Tag: news

Torture doesn’t work to produce actionable intelligence. Indeed, it harms our national security and creates more terrorists.

Because torture is blatantly illegal, the Bush and Obama administrations have tried to hide America’s torture by shipping prisoners to foreign countries … so they can torture them for us.

Similarly, mass spying by the NSA and other agencies doesn’t prevent terror attacks … but actually interferes with our ability to stop them.

Because mass spying on Americans is blatantly illegal (and see this), the Bush and Obama administrations have tried to hide America’s Big Brother act by shipping Americans’ most confidential, sensitive information to foreign countries like Israel (and here) the UK and other countries … so they can “unmask” the information and give it back to the NSA.

In other words, the NSA is subverting the legal prohibition against mass spying on Americans by shipping data overseas … and then having our allies give it back to us.

The list of countries which are doing this for the NSA are almost certainly as follows:

• Israel

• Canada

• Britain

• Australia

• New Zealand

Postscript: Unfortunately, the American elite aren’t particularly concerned with protecting the basic rights – let alone the sovereignty – of the American people.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/RrlxJe6cXmw/story01.htm George Washington

“In some stocks,” Starwood Capital’s Barry Sternlicht warns, “we are seeing irrational exuberance with silly valuations.” The outspoken asset manager warns that the signs are coming from the credit markets of “silly debt deals” with no covenants – which is helping equities melt-up but is a sign of a bubble. Perhaps his answer to what the Fed will do and when is the most succinct (and likely accurate) summation of the current idiocy, “very little and never,” as the anchor grinningly suggests how great higher stock prices are for ‘investors’ before Sternlicht exclaims that may be true for the minority who hold stocks, “enjoy it is an investor,” he suggests, “but don’t love it as an American.” Sternlicht goes on to address the dysfunctional political class and the Fed’s enabling of that to continue as well as where the real estate bubbles are in the US.

 

 

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/ARMrvV3G1g8/story01.htm Tyler Durden

“In some stocks,” Starwood Capital’s Barry Sternlicht warns, “we are seeing irrational exuberance with silly valuations.” The outspoken asset manager warns that the signs are coming from the credit markets of “silly debt deals” with no covenants – which is helping equities melt-up but is a sign of a bubble. Perhaps his answer to what the Fed will do and when is the most succinct (and likely accurate) summation of the current idiocy, “very little and never,” as the anchor grinningly suggests how great higher stock prices are for ‘investors’ before Sternlicht exclaims that may be true for the minority who hold stocks, “enjoy it is an investor,” he suggests, “but don’t love it as an American.” Sternlicht goes on to address the dysfunctional political class and the Fed’s enabling of that to continue as well as where the real estate bubbles are in the US.

 

 

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/ARMrvV3G1g8/story01.htm Tyler Durden

The President will deliver statement explaining, we assume, why Harry Reid’s “nuclear option” vote is good for all American citizens…

 

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/-NMDLaIMFOY/story01.htm Tyler Durden

The President will deliver statement explaining, we assume, why Harry Reid’s “nuclear option” vote is good for all American citizens…

 

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/-NMDLaIMFOY/story01.htm Tyler Durden

For all purists still stuck in a world in which humans are the most efficient allocators of capital, and where, under Ben Bernanke’s centrally-planned New Normal, shorting stocks has become blasphemy, the following table showing the monthly return of quant giant RenTec’s chief equity fund open to the outside world, the Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund (RIEF B), whose AUM has ballooned to $8.7 billion in the past few years, will come as a shock. Because the quant strategy-driven fund, which does not look at fundamentals but purely at technical relationships and quant arbs, just posted its best month in history in October returning 8.65% nearly doubling the 4.60% return of the broader market.

But the truly stunning aspect of RenTec’s October performance is that it was not driven by a highly levered beta position (2x leverage on the S&P would do it easily) which is how virtually everyone else does it (a strategy that works great as long as the market is going higher), but instead thanks to that nearly forgotten aspect of a “hedge” fund’s exposure – shorts.

From RenTec:

Where did RIEF’s alpha come from? The answer is that it came from the short portfolio. In fact, we made so much alpha in the short portfolio that we made positive profits from our short positions despite the S&P 500’s 4.6% return in October. Drilling down further, we note that almost half of RIEF’s alpha was made in the Barra Biotechnology and Drugs industries. Within those industries, RIEF is short in many of the smaller and (presumably) more speculative names. Those issues fared particularly poorly in October as the two industries combined had a cap-weighted return of 2.8% but a flat-weighted return of -4.3%. Since RIEF is long overall in Biotechnology and Drugs, but made its alpha in the short portfolio, the fund’s gains are a result of stock selection rather than sector or industry selection.

 

The good news: alpha generation still works. The bad news: one has to be a math genius or a robot to figure out how to do it. For everyone else – especially those 90% of hedge funds underperforming the S&P for the fifth year in a row – the Pied Piper of Marriner Eccles has an unbeatable deal on all time high beta-chasing margin debt.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/lMWnw1l_Dnk/story01.htm Tyler Durden

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/2Oga7GioEmI/story01.htm williambanzai7