news – Page 26191

The “Malaise Has Spread To Services”- Service Industries Cut Jobs For The First Time In Two Years

For many months, the general consensus was that the "malaise" in US manufacturing (which is clearly in a recession) is isolated, and would not spread to the service sector. That is no longer the case.

As a very gloomy Markit report noted earlier,

"business activity stagnated in February as malaise spread from the manufacturing sector to services. The Markit PMIs are signalling a stagnation of the economy in February, suggesting growth has deteriorated further since late last year. Prices pressures are waning again in line with faltering demand. Average prices charged for goods and services are dropping once again, down for the first time in five months, as firms compete to win new business."

And then it was the ISM's turn where despite a modest beat to expectations, overall growth in U.S. service industries slowed for a fourth straight month in February, prompting the first job cuts in two years as the Employment indicator dipped from 52.1 to 49.7, the first contraction in two years.

This means that not only are manufacturing jobs suffering mass layoffs, but the service sector – ostensibly now that the second tech bubble has burst – is next.

We wonder how long until the US Bureau of Labor Services discovers this.

With 188,000 for tomorrow's jobs data, this chart suggests things may be a little different to what the economists expect.

And judging by the lagged effect of the collapse of the Restaurant Performance Index, that party is over…

h/t @noalpha_allbeta

Just like it was in 2008…

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Things Have Actually WORSENED Since the Feb Bounce Began

What a different four weeks makes.

Four weeks ago, the S&P 500 had just taken out critical support. Everyone was panicking that the market was about to implode.

1. At that time, China was continuing to devalue the Yuan as its economy collapsed.

2. Europe was tumbling based on Draghi’s inability to generate inflation.

3. The US economy was rolling over sharply as deflation arose courtesy of US Dollar strength and a Fed rate hike.

Since that time, not one of those issues has been resolved. The only thing that has changed is that the S&P 500 has rallied 9%.

Indeed, if anything we are getting additional signs things are worsening outside of the stock market.

China’s economy is in a full-scale collapse. According to electricity consumption the country’s economic activity is NEGATIVE. Indeed, 28 out of 31 provinces had a NEGATIVE deflator for 2015. China as a whole is in recession if not outright deflation.

Europe just posted negative inflation. Mario Draghi has cut rates into NIRP three times and spent over €670 billion. This bought at best a year’s worth of uptick in inflation data.

And finally, the US continues to post worsening economic data. US services have slumped into contraction just as we predicted (manufacturing has been in a recession since mid-2015).

And the Fed is hiking rates?

Another crisis is coming. Nothing has changed since February 9^th. Markets have rallied on hype and hope of more stimulus, but that will only go so far. The business cycle has turned. And credit is SCREAMING that something BIG is coming down the pike.

Smart investors are preparing now.

We just published a 21-page investment report titled Stock Market Crash Survival Guide.

In it, we outline precisely how the crash will unfold as well as which investments will perform best during a stock market crash.

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Best Regards

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Chief Market Strategist

Phoenix Capital Research

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Tsipras Rages, Greece “Will Not Become A Warehouse Of Souls”

Via KeepTalkingGreece.com,

European Council President Donald Turk is visiting Athens today to talk about the Refugee Crisis. He met with Prime Minister Alexisi Tsipras and both men agreed that

Unilateral actions by European Union member states to deal with the migrant crisis troubling the bloc is hurting solidarity and must stop.

“We will not allow Greece to be turned into a warehouse of souls! “>Tsipras said during a joint press conference with Tusk and stressed that “Greece already assumed a disproportional weight in the refugee crisis.”

would be stressing in Greece and Turkey that the goal was to eliminate entirely the transit of migrants from Turkey to Greece and that Europeans believed Turkey should be able to bring the numbers down to the “low triple digits” very soon.

Before the meeting with Tsipras, Donald Tusk sent a strong ‘solidarity message to Greece. He tweeted this morning:

“Excluding Greece from Schengen is neither an end, nor a means. Greece will remain part of Schengen, euro area and EU.”

However, a day earlier, Donald Tusk defended the use of barbed-wire fences against migrants and the Schengen-collape, saying that securing the Schengen area’s outer borders was a “pre-condition” to solving the refugee crisis.

“I’m afraid that sometimes you need tougher measures if you, we want really to apply Schengen. Sorry but this is the reality,” Tusk said during his visit to Slovenia.

Tusk full remarks in Athens here.

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Mass Transit Meets Mass Surveillance

When you think of the surveillance state, you probably think of the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security. You probably don’t think of the Maryland Transit Administration. And yet the latter agency has been installing cameras and listening devices on its buses for years. Yesterday the Maryland Senate advanced a bill to put some limits on how that hardware can be used.

The Washington Post has some background:

MTA began using recording devices inside some of its buses in 2012, without seeking legislative approval. Nearly 500 of its fleet of 750 buses now have audio recording capabilities. Officials say the devices can capture important information in cases of driver error or an attack or altercation on a bus.

Under the bill, recording devices would have to be installed near a bus or train operators’ seat. The devices would be controlled by the driver and could be activated only in the event of a public-safety incident….

This is the fourth time in four years that the bill to limit the recordings has been introduced. Previous pieces of legislation have never made it out of committee, but [the Senate Judicial Proceedings] committee unanimously approved it this year.

The bill also creates a $1,000 fine for people who illegally share the government’s recordings.

Objections to the bill have centered around two issues. One is the cost of replacing the existing devices. (Somehow, the people raising that concern don’t seem interested in stopping the expansion of the listening system.) The other is the notion that these limits would somehow impair security. One state senator, the Montgomery County Democrat Nancy King, declared she doesn’t “want to be in a position of telling the FBI they can’t listen in on our buses.”

The broader issue here is far larger than the MTA, and not just because several cities outside Maryland have been spying on bus riders too. Indeed, it’s even larger than the potential for abuse. At this point we’re used to seeing cameras everywhere; for better or worse, we’ve started adjusting our behavior to their presence. I don’t think we’re used yet to the notion that someone in a distant office can listen to private conversations we conduct in public. If that kind of eavesdropping becomes common, how might it change the ways we interact with each other?

Bonus video: ReasonTV’s Todd Krainin covered Maryland’s mass-transit surveillance back in 2013, when legislators narrowly rejected an earlier attempt to limit the use of these devices:

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A 10-Year Mandatory Minimum Hinges on the Inartful Placement of Five Words

Under federal law, merely possessing child pornography can be punished by a prison sentence of up to 20 years, but ordinarily there is no mandatory minimum. One exception is when prosecutors decide to charge the defendant with “receiving” those images, which triggers a five-year mandatory minimum (an arbitrary enhancement, since anyone who looks at online images also receives them). Another exception is the 10-year mandatory minimum for a defendant with a prior conviction “under the laws of any State relating to aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor or ward.” Since we’re talking about child pornography, you might think the phrase “involving a minor or ward” modifies all three offenses in that list. If that is what you think, you are wrong. Or so says the Supreme Court, in a 6-to-2 decision issued this week.

The case involved Avondale Lockhart, a New Yorker who in 2000 was convicted of “sexual abuse in the first degree” against his 53-year-old girlfriend. That crime, which involves subjecting another person to “sexual contact” either by force or when she is incapable of consent, is a Class D felony punishable by two to seven years in prison. In 2011 a sting operation led to the seizure of Lockhart’s computer, on which the FBI found some 15,000 images and nine videos showing minors engaged in sexual activity. He pleaded guilty to possession to avoid the five-year mandatory minimum triggered by a receiving charge, which prosecutors agreed to drop. But then the judge decided Lockhart’s prior conviction made him subject to the 10-year mandatory minimum.

Lockhart argued that the judge was mistaken, since the 2000 conviction involved not a minor but a middle-aged woman. The Supreme Court disagreed.

Writing for the majority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor says “the rule of the last antecedent” indicates that the phrase “involving a minor or ward” in the list of prior state offenses applies only to “abusive sexual conduct” and not to “sexual abuse” or “aggravated sexual abuse.” She says that reading is reinforced by the list of prior federal offenses that also trigger the mandatory minimum, each of which is described in a separate section and only one of which refers to minors. “We see no reason to interpret §2252(b)(2) so that ‘[s]exual abuse’ that occurs in the Second Circuit courthouse triggers the sentence enhancement, but ‘sexual abuse’ that occurs next door in the Manhattan municipal building does not,” writes Sotomayor, who used to serve on the 2nd Circuit. Because the language is clear in context, she adds, Lockhart was wrong to invoke the “rule of lenity,” which says ambiguous statutory language should be read to favor the defendant.

Justice Elena Kagan mocks Sotomayor’s conclusion in a dissent joined by Stephen Breyer:

Imagine a friend told you that she hoped to meet “an actor, director, or producer involved with the new Star Wars movie.” You would know immediately that she wanted to meet an actor from the Star Wars cast—not an actor in, for example, the latest Zoolander. Suppose a real estate agent promised to find a client “a house, condo, or apartment in New York.” Wouldn’t the potential buyer be annoyed if the agent sent him information about condos in Maryland or California? And consider a law imposing a penalty for the “violation of any statute, rule, or regulation relating to insider trading.” Surely a person would have cause to protest if punished under that provision for violating a traffic statute. The reason in all three cases is the same: Everyone understands that the modifying phrase—”involved with the new Star Wars movie,” “in New York,” “relating to insider trading”—applies to each term in the preceding list, not just the last.

That ordinary understanding of how English works, in speech and writing alike, should decide this case….That normal construction finds support in uncommonly clear-cut legislative history, which states in so many words that the three predicate crimes all involve abuse of children. And if any doubt remained, the rule of lenity would command the same result: Lockhart’s prior conviction for sexual abuse of an adult does not trigger §2252(b)(2)’s mandatory minimum penalty.

I tend to think Kagan has the better of this argument. But neither outcome is anything resembling justice for Avondale Lockhart, who paid the penalty for a crime he committed 16 years ago and now faces a minimum sentence five times as long for downloading forbidden pictures. Even if his appeal had been successful, Lockhart still would face a prison term of six-and-a-half to eight years under federal sentencing guidelines. That is more severe than New York’s penalty for sexual contact with a child. It makes no sense that people who look at images of crimes against children are punished more harshly than people who actually commit crimes against children.

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This Professor Is Still Out of the Classroom After Offending Her Students Months Ago

Andrea Quenette is the victim of a witch hunt. A University of Kansas assistant professor, Quenette is on leave while the administration completes its review of her allegedly inappropriate behavior.

Quenette made the unfortunate mistake of trying to speak candidly about race after her students prompted her to address the recent protests on campus. She conceded that as a white person, she had trouble putting herself in the shoes of activists.

“As a white woman I just never have seen the racism… It’s not like I see ‘Nigger’ spray-painted on walls,” she said, according to a student-initiated petition to get her fired.

As I wrote in a recent column for The Daily Beast, Quenette erred in using offensive language, but she ought not to be punished for it:

But she did not use inappropriate language to describe any of her students—or to describe anyone else. She was describing her own blindness to racial animus. Could she have used different language? Sure. Should she have? Probably. But genuine self-reflection isn’t usually rehearsed. This wasn’t a public address—it was a classroom discussion about a controversial topic. Some imprecision should be expected, and tolerated.

One can hold the position, I suppose, that it is never okay to utter the n-word, even in a merely explanatory way. I would argue that doing so gives the word additional power to inspire fear, like saying “You Know Who” instead of “Voldemort.” Wendy Kaminer, a lawyer, feminist, and former board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, argues persuasively that there is an “obvious difference between quoting a word in the context of discussing language, literature or prejudice and hurling it as an epithet.”

In any case, given that Quenette’s intention was to shed light on her own lack of experience with racism, rather than to offend her students, it seems like a simple apology and promise to be more cautious with hurtful words ought to have sufficed.

Full thing here.

Instead of seeking a dialogue with Quenette, her students undertook a campaign to run her off campus. Such is the fate of all too many people who don’t immediately obey the dictates of the illiberal mob.

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I like velcro and used to drink Tang, but was NASA really full of horseshit?

I remember being home on leave from Vietnam and watching the President on television.
He was telling Americans that US forces were not operating in Cambodia.
The US Army had taught me well how to use a compass and a map.
I had just been operating in Cambodia for many weeks.

There are many conspiracy theories about the moon landing, but this article deals only with one, which is a math problem I need your help to solve. We have some smart people on zerohedge, and access to much better computers than they had in the 60’s. We should be able to do the math.

I have sat in a Lunar Lander, a few years back in Houston, before NASA hung it way up high on the ceiling, where you cannot get close to it.

It is tiny, especially considering that it is a two-stage space craft, with two separate and complete engines.

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The lower stage, below the landing legs’ top attachment points, is covered in foil. It houses one of the rocket engines and the fuel to decelerate the spacecraft from orbital speed (__________________velocity) and land the space craft and its payload (_______________ mass) gently on the moon without injuring or killing the two government workers inside, unlike these objects.

The upper stage, housing the two aforementioned government workers, also contains a second complete rocket engine, and its fuel, (_______________ mass). It separates from the lower stage and flies back up into lunar orbit.

I examined the size of the ascent and
descent engines, as well as the size of the alleged fuel storage. It
seemed to both me and my kids, intuitively, to be less than credible, even considering that the moon’s gravity is 1/6 of the Earth. Our doubts were reinforced by the massive size of the Saturn V rocket on display.

The size of the lunar lander is limited by the
fact that they had to fit it in the top of a Saturn V rocket and get it
into orbit, along with the Command Capsule and Service Module.

I will concede the fact that they got it up into Earth orbit. Sure. There were plenty of eye witnesses at Cape Kennedy.

But down to the moon’s surface, landing soft enough to not injure or kill the astronauts, and then back up into lunar orbit?

Come on. There is no atmosphere to brake against. That requires a lot of fuel. Here is the math problem:

How much fuel and how big would the fuel storage really need to be, for each of the two stages _________________ cm²? Does this amount fit into the space of the fuel shown here.

Remember, there is no margin for error, as there are two lives at stake. Show your work.

Unfortunately, we need to do this math, because NASA erased or lost the original film from the surface of the moon, so we cannot use modern analysis on the original high-resolution 2 1/4″ negatives, and the eye-witness government workers that allegedly landed on the moon cannot be trusted, considering that they all live in multi-million dollar homes (I have personally been in one in the foothills of Colorado SW of Denver) and have had big-fat government paychecks the last 50+ years, not to mention their credibility as people. Also, nobody has done it again in almost 50 years, with much better technology.

Any takers?

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Protesting Donald Trump is Now a Federal Crime

The Orwellian-named “free speech zones” Protected by the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act on college campus and political rallies are nothing new to regular readers of Reason, and suppressing political dissent with the brute force of government has been a feature of the American system since shortly after 9/11/01, when the Secret Service and local law enforcement entities began confining demonstrators to “protest zones.”

What might be a surprise is the fact that quietly and right under our noses in 2012, Congress nearly unanimously passed H.R. 347 (a.k.a. the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act) which makes it a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison to “willfully and knowingly” enter a restricted area or to engage in “disorderly or disruptive conduct” that in any way impedes “government business or official functions.”

Signed into law by President Obama, this supposed tweak of a pre-existing law effectively criminalized protest of any person under the protection of the Secret Service, a select group which includes both major parties’ front-runners for the presidential nomination. During the general election, the nominees of both parties are automatically assigned Secret Service protection, but Hillary Clinton, as a former first lady, is entitled to a Secret Service detail for the rest of her life, and Donald Trump has had a detail assigned to him since last November.

Dahlia Lithwick and Raymond Vasvari wrote in Slate that “the law makes it easier for the government to criminalize protest. Period.” They also assert the words “disorderly” or “disruptive” could be defined down to mean almost anything with regards to “impeding government business.”

And it’s not just presidential campaign events where free speech is so severely restricted:

Today, any occasion that is officially defined as a National Special Security Event (NSSE) calls for Secret Service protection. NSSE’s can include basketball championships, concerts, and the Winter Olympics, which have nothing whatsoever to do with government business, official functions, or improving public grounds. Every Super Bowl since 9/11 has been declared an NSSE.

Now that Donald Trump’s staff is having local police forcibly remove protesters from campaign events before they even speak, the question has to be asked: Why are the police cooperating with such requests?

In this video, the expelled group of almost exclusively black demonstrators outside the Valdosta State University (VSU) arena tell an officer that they are students of the school and paid to attend the event.

The officer replies, “This is your college campus but this part has been rented out.” Another officer tells them he has no idea what the group supposedly did to disrupt the event (and no video evidence has yet emerged showing they did anything except dress in black and wait for the event to start), but that the Trump staff asked that they be removed and that they are free to protest in a designated free speech zone far from the event itself.

In a letter to the VSU community, interim university president Cecil P. Staton conceded that the removal of the students was “disturbing,” but passed the buck entirely by stating that “this was not a VSU sponsored event, but a private function.”

In defending the suppression of the basic right of free expression of his students by government forces. Staton added:

The Trump campaign, together with the Secret Service and other law-enforcement officials, had responsibility for such decisions, not VSU. As we reminded the campus via email last Friday, current federal law (HR 347) does not allow for protesting of any type in an area under protection by the Secret Service.

Last month, days before the New Hampshire primary, I reported from the GOP debate in Manchester, where Republican demonstrators and anti-Trump protesters were confined to a “free speech zone” on an icy hill more than a mile from the assembled media. Read the article here or watch the video below.

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Donald Trump, Enemy of the Constitution

Here’s a question for you to puzzle over. Can you name the single most unconstitutional thing Donald Trump has proposed or endorsed so far in the 2016 presidential race?

Not an easy question to answer, is it? Do you start with Trump’s efforts to suppress immigration by gutting the 14th Amendment? Or do you perhaps point to Trump’s long war on the Fifth Amendment and its protections for property rights, as exemplified by Trump’s embrace of boundless eminent domain powers for the government and Trump’s own shameful record of seeking to personally profit when government officials seize homes and businesses and then hand the bulldozed land over to crony capitalist real estate developers?

Either of the above could serve as an answer to my opening question. But when it comes to Trump’s unconstitutional agenda, there are plenty of other noxious options to choose from.

What about Trump’s call for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States? That stance manages to offend multiple constitutional principles in a single bound, including such bedrock concepts as religious liberty, due process, and equal protection.

Speaking of religious liberty, there is also Trump’s belief that the government should have the power to close mosques. Needless to say, the First Amendment plainly forbids the government from taking the truly authoritarian step of shuttering houses of worship, be they mosques, churches, synagogues, or temples.

In addition to protecting the free exercise of religion, the First Amendment also protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press. So of course Trump has come out against those two constitutional principles as well. Trashing free speech, Trump has said the government should be able to censor parts of the Internet. Trashing freedom of the press, Trump wants to gut libel law so that it will be easier for him to sue (and thus silence) those journalists who write unkind things about him. Just like a crybaby advocate of political correctness, Trump wants to hollow out the First Amendment in order to make a “safe space” for himself.

Because Trump is seeking the office of the presidency and hopes to soon wield the authority it contains, his disregard for constitutional limits on executive power is particularly troubling. Ominously, Trump has praised Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese-Americans, one of the more vile and indefensible episodes in American presidential history. Yet Trump has cited FDR’s crimes as an example worth following when it comes to Trump’s own desire to single Muslims out for abuse. FDR “is a president highly respected by all, he did the same thing,” Trump has bragged. To say the least, decent Americans should look on FDR’s misdeeds and recoil. Trump seems to think FDR laid out a useful blueprint for future acts of government repression.

By my count, Donald Trump has trashed the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Bill of Rights generally, the 14th Amendment, due process, equal protection, and the doctrine of enumerated and limited executive powers. What part of the Constitution will Trump seek to undermine or attack next? Regrettably, I have little doubt we are going to find out.

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Gold Surges Above $1250 On Weak Data, JPM “Buy”

Extending its gains from yesterday, gold has broken back above $1255 – near 13 month highs – breaking out of its one-month triangle, following weak data this morning (ISM/PMI/Factory Orders) and JPMorgan's "Buy Gold" warning.

The barbarous relic is in high demand this morning…

Breaking out of the one-month triangle…

Pushing near 13-month intraday highs…

It appears more than just central banks are buying…

Central banks have been net buyers of gold for eight straight years, according to IMF estimates, the longest streak since the first troops were deployed in The Vietnam War.

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