but it gave the impression that the attorney general [Lynch] was looking to align the way we talked about our work with the way the political campaign was describing the same activity, which was inaccurate,” Comey added.

 

Comey also cited Lynch’s secret tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton as a reason he chose to hold the press conference, he said, as he was concerned about preserving the independence of the FBI.

 

The Clinton campaign consistently sought to mislead the public by denying that Clinton was the subject of an FBI investigation. Instead, the campaign claimed the investigation was a simple “security inquiry.” Comey said he was concerned by Lynch’s pressure on him and the FBI to use the campaign’s spin, as it appeared it appeared that Lynch was intentionally trying to align the language the FBI was using to match the angle pushed by the Clinton campaign.

Just like that, concerns of Trump trying to obstruct justice in his conversation with James Comey gets watered down considerably in the minds of the American public.

Next, there’s the admission from Comey that a story published by The New York Times on February 14th, 2017 titled, “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence” was essentially fake news. Here’s the clip.

He touched upon the topic another time when under questioning from Lankford. Here’s the brief exchange:

LANKFORD: OK. You had mentioned before about some news stories and news accounts. Without having to go into all of the names and specific times and to be able to dip into all of that. Have there been news accounts about the Russian investigation or collusion about the whole event or as you read the story you were wrong about how wrong they got the facts?

 

COMEY: Yes, there have been many, many stories based on — well, lots of stuff but about Russia that are dead wrong.

This pretty much proves what many of us have long suspected, that many of these media stories are being fabricated by anonymous sources. This is why we should always be skeptical of what we hear from the agenda driven, billionaire-owned corporate media, especially when the sources are anonymous.

To summarize, today’s Comey testimony was a huge win for Trump and pretty much a disaster for the Democratic Party. While Trump will remain under pressure from various investigations, all of the new and important revelations today seems to portray Democrats and Obama cronies in a poor light, while negative stuff surrounding the Trump team (Flynn in particular) was already widely known. This is what happens when you make huge claims of treason and then find you can’t back it up.

Finally, the most concerning thing to the Democratic Party should be the fact that there have been many flashing warning signals leading up to this. For example, take a look at the following facts presented in a recent Politico article:

There are, here and there, warning signs that maybe the Democrats might want to, you know, focus on their own political problems. In April, the Democratic National Committee had its worst fundraising month in nearly a decade. As was seen in crucial states during the 2016 contest, African-American turnout remains a serious concern. The voters of admittedly red-state Montana just elected a guy who has been charged with assaultinstead of a (seemingly) competent Democrat with a clean police record. Reporters who actually spoke to voters in places like Ohio seem to have found some shrugs over the Russia frenzy. More than two-thirds of voters, according to at least one ABC News/Washington Post poll (if you believe polls anymore), said the Democrats were “out of touch.” The Democrats—yes, the Democrats—scored lower than Trump and the Republicans on that issue.

 

Trump, meanwhile, is trying to regain his message on border security, tax cuts, Obamacare repeal and telling off Europeans to their faces. You know, the kind of politically incorrect, occasionally rude things that actually ended up helping him win the election. A few weeks ago, a sociologist at Columbia University flatly predicted that Trump will be reelected in 2020. In an even crueler blow to the Democrats, an ABC poll released in April found that Trump would beat Hillary Clinton in the popular vote if there were a hypothetical rematch. (A rematch that at least one humble genius long ago predicted.)

I tweeted the following a month ago when everyone thought Trump was about to go down in flames, and I stand by it.

Trump has a far better chance at a second term than being impeached.

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) May 16, 2017

Democratic leadership are either the dumbest people in America, or the most corrupt. Probably a combination of the two.

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

Whatever one thinks of Edward Snowden, the actions of the original NSA leaker – right or wrong – were dictated not by spite, but an ideology: his desire to expose the pervasive domestic spying apparatus of the NSA, even if meant a lifelong exile in Russia, was – in his view – for the greater good. His infamous successor, NSA contractor Reality Winner, who was recently arrested for providing The Intercept with a top secret document allegedly revealing Russian hacking of the US election, however had a far less lofty goal: to burn Donald Trump down to the ground.

Literally.

On Thursday afternoon, Reality Winner was indicted by a federal grand jury on a single count. She entered a not-guilty plea before the judge denied bond.

Based on evidence seized from her home, federal prosecutors detailed Winner’s alleged plans “to burn down the White House” and travel to Afghanistan, pledging her allegiance to the Taliban according to Atlanta’s Channel 2 News.

EXPLOSIVE testimony in alleged NSA leaker hearing. GOV’T:Reality Winner praised Taliban,wrote “I want to burn the White House down” @wsbtv 5 http://pic.twitter.com/4Yt1eXGWdC

— Nicole Carr (@NicoleCarrWSB) June 8, 2017

Prosecutors argued that the only thing Winner could do if she were released on bail is be recruited by the nation’s enemies.

Behind the scenes, Winner was even more conniving than her actions revealed: prosecutors said in recorded jailhouse calls, she told her mother how to play her side of the story in the media, as someone who was scared she’d disappear from an interrogation room in her Augusta home after Saturday’s raid. In other words, the mother’s heartfelt appeal was scripted by Reality herself.

It wasn’t just her mother: the prosecution added that in a phone call to her sister expressed her confidence in how to play the court during her bond hearing. “I’m pretty, white and cute,” she allegedly told her sister. Prosecutors said Winner told her sister she would braid her hair and cry in court.

Here, a question we posed earlier in the week re-emerges: how did this 25-year-old, with a checkered public social network past, which revealed her contempt for the president, end up with a top secret clearance and was unaware her NSA work computer was being monitored, and that her prison conversations were being recorded. We can only attribute it to the vast qualified labor gap plaguing America these days.

Going back to today’s hearing, the government said it believes those who knew Winner best did not know an alternate side of her, who confessed to wanting to do harm to the nation through the release of classified documents.

Channel 2’s Nicole Carr spoke to Winner’s parents Thursday morning.

“She offered up her life for this nation and to see her treated so vilely is an insult to every person who’s ever worn a uniform,” Winner’s father, Gary Davis, said. The government said it will likely add to the indictment and more charges are expected to come.

#Breaking: Government: ” We’ll likely add to indictment.” Alleged NSA leaker bond hearing, more charges expected ,testimony -next on @wsbtv http://pic.twitter.com/YcPvVge48V

— Nicole Carr (@NicoleCarrWSB) June 8, 2017

via http://ift.tt/2rbd2wi Tyler Durden

Authored by Eric Peters via EricPetersAutos.com,

Whatever their failings, machines generally don’t second-guess you. Turn them on, turn them off. Point them in a certain direction. Command them to move or spin or do whatever it is they were made to do and – assuming they are not broken – they will usually do it.

And won’t try to nudge you to do what they think is best.

Electronic gadgets, on the other hand . . .  .

They pre-empt and nudge. Do things you didn’t ask them to – and won’t do things you want them to. They turn on – and off- at random, according to their own lights. They are not broken, either.

Which means, of course, they can’t be fixed.

They seem to literally have a mind of their own – and in a very real sense, they do. They are programmed to guess/intuit/anticipate your needs – whether you need them to or not.

It is like having an insolent intern or personal assistant who is useful to you in some ways but an aneurism-inducing  aggravation in other ways. And unlike the intern or PA – whom you can fire and replace with a more deferential one who actually does do what you ask without giving you lip or funny looks or unsanctioned advice – and doesn’t do things you didn’t ask them to – electronic gadgets are pretty much all the same. In particular, their annoying penchant to pre-empt; to nudge you along certain pathways of the software’s – that is, the programmer’s – choosing.

Always because the programmer has decided it’s good for you.

To – in  a very real way  – parent you.

It most definitely isn’t a master-servant relationship, as it ought to be. As it was, with machines.

And it is spreading.

Do you see”safety” anywhere? Where is he?

Apple announced the other day that the next iPhone will lock you out whenever your car is moving. No texting, either sending or receiving. Nor swiping or tapping, either.

For your saaaaaaaaaaaafety, of course.

Just like the saaaaaafety features built into the latest cars that lock you out of many of the “infotainment” features while the car is moving.

Also for saaaaaaaaaaafety.

And automatically – parentally – mute or turn down the volume of the radio whenever the car’s transmission is put into Reverse. Or refuse to allow you to turn off the traction control. Flashes a red light at you when you exceed the speeeeeeeeed limit (yes, really).

And more.

Apples’ new “feature” – as it is being marketed – will be built into iOS 11, the latest software for their sail fawns. This will spread, as it always does. You will not be able to say No Thanks.

Your sail fawn has decided that you are not capable of safely answering a call or sending a text while driving. Because some people cannot. The people who can’t handle a car regardless.

But it will peremptorily assault you in the middle of night, while you are trying to sleep, with a piercing Amber Alert – about a disappeared kid 50 miles away that you can do precisely zero to assist. What are you supposed to do? Put on a fire hat and run outside and look for the kid?

You cannot delete Amber Alert, either. Or even turn it off.

They are talking about doing the same with “important” announcements from Dear Leader. Amber Alerts expanded to Emergency Alerts. The “emergency” being whatever they decide it is.

Dear Leaders alerts. Wait and see.

Since people have stopped paying attention to their Tele-Prompt-ered “speeches,” they will  be force-fed to us, via dey sail fawns. Unctions to vote. Maybe to remember to eat your veggies today, too.

 

It’s demoralizing. Like being ankle-tied to your stretch-pants-wearing sixth grade teacher .

And it’s not just Apple, either.

Nissan, according to reports, is giving serious thought to making its new cars mobile Faraday Cages – impenetrable to radio signals. Texts could not be sent or received from within. Ditto emails and other real-time updates. (Satellite radio transmissions will be a problem; no word as to how that will be allowed through.)

GM and Volvo are playing with the idea of fitting their new cars with built-in “passive” alcohol sensors; the steering wheel and other surfaces would sample your skin – and if the car decides you’ve had one-too-many, it won’t start.

For saaaaaaaafety, again.

All buckled in for saaaaaaafety!

The Kia Cadenza I test drove this week (reviewed here) is a nice car, overall – but like almost all new cars, has a suffocating suite of saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety technologies that you cannot skip. Among them, sensors for the profusion of air bags built into the car (eight of them) that are so sensitive to weight that they sound the alarm if a laptop or hoagie from Subway is left unbuckled in the passenger seat. Literally, an alarm will sound – and the only way to shut the thing up is to buckle up the laptop or the sandwich.

A great, retarded Skynet is descending.

Or rather, a Skynet that considers us retards is descending. We haven’t been targeted for termination. Just pre-emptive lobotomization. All of us – because some of us deserve to be so regarded (and treated).

Cry saaaaaaaaafety!  . . . and let slip the dogs of control.

via http://ift.tt/2skKc1b Tyler Durden

If you count yourself among the die-hard, disaffected Hillary supporters still holding out hope that President Trump will be impeached for conspiring with Russian spies to stage a coup in the United States, then you may want to sit down because earlier today one of your biggest cheerleaders just threw in the towel on that whole narrative.  Yes, MSNBC’s very own Chris Matthews, the same man who confessed he “got a thrill up his leg” from simply watching Obama speak, admitted today that Comey’s testimony pretty much confirmed that “there’s no ‘there’ there” when it comes to Trump colluding with the Russians.

“The assumption of the critics of the President, of his pursuers, you might say, is that somewhere along the line in the last year is the President had something to do with colluding with the Russians … to affect the election in some way.  Some conversation he had with Michael Flynn or Pual Manafort or somewhere.”

 

“And yet what came apart this morning was that theory in two regards…the President said, according to the written testimony of Mr. Comey, go ahead and get any satellites of my operation and nail them.  I’m with you on that…”

 

“And then also, Comey said that basically Flynn wasn’t central to the Russian investigation.”

 

“And I’ve always assumed that what Trump was afraid of was that he had said something to Flynn and Flynn could be flipped on that and Flynn would testify against the President that he’d had some conversation with Flynn in terms of dealing with the Russians affirmatively.”

 

“And if that’s not the case, where’s the there-there?”

 

And when Chris Matthews throws in the towel on a liberal narrative, you know the gig is up. Oh, and by the way, this probably doesn’t help your case either…

Burr: “Director Comey, did the President at any time ask you to stop the FBI investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. elections?”

 

Comey:  “Not to my understanding, no.”

 

Burr:  “Did any individual working for this administration, including the Justice Department, ask you to stop the Russian investigation?”

 

Comey:  “No.”

#gamedev #indiedev Comey on whether Pres. Trump tried to stop Russia investigation: “Not to my understanding, no.” https://t.co/RtpPvi8Usr

— ???? (@bestermcbest) June 8, 2017

Adding insult to injury for bereft Hillary supporters, Comey did say an “obstruction of justice” was attempted… only not by Trump. Who then? This tweet provides a hint.

UPDATE: D?o?n?a?l?d? ?T?r?u?m?p? Loretta Lynch directed James Comey to drop ‘investigation’ into D?o?n?a?l?d? ?T?r?u?m?p? Hillary Clinton.

— Michael J. Knowles (@michaeljknowles) June 8, 2017

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Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,

One of the biggest pushbacks about my theory that inflation is the real worry for the markets, not deflation, is the argument that there is no demand for credit, and therefore, inflation will never be able to take root. There can be no denying that Central Bankers throughout the world have had much more difficulty creating inflation than they would have ever guessed. Draghi and Kuroda would have never predicted it would take negative rates and doubling their balance sheets every couple of years to stabilize their economies, nevertheless, this is where they find themselves.

Take a moment to think about the insanity of their policies.

First look at Japan’s short term rates. Negative at the front of the curve, and pegged to zero at the 10 year mark.

Then, consider the rate of Bank of Japan balance sheet expansion.

When it comes to Europe, like Mike Myer’s Saturday Night Live skit “Sprockets”, the ECB has experimented with some pretty weird stuff, pushing short term rates to asinine negative levels.

And the ECB’s pace of balance sheet expansion over the past year, would even scare Sprockets’ host Dieter.

At this point my skeptics will say, so what? We have seen this movie before, and each time, the money has not made its way into the financial system, so it ends up sitting inert on the banks’ balance sheets. And these doubters would not be wrong. Ever since the 2008 Great Financial Crisis, monetary policy has been pushing on a string. As Central Banks have shoved credit into the economy, the velocity of money has sunk, keeping the money supply from expanding rapidly.

While many believe this has solely resulted from of a lack of demand for credit, I take the opposing view. After the 2008 crisis, regulators cracked down on banks. Determined to never let it happen again, government officials introduced an array of rules designed to limit banks’ ability to lend too aggressively. Whether it was stricter BIS Basel III rules or US regulatory crack downs, banks were under pressure everywhere to limit lending. Recall JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon’s 2015 comments:

“Banks are under assault. We have five or six regulators coming at us on every issue… you have to ask how American that is.”

Although Jamie was complaining about the “American-ness” of this regulatory assault, it was by no means limited to the United States. Throughout the world, the mantra of “never again” limited the effectiveness of easier monetary policy.

And this tightening of the private sector’s ability to create credit was the main reason for the falling monetary velocity over the past decade. I understand that private sector demand for credit was shaken after the 2008 crisis, but countries whose banking system were less scarred (such as Canada and Australia), saw a tremendous willingness to borrow. And even in countries like the United States, areas of the economy where credit was extended, such as automobiles or student loans, have experienced plenty of borrowing.

Ironically, the desire to regulate and ensure the global economy would never suffer another crisis like 2008, forced the Central Banks to engage in the extraordinarily easy monetary policy. Had money velocity not fallen so precipitously, monetary policy would have been more effective, and therefore much less easing would have been necessary.

Now you might argue Central Banks should not have tried to goose the economy. That’s a perfectly valid point. But that means about much as the nice old lady in the supermarket checkout line telling you that she was once quite a dish. Sure, it might be true, but it doesn’t do much for you today.

What Central Banks should have done is completely irrelevant. If you want to argue about the theoretical best path for monetary policy, go find some economics professor’s blog. I am only interested in what was done, what will be done, and what that means for the market.

And it is quite obvious Central Banks are no longer afraid of expanding their balance sheet. They have decided they can always stop inflation later, but that deflation is the foe they need to fight today.

Which brings me back to my most cited criticism. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is convinced that between demographics, technological innovation and overbuilding of supply, there is zero chance inflation will return. But their main point is often, who is going to borrow?

Yeah, I understand their arguments. But this line of thinking reminds me what the famous chaos trader Dr. Ian Malcolm said in that great movie, Jurassic Park:

John, the kind of control you’re attempting simply is… it’s not possible. If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh… well, there it is.

Throw enough cheap money at the problem, and people will find a way. I can’t tell you where. I can’t tell you when. But I am confident that eventually, people will borrow.

Almost no one recognized the extent of the real estate problems in the 2000s until after the fact. Of course, now everyone thinks it was obvious, but it was anything but.

And the fact that everyone believes inflation will never return, is the very reason it will return. That complacency is why we can have such extreme monetary policies.

The other day, one of my readers, Mehul Daya from Nedbank CIB in South Africa, sent me a link to this terrific Bloomberg piece. I had missed it, and although it is a small article, I can’t stress enough how important it is. The article titled, “How China’s Biggest Bank Became Wall Street’s Go-To Shadow Lender” highlights the rise of Industrial & Commercial Bank of China as the biggest player in the US repo market.

High up in a New York City skyscraper, China’s biggest bank is playing in the shadows of American finance.

The prize for Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. isn’t stocks, bonds or currencies. It’s the grease in the wheels of all those markets: repurchase agreements.

By exploiting a loophole in rules intended to keep U.S. banks from getting “too big to fail,” the state-owned ICBC has become a go-to dealer in repos in just a few short years, alongside longtime powerhouses like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The short-term loans allow investors to borrow money by lending securities, serving a vital role in day-to-day trading on Wall Street.

ICBC’s rise reflects not only China’s global ambitions in high finance, but also how post-crisis rules have let a whole host of new players profit from the murky world of shadow banking, largely beyond the reach of bank regulators. As big banks face tougher standards, they’re being replaced by brokers, asset managers and foreign firms like ICBC, which can use more leverage and take greater risks. That has some regulators worried non-bank lenders are once again emerging as a threat to financial stability, less than a decade after panic in the repo market wiped out Lehman Brothers.

“The concern is that non-bank dealers are becoming a larger part of the repo market,” said Benjamin Munyan, who specializes in shadow banking and regulation at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management. “These intermediaries are outside the scope of our traditional Federal Reserve safety net.”

I am not suggesting that Chinese banks will fuel the next inflationary boom through a burgeoning repo book. I don’t know if they will or they won’t.

I just know that if the price of money is set too low, the private sector will find a reason to borrow. I don’t have a clue how they will do that. And I don’t know how low is too low, so it could be that we still aren’t there yet.

But I do know that Central Banks are intent on reflating the global economy, and that there will be many more stories such as “Chinese banks engaging in US repo to exploit regulatory constraints” in the future. I don’t buy the idea that Central Banks are incapable of stimulating the private sector to borrow. Like most things in life, it’s just a question of price, and these Central Banker knobs seem willing to pay whatever it takes.

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So what is the verdict from Comey’s historic testimony?

It depends on who you ask: turning to CNN, reading the NYT or WaPo, or any source of left-leaning news, and virtually every commentator will be certain that Trump’s political career has been terminally truncated as a result of today’s events. Alternatively, and inversely, the right will claim the opposite: Comey failed to do any damage to the president, the Russian collusion narrative is now over, and that it is Comey’s own actions that should be probed.

Both are to be expected.

But what about the reaction by an impartial arbiter such as the market? Conveiently, that’s what PredictIt is for, and as the chart below shows, Trump’s 2017 impeachment odds dropped by 4 points, from 21% to 17%, following Comey’s testimony.

… retracing the entire move from the past week.

 

What about looking beyond 2017? Luckily, there’s a poll for that too, and according to market participants responding to whether “Donald Trump be president at year-end 2018?”, the answer there rose from 59% this morning to 63%, matching the highest probability over the past month.

The bottom line: political punditry aside, the market’s verdidct was clear – if Comey hoped to cripple the Trump administration – at least based on his much anticipated testimony – he failed.

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By Chris at http://ift.tt/12YmHT5

Menopause, I’m told, is horrible.

Men don’t know too much about it, and thankfully I’ve not been exposed to it… yet. One minute you’re hand in hand on the beach with your sweet adoring wife and the next she’s a sobbing wreck who wants to stab you in the thigh with a pair of knitting needles.

This is probably just how Qatar feels right now.

Sure, they’ve never been “mates” with their neighbours but they’ve always tolerated each other. Only months ago, they had joined with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Hand in hand, they had come together with the shared vision of bombing Yemen back into the sand. Happy days! Today, knitting needles.

Two questions:

1. What is actually going on?
2. Should we care?

The two are related. We can only know if we should care if we actually know what’s going on.

To answer the first question, let’s begin with the second.

Consider that the most expensive, complicated, and unpopular wars are those that Western powers (which really means the US these days) wage directly. Outright wars… Washington has found… are unpopular.

And I’m not referring only to women with hairy armpits and unshaven men running around, waving silly placards chanting and throwing chairs through McDonald’s windows every time they feel triggered. After Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump faces a populace sick of “their boys” coming home without their legs.

Here’s what happens: the US military, after offloading a few billion dollars worth of hardware, flattening designated cities… I mean, “strategic targets” (remember shock and awe?) must ultimately commit ground troops to “secure the peace”. Puppets need installing and that’s impossible to do without security, and security means ground troops.

And this is where the fun starts.

The average terrorist looks exactly like everybody else in the country. US ground troops, however, stand out like a sore thumb. Brave young Billy Joe Swanson, armed with pimples, testosterone, and enough hardware to take out New Zealand, doesn’t actually know why he’s there, but he’s there because he was recruited from a low socio economic area where his prospects were late shift at Taco Bell or the excitement of “fighting for freedom”.

Young, uneducated, and not being the sharpest tool in the shed, Billy chose the latter and now, in a country and culture he knows absolutely nothing about, is faced with unknown and mostly unidentifiable attackers who will cut him down in an instant. Billy, together with his friends, feels increasingly isolated, frustrated, frightened, and angry. We’re here to help, he thinks. WTF is wrong with these people?

When Billy has to push what’s left of his best friends organs back into the gaping hole an IED left in his side, he quickly comes to hate the locals. They’re all terrorists or terrorist sympathisers. You can tell by the language used by Billy and his fellow soldiers where they are in the world – narcos, gooks, chinks, flops, commies, ragheads.

The countries change but the results do not. Billy and his friends hate them, and this means that more innocents are killed. This turns the country increasingly against the invaders.

The locals, now presiding over rubble, grow increasingly intolerant of arrogant, heavy handed Billy and the “liberating forces”. Whatever synergy and initial euphoria may have existed rapidly disappears. The gap — a result of cultural, religious, and value systems — widens with each viewing the other as more alien than ever.

Remember Abu Ghraib?

The lines between acceptable and outrageous blur in war. All wars, all militaries. None are immune. It’s how it is.

Western media continue to speak of “precision strikes” and, when things inevitably go wrong, “isolated incidents”.  Locals speak of genocide and murder.

For Washington it becomes an embarrassment. The world’s most sophisticated military with B1s, drones, guided missiles, satellites, helicopter gunships, and bunker busting bombs still, many years later, are struggling to win against sandal-wearing goat herders with AKs and RPGs.

Just like Musk figured with Tesla, it’s far easier to simply outsource all the parts to someone else and get someone to fund the whole thing. Enter proxy wars and the US puppet dictatorship of Saudi Arabia.

Trump likely figured this out. Ground troops in yet another Middle Eastern backwater will be as popular as herpes. So why going there?

Trump to his military advisors on Saudi Arabia: “Isn’t it time these guys started working for us?”

The real issue here isn’t Qatar.

They are merely a pawn in this. The target here is Iran, and now that Chairman Trump just gave the Saudis a “we’ve got your back” pledge, it’s time to move things forward.

This is likely to be as messy as ever. Why? Because it’s all been tried before. Direct wars, as discussed, have their problems. Proxy wars, on the other hand, aren’t all peaches and cream either.

The folks in the 5-sided building in Virginia may have higher IQs than Billy but they’re still as dumb as “isht”.

Here’s what happens with proxy wars.

US forces “train” local forces to stand up and fight for whatever the US thinks they should be fighting for. All too often it involves killing the citizens of their own country.

Pray tell, why US-trained forces in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan never seem to work?

Let me put it this way. It’d be like the Russians invading the United Kingdom and having Ivan force Peter in Yorkshire to fight Luke in Devon. Only government could fail to see this for what it is: a terrible idea. This won’t stop it from happening. You can’t fix stupid.

What Now?

Iran, a country that hasn’t invaded another in 200 years, is a terrible danger to the US, and Qatar supports them. We know this because the MSM tells us it’s so.

As that thug Henry Kissinger stated:

“It is not a matter what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true.”

Sadly, he is correct. That this narrative is being championed now by none other than biggest sponsor of terrorism makes it all the more laughable.

Washington have decided Iran is the enemy and that’s really what matters, which begs the question. Was Trump’s Middle Eastern visit used to drum up support for an offensive on Iran? An easy sell to the Saudis who like Iran in the same way Jews like bacon.

Given the speed with which the Saudis and 6 other Middle Eastern countries cut ties with Qatar, I think it’s safe to say there is a far broader plan in the works.

As ZeroHedge pointed out yesterday it’s about energy and the money and power that comes with it. Surprise:

“The real reason behind the diplomatic fallout may be far simpler, and once again has to do with a long-running and controversial topic, namely Qatar’s regional natural gas dominance.

 

Recall that many have speculated (with evidence going back as far back as 2012) that one of the reasons for the long-running Syria proxy war was nothing more complex than competing gas pipelines, with Qatar eager to pass its own pipeline, connecting Europe to its vast natural gas deposits, however as that would put Gazprom’s monopoly of European LNG supply in jeopardy, Russia had been firmly, and violently, against this strategy from the beginning and explains Putin’s firm support of the Assad regime and the Kremlin’s desire to prevent the replacement of the Syrian government with a puppet regime.”

With nearly 30% of global LNG supply, Qatar has more natural gas than Michael Moore after a bowl of cauliflower. And what’s more, it has the lowest extraction rates in the world. It’s how they got to be the richest country in the world on a per capita basis.

What to Expect?

Remember Libya?

Well, it’s no coincidence that the amount of terrorist attacks in Europe have increased ever since the US-led “coalition” shoved a flag pole up Gaddafi’s bum.

Any conflict in the Middle East is likely to increase the surge of refugees into Europe, and you can read my article on this very topic “7 steps to the easiest short in recent history” for a rundown. That particular theme will only increase the already fragile political and social fabric of Europe.

While it’s currently a low probability, should the powder keg that is the Middle East really blow, expect a US-led “coalition” to first provide “support” and finally to put boots on the ground. Then we go from passive to active and Billy gets to “integrate” once more with the natives. We’ve seen it all before.

Who wins? Who loses?

• It’s hard to see how any disruption to the supplier of 1/3rd of the natural gas market wouldn’t move prices.
• Any escalation leading to war won’t help already ballooning deficits, and yet the treasury will almost certainly need to sell more of those. Wars don’t come cheap.

Something else to consider is that this move by Middle Eastern countries led by the Saudis — designed no doubt to contain Qatar ahead of a more aggressive stance towards Iran — could backfire spectacularly, pushing Qatar closer to both Turkey and Iran. Qatar has money… lots of it.. and Turkey and Iran have decent military capabilities and regional ambitions.

Cast your vote here and also see what others think will happen

– Chris

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” — Søren Kierkegaard

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Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

 

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