It is no secret that the mainstream media has a “slight” left-leaning bias in their political reporting.  But newly leaked emails from Guccifer 2.0, obtained exclusively by The Intercept, reveal just how “cozy” and pervasive the Clinton campaign’s relationship is with the press.  From “off-the-record dinners with the key national reporters” to feeding pre-written propaganda pieces to “friendly” journalists, the new leaks reveal startling coordination between the Clinton campaign and the mainstream media.

The first revelation comes from a January 2015 strategy document written by Hillary’s press secretary, Nick Merrill, about how the campaign should approach reporting on Hillary’s decision to run for president.  The memo identifies “Maggie Haberman” of Politico as someone who had a “very good relationship” with the campaign and who had “teed up stories” for Hillary in the past.

Other documents revealed by The Intercept, listed those whom the campaign regarded as their most reliable “surrogates” – such as CNN’s Hilary Rosen and Donna Brazile, as well as Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden.  The list also included “David Brock” as a “Progressive Helper”…of course, Brock has made headlines this weekend as the latest WikiLeaks dump of the “Podesta Emails” revealed that the Hillary campaign potentially coordinated directly with Brock’s “Correct the Record” Super PAC, which is technically a felony (see “Podesta Emails Reveal Illegal Coordination With David Brock Super PAC“)

The next memo comes from Clinton’s deputy press secretary, Jesse Ferguson, who helped setup an “off-the-record dinner with key national reporters.”  The memo lists the goals of the dinner, one of which is to “give reporters their first thoughts from team HRC in advance of the announcement”…certainly wouldn’t want anyone to form and/or report their independent, unbiased thoughts now would we?

And, of course, the guest list included the who’s who of national reporters.

Finally, another document reveals the Clinton strategy to constantly feed stories to the traveling press to prevent them from saying something that might be “unhelpful”…they do say that offense is the best defense.

“Give reporters who must cover daily HRC news something to cover other than the unhelpful stories about the foundation, emails, etc.”

While none of these revelations are particularly shocking, they are yet another startling reminder of just how corrupt and irrelevant the mainstream media has become in delivering independent, unbiased news to the American public.

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

Authored by Mark St.Cyr,

Remember way back in the glory days when the combination of “everything social” and “IPO” meant near instant stardom and riches? For those who might be having a little trouble remembering; it was way back in days past just a little under 24 months ago. Yes, that’s months, not years.

Yet, as far as the many still clinging to IPO cash-outs, or stock option redemption in lieu of salary? It’s bordering on an eternity. And, believe it or not, that waiting game may have just been extended. The reason?

Look no further than the once hailed songbird of both “social,” and in a larger context, much of what being a tech firm in “Silicon Valley” encapsulated: Twitter™

Twitter has truly morphed into the literal “canary in the coalmine” of what I believe portends in the not so distant future for much of “The Valley” and “social media” in general. i.e., Laying on their backs, in the bottom of their cages, with nothing more than rumors and innuendo of either an offer to buy, or worse, an offer to just look. The latter having the worst of consequences once the “Thanks, but no thanks!” formality becomes public.

It would seem, in my opinion, Twitter™ received the equivalent of both in the very same week. Can anyone say (or should I say tweet?) Ouch!

As I stated earlier: “way back” was just under 24 months ago. And what truly took place as to hinder, or tarnish the implied “genius” status of founders, or the brilliance of the “it’s different this time” defense as it pertained to actual fundamental business metrics was The Fed’s ending of QE (quantitative easing.)

And with that has come the realization (albeit very slowly) that “unicorn and rainbow” thinking belongs where it should – in fairy-tales and folklore.

Want proof? Just look back to the ancient texts circa 1990-2000 in the “dot-com mania and crash section” via your search engine of choice. And for those of you old enough to had been “invested” back then? Just remember to have a tissue at the ready is all I’ll say.

For those not familiar, or those painfully trying to forget, the condensed version is this…

First there were cracks in the meme (think “it’s different this time”) then, one by one, once heralded IPO high flyers (think Twitter, LinkedIn™, etc.) began losing value from their peaks. At first it was slowly, then suddenly, and all at once, where they never regained their former lofty valuations. Till finally, the revenue models (think “eyeballs for ads”) along with their assumptions (think “billions upon billions of potential customers!”) were completely destroyed, taking even the largest of players down only a few years later of what was seen at that time as “unimaginable” with the demise of the then king of “new media” AOL™, yesterday’s equivalent of Facebook™ today.

But not too worry, after all, it’s different this time, yes?

Although I’m not as old as Methuselah (if you don’t ask the kids) I penned an article way back when in Sept. of 2014 titled “The Shot Heard Round The Valley World.”  right before the official ending of QE. And in it I made the following argument. To wit:

“But, one shouldn’t read into this as “confirmation” the risk appetite story is not only alive but growing. For that is all about to change.

 

Once the Fed shuts down the section of QE that has been pumping Billions upon Billions of dollars every month – it’s over for a great many of today’s Wall Street darlings.

 

Think of it this way: Who is going to fund your next round when they no longer have access to the Fed.’s piggy bank? Let alone pump more money into older start-ups that just haven’t produced any real money (as in net profit,) but have produced nothing more than great new employee digs or benefits?

 

Tack along side this the culture shock in what will seem near instantaneous with the shunning that will take place of any business resembling the, 3 employee, menial customer base, Zero if not negative profit margin businesses formed with the implicit intent as to be bought up or “acquired” for Billion dollar pay days.

 

These will be the first to go. That formulation is going way of the now infamous Pets dot-com sock puppet. This will be the first true shock to Silicon Valley culture that hasn’t been seen in many years. And it will be far from the only one.”

Along with this assertion:

“And that won’t be the only monumental shift coming. Maybe, one at an even faster pace: The meaning of IPO.

 

IPO is not going to have the same term of endearment it now has. I believe it will turn into the last and most dreaded three-letter acronym no one ever imagined in Silicon Valley.

 

The IPO screams of joy will turn into wails of terror when those VC “angels” meet at many “treps” desk and state – they’re IPO-ing.

 

No, not getting one set up for the big pay-day. No IPO will mean: “I’m pulling out.” i.e., “Have a nice day. Where’s the rest of my money?”

 

The once renowned purchases of “Billion dollar babies” will prove out not to be worth two cents in this environment.

 

Valuations will get crushed and people will be shocked at just how fast a company touted across the financial channels and other media as “fantastic buys” are flogged and fleeced when Wall Street comes back for their “investment.”

 

If the story or the numbers aren’t there – neither will these once darlings of Wall Street. Regardless of size or stature.”

You saw the ensuing cracks begin during the initial months of 2015 as the IPO market began drying up faster than a puddle in the Sahara as once Wall Street IPO darling stock prices went from “high flyer” to “dropped like a lead balloon” status – and never, repeat, never ascended within earshot of those once “totally worth it!” valuations.

Twitter is just the latest, LinkedIn showed just how much “hype” there was to all these valuation metrics. For without a Microsoft™ buy-out? It appeared when it came to getting more LinkedIn shares? There were more people looking to Link-out.

But not too worry! 2016 was said to be “The year for a rebirth of the IPO market.” That was said during the closing months of 2015. It’s now mid October 2016. How’s that all working out? (insert crickets here)

However, many will state this is all a bunch of “hyperbole” or “uninformed assertions” or better yet, as is portrayed among the main stream financial media crowd as “the doom and gloom-ers looking only to be proved wrong again, i.e., “For just look at these markets!” I leave you with 2 words that were near unconscionable over the last few years.

Two very small words that have monumental implications and should bring panic to anyone in tech, “Silicon Valley,” or still holding dreams of cashing out large on the basis of an IPO built on the “Eyeballs for ads” model. And it’s right there in Palo Alto, California for all to see. That is – if one dares look.

Those two words?

“Price Reduced!”

And no, that’s not in reference to a Silicon Valley darling such as a start-up. No, those two words belong to that other seemingly invincible meme which was seen as far more stable than the IPO’s that afforded them.

Real estate.

via http://ift.tt/2dp5JuJ Tyler Durden

While the Trump Tape scandal may end up far less damaging to the Trump campaign than many pundits predicted, confirmed by several polls this morning which showed rank-and-file Trump supporters barely changed their opinion of the candidate in the aftermath of the hot mic recording leaked on Friday afternoon, he will have to pull off a strong debate performance while ignoring loud calls from both the press and top elected republicans to step aside, in order to offset a decline in polls has suffered since the first debate.

That may be easier said than done, especially since over the past 24 hours Trump has seen a barrage of attacks not only from the left but also from his own party, with dozens of GOP lawmakers calling for him to stand down. As Fox wrote earlier, Trump was already struggling through a tough couple of weeks, after the first debate with Clinton, in which she argued Trump was verbally abusive to a 1996 Miss Universe winner. Still, trying to appear unfazed, Trump struck a defiant tone on Sunday in the face of calls for him to abandon the U.S. presidential race, attacking prominent Republicans and saying he has “tremendous support.”

As he so often has done in times of campaign stress, Trump took to social media to try to squelch any speculation that he could leave the race. “Tremendous support (except for some Republican leadership”). Thank you,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

“So many self-righteous hypocrites. Watch their poll numbers – and elections – go down!” Trump tweeted, apparently referring to Republican lawmakers seeking re-election who have withdrawn their support for him over a 2005 video that emerged on Friday.

The negative speculation over the fate of Trump’s campaign was the bulk of Saturday’s news cycle, and continued on Sunday.

As Reuters writes, Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri told reporters on Clinton’s campaign plane: “We understand that this is uncharted territory … to face an opponent that is in the grips of a downward spiral in terms of his own party belatedly walking away from him.” A source close to the campaign of Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, dismissed talk among some political analysts the Indiana governor might bolt the ticket in the uproar over Trump’s comments.  “Absolutely not,” the source told Reuters.

Meanwhile, as noted above, with Republican Party leaders in crisis mode and doubts emerging over Trump’s ability to draw support from crucial undecided voters, it appeared that many of Trump’s core supporters would remain loyal despite the hot mic incident. A public opinion poll by POLITICO/Morning Consult, taken just after news broke of the video, found 39 percent of voters thought Trump should withdraw, and 45 percent said he should stay. Of those who said Trump should leave, only 12 percent identified themselves as Republicans.

Suggesting blowback may be in store for some Republicans who attacked Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan was heckled by Trump supporters at a rally in his congressional district in Wisconsin on Saturday, after having disinvited Trump following the release of the recording of Trump making lewd remarks. “You better back Trump!” they yelled. “You turned your back on him!” “Shame on you!”

But while there has been much verbal speculation about the future of the Trump campaign, now one month ahead of the election, in practice it would be virtually impossible to replace Trump. As we reported previously, in what have been largely symbolic moves, at least two Republican governors, 10 senators and 11 House of Representatives members withdrew their support of Trump, with some advising him to drop out of the race, including John Thune of South Dakota, a member of the Senate Republican leadership. But, as Reuters notes, any attempt to replace Trump on the ballot would face huge legal and logistical hurdles. The Trump campaign fought back, circulating “talking points” to a core of high-profile Republicans who promote Trump in the news media. The points sought to undermine establishment Republicans who have abandoned Trump.

“They are more concerned with their political future than they are about the future of the country,” said a copy of the talking points, described to Reuters by two sources close to the campaign.

It might work: as we noted previously, Trump has made his battle against the establishment a central campaign theme: what better way of underscoring that than by showcasing that not only do Democrats hate his brand, as of this moment a vast majority of Republicans do too.

“Phones have been blowing up for the past 24 hours,” said a prominent Republican political operative in Washington, referring to a heavy volume of calls among party officials and Republican members of Congress.

There could be financial complications for Trump however. As we reported last night, Trump’s troubles could steer campaign donations away from him and to Republican candidates for Congress and other down-ballot offices.

But money may be the least of Trump’s worries if he is unable to keep his head in tonight’s debate.

What should one expect?

According to one Reuters source, Trump could help himself if he himself quickly addressed the video and the Oct. 1 New York Times report that he took so substantial a tax deduction on a declared $916 million loss in 1995 that he could legally have avoided paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years.

Altternatively, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Trump adviser, told Sunday talk shows that at the debate Trump might choose to go on the offensive against Clinton by bringing up past infidelities of her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Giuliani said both presidential contenders were flawed but that Trump feels he owes it to his supporters to stay in the race. Republicans have attacked Clinton, 68, over what they say is her role in trying to discredit women who accused her husband of sexual misconduct decades ago, and have wondered why Trump ignored to approach the topic during the first debate.

According to the WSJ, which writes that “Trump Signals Attack on Bill Clinton in Coming Days ” a taste of what may be to come was unveiled on Saturday when Bill Clinton was midway through a remark about climate change Saturday when a heckler gave a taste of what he and his wife’s presidential campaign might get from Republican Donald Trump in coming days. “Nobody can dispute the fact…” Mr. Clinton started to say at a rally in a union hall, “… that you’re a rapist!” the protester shouted, finishing the sentence for the 42nd president.

Bill Clinton responds after heckler calls him a “rapist” during rally in Wisconsin http://pic.twitter.com/eTJxMeKqOK

— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 9, 2016

Previewing a hard-line attack on Clintons’ sexual past, Trump on Sunday morning tweeted an interview given by Juanita Broaddrick, who claimed Mr. Clinton sexually assaulted her in the late 1970s…. Ms. Broaddrick tearfully recounts the episode in the videotaped interview and said “I’m afraid of him.”

As the WSJ adds, “Trump, facing fierce blowback for his lewd comments about women, is signaling that he will target Mr. Clinton’s behavior as he tries to stabilize a campaign coping with its biggest crisis to date.”

In weekend apologies for his remarks, the Republican nominee invoked Mr. Clinton repeatedly, saying he had “abused women” and talked about them in ways that were more offensive than his own in a 2005 video in which he boasted of sexual aggression.

 

He also claimed Mrs. Clinton attacked the women who accused her husband of sexual misconduct.

 

“I’ve said some foolish things, but there’s a big difference between the words and actions of other people,” Mr. Trump said in a Saturday morning video. “Bill Clinton has actually abused women and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his victims. We will discuss this more in the coming days.”

 

That line of attack threatens to yank Mr. Clinton directly into the campaign scrum, a space the former two-term president has largely avoided since his wife launched her campaign a year and half ago.

The WSJ notes that according to strategists in both parties, a tactic where Trump goes for Clinton’s past infidelities may backfire.

Rudolph Giuliani, a Trump campaign surrogate, said Sunday on NBC that he didn’t expect his candidate to raise Mr. Clinton’s past during an evening presidential town hall meeting in St. Louis, Missouri.

Additionally, the WSJ notes that Bill Clinton remains a popular figure, outshining his wife and her Republican opponent.

A recent Wall Street Journal/ NBC News poll found that 45% of voters said they have very positive or somewhat positive feelings about the former president, compared with 38% who have very negative or somewhat negative feelings.

 

The same survey found that 37% of voters have positive feelings about Mrs. Clinton, while 52% have negative feelings. Meanwhile, just 28% of voters have very positive or somewhat positive feelings about Mr. Trump; 61% have very negative or somewhat negative feelings about him.

Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster, said Mr. Trump would be playing to his base of hard-core supporters by attacking Mr. Clinton, but he isn’t winning over any new voters. “If he were running a Republican primary race, this could be an effective strategy,” Mr. Newhouse said. Now, “it’s a failed strategy to try to bring Bill Clinton to this.” Lashing out at the former president and saying that he has done something worse is “like an argument that a third-grader might make,” Mr. Newhouse said. ” When you use an apology to turn around and attack your opponent, you lose ground,” he said.

A democratic strategist, Joe Trippi, believes that “there’s no way out for him other than to be humble and apologize”, which on the other hand some say would show weakness and give Hillary the offensive. He also pointed out that Trump now needs to somehow win over women and college-educated white voters and that “taking aim at Mr. Clinton is only going to “repulse them further.”

* * *

While nobody has any idea what Trump’s best angle of attack may be, or what the republican presidential contender will say in under three hours when the townhall-styled debate begins, it is certain that following a brief courteous open, the mudslinging on both sides will promptly escalate, resulting in one of the most memorable, “deplorable” yet entertaining slow-motion trainwrecks observed in primetime history. The biggest unknown, however, is how America will respond to it: and for Trump that particular gamble could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

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According to the latest weekly Factset data, after five consecutive quarters of EPS declines, earnings for the Q3 season, which begins in earnest this week, are set to post a decline in of 2.1%, which would mark the first time the index has recorded six consecutive quarters of year-over-year declines in earnings since FactSet began tracking the data in Q3 2008. It also means that the vast majority of S&P500 firms are in a buyback blackout period for the next 3-4 weeks.

And while there has been a pickup in recent optimism that Q3 earnings will actually surprise to the upside, and post a material beat relative to consensus as they traditionally have in past years, one firm that is pouring cold water on hope for a rebound is Goldman Sachs, whose David Kostin writes in his latest weekly kickstart, where he previews Q3 earnings, that “changes in most macro factors point to disappointing results.” and points out that 4 out of 5 macro variables suggest that third quarter earnings will disappoint. To wit:

Negative changes in most macro variables suggest 3Q earnings will disappoint relative to expectations. The conclusion is based on our analysis that utilizes five macro factors that have historically been correlated with earnings surprises: US economic growth, interest rates, oil price, the dollar, and consensus EPS revisions. Of the five factors, four have shifted in a direction that typically weighs on earnings surprises. Oil price change is the only factor that should positively contribute to 3Q surprises. During the last 15 years (60 quarters), an average of 46% of S&P 500 firms reported EPS results more than one standard deviation above consensus estimates. Our model suggests that a modestly below-average share of firms (43%) will post positive EPS surprises in 3Q.

Here are the details why Goldman continues to be notably gloomy on corpoate prospects, a trend we noticed first in the late spring, and which has gotten worse since then:

3Q 2016 earnings preview

Earnings season officially begins next week when Alcoa reports, but a handful of S&P 500 firms have already announced results. Notable earnings beats include COST, PEP, and FDX. Of the small share of companies that have reported 3Q earnings so far, 64% have announced EPS more than one standard deviation above consensus estimates, compared with the historical average of 46%.

The vast majority of S&P 500 firms are now in the buyback blackout window. Roughly 66% of S&P 500 market cap will announce results during the next three weeks, and 31% of market cap will report during the three day span from October 25-27. Nearly 90% of S&P 500 market cap will have reported earnings by November 4 (see Exhibit 1).

Consensus bottom-up forecasts imply 3Q S&P 500 adjusted EPS will fall by 1% on a year/year basis. EPS declines will be driven mostly by the Energy sector. Energy EPS is forecast to decline by 68% year/year, but outside of Energy, S&P 500 EPS is expected to rise by 3%. Analysts predict S&P 500 sales will grow by roughly 4% but be offset by margin declines (see Exhibit 2).

Aggregate S&P 500 margins are projected to fall by 59 bp in 3Q. Energy sales should decline only modestly, meaning the massive sector-level EPS decline can be attributed primarily to margin compression (-384 bp). Outside of Energy, consensus forecasts imply that margins will fall across all but two sectors and that S&P 500 ex-Energy margins will decline by 27 bp. Only Materials sector margins are expected to rise, and Information Technology margins are currently expected to remain flat.

Negative changes in most macro variables suggest 3Q earnings will disappoint relative to expectations (see Exhibit 3). The conclusion is based on our analysis that utilizes five macro factors that have historically been correlated with earnings surprises: US economic growth, interest rates, oil price, the dollar, and consensus EPS revisions. Of the five factors, four have shifted in a direction that typically weighs on earnings surprises. Oil price change is the only factor that should positively contribute to 3Q surprises. During the last 15 years (60 quarters), an average of 46% of S&P 500 firms reported EPS results more than one standard deviation above consensus estimates. Our model suggests that a modestly below-average share of firms (43%) will post positive EPS surprises in 3Q.

Higher economic growth increases the likelihood of positive EPS surprises. However our Current Activity Indicator (CAI) suggests a 72 bp decline in the pace of US economic growth relative to the third quarter of last year, a factor that is likely to weigh on S&P 500 EPS results. The 10-year US Treasury yield averaged 1.6% in 3Q, 66 bp lower than the quarterly average one year ago. At the index-level, falling interest rates lead to fewer positive earnings surprises by hampering results in the Financials sector. Looking beyond the macro lens, our Banks analysts highlighted decelerating C&I loan growth as a key theme for 3Q earnings. Slowing C&I loan growth will pressure aggregate loan growth, which consensus still forecasts will be above the three-year average. KEY, FITB, and PNC are most at risk (see 3Q16 Preview, October 5, 2016).

Consensus EPS revisions during the 3-month period preceding earnings season are directionally indicative of earnings surprises. Consensus bottom-up estimates for 3Q EPS fell by 3% throughout the quarter, foreshadowing a below-average earnings season. Since June, consensus has lowered 3Q EPS forecasts in most sectors, with Energy EPS slashed by more than 30%. A disappointing 3Q earnings season will spark negative revisions to 4Q EPS estimates, which are overly optimistic in our view. Consensus bottom-up forecasts currently suggest 4Q EPS will grow by 7%, representing the highest year/year growth rate in nearly two years. Changes in the price of crude oil, which has fallen by 9% since 3Q 2015, is the lone macro factor that should positively impact the 3Q earnings season. Brent crude price has jumped 88% since bottoming in January, but the average price during 3Q 2016 was still down near-double digits year/year. Declining oil prices will weigh on Energy firms but should continue to serve as a modest benefit to the earnings of companies in other sectors.

Finally what does this all mean for the market:

While cyclicals have outperformed defensives by 9 percentage points during the last three months (7% vs. -2%), a disappointing earnings season is one reason why the outperformance will not persist. S&P 500 has traded between 2100 and 2200 for almost three consecutive months (64 trading days). As the stock market stagnated, bond yields started to rise. The 10-year Treasury yield has climbed by 38 bp since July, while defensives (GSSBDEFS) have lagged cyclicals (GSSBCYCL) and the S&P 500. The recent strong performance of cyclicals interrupted a nearly two-year stretch of outperformance by defensives. A poor earnings season could pressure stocks, sending the market index lower and pushing investors back toward defensives. Additional negative EPS revisions and rising uncertainty in advance of the presidential election add to the case for defensive firms.

Alternatively, a poor earnings season and a drop in stocks could force more dovish talk out of the Fed, killing the prospect of a December rate hike, resetting the cycle once again and leading to another rebound in stocks driven entirely by multiple expansion.

via http://ift.tt/2d1i1NF Tyler Durden

Submitted by Kevin MacDonald via Occidental Observer

What Trump said:

“I’ve got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her,” Trump says. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”

 

“And when you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

 

“Whatever you want,” says another voice, apparently Bush’s.

 

“Grab them by the p—y,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

So now we have a media frenzy, the theme of which is that Trump has shown himself to be a horrible sexist and  abuser of women. “Rape culture in a nutshell” as a writer in the Huffington Post would have it.

As usual, it’s a moral indictment. Of course, moral indictments of Trump have been routine ever since he entered the race, often centered on race and immigration. But now the chorus is deafening. So much so that quite a few Republicans (mainly those who never supported him or did so only reluctantly — i.e., the GOP establishment cuckservatives) are now (surprise!) deserting him.

The implicit assumption here is that the women involved are passive, helpless creatures who are being assaulted by the big bad hairy ape. Heaven forfend! Fainting couch feminism at its finest.

Spare me.

What Trump is saying is that, because  he is a star, women are entirely open to his advances, and as an evolutionary psychologist, I would have to say I am utterly unsurprised at this. Evolutionary psychology 101.

Trump is nothing if not an alpha male. He is rich and he is a celebrity. His comments happened in Hollywood where the culture of sex, celebrity, money, and power has been entrenched for 100 years. All that talk of the casting couch has a strong basis in reality. And it’s well known that male  movie stars have access to a very active sex life if they want it. It would take a lot of will power to pass on a life that pushes the buttons of quite a few of your evolved pleasure centers.

So we have the spectacle of ultra-liberal, Trump-hating Hollywood — the absolute center of the American culture of sex, celebrity, money and power — somehow failing to notice the hypocrisy.

This is not about rape. (That’s Bill Clinton’s thing — with Hillary’s collusion; it goes without saying that rape is evil.) Women are willing participants in this culture of sex and power, and they often have much to gain by indulging males, or at least they may think they do. As Trump said, “when you’re a star, they let you do it.”

The evolutionary psychology of sex is that males often gain by maximizing  the number of sexual partners. That’s  because  the act of sexual intercourse is low-cost for males, while for females in the environment we evolved in, it could be very costly indeed — pregnancy, the danger of childbirth, lactation — and that’s just infancy. As a result we expect females (or those who control them, such as parents) to be very choosy about whom they mate with, whereas males are not expected to be as choosy—unless they plan to be a good father and invest in their children. But a culture of monogamy and good parenting is not what Hollywood is pushing.

But even under conditions of monogamy, males benefit from extra-pair matings in a way that females can’t. And throughout history, males who compete successfully (i.e., achieve social dominance, like Trump) have been able to turn their social success into reproductive success, or, in our society, a very active sex life with willing females. So a major finding in history is that  wealthy, powerful males had access to many females. Think Chinese emperors with hundreds of concubines, Muslim sheiks, and African chieftains.

Or Genghis Khan. By achieving unprecedented military success, he and his male descendants were able to establish large harems of women throughout Asia. Based on modern Y-Chromosome data, his lineage has 16 million direct male descendants in the modern world.  (But it didn’t happen with European kings — interesting question as to why.)

And the flip side is that women are attracted to successful males. Read any romance novel. Or look at the real world and notice which men are getting the attractive women. Willing attractive women.

But an important strand of modern feminism is to try to turn men into beta males who are willing cucks and wouldn’t think of coming on to a woman in an assertive way. If you’ve been around a university lately, they’re full of them. Sensitive guys who are likely horrified by that brute Trump.

So we have articles like “Trump is the climax of America’s masculinity problem” in the Atlantic, “Donald Trump and the crisis of masculinity” in Counterpunch, and “Donald Trump is a parody of American manhood — and that’s what lifts him” in the LATimes.

The sad thing is so many women have bought into this. It’s pathetic that as America heads into a watershed election, the entire focus of discussion is on how Donald Trump thinks of women.

Grow up. Get in the real world.

Having said all that, let’s talk evolutionary psychology 2.0. The mainstreaming of the Hollywood culture of sex, celebrity, money and power has not been good for the society as a whole. Trump has apologized for his comments, and he is well-advised to do so. Part of his apology could be to say that he got caught up in this culture because of its obvious appeal to his nature as a male, but he rejects it now because of its harm on the wider society. You might say that Trump has taken advantage of all the aspects of corruption available in contemporary America—the tax loopholes for the wealthy, hiring foreign labor in order to be competitive, investing in casinos despite their drawing on the worst human compulsions, contributions to pliable politicians, and doing the celebrity sex thing. And as he said about much of this, he knows the system inside-out and realizes the need to change it.

The fact is that this Hollywood culture has not been good for the society as a whole. Social support for high-investment parenting has always been a critical feature of Western social structure until the sexual revolution of the 1960s. This regime was an aspect of the sexually egalitarian ethic of traditional Western society, deeply intertwined with Christian religious beliefs. Fundamentally, the harder edges of sexual competition were softened; wealthy, powerful males did not have freedom of sexual access that they do today. Until the 1960s, even though the Hollywood culture thrived beneath the surface, there were strong controls on the content of movies in conformity with Christian family values. Since the 1960s, these cultural controls were lifted, and all of the markers of family stability have headed south  — including divorce rates and births out of wedlock for all races and ethnic groups. (Nevertheless, there are very large differences between races and ethnic groups in conformity with Rushton’s lifespan theory of race differences.)

But this relative lack of social support for marriage has had very different effects depending on traits like IQ—a theme of The Bell Curve. For example, a well-known study in behavior genetics shows that the heritability of age of first sexual intercourse increased dramatically after the sexual revolution of the 1960s. In other words, after the social supports for traditional sexuality disappeared, genetic influences became more important. Before the sexual revolution, traditional sexual mores applied to everyone. After the revolution, genes mattered more. People with higher IQ were able to produce stable families and marriages, but lower IQ people were less prone to doing so, and these trends have been exacerbated by the current economic climate.

A theme of Chapter 4 of The Culture of Critique is that the psychoanalytic assault on traditional Western sexual culture had a disparate impact on different IQ groups:

Jews suffer to a lesser extent than non-Jews from the erosion of cultural supports for high-investment parenting, and Jews benefit by the decline in religious belief among non-Jews. As [Norman] Podhoretz (1995, 30) notes, it is in fact the case that Jewish intellectuals, Jewish organizations like the AJCongress, and Jewish-dominated organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union … have ridiculed Christian religious beliefs, attempted to undermine the public strength of Christianity, and have led the fight for unrestricted pornography. The evidence of this chapter indicates that psychoanalysis as a Jewish-dominated intellectual movement is a central component of this war on on-Jewish cultural supports for high-investment parenting. …

 

Although other factors are undoubtedly involved, it is remarkable that the increasing trend toward low-investment parenting in the United States largely coincides with the triumph of the psychoanalytic and radical critiques of American culture represented by the political and cultural success of the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s.

I then go into the academic version of the ideas presented here, especially the greater importance of social controls and traditional religious beliefs for people on the left side of the Bell Curve. (See here, in the  Conclusion).

There is nothing wrong with traditional Western sexual codes. The problem is not the traditional culture. Rather it is the economic dispossession of non-elite Whites combined with a media culture that glorifies expressive individualism and uninhibited sexuality (i.e., drugs, sex, and Rock ‘n’ Roll) — a media culture that, in my view, was critically shaped by the Jewish intellectual movements reviewed in The  Culture of Critique.

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With the worst of the great recession, supposedly, behind us, The Real News Network's Kim Brown notes that many economic analysts still see signs that we’re not yet completely out of the woods. A new report released Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund shows that some banks in the United States and Europe may not be strong enough to survive another downturn, even with States assistance.

KIM BROWN, TRNN: Joining us from New York is Michael Hudson. Michael is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His latest book is Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy. Michael, thanks again for joining us.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Its good to be here. But we can’t get out of the woods.

BROWN: Okay, let’s get into that. The IMF report on financial stability says, in spite of banks being stronger now than before the economic crisis of 2007-2008, about twenty-five percent of US banks and about a third of European banks are too weak to even benefit from a potential rise in interest rates and any recovery aid, should the global economy take a downward turn. But before we get into any specific questions about the health of banks, Michael, are we still in a recession or are we firmly in a recovery now?

HUDSON: We are not in a recovery and we’re not really in a traditional recession. People think of a business cycle as a boom followed by a recession and then automatic stabilizers revive the economy. But this time we can’t revive. The reason is that every recovery since 1945 has begun with a higher, and higher level of debt. The debt is so high now, that since 2008 we’ve been in what I call, debt deflation. People have to pay so much money to the banks that they don’t have enough money to buy the goods and services they produce. So there’s not much new investment, there’s not new employment (except minimum-wage “service” jobs), markets are shrinking, and people are defaulting. So many companies can’t pay their banks.

The banks’ product is debt. They try to tell customers that “debts are good for you,” but the customers can’t afford any more debt, so there’s no way the banks can continue their current business plan. In fact, there’s no way that banks can be paid everything that they’re owed. That’s what the IMF doesn’t follow through its analysis, by saying, “Look, the banks are broke because the financial system is broke; and the financial system is broke because the whole idea of trying to get rich by running into debt doesn’t work.”

It was a false model. So really, we’re at the end of long cycle that began in 1945, loading the economy with debt. We’re not going to be able to get out of it until you write down the debts. But that’s what the IMF believes is unthinkable. It can’t say that, because it’s supposed to represent the interest of the banks. So all the IMF can say is to wring their hands over the fact that the banks won’t make money even if there is a recovery.

But there really isn’t a recovery, and no signs of it on the horizon, because people have to pay the banks. It’s a vicious circle – or rather, a downward spiral. Basically, the IMF economists are just throwing up their hands and admitting that they don’t know what to do, given the limits of their tunnel vision.

BROWN: Well, Michael, help us figure out why growth has been so weak over these past eight to six years or so.

HUDSON: If you take the average family budget – and I’ve said this on your show many times –we can go through the numbers. If you have to pay about forty to forty-three percent of your income for housing, you also have to pay fifteen percent of your paycheck for the FICA for Social Security wage withholding. You have to pay medical care, you have to pay the banks for your credit card debt, student loans. Then you only have about twenty-five or thirty-five percent, maybe one-third of your salary to buy goods and services. That’s all.

The problem here is that the way you get a job is with a company that sells goods and services. The companies aren’t hiring, because consumers don’t have enough money to buy the goods and services.

We’re in a chronic debt-deflation. There’s no way we can recover unless you write down the debts. And that’s what the IMF basically is implying (and it was explicit regarding Greece), but its not spelling it out, because that’s not what can be said in polite company.

BROWN: Michael the headline from MarketWatch about this IMF report, it reads, “Forget too big to fail. The big concern is banks too weak to survive.” If big banks almost capsized the global financial system, are weaker banks actually better for consumers?

HUDSON: Banks that are very narrow and do what banks used to do (before President Clinton abolished Glass-Steagall in 1999). Small banks that lend to consumers are fine. Most banks – with Deutsche Bank at the top of the spectrum here – have decided that they can’t make money lending to barrowers anymore, so they’re going to the second business plan: They lend money to casino capitalists. That is, to people who want to gamble on derivatives.

A derivative is a bet on whether a stock, or a bond or a real estate asset, is going to go up or down. There’s a winner and a loser. It’s like betting on a horserace. So the biggest bank lending for gambles – not for real production, not for investment, but just for gambles – was Deutsche Bank. Borrowers borrowed from Deutsche Bank to gamble.

What’s the best gamble in the world, right now? Its betting that Deutsche Bank stock is going to go down. Short sellers borrowed money from their banks to place bets that Deutsche Bank stock is going to go down. Now, it’s wringing its hands and saying, “Oh the speculators are killing us.” But it’s Deutsche Bank and the other banks that are providing the money to the speculators to bet on credit.

BROWN: Michael, the IMF report says that in the Eurozone, if the Eurozone governments could help banks dump their bad loans, it would have a positive effect on bank capital. What would be the effect on consumers in the EU economy, at large, if banks were able to just dump these bad loans?

HUDSON: Its really very simple mathematics. You have to abolish pension plans. You have to abolish social spending. You have to raise taxes. You have to have at least fifty percent of the European population emigrate, either to Russia or China. You would have to have mass starvation. Very simple. That’s the price that the Eurozone thinks is well worth paying. It’s the price that it thought Greece is worth paying. To save the banks, you would have to turn the entire Eurozone into Greece.

You’ll have to have the governments sell off all of their public domains; sell off their railroads, sell off their public land. You’ll essentially have to introduce neo-feudalism. You’ll have to roll the clock of history back a thousand years, and reduce the European population to debt slavery. It’s as simple a solution as the Eurozone has imposed on Greece. And it’s a solution that the leaders and the banks are urging for responsible economists to promote for the population at large.

BROWN: Let’s talk about the other little nugget of information released by the IMF about debt. Global debt has now reached about a hundred and fifty-two trillion dollars. This includes government debt, household debt, non-financial firms’ debt. What does all this debt mean for the global financial system and for everyday people here, Michael?

HUDSON: It means that the only way people can repay the debt is by cutting their living standards very drastically. It means agreeing to shift their pension plans from defined benefit plans – when you know what you’re going to get – into just “defined contribution plans,” where you put money in, like into a roach motel, and you don’t know what’s coming out.

To save the banks from making losses that would wipe out their net worth, you’ll have to get rid of Social Security. It means that you’ll essentially have to abolish government and turn it over to the banking system to run, with an idea that the role of governments is to extract income from the economy to pay to the bondholders and the banks.

When you say “paying the banks,” what they really mean is paying the bank bondholders. They are basically the One Percent. What you’re really seeing right now in the IMF report, in this growth of debt, is the One Percent of the population owns maybe three-quarters of all this debt. This means that there’s a choice: Either you can save the economy, or you can save the One Percent from losing a single penny.

Every government, from the Obama administration right through to Angela Merkel, the Eurozone and the IMF, promise to save the banks, not the economy. No price is too high to pay to try to make the financial system go on a little bit longer. But ultimately it can’t be saved, because of the mathematics that are involved. Debts grow and grow. And the more they grow, the more they shrink the economy. When you shrink the economy, you shrink the ability to pay the debts, so it’s all an illusion that the system can be saved. The question is, how long are people going to be willing to live in this illusion?

BROWN: That was my next question for you. Not only how long are people going to be able to live in this illusion, but how much longer is this illusion actually sustainable before we see another collapse of economies around the world? Is this something that is impending, that we should just be expecting to come, we should be readying ourselves for this?

HUDSON: We’re still in the collapse that began after 2008. There’s not a new collapse, there hasn’t been a recovery. Wages for the ninety-nine percent have gone down, steadily, since 2008. They’ve gone down especially for the bottom twenty-five percent of the population. This means that they’ve gone down especially for Blacks and Hispanics and other blue-collar workers. Their net worth has actually turned negative, and they don’t have enough money to get by.

In fact, one of the big consulting firms just did a study of the millennials. Ernst and Young did a study and they found seventy-eight percent of millennials are worried about not having enough good paying job opportunity to pay off their student loans. Seventy-four percent can’t pay the health care if they get sick. Seventy-nine percent don’t have enough money to live when they retire. So, already, we’re having a whole generation that’s coming on, not only here but also in Europe, that isn’t able to get good-paying jobs. The only way it can live the life they were promised is if they have rich enough parents who have given them a trust fund.

BROWN: We’ve been speaking with Michael Hudson. Michael is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His latest book is Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy. Michael, you said you had another book coming out, is that right?

HUDSON: Yes, later this month. It’ll be J is for Junk Economics. And it’s a review of why the economists promise that somehow we’ll recover. Why this is basically junk, and why in order to be an economist these days, you have to participate in this fairytale that somehow we can recover and still make the banks rich. And it is a fairytale. J is for Junk Economics is about why it won’t work.

BROWN: Coming to a bookstore, near you, later this year. Michael, we appreciate you lending your time and expertise to us, as always. Thank you.

HUDSON: It was good to be here.

BROWN: And thank you for watching The Real News Network.

Source: The Real News Network

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As Evercore ISI notes in its latest China weekly summary, the “biggest China policy development last week, was multiple cities establishing new rules to slow the spreading housing mania,” adding that this was “surely at Beijing’s behest“, it now indeed appears that China is once again trying to cushion a soft landing for a housing market that even Beijing is worried has gone too far.

While news that China’s housing bubble – especially in Tier 1 cities – is fully back, are not new, documented several weeks ago in shown in our post “Chinese Home Prices Jump Most On Record: “The Numbers Are Hard To Believe”, and shown in the following charts…

… discussed most recently by Bloomberg in an article titled “China’s Housing Boom Looks Like Last Year’s Equities Bubble,” it was news that, as Caixin reported today, the head of China’s central bank said the country will put in place “certain controls over credit growth,” signaling a squeeze on liquidity that has been blamed for the property sizzle in dozens of major cities across the country. Zhou Xiaochuan made the comments at a meeting of the IMF board — the International Monetary and Financial Committee — on Saturday.

As the Chinese publication further adds, “investors armed with cheap credit have flocked to China’s property market in recent months, and home prices in 70 major cities rose 7.5% in August compared with a year earlier, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics.”

The debt-fueled binge behind the latest housing bubble is also not news to our readers: new loans in August reached 948 billion yuan ($142 billion), more than double the figure a month before, according to the latest PBOC data. However, as Caixin notes, “over 71 percent of the loans went to households, mainly to fund mortgages.” We showed this unprecedented debt-funded house buying spree a month ago courtesy of the following Capital Economic chart, which revealed that a record 20% of all new loans are now being used to fund mortgages.

It now appears that China has been confronted by global powers to address this bubble before it becomes systemic. As Zhou told the IMF in a written statement this weekend, “China will use various policy instruments to keep banking liquidity at an adequate level and allow credit and total social financing to grow at a steady and moderate pace.”

Zhou had warned earlier against the emergence of housing bubbles. Speaking at the G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Washington on Thursday, Zhou said the government has already enacted policies to develop “a healthy property market.”

And now that the IMF has officially warned that the country’s growing debt “posed risks to financial stability”, China has shifted from mere words to actions.

In what may be the first indication that China’s tremendous home-price surge is about to hit a brick wall, about 20 Chinese cities tightened home purchasing requirements in late September to cool an overheated market, with some prohibiting property developers from selling homes to residents who don’t have a local hukou, or residency registration, and to those who already own more than one home. Other cities have raised the minimum down payment required.

Zhou also proposed controlling credit growth to corporations by “lowering corporate leverage and dealing with piling debt through market-based approaches, such as debt restructuring, debt-to-equity swaps, securitization, and liquidation.”

To be sure, China is desperate to address its soaring debt problem: its gap of credit to gross domestic product, taking into account loans to the private sector excluding financial institutions, was 30.1 as of March. China’s gap was highest among all 43 economies monitored by the financial watchdog. A debt level above 10 signals a potential crisis, according to the agency.

However, while it is now forced to admit, and address, the debt-fueled housing bubble, China has even bigger debt-related problems.

As Caixin wrote, the economic downturn and overcapacity in certain heavy industries have resulted in a group of “zombie companies” that are struggling to survive and repay debt. We wrote about this last week in “A Quarter Of All Companies Can’t Pay The Interest On Their Debt.” It remains to be seen just how China will resolve its massive debt overhang, which according to the latest IIF estimates accounts for roughly 300% of GDP:

Zhou tried to placate fears by saying that although the bad-loan ratio in the banking system has risen, the overall risks are “controllable” because banks have sufficient reserves to deal with them. Needless to say many hedge fund managers disagree, warning that China’s NPLs continue to rise, and as the latest Chinese reserve data showed, capital continues to flow out of the country. Last week, the PBOC reported that China’s currency reserves fell by $18.79 billion in September to $3.17 trillion, the lwoest since April 2011. The drop was larger than the $11 billion estimated, and followed a drop of $15.89 billion in August. It was was the largest monthly decline since May, suggesting that while some complacency may have returned to the Chinese market, few if any of the deteriorating trends that the market was so concerned about a year ago and in the start of 2016, have been resolved.

* * *

Putting it all in context is the following must see documentary from Al Jazeera’s 101 East titled “The End Of China, Inc.” In it 101 East explains that “there’s a magic formula to becoming a millionaire in China – borrow big to earn big.” For years, individuals, state-owned companies and municipalities have taken massive loans to chase the Chinese dream. Now it’s payback time, but a severe economic slowdown means many are struggling to pay their debts. Entire neighbourhoods have become “ghost towns”, industrial companies sit idle and the unemployed are growing desperate. Government economists claim China has enough in its coffers to cover the bad loans, but defaulting on it could send the world’s economy into a tailspin.

101 East asks, is this the end of China Inc?

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By EconMatters

Had a lot of distractions recording this video, but some interesting analysis in between regarding some thoughts on the Gold Market. We discuss the Dollar, Bonds, Oil and the Carry Trade as well in this video. But the Gold Market has been under attack with the quarter change and repositioning ahead of the 25 basis point rate hike probably occurring at the December quarterly meeting unless the shit hits the fan after the election in November.

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When it comes to the market, there is one instrument which reveals, perhaps better than any other asset class, Trump’s presidential chances: the Mexican Peso, or MXN.  As we reported in mid-September, the Mexican currency plunged to record lows at the same time as Trump’s presidential odds were rapidly rising and even briefly surpassed Hillary’s.

However, following the first presidential debate two weeks ago, the Peso spiked, erasing much of its recent losses. More importantly, market participants were looking at the MXN to see how the market would react to the Trump Tapes scandal. The answer came moments ago when in early trading, the Mexican Peso has soared, and the USDMXN tumbled out of the gate, an indication of Peso strength, and a confirmation that at least for now, the market’s reaction to the Trump Tapes is that his presidential chances have deteriorated substantially.

Specifically, in the premarket, the USD/MXN extended losses ahead of U.S. presidential debate at 9am Monday time in HK/Singapore. Spot was down as much as 1.6% to 18.9967, hitting 18.9883 earlier in session, lowest since Sept. 13 and past 19.00 technical support. As Bloomberg notes, a breach of 19.00 puts 50-DMA at 18.8878, 100-DMA at 18.7462 in sight

The inverted USDMXN chart below shows that as of early trading, Trump’s odds at least as indicated by the Peso, are back to levels seen on September 13 and sliding fast.

Just as interesting is how closely the inverted USDMXN tracks the Clinton-Trump spread, as shown below.

Just like during the first debate, for the best indication of how the market believes the second debate is going, look no further than the Mexican Peso.

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This article by David Haggith was first published on The Great Recession Blog.

The infamous Clinton reset button for US-Russian relations turned out this week to be the other proverbial red button used to launch nuclear missiles. Wikileaks documents that will be covered in this series of articles reveal a chain of wars that started due to Hillary Clinton’s diplomacy.

Hillary’s Wars exploded this week when Russian President Vladimir Putin terminated nuclear disarmament agreements that existed between Russia and the United States:

 

Tensions between the U.S. and Russia escalated Monday as the Obama administration suspended talks over Syria’s civil war hours after Moscow announced it was ending cooperation with the U.S. on a 16-year-old program for the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium to curb the production of more nuclear bombs.

 

The Obama administration stopped pursuing diplomacy with Russia amid renewed attacks by Russian and Syrian forces on the city of Aleppo. Frustrated administration officials acknowledged that Syrian President Bashar Assad is making territorial gains with Moscow’s help after the collapse of a cease-fire negotiated by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. (The Washington Times)

 

Why Clinton reset button went nuclear

 

Putin stated that he is ending the Plutonium-elimination agreement because the United States has failed under Barrack Obama to hold up its end of the agreement.

 

Mr. Putin’s decree cited Washington’s “unfriendly actions” and the U.S. inability to fulfill its obligations under the 2000 deal as reasons for the move. Under the agreement, which was expanded in 2006 and 2010, Russia and the U.S. each were to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium, enough material for about 17,000 nuclear warheads…. Russia said last year it had started up a plant that produces mixed-oxide commercial nuclear reactor fuel known as MOX from weapons-grade plutonium. Meanwhile, the construction of a similar U.S. plant in South Carolina has been years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. The Obama administration wants to cancel the Savannah River Site’s MOX project…. Defending Mr. Putin’s move, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the U.S. has “done all it could to destroy the atmosphere encouraging cooperation,” citing U.S. sanctions on Moscow over the Ukrainian crisis and deploying NATO forces near Russian borders.

 

Unfriendly actions by the Obama Administration, in the Russian view, include the coup in Ukraine, which Russia believes was US sponsored, sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea (intended ostensibly to keep Crimea out of the hands of an illegitimate (coup) government), attacks made against Bashar Assad (whom Russia has long supported) aimed at regime change, not at stopping ISIS, and the long-term build-up of NATO artillery on Russia’s border, which accelerated after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

The Russians explaining their withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, the Russians stated particularly that, in order to resume the treaty, the US will have to pull back its military installments near Russian borders to where they were before the Bush years and that it will have to get used to the idea that “it cannot bring sanctions against us and at the same time continue selective cooperation in areas it sees as advantageous.”

 

“Russia has been observing the agreement unilaterally for quite a long time, but now it no longer sees such a situation as possible amid the tensions,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

 

Given the timing of the announcement and the statements about tensions, I think it’s clear Russia’s break from nuclear disarmament was triggered by the concurrent stalemate between the US and Russia over how the war in Syria should be handled, even though Russian statements show that it is the culmination of a great many earlier affronts.

The Obama administration also announced this week that it is talking about stepped-up military strikes in Syria as a “means of forcing Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to pay a cost for his violations of the cease-fire.”

 

Clinton Reset button was a bad joke from day one

 

 

Hillary Clinton’s Reset Button. The Russian word “perezagruzka,” written offensively in Roman alphabet, instead of Cyrillic, was intended to mean “reset” but actually meant “overload.” Turned out to be truer than intended.

Hillary’s crudely made toy reset button for relations with Russia was defective from the day she had it made. It said “reset” in English for Americans who would see photos of it and “peregruzka” for Russians. Undoubtedly, a lot of thought went into putting the Russian word first in order to make the Russian’s feel good, since the button was being presented to Russians, not to Americans. However, not much thought went into how the word was written. Hillary Clinton’s state department missed the little detail that Russians read in Cyrillic alphabet, not in Roman. As a result, Russians had to read their own language in the American way. Rather symbolic, I think, of the ham-fisted way in which America has approached Russia on many issues from George Bush onward. “We’ll work with you … our way.”

 

Russians also found the Clinton reset button amusing because the Russian word Hillary Clinton and her Department of State chose actually meant “overload.” Oops. A truer word for Clinton’s relations with Russia during her time as US secretary of state and Obama’s relations from that point forward could not have been chosen.

What Hillary apparently didn’t foresee when she presented her toy reset button back in March of 2009 was that she brought the wrong button to her meeting with Russia’s foreign minister. Without realizing it, she was holding out the opportunity for her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, to put his finger on the nuclear button. Ironically, it said “reset” in English only because the policies of the Clinton state department and the subsequent Kerry state department would ultimately reset Russian-American relations back to Cold War status.

 

Hillary miscalculated Russian response in Syria

 

While the next article in this series will establish from Wikileaks archive of Hillary Clinton’s emails that the Clinton State Department always intended a war against Syria for the sake of regime change, I want to point out one part of that masterplan that shows how Hillary’s strategies clearly misfired.

The Department of State, under Hillary’s lead, put out a document recommending war against Syria, that assured President Obama — based on Hillary’s close experience with her Husband’s war in Kosovo — that Russia would never involve itself in a Syrian War if the Obama administration chose to take the State Department’s advice and pursue regime change:

Russia will never support such a mission [as regime change in Syria], so there is no point operating through the UN Security Council. Some argue that U.S. involvement risks a wider war with Russia. But the Kosovo example shows otherwise. In that case, Russia had genuine ethnic and political ties to the Serbs, which don’t exist between Russia and Syria, and even then Russia did little more than complain. (Wikileaks)

 

Oops! I guess Russia thought differently after years of feeling pushed around its borders by the US and realized that it needs to do more than complain if the US is going to take its objections seriously and not discount them as the State Department did above. Rather than just complain Russia leaped directly into the Syrian Civil War with its own bombers.

This week, it took another leap and ended cooperation on its nuclear treaty with the US, taking both nations deeper into Cold War status. Oops again in terms of Hillary’s calculations about how Russia would respond to US efforts to turn over the Assad regime.

As the next article will show (“Wikileaks Proves Syria about Iran and Israel“), the cost of getting a tenuous nuclear “deal” with Iran was the loss of an established nuclear treaty with Russia. I’ll leave it to you to decide if that’s a winning outcome; but it is clearly a case where Hillary’s state department miscalculated how much the US can keep pushing Russia around, which the next step in Russia’s warnings makes even more clear:

 

Hillary’s War in Syria becomes a proxy war with Russia

 

While a few have claimed US involvement in the Syrian war was really intended as a proxy war against Russia, I think the next article will show that the US simply miscalculated how involved Russia would get in Syria because they show the state department clearly had a different (but equally imperial) motive than engaging with Russia. In the statement above, they show they didn’t believe Russia would get involved at all.

That said, the proximity of war with Russia in Syria certainly intensified Friday. Russia has placed anti-aircraft artillery in and around areas where Assad’s forces are located, and then issued the following warning late last week:

 

An extraordinary warning tonight from Russia to the US against conducting military strikes in Syria. In a strongly worded statement, a spokesperson for the Russian defense minister said any [US] strikes against President Bashar Assad’s regime … could result in American aircraft being shot down. (ABC)

 

US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter responded Friday that Russia will face the consequences for its growing involvement in Syria. (See, they are surprised Russia has had the boxy to involve itself in a way that endangers US aircraft as a result of earlier advice from Hillary that said it wouldn’t. Thus, the Obama administration professes outrage that things have taken this seriously dangerous turn.)

The Pentagon this week has been presenting the Obama administration with options for potential strikes on Assad’s air force bases to punish the regime for its failure to abide by the recent ceasefire agreement. (And, as the next article shows, because overthrowing Assad was always Plan One as a measure of support for Israel.) State Department officials, however, have said that Obama is unlikely to approve the strikes, though the Joint Chiefs of Staff are in favor of them.

To this news of recommended air strikes directly against Assad, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, the Russian defense ministry spokesman, responded,

 

I would recommend our colleagues in Washington to thoroughly consider the possible consequences of the realization of such plans.

 

This is about as close as you get to a hot war with Russia without actually being in one. Russia is not just saber rattling. It is saying its missiles will be in the air, and Russia won’t have time to coordinate missile flight plans with the US. So, if the US happens to be in the air in the same place and same time, its planes could get shot down.

I think there is even more to this warning than concern that US planes may accidentally get caught in the fire:

 

Konashenkov, however, suggested Russia would target any unidentified aircraft attacking Syrian government targets and warned “American strategists” not to assume a covert intervention would go unanswered…. Konashenkov also warned that Russian troops were now widely deployed across Syria, implying any strikes could hit them, pulling the U.S. into conflict with Russia. Konashenkov referred again to a strike on Sept. 17, when U.S. military aircraft killed dozens of Syrian government troops accidentally. The Pentagon has said the strike was a mistake, but Konashenkov said Russia was prepared to prevent “any similar ‘mistakes’” against Russian troops.

 

In other words, all stealth aircraft (by nature “unidentified”) that attack Assad will be targeted and shot down, even though they most likely belong to the US if they are not planes Russia can identify as its own; and any US attacks against Assad that wind up endangering Russian troops will receive a direct Russian counter-attack.

Russian bombardment of the besieged city of Aleppo during the past week was described as the most intense in this war to date. At the same time, the fact that the talk of targeting by the US has been directed at Assad’s air bases says that clearly regime change is the only order of the day for the US. ISIS seems to have become a sideshow compared to US rage against Assad. (It was, in fact, a sideshow from the beginning of Clinton’s recommendations for a US war against Assad.)

 

Was the US also the destabilizing force in the Ukrainian coup d’etat?

 

Predictably, the US defended itself from accusations that it is at fault for the breakdown in relationships with Russia by trying to pit the blame on Putin:

 

State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters Monday. The U.S. “seeks a constructive dialogue with Russia on strategic issues, but it is Russia instead who continues to engage in destabilizing activities. (Bloomberg)

 

But is it really Russia that is initiating destabilizing activities? Part Two of this series shows that the US Department of State saw the Syrian Civil War as an opportunity to work covertly for regime change in order to help Israel and in belief that regime change in Syria will transform the Middle East into a more friendly place for the US.

Syria’s Civil War is not a war the US needed to be involved in for its own protection any more than the US needed to change regimes in Iraq in order to protect itself (another war Hillary Clinton fully supported). Syria has also become a hardened training ground for ISIS, just as Iraq became an incubator for ISIS.

Putin has maintained for years that the US is moving imperially to reshape the Middle East in a manner best suited to US interests. So, who is the destabilizing force, given that neither of these countries ever brought an attack agains the US or its NATO allies? Who is destabilizing things by trying to change the entire Middle Eastern map?

And US efforts at regime change (or, at least, backing of illegitimate regime changes) are not just happening in the Middle East. The Obama administration worked through the UN in 2014 to censor Russia with sanctions for involving itself in Ukrain’s civil war by annexing Crimea, even though there is good reason to believe the US sponsored the coup d’etat that started the civil war by throwing over Ukraine’s democratically elected government.

Putin’s suspicion of US support for the coup is warranted, given that the Obama administration’s full approval and support of the insurrectionist government that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected government was almost instantaneous.

So much for supporting democracy … if it winds up electing a government that is much more aligned with Russia than with the US. How could the US assess and support an uprising that happened almost overnight if the Obama administration didn’t know a lot about the group behind the coup to begin with? In the very least, from Putin’s standpoint, the US is fully supporting a government that took over Ukraine by insurrection, directly in conflict with Russian interests.

Wether the US can be proved to have been directly funding the coup or not, it certainly supported an insurrection that moved against Russian interests in the region.

During that time, Hillary Clinton (no longer secretary of state) had to defend her reset button against criticism that Russia’s annexation of Crimea proved the reset had obviously failed. In defending the Clinton reset button, Hillary pointed out how Russia had subsequently agreed to sanctions against Iran and to allowing US planes to fly over Russia in order to supply NATO troops in Afghanistan.

True it had, but the beginning of a serious tear that happened over Ukraine does not have to mean that all attempts by Russia toward good relations were immediately terminated. These kinds of tears get worse and worse over time (like a deteriorating marriage) until they are complete. This past week, however, put the US and Russia much closer to complete breakdown of the relationship. The only way it can become any more complete is if we start actually intentionally shooting at each other.

In 2014, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that a “reset of relations” between Russia and the US was impossible due to the United States’ “destructive” and “stupid” sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea. Russia, of course, says that it annexed the predominantly Russian-speaking Crimea to keep it out of the hands of an illegitimate coup government.

 

Has Clinton’s reset button reset the US and Russia to Cold War status?

 

That same year (2014), the man who ended the first cold war, Mikhail Gorbachev, warned that the United State’s conflict with Russia over Ukraine was likely to reset relations back to a cold war status. After that, some politicians and pundits argued that calling Russian-American relations a return to cold-war status was unwarranted because things had not deteriorated that far.

Gorbachev, however, was not saying relations had returned to a cold war status, but that Hillary Clinton’s reset strategies were marching everyone down that path.Now that Russia has stepped away from this nuclear disarmament treaty, a lot of weight has been added to the argument that we are moving back into a cold war position.

How much does the following article this week sound like the days of “duck and cover” during the Cold War?

 

Amid growing international tensions, particulary over Russia’s conduct in Syria, the Defence Ministry-run Zvezda TV network announced last week: “Schizophrenics from America are sharpening nuclear weapons for Moscow.” (The Independent)

 

That comment was prelude to other announcements this past week that Russia’s Ministry for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters (EMERCOM) will be running a three-day emergency drill with 40 million civilians and 200,000 emergency responders to assure the nation is prepared for nuclear, chemical or biological attacks from the West.

Sounds like the Cold War “duck and cover” drills to me:

 

 

Russia also stated its plans this week to build underground nuclear shelters in Moscow sufficient to house the city’s entire population, and it has begun building a new generation of nuclear bombers and ICBM’s, missile launchers and nuclear-armed subs. The Kremlin is reportedly seeking nuclear fire power superior to that of the US.

That doesn’t sound like the Cold War?

In Syria, these tensions advanced this week very close to becoming a hot war — about as hot as the Cuban Missile Crisis. As soon as US Secretary of State John Kerry terminated diplomatic relations with Russia in the Syrian war this past week, the Syrian war began to look and sound all the more like the “very, very familiar proxy war cycle from the bad old days of the Cold War” (Vox) that some said it was.

The Clinton reset button looks more and more like the proverbial nuclear button that launched a purposeful chain of regime-change wars that is turning out to be more of chain reaction.

via http://ift.tt/2dXZYcQ Knave Dave