Submitted by Saxo Bank's Clemens Bomsdorf via TradingFloor.com,

• Martin Schulz has announced his intention to challenge Angela Merkel
• The race for heading Germany's government is open again
• Schulz's Social Democrats have gained tremendously in polls
• Merkel's party only ranks second in recent poll
• Schulz is as pro-European as Merkel and might want to govern with the left parties
• Germany continues on its growth path with GDP up 1.9% in 2016

Social Democrat Martin Schulz aims at making his party Germany's biggest again and at becoming Merkel's successor.

German politics = boring politics – in recent decades this equation has generally held true. At least that's how many observers would put it.

Fortunately, governments in Germany – Europe’s largest economy – have been much more stable than those in, for example, Italy. Even after the new right-wing party AfD entered the stage a few years ago, it seemed that Angela Merkel and her grand coalition with the Social Democrats was here to stay. German politics therefore remained reassuringly boring.

And yet, with the new Europe we face, that perhaps is no longer the best thing for them to be. Suddenly politics in Germany has become very interesting and the race for the chancellorship looks open again.

While the rest of the world appears to be pivoting to the right, Merkel's challenger has come from the left. He presents a liberal alternative to the narrative that's propelled the Donald Trumps of this world, that change can only be achieved from a protectionist and isolationist platform.

Martin Schulz, who was nominated on January 29 in a surprise move as the Social Democrats' main candidate, has a realistic chance of winning against Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union of Germany and bringing an unprecedented coalition into office.

His nomination has boosted his Social Democratic Party considerably. The week prior to Schulz's nomination, SPD was the preferred party of 21% of the electorate, according to polls by Bild. Now it's polling at 31%, meaning it gained almost 50% (or 10 percentage points) and is doing better in the polls than Merkel’s CDU.

The latter dropped from 32.5% to 30% over the same period. At the same time, Germany is continuing on its moderate growth path as the latest data from the statistical office shows. Its unemployment rate is at 6.3%.

In contrast to the Netherlands, France or of course the US, in Germany, the politician on the rise does not want to disintegrate his country and is not issuing scathing critiques of globalisation and internationalisation while at the same time claiming to be the only legitimate representative of the people. Instead, like his competitor Merkel, Schulz is an advocate of cooperation, particularly within the European Union.

He also makes the case that doing politics means finding compromises.

Obama is history as US president. Unlike him, Merkel can run again as head of government – also to counterweight successor Donald Trump.

Unlike the current chancellor though, he calls for change – to create a fairer and more just Germany. No wonder his supporters compare him to Barack Obama. They have even created a picture similar to the iconic Obama Hope poster, but showing Schulz and stating “MEGA”.

The four-letter word stands npt only for Schulz's fans belief in him as a fantastic candidate, but also as an abbreviation for “Make Europe Great Again”. The play on Trump’s slogan makes an ironic reference to the US president’s promise. At the same time, it probably also appeals to those that are fascinated by Trump’s approach and dislike the so-called establishment.

This fits into the emerging reality that the far right Alternative fur Deutschland, or AfD, lost support since Schulz announced his intention to run. The aforementioned Bild poll sees AfD now (week 6 – see chart above) polling at 12%, down from 14.5%. Additionally, Schulz also manages – at least in the polls – to summon support from those that otherwise would not have wanted to vote, according to another Bild survey. 

Fan page for Schulz on Reddit.

In an interview with Der Spiegel, however, he declared that while he “want[s] to win them [AfD voters] back,” he would never “run such a campaign [as Trump's] under any circumstances.” he added that the US president “is gambling with the safety of the Western world. Donald Trump must be taken seriously. He is fulfilling his dangerous campaign.”

While he is very clear on that, the policies Schulz wants to implement remain vague. His values, however, are not. As does Merkel, he believes in Europe as “a region of freedom and peace, of security, law, democracy, tolerance and mutual respect,” as he put it in the interview.

Schulz had been a member of the European Parliament since 1994 and its president since 2012; he left both positions earlier this year. Taking into account the criticism the EU is currently facing, this might be seen as a position of weakness. However, it turns out that it seems far more important that he was not part of the coalition with Merkel in Berlin – and that his rhetorical powers clearly top hers.

Schulz also told the magazine that Germany, “as the largest European Union member state, found the correct response in an historic situation” by accepting large numbers of refugees in 2015 – an act Merkel since has been heavily criticized for, including by her fellow politicians.

As mentioned above, fairness will be a major focus for him when running for chancellor. This will also affect business, as it includes more controls to ensure companies comply with minimum wage legislation as well as tax increases: “People who work hard for their money cannot be placed in a worse position than those who allow their money to work for them,” as he told Der Spiegel.

Trump in campaign-mode. Now he is the US president and wants to "make America great again".

Speaking of money, Greece also deserves a mention. Merkel's fellow party member and serving finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has always taken a hard stance on the Mediterranean nation, incurring the ire of many Greeks against himself and the German chancellor. Schulz, on the other hand, told Die Welt that a Grexit is not what he wants.

“Anyone flirting with the idea of Grexit risks breaking Europe apart. This may be in the interest of Donald Trump or [French National Front leader] Marine Le Pen, but it is certainly not in the interest of Germany and Europe. It is extremely dangerous,” reads the Guardian's translation.

A concrete programme is still due and what Schulz and his party will be able to realise is highly dependent on what coalitions end up getting formed.

If the strengthening of the Social Democrats continues, a coalition with the left party Die Linke and the Greens could become an option. That constellation has never been seen before in Germany on a national level. Neither has an alliance between Merkel’s CDU and the liberal FDP – which has been the preferred partner – and the Greens. While the former would clearly mean a shift to the left, the latter could strengthen liberal positions.

One thing remains clear: the only coalition that would definitely have a strong majority also after September 2017 is the current one of Merkel’s CDU and Schulz’ SPD. Going down that path again, however, would be both sides' worst case scenarios, one reason being that a coalition of the two biggest parties in parliament could see the extremists getting more support.

Cologne, one of the largest German city's, is only one-hour drive from Würselen, where Martin Schulz began his political career as a mayor.

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Submitted by William Anderson via The Mises Institute,

About 40 years ago, economist Bruce Yandle went to Washington to work for the Council on Wage and Price Stability, ready to apply his knowledge of economics and educate his fellow workers. After all, he reminisces, one eye-rolling, head-scratching decision after another was coming from government regulators that surely someone versed in economics could expose as stupid, wasteful, and downright ridiculous.

Government Serves the Interests of Government

At some point, Yandle realized that the lay of the regulatory land looked quite different in Washington than it did in Clemson, South Carolina, where he was on the faculty at Clemson University. Regulators — and the representatives of the enterprises they regulated — were not looking to create an atmosphere in which the government tried to find the “optimal” set of regulatory policies that both minimized regulatory costs and allowed for the maximum removal of whatever “externalities” were created.

No, as Yandle writes:

… instead of assuming that regulators really intended to minimize costs but somehow proceeded to make crazy mistakes, I began to assume that they were not trying to minimize costs at all — at least not the costs I had been concerned with. They were trying to minimize their costs, just as most sensible people do.

The more he examined the situation, the more he realized that all of the various actors in the system were acting in their own perceived self-interests — regulators, politicians, and those being regulated — and the combination of their interests created perverse outcomes. The “big picture” view that those on the outside of the situation might have is irrelevant to what actually happens, and understandably so.

Far from the stated goals of the regulators and those involved in the process – that regulation was pursued in order to promote a lofty “public interest” –  the real purpose of the regulatory apparatus is the promotion of the regulatory apparatus. The system exists to preserve and protect itself.

Socialists Are Interested in Control, not Economic Prosperity 

As I observe (and participate in) a few discussions on Facebook and elsewhere about socialism, I have come to a few conclusions about the nature of the arguments and the reasons why socialists remain socialists even as we see the utter failure of socialist economies throughout history. Maybe the meme that appears once in a while — “If socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists” — might be true, but I doubt it. As I see it, the purpose of establishing socialism is to further promote socialism, not improve the lot of a society and certainly not to promote prosperity.

First, and most important, the minds of socialists work differently than do the minds of economists that see an economy as a mix of factors of production, prices, final goods, markets, and entrepreneurs that drive the whole route. Those of us who are economists are fascinated by this process because we see human ingenuity, the coordination of the goals of numerous people, and, when the system works, a higher standard of living for most people.

Socialists, however, don’t see what we see. Instead, they see chaos and unequal outcomes. Not everyone benefits, right? In some situations, someone may lose a job or a way of doing things becomes obsolete. In the end, some people won’t be helped at all, at least not directly, and in the mind of someone that has an organic view of society, the fact that certain entrepreneurial actions taken by some individuals have created goods that meet the needs of others is irrelevant. Society should be providing those goods for free! People should not have to pay for what they need!

Are you a surgeon who had done well financially because you have performed medical miracles for people who desperately needed your services? You have exploited sick people! Are you like Martha Stewart, who became wealthy in part by showing people how to make holiday celebrations better? What about the poor? They don’t have nice houses!

When I first started writing about economics nearly 40 years ago, I was like Bruce Yandle, believing that all that was needed to convince socialists to stop being socialists was a well-reasoned economic argument. You know, explain that entrepreneurs don’t earn profits by exploiting workers, but rather entrepreneurs make workers better off by directing resources to their highest-valued uses. You know, explain how a price system really does result in morally-just outcomes because, in the end, it directs resources toward fulfilling the needs of consumers. And so on.

I still believe the arguments, and over the years have come to understand them even better than I did when I wrote my first article for The Freeman in 1981. (It’s funny how Economics in One Lesson continues to become increasingly relevant to my thinking each time I read it.) However, I believe that the end of all of this activity is — or should be — the improvement of life for people in a way that is not predatory and brings about voluntary cooperation among economic actors. In other words, economic activity is a means to an end, and the end is free people gaining in wealth and standards of living.

A socialist does not and will not see things this way. The end of socialism is not a higher living standard or even making life better for the poor, as much as a socialist will talk about the well-being of poor people. No, the end of socialism is socialism, or to better put it, the ideal of socialism. Once socialism is established, as it was in Venezuela or in the former USSR or Cuba, the social ideal had been met no matter what the actual outcome might be.

But what about the problems that inevitably occur in a socialist economy? Are not socialists shaken by the economic meltdown in Venezuela? The answer is a clear NO. For example, The Nation, which has supported various communist movements for generations, takes the position that Venezuela suffers from not enough socialism:

If socialism is understood as a system in which workers and communities (rather than bureaucrats, politicians, and well-connected entrepreneurs) exercise effective democratic control over economic and political decision-making, it would appear that Venezuela is suffering not from too much socialism, but from too little. Who can deny that Venezuela would be much better off if the hundreds of billions of dollars reportedly diverted through corruption were instead in the hands of organized communities?

The author assumes, of course, that socialism can be separated from the state, which shows either dishonesty or naivety, or perhaps both. After all, the author continues by claiming that the vast system of price controls the government has laid down over Venezuela’s economy has had little economic effect and certainly has not been harmful, just as the author assumes that because most businesses in Venezuela officially are privately-owned, the government has little economic control over their operations. (As we know, the government there has seized businesses, arrested store owners for raising prices in the face of blizzards of paper money, and made ridiculous claims about conspiracies to overthrow the government.)

The one thing the author does not suggest is the government backing off its policies and its socialist ideology. To do so, obviously, would mean that socialism had failed and no socialist is going to ever embrace the idea that socialism could fail.

Perhaps the best example of this is Robert Heilbroner’s famous 1989 New Yorker article, “The Triumph of Capitalism,” written even before the Berlin Wall went down, along with the communist governments of Eastern Europe and the USSR. He followed this a year later with “After Communism,” also in the New Yorker. In his first article, the Marxist Heilbroner wrote:

The Soviet Union, China & Eastern Europe have given us the clearest possible proof that capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism: that however inequitably or irresponsibly the marketplace may distribute goods, it does so better than the queues of a planned economy … the great question now seems how rapid will be the transformation of socialism into capitalism, & not the other way around, as things looked only half a century ago. 

Yet, it is clear, especially after the second article, that Heilbroner was not advocating the establishment of free markets, but rather saw the collapse of the communist system as little more than a strategic pause of the Long March to Socialism. To reach that Utopia, wrote Heilbroner, socialists needed to turn to environmentalism to deliver the goods. (That most of the socialist countries also were ecological disasters did not penetrate Heilbroner’s mind, and that should not surprise anyone. To Heilbroner, the end of socialism was not a better way to produce and equally distribute goods; no, the end of socialism was socialism.)

In other words, even after seeing the socialist system that economists like he, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Paul Samuelson praised for a generation melt down right in front of him, Heilbroner could not bring himself to admit that maybe socialists needed to turn in their membership cards and promote capitalism. No, Heilbroner decided that socialists simply needed new strategies to find ways to have state (read that, social) control of resources and economic outcomes. Interestingly, he wrote these words even after acknowledging that Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek were correct in their assessment of socialism’s “economic calculation problem,” but even that admission did not bring Heilbroner to the logical end of his analysis: total rejection of the socialist system.

Like the Fonzie character from Happy Days that never could admit being “wrong” on an issue, Heilbroner — and others like him — could not concede that socialism in any form still would run aground, be it in providing medical care, establishing strict environmental policies, or the establishment of a vast welfare state. The central problem facing socialism — economic calculation — does not disappear just because a government does not directly own factors of production and engage in five-year economic plans.

This hardly means that economists like me should stop writing about the failures of socialism or stop explaining how a private property order and a free price system work. First, one never can be too educated in economic analysis and neither can anyone in public life. Socialists may not be able to abandon their faith, but others who might like to hear well-reasoned arguments might not be willing to join the Church of Socialism in the first place.

Second, there is nothing wrong in speaking the truth and just because socialists and their followers are averse to truth does not mean we give up saying what we know to be true. Just because socialists refuse to believe that socialism fails – even when the evidence points otherwise – does not mean they have the moral and intellectual high ground.

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Submitted by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Nigel Farage made a brief speech in European Parliament on Monday in which he stated:  

“Chatham House, the reputable group, published a massive survey from 10 European states, and only 20% of people want immigration from Muslim countries to continue.”

Here is the Chatham House poll referenced by Farage: What Do Europeans Think About Muslim Immigration?

Chatham House Poll

In our survey, carried out before President Trump’s executive order was announced, respondents were given the following statement: ‘All further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped’. They were then asked to what extent did they agree or disagree with this statement. Overall, across all 10 of the European countries an average of 55% agreed that all further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped, 25% neither agreed nor disagreed and 20% disagreed.

 

Majorities in all but two of the ten states agreed, ranging from 71% in Poland, 65% in Austria, 53% in Germany and 51% in Italy to 47% in the United Kingdom and 41% in Spain. In no country did the percentage that disagreed surpass 32%.

To state things more precisely, 55% are against further immigration, 20% disagree, and 25% appear to have some reservations with the statement, most likely in reference to the word “all”.

Had Chatham worded the question slightly differently, it’s possible nearly all of those in the “neither” category may have agreed, and some of those in the “disagree” category may have switched.

Interestingly, Poland is most against migration. Once again, had the question been worded just a bit differently, I suspect Poland would have topped the 90% mark easily.

Socio-Demographic Difference

Degree Holders and Millennials 

Those with degrees and the millennials aged 18-29 stood apart from the rest.

Is this a case of the liberal elite plus the naive youth against everyone else? If so, isn’t that precisely what happened in Brexit?

Also take a good look France in the first chart. 61% want to stop all further immigration and only 16% disagree.

Let that sink in.

As I have stated before, mainstream media, the polls, and the liberal elite are seriously underestimating eurosceptic candidate Marine le Pen’s chances of winning the next French election.

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Submitted by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

After barely two weeks in office Donald Trump has stunned the world with his «shock and awe» campaign to keep promises made when he was a candidate. The mere fact of a politician doing what he said he would do seems to have unsettled the nerves of his opponents. What is called «Trump Derangement Syndrome» is already reaching critical proportions.

Withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, ordering a start on his Mexican border wall, ordering an investigation into voter fraud (if conducted properly, almost certain to uncover widespread unlawful voting by non-citizens both legally and illegally present in the U.S., since no proof of citizenship is required to register), insisting he wants to get along with «killer» Vladimir Putin, and cutting short a call with Australia’s prime minister over Barack Obama’s idiotic promise to take in Muslim refugees that our mates Down Under don’t want themselves – all of these have infuriated the usual suspects.

But the declaration of war was his order to impose restrictions on entry from seven majority-Muslim countries designated as trouble spots by Obama with nary a peep from the progressive watchdogs of «tolerance» and anti-«Islamophobia». As Srdja Trifkovic has noted, Trump’s order is the first step in instigating an ideological test to bar jihad ideologues from the United States. (See «The Real ‘Muslim Ban’» and my «If He Doesn’t Like Trump’s Exclusion of All Muslims, Obama Must Exclude Advocates of Sharia and Caliphate»).

If Trump prevails on his exclusion order, he has the high ground to crush his opponents in both political parties – and they know it. That’s why the reaction has been both hysterical and cynical. Mainstream media, inveterate enemies of Trump and the American people, rarely mention the list of countries was Obama’s. (Frankly, it’s a bad list. Iran is on it – how many terrorist attacks by an Iranian, or by any Shiite, have we seen in the U.S. or Europe? But look who’s not on it: Saudis (9/11), Pakistanis (San Bernardino), Palestinians (Fort Hood), Afghans (Orlando). For that matter, where’s the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the criminal pseudo-state of «Kosova»?) Still, you have to start someplace, and the order can be refined as it moves forward.

If it gets a chance. In a barefaced political move, a federal district judge in Washington State enjoined the order, and his injunction was upheld by three judges of the Ninth Circuit, the worst in the country. (As they say at the Supreme Court: «This case comes on appeal from the Ninth Circuit. Other reasons for reversal include…») Trump can ask for review by the full Circuit en banc (a futile undertaking) or more likely turn to the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, which is far from certain, a probable split of 4 to 4 (at best) would affirm the injunction. Or, as some consider likely, pseudo-conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, of same-sex marriage infamy, could side with the terrorists-welcome crowd, handing Trump a 5 to 3 defeat. Either result would kill Trump’s order. He could always withdraw it and reissue it in modified form crafted to survive judicial scrutiny, but the lesson would be clear: questions of who can safely be let into the U.S. will no longer be governed by the duly elected president, whom the Constitution and federal statute empower to make such assessments, but by unelected judges’ according to their personal preferences. This is the antithesis of the rule of law. 

Clipping Trump’s wings early to prevent his protecting our country from dangerous intruders is only one element of the threat he faces. Of even greater menace is the effort to create what amounts to a «color revolution» on the streets, in a replay of the tried-and-true method used in other countries: Philippines, Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine (twice), Egypt, Lebanon, just to name some that succeeded. Now the same Deep State and George Soros team are setting their sights on overturning the will of the American people to restore and preserve our country.

Violence against political speech of the wrong kind is being legitimated and mainstreamed by the media. Black-clad «anti-fascist action» reincarnations of Mao’s Red Guards and Röhm’s brownshirts beat up and mace peaceful citizens. So-called journalists openly mull whether the president should be assassinated. A celebrity fantasizes about blowing up the White House.

Americans are more divided than any time since 1861. The term «civil war» is heard more and more, both in the «cold» variety and the prospect it could turn hot. Half of America hates the other half. We have become virtual aliens to one another who don’t agree on even the most basic principles of God, man, and the purpose of life. Secessionist movements are gathering unprecedented levels of support (notably in California – please, please, please let them go and take their 55 Democratic Electoral Votes with them!).

Taken together, there’s reason to be cautiously pessimistic. Trump beat his GOP rivals, he beat Hillary, and maybe he can beat the confederacy of scoundrels mobilizing against him. But it’s far from a sure thing. It’s a fight in which he’s virtually alone, with few trustworthy allies within his own party and even in his own nascent administration. (This is a particular concern in the national security area, which I will touch upon at another time.)

If Trump is to win, he needs to stick to his own instincts and vision. Compromising in the hopes of wooing those opposed to him would be fatal. Those who can be reconciled will be won only by delivering on his primary pledge to restore the economy and jobs for working people.

Actually, Trump is not totally alone. There are still the tens of millions of people who voted for him and who disdain his enemies as much as Trump’s enemies hate him.

For the media, the «antifa» thugs, the fantasists of assassination, it may now seem all in good fun to trash every rule of civil and moral restraint in their quest to bring Trump down. But they should think twice, and then think again. The side that starts a civil war isn’t necessarily the side that wins it.

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Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

The United States is much better off without Michael Flynn serving as national security adviser. But no one should be cheering the way he was brought down.

 

The whole episode is evidence of the precipitous and ongoing collapse of America’s democratic institutions — not a sign of their resiliency. Flynn’s ouster was a soft coup (or political assassination) engineered by anonymous intelligence community bureaucrats. The results might be salutary, but this isn’t the way a liberal democracy is supposed to function.

 

President Trump was roundly mocked among liberals for that tweet. But he is, in many ways, correct. These leaks are an enormous problem. And in a less polarized context, they would be recognized immediately for what they clearly are: an effort to manipulate public opinion for the sake of achieving a desired political outcome. It’s weaponized spin.

 

In a liberal democracy, how things happen is often as important as what happens. Procedures matter. So do rules and public accountability. The chaotic, dysfunctional Trump White House is placing the entire system under enormous strain. That’s bad. But the answer isn’t to counter it with equally irregular acts of sabotage — or with a disinformation campaign waged by nameless civil servants toiling away in the surveillance state.

 

– From The Week article: America’s Spies Anonymously Took Down Michael Flynn. That is Deeply Worrying.

I never intended to write about the Michael Flynn affair. I figured it had been covered to death and I probably wouldn’t have anything to add to the conversation. That said, I hadn’t been following the story closely so I decided to get caught up by reading a diverse selection of articles on the topic. One of my favorite sources on such subjects is Glenn Greenwald, and I eagerly read his latest piece on the matter: The Leakers Who Exposed Gen. Flynn’s Lie Committed Serious — and Wholly Justified — Felonies.

There are several key points he outlines in the piece, most of which I agree with. First, he proves that the leakers committed serious felonies under the law. Second, he states that if illegal leaks lead to the disclosure of information that is clearly very much in the public interest, then such action is not only justified, but ethically necessary. I agree with this as well. Where he doesn’t really convince me, is the argument that this particular leak represented some sort of great public service. He writes:

This Flynn episode underscores another critical point: The motives of leakers are irrelevant. It’s very possible — indeed, likely — that the leakers here were not acting with benevolent motives. Nobody with a straight face can claim that lying to the public is regarded in official Washington as some sort of mortal sin; if anything, the contrary is true: It’s seen as a job requirement.

 

Moreover, Gen. Flynn has many enemies throughout the intelligence and defense community. The same is true, of course, of Donald Trump; recall that just a few weeks ago, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer warned Trump that he was being “really dumb” to criticize the intelligence community because “they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

 

It’s very possible — I’d say likely — that the motive here was vindictive rather than noble. Whatever else is true, this is a case where the intelligence community, through strategic (and illegal) leaks, destroyed one of its primary adversaries in the Trump White House.

 

But no matter. What matters is not the motive of the leaker but the effects of the leak. Any leak that results in the exposure of high-level wrongdoing — as this one did — should be praised, not scorned and punished.

Glenn’s conclusion here is that the Flynn leak exposed high-level wrongdoing. What wrongdoing are we talking about specifically? Yes, it seems he clearly lied to the public and Mike Pence about the content of his conversation with the Russian ambassador. The lie to Mike Pence in particular led to Pence embarrassing himself publicly by repeating that lie, and this betrayal seems to be the primary motivator (from my seat) of why Trump fired him. Others are referring to potential violations of the Logan Act, but as we learned from Lawfare:

Flynn certainly breached protocol. He may also have broken the law by interfering with U.S. diplomatic efforts while still a private citizen, which is forbidden by the Logan Act. The centuries-old law is vague, however, and has never resulted in a conviction. Furthermore, there may be significant First Amendment problems with enforcing it. Officials became more alarmed when Flynn was not forthcoming with Vice President-Elect Pence and others, possibly including federal agents, about the conversations. Those officials feared that Flynn’s dissembling might open up him up to risks of blackmail.

Yes, Flynn was a private citizen, but he was less than a month away from being a high-level government official, and the Obama administration was doing everything it possibly could to antagonize Russia during its last few weeks in office. I’m not justifying what Flynn said in those conversations, or the lies he told about it, but there’s a key problem with this whole leak. It wasn’t really a leak meant to inform the public. It was a leak to specific journalists, at specific papers, with a clear intent of political assassination through the manipulation of public opinion via cryptic releases of filtered information.

For example, here’s how the New York Times reported on the information in its February 9 article, Flynn Is Said to Have Talked to Russians About Sanctions Before Trump Took Office:

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

 

Throughout the discussions, the message Mr. Flynn conveyed to the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak — that the Obama administration was Moscow’s adversary and that relations with Russia would change under Mr. Trump — was unambiguous and highly inappropriate, the officials said.

 

But current and former American officials said that conversation — which took place the day before the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia over accusations that it used cyberattacks to help sway the election in Mr. Trump’s favor — ranged far beyond the logistics of a post-inauguration phone call. And they said it was only one in a series of contacts between the two men that began before the election and also included talk of cooperating in the fight against the Islamic State, along with other issues.

 

The officials said that Mr. Flynn had never made explicit promises of sanctions relief, but that he had appeared to leave the impression it would be possible.

How do we know what was really said without the transcript?

During the Christmas week conversation, he urged Mr. Kislyak to keep the Russian government from retaliating over the coming sanctions — it was an open secret in Washington that they were in the works — by telling him that whatever the Obama administration did could be undone, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified material.

 

Federal officials who have read the transcript of the call were surprised by Mr. Flynn’s comments, since he would have known that American eavesdroppers closely monitor such calls. They were even more surprised that Mr. Trump’s team publicly denied that the topics of conversation included sanctions.

 

Prosecutions in these types of cases are rare, and the law is murky, particularly around people involved in presidential transitions. The officials who had read the transcripts acknowledged that while the conversation warranted investigation, it was unlikely, by itself, to lead to charges against a sitting national security adviser.

I have so many issues with the above reporting it’s hard to know where to start. Everything mentioned above is given to us secondhand via “anonymous American officials.” Nowhere do I see any specific quotes from the transcript, despite the fact that the paper admits it talked with federal officials who read it. Why not? Why must we hear about the content of the transcripts secondhand from anonymous officials? This is the most significant red flag with this whole story. If the leakers were truly interested in transparency, and wanted the public to know the truth, why not leak the transcript to Wikileaks and let the public decide?

I’ll tell you why. They didn’t do this because transparency was never the goal here. They wanted to illegally use intelligence information to take a scalp from a Trump administration they hate, and they knew they could do this via mainstream media journalists. I know what you’re thinking, Edward Snowden didn’t leak everything to Wikileaks either. He likewise picked a few journalists and trusted them to responsibly report the information. How is this any different?

It’s different in two important respects. First, we are talking about a single transcript, or a few transcripts, as opposed to the enormous intelligence data-dump that Snowden provided. Secondly, The Intercept and others who reported on the Snowden material provided a huge amount of primary source documentation for the public to see so that it could come to its own conclusion. They didn’t simply tell everyone what to think about leaked documents while refusing to share any actual content. Where are the specific, comprehensive quotes from the Flynn transcript? Why doesn’t the public have a right to see the entire thing? Instead, we are being told what happened and what to think via secondhand anonymous sources. Sorry, but this doesn’t cut it for me.

I have yet to see any excerpts from the transcript. All I’ve seen is what anonymous officials say was discussed. This is absurd. We the people should demand the content of the relevant transcripts so we can decide for ourselves just how bad Flynn’s actions were. In the absence of this, we’re essentially being manipulated on a massive scale by rogue intelligence agents and told what to think through the major newspapers. This doesn’t cut it for me. I want to see the content of these conversations so I can make up my own mind. Perhaps it’s even worse than we know. So be it. We should be treated as adults and allowed to see the actual conversation if it’s going to be made into a story of such huge national importance.

Finally, I want to end with the mind-boggling absurdity of those who wanted Edward Snowden’s head on a platter, but are somehow ok with these leaks. As Lawfare explains:

Somehow I doubt the Flynn leakers will find themselves in the same position as Snowden, scrambling to get to a country that will provide them safe haven from the vast, vindictive reach of the U.S. government. That’s because the leakers in this case are powerful operatives of the deep state. As Greenwald explained:

It’s hard to put into words how strange it is to watch the very same people — from both parties, across the ideological spectrum — who called for the heads of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Tom Drake, and so many other Obama-era leakers today heap praise on those who leaked the highly sensitive, classified SIGINT information that brought down Gen. Flynn.

 

It’s even more surreal to watch Democrats act as though lying to the public is some grave firing offense when President Obama’s top national security official, James Clapper, got caught red-handed not only lying to the public but also to Congress — about a domestic surveillance program that courts ruled was illegal. And despite the fact that lying to Congress is a felony, he kept his job until the very last day of the Obama presidency.

 

But this is how political power and the addled partisan brain in D.C. functions. Those in power always regard leaks as a heinous crime, while those out of power regard them as a noble act. They seamlessly shift sides as their position in D.C. changes.

Finally, if you want to get a sense of the mindset behind the most adamant defenders of the Flynn leaks, take a look at the following tweets from former NSA analyst and Naval War College professor, John Schindler.

If that’s “the resistance,” I want no part of it. As I summarized on Twitter:

Thus far, "the resistance" seems to consist primarily of violent social justice warriors, and deep state sycophants.

No thanks.

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) February 15, 2017

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 The following article by David Haggith was published first on The Great Recession Blog:

Arguing with a liberal about the economic impact of rampant immigration will twist your brain into a pretzel. It inevitably goes something like this:

“Illegal aliens and legal immigrants are taking millions of our jobs.”

“No, they’re not.”

“Then they’re all on welfare.”

“No, they’re not. Even most undocumented workers are productive members of society.” 

“How are they productive if they’re not taking jobs?”

“Undocumented workers are only taking jobs American’s don’t want.”

“Americans don’t want those jobs because migrant workers have been taking them for so many decades that wages have remained stagnant at a level that only a totally desperate person would work for. That is exactly how they are hurting us by taking jobs. They are not just taking up jobs, but they are keeping wages suppressed because Americans would have to reduce themselves to living like many migrant workers in substandard housing and driving badly broken vehicles in order to stay alive at those wages if they accepted those jobs.”

“Migrants only live at that level because they are forced to.”

“Exactly. They are forced to because the pay for those jobs never goes up because they are willing to live at that level out of desperation if that is what it takes to stay alive, and you’re willing to exploit them.”

“And if migrant workers didn’t do that, you’d have to pay more for all the food you eat. Do you really want to pay more for everything?”

 

 

Migrant workers in a California field.

 

 

Maintaining a peasant immigrant labor class is what it is really all about

 

And that, you see, is the bottom line — cheap labor via a peasant class. We don’t want to pay more for everything, so both political parties turn a blind eye to the cheap, illegal labor and keep the peasants coming, regardless of the social costs of maintaining a peasant class.

They are truly peasants, not just because of their living conditions, but because they supposedly have no voting rights (debatable). They have no say in the laws that govern them so live by the rules of another class of people, and they have to keep their heads low to keep from being deported. That means they dare not complain about working conditions either, as Americans most certainly would.

Peasants have to take what they get. That’s why we keep them illegal, and why we just catch and release them, letting them stay here in spite of the fact we know they have no legal right to because we just caught them crossing the border. It all forces them to keep their heads low … until one day they rise enough in numbers that they don’t keep their heads low any longer, and the peasants revolt against their slavish conditions.

 

 

Caesar Chavez, Migrant Workers Union leader.

 

 

What about the compassionate liberal argument for immigrant labor

 

At this point, the liberal turns to the compassion argument, since the economic argument for immigrant labor leads to ruin. The compassionate argument runs like this, this time starting with the liberal:

“You are mean and cruel for wanting to kick a million and a half undocumented workers out of this country.”

“No more mean and cruel than you are for insisting on keeping out the hundreds of millions more who want in but are kept out because they respect immigration laws.”

“I don’t insist on keeping anyone out.”

“Of course you do. Otherwise, you’d spend all this protest energy trying to get the government to declare open borders to the whole world and let in everyone that wants in so long as they’re not criminals.”

“There wouldn’t be that many that would come in anyway.”

“Eliminate all immigration laws, except those barring criminals, and find out.”

“That is ridiculous. We have to have some reasonable limits because we cannot absorb hundreds of millions all at once.”

“So, you only want to keep out the ones who are respecting the legal process but keep in all the ones that jumped ahead of them in line? I want to kick out 1.5 million or more who jumped ahead in line, but you want to keep out hundreds of millions, and that makes you more compassionate?”

“Yes, it does. We cannot absorb hundreds of millions. It’s ridiculous. I would if we could, but it’s not even possible.”

“So, there is nothing wrong with having immigration laws, but just with enforcing them?”

“Yes, that’s mean and cruel because you are breaking up families.”

“Didn’t they know that was the huge risk they took in breaking the law and coming into the country illegally — that it might be really messy when they’re forced to leave?”

“You’re a racist with no heart.”

“What if I’m of English decent and also don’t want 1.5 million illegal aliens from the UK?”

“You’re English? See, I knew you were racist.”

“What if I just don’t want more people of any color, including my own, because we already have too many people in the US?”

“Why don’t you just leave the country and solve the problem then?”

“Aren’t you the one who promised you would leave if Trump was elected? Why should I just force the problem onto some other nation? You see, at one time, we had a vast land we wanted to occupy in order to keep the Indians from having it all, so bringing in immigrants was the only way to occupy all of it. But I think we’re full, and we can stop now.”

“See, you’re a racist.”

“No, I love Indians and even have some as relatives; but I’ll bet the Indians would have been glad to have a lot fewer migrants, too, starting with the Mayflower. Look, my point is that there was once a lot of land available. Now the land is overstrained. We don’t need more housing developments all over the countryside. Don’t need more congested streets and more auto pollution and more petroleum consumption. Don’t need more landfills filling up faster and more sewage, and we don’t even have enough potable water in the places that want immigrants the most. There is simply no way to bring in millions more people without creating all those problems because we’re full now. The land simply cannot absorb more without it having a negative impact.”

“That makes no sense. We’d have no economy. We have to keep bringing in people so that we have people to build housing for. Building those developments is what keeps the economy perking.”

“So, we need to all endlessly grow like Mexico city or like California has been doing and never stop increasing the population because that is the only way to sustain a healthy economy? Is that the Californian version of sustainability? California has grown to where it doesn’t even have enough water for all of its people without going to another state to get it. So, doesn’t water, at least, force a point at which you say population growth is enough already? Yet, California wants immigrants more than any state. That’s why they’ve made themselves a sancturary against immigration law enforcement. Where is it going to get the additional water?”

“That is ridiculous. Haven’t you seen that it is raining in California now? They’ve solved this problem. They now need more people in order to drink the water fast enough to keep their reservoirs from overflowing and breaking their damn dams.”

“Maybe they just want to use all those people to fill the holes in the dam and plug the damn leaks.”

“That’s horrible. They want them because they are compassionate.”

“Then why are they so uncompassionate toward the millions of others that they keep out with immigration laws? Maybe they just don’t need all those others to pick their oranges for a penny each and mow their lawns at a nice low price. Maybe they just want enough to keep the price stable and low.”

“That is a racist comment that assumes migrant workers are only good for mowing lawns and picking crops.”

“It’s not me bringing them all in and then paying them poorly for mowing my lawn. I mow my own. Isn’t that where you’re keeping all of them? Why don’t you pay them more so they can live like you in a house right beside you, instead of mow your lawn and then return to their trailer? You know, open the gates.”

“That is ridiculous. Why is that my responsibility? I pay my gardeners fine. I pay them as much as anyone else does. I cannot help what the economy will bare.”

“Of course you can, because maintaining such a huge supply of immigrant workers, especially the cheaper illegal ones, makes sure the cost of their labor stays low for you.”

 

And there we are, full circle. It’s all about maintaining a peasant class for the privileged. How else will they enjoy a liberal lifestyle?

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

PewdiePie used to do videos about video games, luring 53 million youngsters to subscribe to his channel — making it the biggest channel on Youtube ever, by a very large margin.

Recently, he’s been dropping redpills on his subs, discussing media hypocrisy, with a slight conservative bent. He did a comedy video about Hitler and the result was manufactured outrage, spawned by a Wall Street Journal article and subsequent cancellation of a deal he had with Disney.

Here’s the lesson gleaned from this episode of more main stream media FAKE NEWS: young people are getting pissed off by this and have taken to the internets to vent their rage.

My son, who is 20, sent this to me.

Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

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China has often found itself in trouble over the past couple of decades for its attempts to replicate technology from other developed countries.  But technological advances aren’t the only things being mimicked in China as the country is also littered with fake replicas of monuments from around the world including the Great Sphinx of Giza, the Sydney Opera House and the U.S. Capitol building, just to name a few.

Now, in an effort to replicate the United States’ bustling hedge fund industry, China has apparently also decided to knock off Greenwich, CT.  Appropriately named Yuhuang Shannan Fund Town, more than 1,000 hedge funds and private equity funds, overseeing a combined 580 billion yuan ($84 billion), have registered in the village since its official re-branding in May?2015.  And, with subsidies amounting to 30% of a typical firm’s tax bill adding to the area’s appeal, it’s no wonder that Yuhuang Shannan now boasts one of China’s largest hedge fund clusters outside the mega-cities of Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen…hedgies do love their tax havens.  Per Bloomberg:

Nestled between the Qiantang River and Jade Emperor Hill, the village of Yuhuang Shannan feels a world removed from the surrounding metropolis of Hangzhou. The city of 9 million is hectic and loud, while this gated community—on the same site where emperors in the Song dynasty prayed for good harvests centuries ago—is quiet and green, exuding the feeling of a laid-back, high-end oasis.

Almost non-existent just a couple of years ago, China’s hedge fund industry has blossomed recently with the total number of hedge funds almost doubled in 2016, and assets under management that have more than tripled over the past two years.

In part, the Chinese hedge fund industry is booming thanks to cautious support from securities regulators and the gradual liberalization of local equity and bond markets. Despite some scandals—including a high-profile market manipulation conviction—­policymakers are starting to view hedge funds as worthwhile contributors to Asia’s largest economy.

As Bloomberg notes, “fund towns”, like Yuhuang Shannan, are attracting alumni from some the largest U.S. banks and hedge funds from Goldman Sachs to Bridgewater.

Alumni of Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Merrill Lynch have moved in, while a representative of Connecticut-­based Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund firm, is said to have made a recent visit. “The natural environment is fantastic, and I believe the cluster effect will become stronger and stronger,” says Ted Wang, a former co-head of equities trading for the Americas at Goldman Sachs who now runs Puissance Capital Management, a global investment firm with offices in New York and China. Wang has registered two of his Chinese equity funds in Yuhuang Shannan.

 

In many ways, the evolution of Yuhuang Shannan mirrors that of the entire country. The area was used mostly for farmland until the 20th?century, when industrialization brought factories and warehouses. About a decade ago the local government made a big push into services, promoting the area first as a tourism zone and then as a design hub. Neither of those efforts was successful, but when hedge funds began moving in and authorities heard about Greenwich, the idea for a fund managers’ village took root.

Today, Yuhuang Shannan is one of the most prominent examples of what policymakers call “characteristic small towns.” The village hosts about 3,000?employees of funds and related businesses, a figure local officials predict will climb as new residential and office space comes online.

Of course, for economic planners keen to reduce the nation’s reliance on infrastructure spending and heavy manufacturing, there’s a lot to like about hedge funds…after all, you can’t just keep constructing buildings then knocking them down and rebuilding them to engineer economic growth…better to pursue that strategy with financial markets instead.  

Unfortunately for China’s newest financial wizards, in addition to replicating Greenwich architecture, the hedge fund managers also managed to replicate the negative 2016 fund returns of American’s largest “2 & 20” billionaires. 

While Chinese hedge funds lost money on average last year, they avoided a client backlash by outperforming local equity and credit markets. Funds tracked by Shanghai Suntime Information Technology were down 2.5 percent in 2016, vs. a 12 percent slide in the Shanghai Composite Index and a 10 percent retreat in high-yield corporate bonds. Client inflows fueled a 55?percent jump in industry assets, while the number of registered funds rose to a record 27,015, according to the Asset Management Association of China.

 

Charlie Wang, who ran Bank of America’s global equity quant group in London before leaving to start his own investment firm in 2015, launched two funds in China last year. He says the country’s markets have entered something of a sweet spot; while they’ve grown more sophisticated, adding new tools such as futures and options, they’re still inefficient enough to produce attractive returns for savvy managers. That’s thanks in part to the outsize impact of individual investors, who drive more than 80 percent of volume in the Chinese stock market, vs. about 15 ?percent in the U.S.

 

“It’s easier to achieve alpha here,” says Wang, 53, who oversees about 350 million yuan as the chairman of MD Grand Investments. He opened a commodity futures fund in Yuhuang Shannan last March and added an equity fund in July, connecting with some of his early clients through the village’s management committee.

This should end well…

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Submitted by Daniel Drew via Dark-Bid.com,

Something strange happened at Google recently. Bloomberg alleges that Google paid its top level employees so much that they crossed the line into "F*** You Money" territory, prompting the employees to pack up and quit. While this intriguing turn of events may have transpired at Google and other technology companies, this would never happen on Wall Street for one reason alone: "F*** You Money" is simply not good enough for the fast money crowd. The pinnacle achievement in the investment industry is "F*** Everybody Money."

As the Wall Street Journal aptly noted in their concise chart, most people making less than $10,000 are dissatisfied with life.

As people approach the $100,000 mark, most of them are satisfied. That's why it's not terribly surprising to see stories like this one. Bloomberg reports,

"Early staffers had an unusual compensation system that awarded supersized payouts based on the project's value. In addition to cash salaries, some staffers were given bonuses and equity in the business and these awards were set aside in a special entity. After several years, Google applied a multiplier to the value of the awards and paid some or all of it out. The multiplier was based on periodic valuations of the division, the people said. A large multiplier was applied to the compensation packages in late 2015, resulting in multi-million dollar payments in some cases, according to the people familiar with the situation. One member of the team had a multiplier of 16 applied to bonuses and equity amassed over four years, one of the people said."

The whole purpose of compensation is to prevent employees from leaving. Ironically, Google's high pay caused just the opposite, turning traditional compensation theory on its head. This whole episode will be a case study for human resources departments for years. Why does high pay cease to be an incentive after a certain point? The compensation analysts apparently forgot to read the Wall Street Journal study. Most people are satisfied with "F*** You Money."

Legitimate retention efforts start at the hiring process. If you have such a valuable project, finding highly qualified people is not enough. You have to find people who are both qualified and exponentially driven by money – with no cutoff point. You need someone who isn't satisfied with "F*** You Money." What you need is someone who settles for nothing less than "F*** Everybody Money."

What is "F*** Everybody Money," and where can you find these people? Look no further.

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London-based realtor Nested produced the 2017 Rental Index in conjunction with their recent Real Estate Index. The study illustrates the price of renting per square foot in 10 major US cities and a number of metropolises worldwide. The research conveys the minimum gross salary required to support an individual and a family of four in rented property based on the minimum space recommended for one person, and for four people respectively.

Some of the key findings:

• The top three most expensive cities to rent in worldwide are American: San Francisco, New York City and Boston
• At $1.09 per square foot, Detroit is the cheapest of the American cities included, and is more affordable than Cape Town, Bangkok and Jakarta.
• New York City and San Francisco are five times more expensive than Detroit, and three times more expensive than Houston

The study was undertaken to understand the costs associated with renting as an individual and as a family, and to determine whether cities are becoming increasingly unaffordable. The inclusion of the global ranking alongside the US ranking allows easy comparison between the two, and illustrates the relative unaffordability of major US cities compared to other global settlements.

The price per square foot of property was calculated based upon current market listings for all locations researched, while the minimum space recommended for one person and four people is laid out in guidelines from an urban planning authority. The gross salary guideline was included to help illustrate relative affordability.

Here are the study’s core findings about the US market.

• The most expensive city in the United States to rent property is San Francisco, at $4.95 per square foot.
• To afford to rent the minimal rental space recommended for one person and cover additional living costs in San Francisco, an individual needs a gross income of $85,985.38 per year. 
• The minimal rental space recommended for a family of four costs $3,942.82 per month in San Francisco. To afford that and cover additional living costs, a gross income of $163,151.17 per year is required. 
• The most affordable American city in the list is Detroit, where a square foot costs $1.09.
• To live alone in Detroit and cover additional living costs, an annual salary of only $18,933.96 is required.
• The afford the minimal space recommended for a family of four and cover additional living costs in Detroit, an income of $35,926.34 is required.
• A family rental in Detroit is cheaper than a single rental in seven US cities in the list, including Miami, Los Angeles and Seattle.
• Rental properties in New York City and San Francisco are more than three times more expensive than in Houston, and almost five times more expensive than in Detroit.

The results for the United States, ranked by the cost of rental per square per foot, are as follows:

* * *

Expanding to all global cities:

• The three most expensive cities to rent globally are all in America: San Francisco, New York City and Boston. 120 global cities were included in the study.
• Of the cities included in the list, five of the top ten most expensive cities to rent are in the US.
• The most expensive city outside of the US for rental is Hong Kong, where a annual gross income of $66,530.07 is required to afford the minimum space recommended for one person and living costs.
• To afford the minimum space recommended for a family of four and cover additional living costs in Hong Kong, an annual income of $126,236.28 is required. 
• Of the 120 cities included, Cairo is the cheapest city to rent property, at just 28 cents per square foot.
• To afford the recommended space for one person and cover additional living costs in Cairo, a gross income of $6,130.89 per year is needed.
• To pay for family rental and additional living costs in Cairo, a gross income of $11,633.11 per year is needed.
• At $1.09 per square foot, rental in Detroit is cheaper than in Cape Town, Bangkok or Jakarta.

The top 25 results for the global cities list, ranked by the cost of rental per square per metre, are as follows:

For the full list, go here.

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