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“When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product
of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.”
John Maynard Keynes
"Life is a school of probabilities."
Walter Bagehot
Neoliberal economics (aka casino capitalism) function from one crash to another. Risk is pervasively underpriced under neoliberal system, resulting in bubbles small and large which hit the economy periodically. The problem are not strictly economical or political. They are ideological. Like a country which adopted a certain religion follows a certain path, The USA behaviour after adoption of neoliberalism somewhat correlate with the behaviour of alcoholic who decided to booze himself to death. The difference is that debt is used instead of booze.
Hypertrophied role of financial sector under neoliberalism introduces strong positive feedback look into the economic system making the whole system unstable. Any attempts to put some sand into the wheels in the form of increasing transaction costs or jailing some overzealous bankers or hedge fund managers are blocked by political power of financial oligarchy, which is the actual ruling class under neoliberalism for ordinary investor (who are dragged into stock market by his/her 401K) this in for a very bumpy ride. I managed to observe just two two financial crashed under liberalism (in 2000 and 2008) out of probably four (Savings and loan crisis was probably the first neoliberal crisis). The next crash is given, taking into account that hypertrophied role of financial sector did not changes neither after dot-com crisis of 200-2002 not after 2008 crisis (it is unclear when and if it ended; in any case it was long getting the name of "Great Recession").
Timing of the next crisis is anybody's guess but it might well be closer then we assume. As Mark Twain aptly observed: "A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes" ;-):
This morning that meant a stream of thoughts triggered by Paul Krugman’s most recent op-ed, particularly this:
Most of all, the vast riches being earned — or maybe that should be “earned” — in our bloated financial industry undermined our sense of reality and degraded our judgment.
Think of the way almost everyone important missed the warning signs of an impending crisis. How was that possible? How, for example, could Alan Greenspan have declared, just a few years ago, that “the financial system as a whole has become more resilient” — thanks to derivatives, no less? The answer, I believe, is that there’s an innate tendency on the part of even the elite to idolize men who are making a lot of money, and assume that they know what they’re doing.
As most 401K investors are brainwashing into being "over bullish", this page is strongly bearish in "perma-bear" fashion in order to serve as an antidote to "Barrons" style cheerleading. Funny, but this page is accessed mostly during periods of economic uncertainty. At least this was the case during the last two financial crisis(2000 and 2008). No so much during good times: the number of visits drops to below 1K a month.
Still I hope it plays a small but important role: to warn about excessive risk taking by 401K investors in neoliberal economic system. It designed to serve as a warning sign and inject a skeptical note into MSM coverage. There are not many such sites, so a warning about danger of taking excessive risk in 401K accounts under neoliberalism has definite value. The following cartoon from 2008 illustrated this point nicely
As far as I know lot of 401K investors are 100% or almost 100% invested at stocks. Including many of my friends. I came across a very relevant to this situation joke which nicely illustrated the ideas of this page:
Seven habits that help produce the anything-but-efficient markets that rule the world by Paul Krugman in Fortune.
1. Think short term.
2. Be greedy.
3. Believe in the greater fool
4. Run with the herd.
5. Overgeneralize
6. Be trendy
7. Play with other people's money
I would like to stress again that it is very difficult to "guess" when the next wave of crisis stikes us: "A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes".
But mispricing of risk in 401K accounts is systemic for "overbullish" 401 investors, who expect that they will be able to jusp of the train in time, before the crash. Usually such expectations are false. And to sell in the market that can lose 10% in one day is not easy psychologically. I remember my feelings in 2001-2002 and again 2008-2009. That's why many people who planned to "jump" stay put and can temporarily lose 30 to 50% of value of their 401k account in a very short period of time (and if you think that S&P500 can't return to 1000, think again; its all depends on FED). At this point some freak out and sell their holdings making paper losses permanent.
Even for those who weathered the storm and held to their stock holdings, it is important to understand that paper losses were eliminated mostly by Fed money printing. As such risks remains as at one point FED might find itself out of ammunition. The fact that S&P500 recovered very nicely it does not diminish the risk of such behavior. There is no guarantee that the third crisis will behave like previous two.
Next crash will have a new key determinant: the attitude toward the US government (and here I mean the current government of Barack Obama) and Wall Street after 2008 is the lack of trust. That means that you need to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Injection on so much money into financial system was a novel experiment which is not ended yet. So how it will end is anybody's guess. We are now in uncharted waters. I think when Putin called Bernanke a hooligan, he meant exactly this. Since Bernanke was printing money out of thin air to buy financial paper, his action were tantamount to shoplifting. In some way this probably is more similar to running meth labs inside Fed building. The system was injected with narcotics. Everybody felt better, but the mechanism behind it was not healthy.
The complexity of modern financial system is tremendous and how all those new financial instruments will behave under a new stress is unknown. At the same time in the Internet age we, the great unwashed masses, can't be keep in complete obscurity like in good old time. Many now know ( or at least suspect ) that the neoliberal "show must goes on" after 2008 is actually going strongly at their expense. And while open rebellion is impossible, that results in lack of trust which represents a problem for financial oligarchy which rules the country. The poor working slobs are told be grateful for Walmart's low (poverty-subsidized) prices. Middle class is told that their declining standard of living is a natural result of their lack of competitiveness in the market place. Classic "bread and circuses" policy still works but for how long it will continue to work it is unclear.
But nothing is really new under the sun. To more and more people it is now clear that today the US is trying to stave off the inevitable decline by resorting to all kinds of financial manipulations like previous empires; yesterday, it was the British Empire and if you go further back, you get the USSR, Hapsburg empire, Imperial Russia, Spanish empire, Venetian empire, Byzantium and Roman empire. The current "Secretary of Imperial Wars" (aka Secretary of Defense) Ashton Baldwin Carter is pretty open about this:
“We already see countries in the region trying to carve up these markets…forging many separate trade agreements in recent years, some based on pressure and special arrangements…. Agreements that…..leave us on the sidelines. That risks America’s access to these growing markets. We must all decide if we are going to let that happen. If we’re going to help boost our exports and our economy…and cement our influence and leadership in the fastest-growing region in the world; or if, instead, we’re going to take ourselves out of the game.”
For the US elite it might be a time to rethink its neocon stance due to which the US is exposing ourselves to the enmity of the rising economic powers, and blowing serious cash to maintain it hegemony via maintaining huge military budget, financing wars and color revolutions in distant countries. In a way the US foreign policy became a financial racket, and racket can't last forever because it incite strong opposition from other countries.
Neoliberalism (aka casino capitalism) as a social system entered the state of decline after 2008. Like communism before it stopped to be attractive to people. But unlike communism it proved to have greater staying power, surviving in zombie state as finanfial institutions preserved political power and in some cases even enhanced it. It is unclear how long it will say in this state. Much depends on the availability of "cheap oil" on which neoliberal globalization is based.
But the plausible hypothesis is that this social system like socialism in xUSSR space before entered down slope and might well be on its way to the cliff. Attempts to neo-colonize other states by the West became less successful and more costly (Compare Ukraine, Libya and Iraq with previous instances of color revolutions). Some became close to XIX century colonial conquests with a lot of bloodshed (from half million to over a million of Iraqis, by different estimates, died ). As always this is mainly the blood of locals, which is cheap.
Libya and Ukraine are two recent examples. Both countries are now destroyed (which might be the plan). In Ukraine population is thrown in object poverty with income of less that $5 a day for the majority of population. And there is no other way to expand markets but to try to "neo-colonize" new countries by putting them into ominous level of debt while exporting goods to the population on credit. That is not a long term strategy as Greece, Bulgaria, and now Spain and Portugal had shown. With shrinking markets stability of capitalism in general and neoliberalism in particular might decrease.
Several researchers points to increased importance Central banks now play in maintaining of the stability of the banking system. That's already a reversal of neoliberal dogma about free (read "unregulated") markets. Actually the tale about "free markets", as far as the USA is concerned, actually was from the very beginning mainly the product designed for export (read about Washington consensus).
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Jul 19, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Why Are "Thousands" of Teslas Sitting In a Field in California?
by Tyler Durden Thu, 07/19/2018 - 16:14 129 SHARES
"There's so much inventory here, it's crazy."
When Tesla finally met its Model 3 production run rate target, astute investors and analysts pointed out the use of the word "factory gated" in the company's press release: "Not only did we factory gate 5000 Model 3's , but we also achieved the S & X production target for a combined 7000 vehicle week!" Musk wrote in an email to his staff that week.
It was a term that Tesla hadn't used before.
Now, thanks to a couple of sleuths on Twitter, we may have just found out what the term means. Twitter Tesla sleuth @ISpyTSLA, with the help of others, has been trying to figure out exactly where all these vehicles are winding up. @ISpyTSLA found that it appears that "thousands" of vehicles are being stored "in a field" 500 E Louise Ave, Lathrop, CA 95330.
A google map visual of the address:
According to public records, the property was also available for lease just 6 months ago , suggesting that Tesla leased it recently. Why?
Perhaps as a place to temporarily dump cars that should be 'off the books' or as some said,' "There's so much inventory here, it's crazy."
The accompanying video appears to show "thousands" of Tesla vehicles just rusting in the open air under the scorching California sun.
Additional video shows the Twitter users initial approach to the property, which appears to have a gate with a warning sign that the premises are being video monitored.
The Twitter user notes that trucks seem to be bringing cars in, but not out. Follow up Tweets noted that "there's no real activity in the inventory lot" before noting that "some cars are coming out".
Meanwhile, as another Twitter user noted, another just as vast pile of Model 3s can be found near the Burbank Hollywood Airport.
The reaction from Twitter was underwhelming.
Great News Lemmings! All of our 5K Burst week cars are sitting in a scrap heap. This is GREAT news, we are going to make submarines out of them. Elon $TSLA
-- William B. Smith (@blainefundlp) July 19, 2018But why stash the cars there? Is it to optimize net working capital and give investors - and auditors - the impression of more liquidity than is actually available?
Surely this will, or should, be one of the "boring" questions asked on the company's conference, if PricewaterhouseCoopers doesn't ask first.
Meanwhile, Tesla already had to fend off a downgrade from Needham this morning, who warned that Model 3 refunds were moving faster than deposits, something we documented here over a month ago .
"Based on our checks, refunds are outpacing deposits as cancellations accelerate," wrote analyst Rajvindra Gill in the note Thursday. "The reasons are varied: extended wait times, the expiration of the $7,500 credit, and unavailability of the $35k base model."
"In August '17, TSLA cited a refund rate of 12%. Almost a year later, we believe it has doubled and outpaced deposits. Model 3 wait times are currently 4-12 months and with base model not available until mid-2019, consumers could wait until 2020," Gill added.
This morning Tesla refuted this, however, with the discovery of this new lot Tesla's PR spin job for today may only be getting started.
Manthong -> macholatte Thu, 07/19/2018 - 16:28 Permalink
Bear -> Manthong Thu, 07/19/2018 - 21:07 PermalinkAt what desert ground level temperature Tesla batteries spontaneously combust?
Hugh_Jorgan -> Manthong Thu, 07/19/2018 - 16:35 PermalinkCars probably awaiting batteries
Endgame Napoleon -> mkkby Thu, 07/19/2018 - 20:34 PermalinkThere probably aren't any batteries in them. These cars are in various states of technical completeness. Processes that were too time-consuming and parts that were not readily available were skipped in order to complete their ridiculous publicity stunt. No one likely knows the missing bits for any given car so they are junk. This is what happens when you are able to do what you're doing because of lots of "other-people's money". 4th turning bitchez, gross waste and abuse. All the big manufacturers are doing it, why shouldn't Tesla?
Sokhmate -> Antifaschistische Thu, 07/19/2018 - 19:30 PermalinkElon Musk manufactures here in the USA. Most American car manufacturers, other than Ford, took bigly bailout money from American taxpayers and then set up shop in racially homogenous, cheap-labor countries in China & Latin America. Ford went straight to Mexico, bypassing the bailout cash.
"Profitable" American car manufacturers still do some production in the USA, mostly hiring groups of young temps. They pay the youthful, blue-collar temp workers more than most white-collar temp jobs around here offer.
About 5 years ago, a local car manufacturer was paying temps $17 per hour, as opposed to the typical $10 per hour offered to white-collar non-college-grad office workers or $12 per hour for white-collar college-grad office workers. I recently saw an article, suggesting that the same American car manufacturer is now paying young temps even more, quite a bit more.
The article was adorned with a photo of an aging union worker, but no explanation was provided about how this system really works, with the young temps hired to do the bulk of the physically demanding labor. Due to senority, a small group of old union workers avoid that work, doing the cushier tasks.
The liberal agenda pusher who wrote the article, sticking a photo on it with an especially aged union worker, was probably promoting the faulty idea that America needs more immigration to fill those jobs due to an aging population, when, in fact, the young Millennial generation is BIGGER than the aging Boomer generation.
Furthermore, American citizens often get on lists to fill those high-paying temp jobs in car manufacturing. Applicants often have six-month waiting periods due to the massive number of job seekers, chasing those rare, high-paying TEMPORARY jobs.
Much like state jobs, US citizens must wait to get a good-paying temp job with those car manufacturers, and if the person who wrote the article had talked to temps who actually worked those jobs, s/he would know it. But it might not matter; advocates of mass-scale immigration gonna advocate.
any_mouse -> beemasters Thu, 07/19/2018 - 20:06 PermalinkConservative numbers. I clocked the temperature of my black dashboard sitting in the sun in a town of balmy 70 degrees F at 160-170 degrees Fahrenheit
SIOP -> Rubicon Thu, 07/19/2018 - 16:36 PermalinkTne Media helped establish Musk as a cult figure. Reality is catching up with a false god, that is what's happening. At what point will Musk throw a kool aid party for MuskCar employees under the tent.
Sapere aude -> SIOP Thu, 07/19/2018 - 17:41 Permalink" Isn't it what all car manufacturers do? " Yes, but it's Tesla so it's different somehow.
Banana Republican -> Rubicon Thu, 07/19/2018 - 16:50 PermalinkNo its not what other car manufacturers do if they have so many orders to fill? only car manufacturers forward producing and estimating demand need store them but most adjust manufacturing levels to avoid it now as its expensive to store, and even non registered vehicles decline in value and are subject to damage.
Tesla with back orders should have no need at all to store cars, with such a professed backlog, so the fact they have is highly suspicious.
It might suggest to some analysts that the vehicles are not completed not safe or something else is awry.
DontWorry -> SloMoe Thu, 07/19/2018 - 17:21 PermalinkIt doesn't even look like "thousands" of cars to me. A quick drone flyover would clear this question up. And sure, this is what all car manufacturers do. Transshipment, rework, whatever. I mean, what else would you do? Put a tent over them? Everything about Tesla is stupid, and I'm enjoying their failure. But stories like this give credence to Musk's paranoid assertions that the world is out to destroy him.
adr Thu, 07/19/2018 - 16:32 PermalinkBack in the old days of software we called it 'shipping bricks'. The new version of the software wasn't ready, but we booked orders, so we slapped labels on blank disks, but em in boxes with manuals and sent em out. Customer called a few days later when the software was ready, and we said, 'oh sorry, must have gotten a defective one, we are fed exing a new disk in the mail.
These may look like Teslas, but they didn't pass tests or are unsellable for some reason, so they count them as 'gated inventory' Same thing
Lie_Detector Thu, 07/19/2018 - 16:34 PermalinkThe increase in TSLA market cap more than covered the few thousand "cars" Tesla needs to hide that will never actually be sold, well until Elon called a hero a pedophile.
This is how the great publicly traded con economy works. You aren't producing product to sell, you are only manufacturing a story to sell stock. Since stock based compensation makes you a billionaire even if your company loses billions of dollars, what incentive is there to turn a profit?
You end up with more scams than productive corporations. If there was no stock market, Walmart would exist, but Amazon would not. Walmart is profitable in the billions of dollars, Amazon is not. Bezos could not be worth $150billion without the scam of publicly traded shares because it would take a few thousand years to pay out $150billion to Bezos from Amazon's profit.
Meanwhile Walmart could pay a few executives $1 billion per year and have plenty of profit left. Why is one company worth $250 billion, less than half revenue and the other near $850 billion with less than $200 billion in revenue?
BocceBaal Thu, 07/19/2018 - 16:37 PermalinkNot only Tesla is "storing" cars. All the majors appear to be doing the same. I live near Flint MI and you would NOT BELIEVE the number of lot's, fields, and empty spaces in the area that are FULL of late model vehicles. I suspect most are lease returns that are being kept out of the market to keep prices elevated. I have a 21 year old pick up truck. It is paid for. I would buy a newer truck but they are way too expensive. We have a newer SUV, also paid for. When the "big 3" decide to sell some of those lease returns at a reasonable price I MAY look at buying one. I WILL NOT BUY ONE for the prices they want. I just purchased a nice home for less than $40K so why would I buy a depreciating asset for the same amount?
Justapleb -> BocceBaal Thu, 07/19/2018 - 19:18 PermalinkTesla delayed some deliveries until July, probably so that they could reach 200K cars sold this quarter and have the $7500 tax credit until Q4. But now that they've sold 200K, it makes no sense to hang onto them unless they don't have a buyer. Maybe that's why they opened the Model 3 builder site to everyone? Could it really be that they've run through all of the Model 3 preorders because most people who signed up to buy a $35K car aren't interested in paying $49K minimum as it is now?
not dead yet -> HilteryTrumpkin Thu, 07/19/2018 - 17:53 PermalinkThis is a reasonable interpretation. Best case for Musk. In islolation (lol) it doesn't seem fatal.
But even so, he has higher inventory control costs. His labor costs have proven higher too. Down the line these cars have no dealer network to service or repair them, and to provide it is [would cost] billions.
Central Ohio Thu, 07/19/2018 - 16:46 PermalinkYea and the Tesla tards are all gaga over the 30% profit margin the 3 will bring as indicated by those that tear down and analyze the vehicle. We're all gonna be rich when Tesla stock hits 10,000 by the end of the year. Booya. What you delusional Musk lovers should do is learn the difference between GROSS PROFIT, which is that touted 30%, and NET PROFIT. Gross profit only includes the direct costs to produce the car, materials and labor, but does not include selling, general, and administrative which will consume that 30% "profit" and then some. General expenses such as warranty work, electricity, paying engineers and secretaries and other non direct manufacturing personnel such as material handlers and plant cleanup and trash disposal and maintenance people etc, "free charging", R&D, interest on the debt, sales offices, etc etc. In the past your boy could brag about the cash pile on hand most of which was accumulated for PR purposes by delaying payment to suppliers.
Kendle C Thu, 07/19/2018 - 17:47 PermalinkReminds me of someone who once touted, 'transparency.'
not dead yet -> Kendle C Thu, 07/19/2018 - 18:41 PermalinkNot since "Who Killed the Electric Car" have so many with axes to grind began fueling this bazaar anti-Tesla barrage. Musk is part of "those who do" while "those that can't" SHIT ALL OVER EVERYBODY who can.
Behind this is a hedge fund with a heavy short position, oil industry think tanks, and just plain shits parading on some fucking adolescent thing called "Twitter".
Have you dumb asses looked at the quantities of warehoused traditional cars by all other manufacturers? Youtube it if you don't believe. As to you haters and inflammatory dickheads, it's time to stop whacking it and eat the fucking cracker.
Kendle C -> not dead yet Thu, 07/19/2018 - 20:49 PermalinkYou really are delusional. "Who Killed the Electric Car' is nothing but a hit piece on GM. GM killed their own electric not the electric industry like idiots want to believe. Their car although state of the art at the time had little range with the old tech batteries that were available at the time and would have been extremely expensive to build as it had no parts in common with other vehicles in their line. Plus at the time there was absolutely no public demand for electrics. The current flurry of electrics coming on the market is not because of Tesla, as you cult members want to believe, but from the hugely funded enviros pushing for the elimination of all ICE cars. In Germany and a few other countries they have passed or are in the process of legislating no new ICE cars to be sold by a certain date, anywhere from 2025 to 2030 depending on country, and all ICE cars off the road by 2050 or other dates depending on country.
Recently there was a complete fiction hit piece that oil companies outspend enviros by 10 to 1 on lobbying. Enviro organizations such as Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, Tom Steyer and other billionaires, and other enviro groups spend most of their budgets, which is in the billions, on lobbying. Under Obama his EPA pursued a "sue and settle" policy to encourage enviro groups to sue the EPA which would settle quickly as a way to get funds into the enviros pockets. Not to mention the hundreds of billions given to enviros by governments around the world. The Obama EPA refused to release to Congress the science on which their rulings were made because most of that "science" was bullshit written by enviro activists. The EPA advisors were all enviro activists. When Trump put Pruitt in charge of the EPA you clowns claimed he was anti science when he shit canned the activist old boy network and set up debates from all sides. Under Pruitt they took money destined for activists and used it clean up real pollution in Superfund sites which the Obama EPA ignored.
The other manufacturers can afford to warehouse cars as they make real profits. They also have to buy "pollution permits" to sell their cars in Commiefornia, which ends up in Tesla's pockets even though they pollute worse the ICE though not directly. As it is your boy is no different than the other manufacturers yet, except for ZH and other sites willing to print the truth, the general media, especially tech sites, can't get enough of licking Musk's balls and stroking his ego by wrongly calling him a genius who is going to change the world. Every single market your boy is in from Powerwalls to solar panels to cars there is experienced and well funded competition but yet the delusional refuse to believe it. His factory of the future, which was going to change the way cars are built, was a huge failure as in many procedures humans are better than robots which is why other car companies still employ humans. Your boy who was going to change the way cars are sold is opening dealerships. Plus Tesla is opening large numbers of repair shops contrary to the belief of many Tesla fanbois that Tesla's run forever without any repairs.
yarpos -> Kendle C Thu, 07/19/2018 - 22:00 PermalinkBoy did I scratch off your scab! Feeling accused? BTW cut back on "enviro-whatever" ok, 'cus it really sounds stupid. Your writing is dense, machine like, staid, crystalized, like a walking dead pedantic. Your reality is your own, there in your hermit crab shell, I wish you a constant stream of nutritional plankton, return to your place on the coral wreath.
Chaotix Thu, 07/19/2018 - 17:47 PermalinkNotice you came back with nothing but name calling and a writing style critique. Another content free liberal, once you scratch one layer deep past the talking points.
ejbonk Thu, 07/19/2018 - 18:59 PermalinkProduction does not always mean demand. In today's' ideology, production pays the rent, as long as the feds keep bailing you out. For years there have been photos of new car graveyards. It gives the charts something good to say.
"We produced 7,000 cars this week" gives the illusion of high demand for product, while not indicating who the buyers are. Part of the Sales illusion.larrythelogger -> ejbonk Thu, 07/19/2018 - 19:14 Permalink1 Problem. Tesla Vehicles Are Made From Aluminum and Aluminum Alloys. So They Do Not Rust ! This Tells Me Someone Didn't Do The Proper Research or Proof Reading .
not-me---it-wa Thu, 07/19/2018 - 21:59 PermalinkYeah, well if you actually DO proper research you'll find that only iron and steel rust. Aluminum corrodes, forms a thin layer of oxidized aluminum over its surface which does protect further surface corrosion. However, in a salt environment, even a teeny little bit of salt and water, like say salt found in desert areas, will cause severe corrosion where the aluminum turns to dust. If it rains in Lathrop followed by lots of wind, any and all unprotected aluminum WILL turn to dust and that right quick if left that way. Ask any Navy or Marine Corps pilot or any Navy or Marine Corps aircraft maintenance person whose served at sea and flew or worked on any number of aircraft. So thanks for the "they do not rust" warning so that "someone" could do Proper Research or Proof Reading. Good tip.
interesting tidbits from downgrade announcement:
" The spokesperson also added depending on the vehicle's configuration , Model 3 wait times are currently 1 to 3 months", but spokeshuman did not explain why no base models will ever be produced.
" Tesla ditched reservations and opened up Model 3 sales to anyone for a $2,500 deposit." that's because reservations are refundable....as long as the cash holds out, sales deposits apparently not.
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Jan 11, 2018 | www.unz.com
Extracted from: The FBI Hand Behind Russia-gate, by Ray McGovern - The Unz Review by Ray McGovern
Russia-gate is becoming FBI-gate, thanks to the official release of unguarded text messages between loose-lipped FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and his garrulous girlfriend, FBI lawyer Lisa Page. (Ten illustrative texts from their exchange appear at the end of this article.)
Despite his former job as chief of the FBI's counterintelligence section, Strzok had the naive notion that texting on FBI phones could not be traced. Strzok must have slept through "Surity 101." Or perhaps he was busy texting during that class. Girlfriend Page cannot be happy at being misled by his assurance that using office phones would be a secure way to conduct their affair(s).
It would have been unfortunate enough for Strzok and Page to have their adolescent-sounding texts merely exposed, revealing the reckless abandon of star-crossed lovers hiding (they thought) secrets from cuckolded spouses, office colleagues, and the rest of us. However, for the never-Trump plotters in the FBI, the official release of just a fraction (375) of almost 10,000 messages does incalculably more damage than that.
We suddenly have documentary proof that key elements of the U.S. intelligence community were trying to short-circuit the U.S. democratic process. And that puts in a new and dark context the year-long promotion of Russia-gate. It now appears that it was not the Russians trying to rig the outcome of the U.S. election, but leading officials of the U.S. intelligence community, shadowy characters sometimes called the Deep State.
... ... ...
Ironically, the Strzok-Page texts provide something that the Russia-gate investigation has been sorely lacking: first-hand evidence of both corrupt intent and action. After months of breathless searching for "evidence" of Russian-Trump collusion designed to put Trump in the White House, what now exists is actual evidence that senior officials of the Obama administration colluded to keep Trump out of the White House – proof of what old-time gumshoes used to call "means, motive and opportunity."
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Jun 28, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org
What are the necessary elements for the success of a modern nation state?
According to one justifiably popular and well-written book, Why Nations Fail , it all has to do with inclusive political and economic institutions which foster technological change which in turn leads to increasing prosperity for the many.
Two key aspects upholding such institutions are a strong centralized state and the rule of law. Without these two, a nation cannot hope to advance socially, politically, or economically. The negative of this rosy picture are nations which maintain and promote extractive political and economic institutions which serve the interests of a narrow elite.
Both cases, the inclusive and the extractive, tend to reinforce themselves through time by a process known as institutional drift. This is an historical tendency for institutions to maintain, strengthen, and reproduce themselves over time similar to the biological processes involved in genetic drift.
Importantly the authors also take the time to mention Robert Michel's seminal idea concerning the iron law of oligarchy which explains the historically documented tendency that large, complex organizations of any kind (democratic, socialist, conservative) fall under the sway of a small elite exercising absolute if cosmetically hidden power.
Our authors optimistically suggest that this law is not destiny and can be sufficiently controlled by ever expanding democratic institutions in civil society.
Opposed to this buoyant idea of increasing mass prosperity and political participation is Francis Fukuyama's discussion of Neo-Paternalism in his thought provoking magnum opus The Origins of Political Order.
In short, much like the earlier Michel, Fukuyama sees present day democracies drifting towards ever more nepotistic patterns of behavior where elites seize power and reward and distribute the fruits of that power to their close associates within their networks of influence.
In effect, both men, see, as did Marx before them, the "constitutional democracies" as a sham as a kind of theater behind which the levers of power are exercised authoritatively with little regard to the true interests of the masses below them.
In such an environment of centralized elite control, "media openness" can do little to rout out the opaque workings of carefully, surreptitiously orchestrated power.
Thus, a superficial reading of history might lead us to believe that we live in an increasingly "inclusive" society reflecting a rising tide of technological progress and economic prosperity. However, a closer look, might reveal a modicum of beneficence bestowed upon the many; while the Machiavellian few have managed behind a facade of democracy and nationalism to achieve unheard of sums of wealth, power, and influence once only dreamed of by despots, dictators, and demagogues of the past.
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Jul 18, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org
The USA and Russia: Two Sides of the Same Criminal Corporate Coin by Dan CorjescuWhy, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.-- Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
There are many modern myths. One of them is about the events of 1989 as being the culmination of a grand historical struggle for freedom and liberty. Nothing could be farther from the truth. For years prior to 1989 the West through a combination of both legal business and criminal activity had interpenetrated the Communist elites with lucrative deals and promises of all kinds.
This situation was even more pronounced in "non-aligned" Yugoslavia who for years had maintained CIA and American and West European business contacts.
In effect, the "cold war" witnessed a rapid convergence between the economic and power interests of both Western and Communist elites.
The "Communists" (in name only of course) quickly realized the economic benefits available to them through at times open at times clandestine cooperation with Western business/criminal interests.
Eventually, Communist elites realized that they had an unprecedented economic opportunity on their hands: state privatization made possible, in part, with active Western participation.
For them, "Freedom" meant the freedom to get rich beyond their wildest dreams.
And the 1990's were just that. A paradise for thieving on an unimaginable scale all under the rubric of the rebirth of "capitalism and freedom".
The true outcome of that decade was that the old communist elites not only retained their social and political power behind the scenes; they also were able to enrich themselves beyond anything the communist dictatorships could ever hope to offer them in the past.
Yes, the price was to give up imperial, national, and ideological ambitions. But it was a very small price to pay; since the East European elites had ceased to believe in any of those things years earlier.
The only firm belief they still held was the economic betterment of themselves and their families through the acquisition by any means of as many asset classes as possible. In effect, they became the mirror image of their "enemy" the "imperialist capitalist West".
This was not a case of historical dialectics but historical convergence. What appeared as a world divided was actually a world waiting to be made whole through the basest of criminal business activity.
But being clever thieves they knew how to hide themselves and their doings behind superficially morally impeccable figures such as Vaclav Havel and Lech Wałęsa, to name just a few. These "dissidents" would be the faces they would use to make a good part of the world believe that 1989 was a narrative of freedom and not outright pubic theft which it was.
Yes, people in the east, even in Russia, are freer now than they were. But it should never be forgotten that the events of 1989/1990 were not even remotely about those revolutionary dreams.
It was about something much more mundane and sordid. It was about greed. It was about the maintenance of power. And finally it was about money.
How deep has the Western nexus of power and wealth gone into the heart of the East? So far indeed that one can easily question to what extent a country like Russia is truly a "national" state anymore and rather just a territory open to exploitation by both local and global elites.
For that matter, we can ask the same question about the USA.
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Jul 18, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
SteveK9 , Jul 17, 2018 8:38:21 PM | 162
The trouble with all this analysis is that it disregards one thing ... thermonuclear weapons. None of these countries, US, Russia, China is a danger to any of the others. A war between any of them is inconceivable and barring some unforeseen breakthrough will remain that way for centuries to come.
These 3 nations are continental in size. None of them can be 'strangled' by the others. You might be thinking of energy, but along with ending war, nuclear technology makes that irrelevant as well. Nuclear power (despite the idiocy you hear constantly from 'anti-nukes'), means that every country can have virtually limitless energy. There is a lot of uranium around, and used in advanced reactors it will last so far into the future, that it might as well be forever. The only reason the fossil-fuel age has not ended, is inertia. We are at the beginning of the uranium age.
And what this means is that if any of these huge countries wants to turn to isolation to whatever degree, it really doesn't matter.
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Jul 18, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
10:55 AM-Jul 17,2018
by Tyler Durden Wed, 07/18/2018 - 08:00 67 SHARES Authored by Michael Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
As the Snowden documents and David Sanger's great new book and other books make plain, and as U.S. officials are wont to brag, the U.S. intelligence services break into computers and computer networks abroad at an astounding rate, certainly on a greater scale than any other intelligence service in the world. Every one of these intrusions in another country violates that country's criminal laws prohibiting unauthorized computer access and damage, no less than the Russian violations of U.S. laws outlined in Mueller's indictment...
It is no response to say that the United States doesn't meddle in foreign elections, because it has in the past - at least as recently as Bill Clinton's intervention in the Russian presidential election of 1996 and possibly as recently as the Hillary Clinton State Department's alleged intervention in Russia's 2011 legislative elections .
And during the Cold War the United States intervened in numerous foreign elections, more than twice as often as the Soviet Union.
Intelligence history expert Loch Johnson told Scott Shane that the 2016 Russia electoral interference is "the cyber-age version of standard United States practice for decades, whenever American officials were worried about a foreign vote."
The CIA's former chief of Russia operations, Steven L. Hall, told Shane: "If you ask an intelligence officer, did the Russians break the rules or do something bizarre, the answer is no, not at all." Hall added that "the United States 'absolutely' has carried out such election influence operations historically, and I hope we keep doing it."
Lawfare : Uncomfortable Questions in the Wake of Russia Indictment 2.0 and Trump's Press Conference With Putin
Nothing gets the phony "Resistance," corporate media and neocons more hysterical than when Trump isn't belligerent enough while meeting with foreign leaders abroad. While the pearl clutching was intense during the North Korea summit, the reoccurring, systematic outrage spectacle was taken to entirely new levels of stupidity and hyperbole during yesterday's meeting with Putin in Finland.
The clown parade really got going after compulsive liar and former head of the CIA under Barack Obama, John Brennan, accused Trump of treason on Twitter -- which resistance drones dutifully retweeted, liked and permanently enshrined within the gospel of Russiagate.
Some people hate Trump so intensely they're willing to take the word of a professional liar and manipulator as scripture.
In fact, Brennan is so uniquely skilled at the dark art of deception, Trevor Timm, executive direction of the Freedom of the Press foundation described him in the following manner in a must read 2014 article :
"this is the type of spy who apologizes even though he's not sorry, who lies because he doesn't like to tell the truth." The article also refers to him as "the most talented liar in Washington."
This is the sort of hero the phony "resistance" is rallying around. No thank you.
It wasn't just Brennan, of course. The mental disorder colloquially known as Trump Derangement Syndrome is widely distributed throughout society at this point. Baseless accusations of treason were thrown around casually by all sorts of TDS sufferers, including sitting members of Congress. To see the extent of the disease, take a look at the show put on by Democratic Congressman from Washington state, Rep. Adam Smith.
Via The Hill :
"At every turn of his trip to Europe, President Trump has followed a script that parallels Moscow's plan to weaken and divide America's allies and partners and undermine democratic values. There is an extensive factual record suggesting that President Trump's campaign and the Russians conspired to influence our election for President Trump," Smith, a top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said in an official statement .
"Now Trump is trying to cover it up. There is no sugar coating this. It is hard to see President Trump siding with Vladimir Putin over our own intelligence community and our criminal investigators as anything other than treason."
Those are some serious accusations. He must surely have a strong argument to support such proclamations, right? Wrong. Turns out it was all show, pure politics.
In an interview with The Seattle Times, Smith expanded on his "treason" comment, saying Trump legally did not commit treason but has committed other impeachable offenses.
"Treason might have been a little bit of hyperbole," Smith told The Seattle Times . "There is no question in my mind that the United States has the need to begin an impeachment investigation."
It says a lot that the resistance itself doesn't even believe its own nonsense. They're just using hyperbolic and dangerous language to make people crazy and feed more TDS.
Here's yet another example of a wild-eyed Democratic Congressman sounding utterly bloodthirsty and unhinged. Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee is openly saying the U.S. is at war with Russia.
From The Hill :
"No question about it," Cohen told Hill.TV's Buck Sexton and Krystal Ball on "Rising" when asked whether the Russian hacking and propaganda effort constituted an act of war.
"It was a foreign interference with our basic Democratic values. The underpinnings of Democratic society is elections, and free elections, and they invaded our country," he continued.
Cohen went on to say that the U.S. should have countered with a cyber attack on Russia.
"A cyber attack that made Russian society valueless. They could have gone into Russian banks, Russian government. Our cyber abilities are such that we could have attacked them with a cyber attack that would have crippled Russia," he said.
This is a very sick individual.
While the above is incredibly twisted, it's become increasingly clear that Russiagate has become something akin to a religion. It's adherents have become so attached to the story that Trump's "wholly in the pocket of Putin," they're increasingly lobbing serious and baseless accusations against people who fail to acquiesce to their dogma.
I was a victim of this back in November 2016 when I was falsely slandered in The Washington Post's ludicrous and now infamous PropOrNot article.
More recently, we've seen MSNBC pundit Malcom Nance (ex-military/intelligence) call Glenn Greenwald a Russian agent (without evidence of course), followed by "journalist" David Corn calling Rand Paul a "traitor" for stating indisputable facts .
Calling someone a traitor for stating obvious facts that threaten the hysteria you're trying to cultivate is a prime example of how this whole thing has turned into some creepy D.C. establishment religion. If these people have such a solid case and the facts are on their side, there's no need to resort to such demented craziness. It does nothing other than promote societal insanity and push the unconvinced away.
It's because of stuff like this that we're no longer able to have a real conversation about anything in this country (many Trump cheerleaders employ the same tactics) . This is a deadly thing for any society and will be explored in Part 2.
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Jul 18, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Daniel , Jul 18, 2018 12:11:36 AM | 191
Daniel
I'm of a different mind when it comes to the elites/money. Was it you or somebody commented some time back that the US elite is not a monolith? No matter, I think Trump is part of a faction of the elite rather than a groomed puppet. There are a number of factions in the US, who mostly act in unison, but now, As anywhere the factions will overlap in interests, as in many with Iran derangement syndrome will overlap with those who have Russia derangement syndrome and so forth.
US is a mess with so many derangement syndromes, even amongst the elite. Trump is something like a catalyst that causes the elite, and much of the US to separate into two distinctly different groupings of derangement syndrome.Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Jul 17, 2018 11:35:02 PM | 188
Peter AU 1 @184. I have written, and do still absolutely believe that the 0.01% is not a monolith, and that they do compete, sometimes with absolutely disastrous effects on humans.
I just don't see this Trump vs. "Deep State" or whatever as an example of that. The 0.01% and their MSM who we are told is "the resistance" helped create and bolster the Trump Brand, and are profiting mightily from his Administration.
I just saw an article showing Goldman Sachs' profits have gone up 44% since Trump. Again, not "The Grand Coincidence" that Trump stuffed the swamp with more GS creatures of the black lagoon than any other President in history.
Or, are GS now anti-globalists, playing along with Trump's brilliant 5-D chess? ;-)
Seriously, what AZ Empire elitists have suffered under the Trump Administration?
The extraction industries are flying high. The MIC is raking it in. The supra-national banksters.... well, they always do well, but they're obviously thrilled as is Wall Street in general.
As I noted above, even the failing media of the NY Times and MSDNC are in boon times! Rachel Maddow and Stephen Colbert were in the ratings cellar until Trump, now they're tops in their slots. Michael frigging Moore and U2 are relevant again! ;-)
Seriously, I had asked who benefits. But the easier question has to be who suffers?
Peter AU 1 , Jul 18, 2018 12:26:04 AM | 196
DanielCirce , Jul 17, 2018 11:49:39 PM | 189
Trump's swamp is very different from what most of us here at b's see as the swamp. Trump's swamp is what Pat Lang at SST terms as the borg. It is the pidgins strutting around shitting on the chessboard (Putin), the Zbig foreign policy 'ex-spurts' blinded by Russia derangement syndrome.Methinks the media pot is calling the Trump kettle black; or is it the other way around? They're interchangeable; they're like a jacket that has two sides one can wear when the other side looks too dirty.Daniel , Jul 17, 2018 11:23:48 PM | 184Same thing with the Washington duopoly. When one starts to look transparent; the other one takes over.
It's all a racket people. Stop buying into the media and duopoly system and it'll lose its power. They exist on your desperation, your need for illusion and your insanity i.e. doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result when you know it's clearly not working!
Trump is the master illusionist du jour even topping Obama, who was like the charming preacher minus the performing snakes. Perhaps the only true statement to come out of Hillary's mouth was about her rival.: "The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be heard and the world will be perfect.
She should know; she peddles the same.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day...err...once.
Circe @| 173, why does the Zionist owned and controlled media in Israel LOVE Trump, but the Zionist owned and controlled media in the US/EU HATE him?And that is one of the (many) reasons why I do not believe the MSM narrative that Trump is an outsider whom they hate. Trump fans know the MSM lies to us about everything, big and small. And yet, they totally believe the MSM narrative about Trump and their relationship with him.
I am reminded of the atheist challenge to believers in a monotheistic religion. "You are atheistic about all the other gods except one. I am merely atheistic about one more god than you."
Well, I disbelieve one more MSM narrative than most.
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Jul 18, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Patrick Armstrong via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
NOTE: Because "NATO" these days is little more than a box of spare parts out of which Washington assembles "coalitions of the willing" , it's easier for me to write "NATO" than "Washington plus/minus these or those minions".
Home Secretary Sajid Javid has called on Russia to explain "exactly what has gone on" after two people were exposed to the Novichok nerve agent in Wiltshire. ( BBC )
The Russian state could put this wrong right. They could tell us what happened. What they did. And fill in some of the significant gaps that we are trying to pursue. We have said they can come and tell us what happened. I'm waiting for the phone call from the Russian state. The offer is there. They are the ones who could fill in all the clues to keep people safe. ( UK security minister Ben Wallace )
Leaving aside their egregious flouting of the elemental principle of English justice, note that they're uttering this logical idiocy: Russia must have done it because it hasn't proved it didn't . Note also, in Javid's speech, the amusing suggestion that Russia keeps changing its story; but to fit into the official British story "novichok" must be an instantly lethal slow acting poison which dissipates quickly but lasts for months .
This is an attempt to manipulate our perception of reality . In a previous essay I discussed NATO's projection of its own actions onto Russia. In this piece I want to discuss another psychological manipulation – gaslighting .
The expression comes from the movie Gaslight in which the villain manipulates her reality to convince his wife that she is insane. Doubt the official Skripal story and it is you – you "Russian troll" – who is imagining things. Only Russian trolls would question Litvinenko's deathbed accusation written in perfect English handed to us by a Berezovskiy flunky; or the shootdown of MH17; or the invasion of Ukraine; or the cyber attack on Estonia. Only a Russian troll would observe that the fabulously expensive NATO intelligence agencies apparently get their information from Bellingcat. Argumentum ad trollem is everywhere: count the troll accusations here or admire the clever anticipatory use of the technique there .
This is classic gaslighting – I'm telling the truth, you're the crazy one.
We may illustrate the eleven signs of "gaslighting" given in Psychiatry Today by Stephanie A. Sarkis with recent events.
They tell blatant lies.The Skripals were poisoned by an incredibly deadly nerve agent that left them with no visible symptoms for hours but not so deadly that it killed them; at least not at Easter; nor the policeman; a nerve agent that could only have been made in Russia although its recipe was published in the open media ; that poison having been administered on a doorknob that each had to have touched at the exact same minute that no one else touched; a nerve agent so deadly that they only bothered to clean up the sites 51 days later. And so on: a different story every day. But your mind must be controlled by Putin if you smell a falsehood at any point. And, now we have it all over again: apparently the fiendishly clever Russian assassins smeared the doorknob and then, rather than getting out of town ASAP, sauntered over into a park to toss the container . (Remember the fiendishly clever Russian assassins who spread polonium everywhere?)
And, speaking of proven, long term, repeating liars: remember when accusing the British government of complicity in torture renditions was a conspiracy theory ? Well, it turns out the conspiracy was by the other side . "Conspiracy Theorist" is the perfect gaslighting accusation, by the way: you're the crazy one.
They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.The Skripal case gives a perfect illustration: here's the UK Foreign Secretary saying Porton Down told him it was Russian ("absolutely categorical" ) And here's the UK Foreign Office disappearing the statement: We never said Porton Down confirmed the origin. It's rare to get such a quick exposure of a lie, so it's useful to have this example. Here is an obvious fake from Bellingcat . Already the Douma story is being re-polished now that the OPCW has said no organophosphates .
Most of the time it takes years to reveal the lie: gaslighters know the details will be forgotten while the impression remains. 64 years later we learn the "conspiracy theorists" were right about the CIA/UK involvement in the Iran coup . It's rather amazing how many people still believe the proven liars this time around.
They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.Russians cheat at the sports you follow, scatter nerve agents and radioactive material in places you could be in, sneak into the voting booth with you, blow up airplanes you might be on and tear up the " very fabric of our democracy ." Your favourite actor tells you " we are at war with Russia ".
And the children! The boy on the beach . The boy in the ambulance . Bana from Aleppo . Miraculous recoveries . Dramatic rescues with camera! Dead children speaking . And finally, the little girl, Trump and the Time cover .
If it's a child, they're gaslighting you.
They wear you down over time.Skripal story fading? How about a CW attack in Syria? No? Back to MH17: same story with one new obviously suspicious detail . Pussy Riot is forgotten and Pavlenskiy an embarrassment , but " Russian bear in Moscow World Cup parade video sparks PETA outrage "! This is what is known as a Gish Gallop : the gaslighter makes 47 assertions, while you're thinking about the first, he makes 20 more: in former times it was recognised by the the folk saying that "a fool can ask more questions than ten wise men can answer". But the fools quickly come up with more: dead dogs in Russia: without tuk-tuks , with tuk-tuks ; your choice.
You are worn down by ten new fake outrages every month: all expressed in simplistic terms. How much context is stuffed into this imbecilic headline? The Plot Against Europe: Putin, Hungary and Russia's New Iron Curtain . How many thousand words, how many hours to discuss it intelligently? Too late! Time for " Trump and Putin's Too-Friendly Summit " (NYT 28 June). Forget that! " Sexism at Russia World Cup the worst in history as female fans and broadcasters are harassed ". (Telegraph 30 June). Gone! " We already gave Syria to Putin, so what's left for Trump to say? " (WaPo 5 July) Stop wondering! " Amesbury poisoning: Here's what we know about the novichok victims " (Sky News 6 July). No! Trumputin again! " Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart -- Or His Handler? " (NY Mag 8 July). Gish Gallop. The sheer volume of easily-made accusations forces two conclusions: they're right and you're wrong (smoke: fire) or, more simply, eventually you – you crazy one! – give up.
Their actions do not match their words.They bomb hospitals on purpose , we bomb them by accident . Discussed further here but the essence of the point is that
it would be physically impossible for Russia to be more destructive than NATO is.
They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.There are direct rewards of course: cue Udo Ulfkotte ; many benefits to swimming with the stream; swimming the other way, not so many. It's only after they retire that British generals question the story, the cynic observes. German generals too . Maybe even US generals .
But for the rest of us, NATO bathes us in gush: "NATO's Enduring Mission – Defending Values, Together" . Together , our values: we – you and I – have the good values. NATO loves to praise itself " the Alliance also contributes to peace and stability through crisis management operations and partnerships. " Remember Libya? " A model intervention " said the NATO GenSek of the time. Here is the view on the ground . Most of the "migrants" tearing Europe apart are fleeing the destruction of NATO's wars. NATO backs (plus/minus minions) the intervention in Mali , a country destabilised by its destruction of Libya. Cue the positive reinforcement: " Projecting Stability: an agenda for action ". In NATOland the gaslight burns bright: " Nato chief: Vladimir Putin 'weaponising' refugee crisis to 'break' Europe ". NATO keeps pouring butterscotch sauce on the rubble: " NATO is based on some core values – democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty " (25 June).
All I can say, over and over again, is Libya . NATO destroyed Libya, weird as it was, killed Qaddafi, weird as he was, and smugly congratulated itself: " NATO's Victory in Libya: The Right Way to Run an Intervention ". Ubi solitudinum faciunt pacem appelant. But should that thought occur to you, you're part of " Russia's secret plan to destroy EU and NATO ".
They know confusion weakens people.Remember PropOrNot ? Sites that do not agree with the Establishment are Russian bots! Authenticated experts! 100% reliable! The WaPo published the list; when under attack even from proponents of the Putindunnit hysteria , it feebly backtracked: it "does not itself vouch for the validity". Vermont power grid hack? WaPo fell for that one too . Confusion from the endless Gish Gallop about Putin: in December 2015 I compiled a number: Aspergers, pychopath, slouching and on and on and on .
You may be confused but the gaslighter isn't: Russia's to blame for whatever-it-was!
They project.NATO projects all the time and this headline from the NYT is classic: " Russia's Military Drills Near NATO Border Raise Fears of Aggression ". I discuss NATO's projection here .
They try to align people against you.NATO exerts a continual pressure for unanimity. Again, the Skripal story is a good example: London accused Russia and, " in solidarity ", Russian diplomats were expelled all over the world. Allies took its word for it. Now the doubts: in Germany especially . Sanctions must be imposed on Russia because we must be in solidarity with Kiev. "Solidarity" on migrants . " Solidarity " is perhaps the greatest virtue in NATOland. We will hear more pleas for solidarity as NATO dies : when mere "solidarity" is the only reason left; there's no reason left.
They tell you or others that you are crazy.How Russian Trolls Won American Hearts andMinds
An " existential threat posed by digitally accelerated disinformation ". So no forgiveness to you, crazy Putin trolls. And don't dare doubt that American democracy is so feeble that it can be directed by a few Facebook ads. Never forget that NATO's opponents are crazy: Putin is a " madman "; Qaddafi was " crazy "; Saddam Hussein " insane "; Milosevic " rabid ". Only crazy people would defend crazy people.
They tell you everyone else is a liar.Honest people don't have to tell you they're trustworthy, and neither, once upon a time, did the BBC . The Atlantic Council smoothly moves from " Why Is the Kremlin So Fixated on Phantom Fascists? " in May 2017 to " Ukraine's Got a Real Problem with Far-Right Violence (And No, RT Didn't Write This Headline) " in June 2018. But it still calls Russia the liar: " Why the Kremlin's Lies Stick " (May 2018). The Atlantic Council hopes you're dumb enough not to notice that Russia hasn't changed its line but the gaslighters have. (Remember O'Brien and two plus two?)
Russian Federation is not the USSR.I said it the last time: the USSR did lots of things in its time – influencing, fiddling elections, fake news, gaslighting and so on. But, in those days the Communist Party was the " leading and guiding force " but today it's the opposition . Things have changed in Moscow, but NATO rolls on.
Some hope, though.While many people are still taken in by the gaslighters, there are hopeful signs. Once upon a time Internet versions of the mass media allowed comments. Gradually, one by one, they shut down their comments sections because of "trolls", "fake news" and offended "standards" but really because of disagreement. Perhaps the most famous case is that of the Guardian: an entire website , has been created by people whose comments were rejected because they violated "community standards". I always read the comments in the Daily Mail, especially the best rated, and on the Skripal stories, the comments are very sceptical indeed of the official story. For example .
This is rather encouraging: for gaslighting really to work, the gaslighter either has to be in such a position of power that he can completely control the victim's surroundings or in such a position of authority that the victim cannot imagine doubting what he says. Those days are gone.
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Jul 15, 2018 | www.unz.com
So effectively has the Beltway establishment captured the concept of national security that, for most of us, it automatically conjures up images of terrorist groups, cyber warriors, or "rogue states." To ward off such foes, the United States maintains a historically unprecedented constellation of military bases abroad and, since 9/11, has waged wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere that have gobbled up nearly $4.8 trillion . The 2018 Pentagon budget already totals $647 billion -- four times what China, second in global military spending, shells out and more than the next 12 countries combined, seven of them American allies. For good measure, Donald Trump has added an additional $200 billion to projected defense expenditures through 2019.
Yet to hear the hawks tell it, the United States has never been less secure. So much for bang for the buck.
For millions of Americans, however, the greatest threat to their day-to-day security isn't terrorism or North Korea, Iran, Russia, or China. It's internal -- and economic. That's particularly true for the 12.7% of Americans (43.1 million of them) classified as poor by the government's criteria : an income below $12,140 for a one-person household, $16,460 for a family of two, and so on until you get to the princely sum of $42,380 for a family of eight.
Savings aren't much help either: a third of Americans have no savings at all and another third have less than $1,000 in the bank. Little wonder that families struggling to cover the cost of food alone increased from 11% (36 million) in 2007 to 14% (48 million) in 2014.
The Working Poor
Unemployment can certainly contribute to being poor, but millions of Americans endure poverty when they have full-time jobs or even hold down more than one job. The latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that there are 8.6 million "working poor," defined by the government as people who live below the poverty line despite being employed at least 27 weeks a year. Their economic insecurity doesn't register in our society, partly because working and being poor don't seem to go together in the minds of many Americans -- and unemployment has fallen reasonably steadily. After approaching 10% in 2009, it's now at only 4% .
Help from the government? Bill Clinton's 1996 welfare " reform " program , concocted in partnership with congressional Republicans, imposed time limits on government assistance, while tightening eligibility criteria for it. So, as Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer show in their disturbing book, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America , many who desperately need help don't even bother to apply. And things will only get worse in the age of Trump. His 2019 budget includes deep cuts in a raft of anti-poverty programs.
Anyone seeking a visceral sense of the hardships such Americans endure should read Barbara Ehrenreich's 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America . It's a gripping account of what she learned when, posing as a "homemaker" with no special skills, she worked for two years in various low-wage jobs, relying solely on her earnings to support herself. The book brims with stories about people who had jobs but, out of necessity, slept in rent-by-the-week fleabag motels, flophouses, or even in their cars, subsisting on vending machine snacks for lunch, hot dogs and instant noodles for dinner , and forgoing basic dental care or health checkups. Those who managed to get permanent housing would choose poor, low-rent neighborhoods close to work because they often couldn't afford a car. To maintain even such a barebones lifestyle, many worked more than one job.
Though politicians prattle on about how times have changed for the better, Ehrenreich's book still provides a remarkably accurate picture of America's working poor. Over the past decade the proportion of people who exhausted their monthly paychecks just to pay for life's essentials actually increased from 31% to 38%. In 2013, 71% of the families that had children and used food pantries run by Feeding America, the largest private organization helping the hungry, included at least one person who had worked during the previous year. And in America's big cities , chiefly because of a widening gap between rent and wages, thousands of working poor remain homeless , sleeping in shelters, on the streets, or in their vehicles, sometimes along with their families. In New York City, no outlier when it comes to homelessness among the working poor, in a third of the families with children that use homeless shelters at least one adult held a job.
The Wages of Poverty
The working poor cluster in certain occupations. They are salespeople in retail stores, servers or preparers of fast food, custodial staff, hotel workers, and caregivers for children or the elderly. Many make less than $10 an hour and lack any leverage, union or otherwise, to press for raises. In fact, the percentage of unionized workers in such jobs remains in the single digits -- and in retail and food preparation, it's under 4.5%. That's hardly surprising, given that private sector union membership has fallen by 50% since 1983 to only 6.7% of the workforce.
Low-wage employers like it that way and -- Walmart being the poster child for this -- work diligently to make it ever harder for employees to join unions. As a result, they rarely find themselves under any real pressure to increase wages, which, adjusted for inflation, have stood still or even decreased since the late 1970s. When employment is " at-will ," workers may be fired or the terms of their work amended on the whim of a company and without the slightest explanation. Walmart announced this year that it would hike its hourly wage to $11 and that's welcome news. But this had nothing to do with collective bargaining; it was a response to the drop in the unemployment rate, cash flows from the Trump tax cut for corporations (which saved Walmart as much as $2 billion ), an increase in minimum wages in a number of states, and pay increases by an arch competitor, Target. It was also accompanied by the shutdown of 63 of Walmart's Sam's Club stores, which meant layoffs for 10,000 workers. In short, the balance of power almost always favors the employer, seldom the employee.
As a result, though the United States has a per-capita income of $59,500 and is among the wealthiest countries in the world, 12.7% of Americans (that's 43.1 million people), officially are impoverished. And that's generally considered a significant undercount. The Census Bureau establishes the poverty rate by figuring out an annual no-frills family food budget, multiplying it by three, adjusting it for household size, and pegging it to the Consumer Price Index. That, many economists believe, is a woefully inadequate way of estimating poverty. Food prices haven't risen dramatically over the past 20 years, but the cost of other necessities like medical care (especially if you lack insurance) and housing have: 10.5% and 11.8% respectively between 2013 and 2017 compared to an only 5.5% increase for food.
Include housing and medical expenses in the equation and you get the Supplementary Poverty Measure (SPM), published by the Census Bureau since 2011. It reveals that a larger number of Americans are poor: 14% or 45 million in 2016.
Dismal Data
For a fuller picture of American (in)security, however, it's necessary to delve deeper into the relevant data, starting with hourly wages, which are the way more than 58% of adult workers are paid. The good news: only 1.8 million , or 2.3% of them, subsist at or below minimum wage. The not-so-good news: one-third of all workers earn less than $12 an hour and 42% earn less than $15. That's $24,960 and $31,200 a year. Imagine raising a family on such incomes, figuring in the cost of food, rent, childcare, car payments (since a car is often a necessity simply to get to a job in a country with inadequate public transportation), and medical costs.
The problem facing the working poor isn't just low wages, but the widening gap between wages and rising prices. The government has increased the hourly federal minimum wage more than 20 times since it was set at 25 cents under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. Between 2007 and 2009 it rose to $7.25, but over the past decade that sum lost nearly 10% of its purchasing power to inflation, which means that, in 2018, someone would have to work 41 additional days to make the equivalent of the 2009 minimum wage.
Workers in the lowest 20% have lost the most ground, their inflation-adjusted wages falling by nearly 1% between 1979 and 2016, compared to a 24.7% increase for the top 20%. This can't be explained by lackluster productivity since, between 1985 and 2015, it outstripped pay raises, often substantially, in every economic sector except mining.
Yes, states can mandate higher minimum wages and 29 have, but 21 have not, leaving many low-wage workers struggling to cover the costs of two essentials in particular: health care and housing.
Even when it comes to jobs that offer health insurance, employers have been shifting ever more of its cost onto their workers through higher deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses, as well as by requiring them to cover more of the premiums. The percentage of workers who paid at least 10% of their earnings to cover such costs -- not counting premiums -- doubled between 2003 and 2014.
This helps explain why, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics , only 11% of workers in the bottom 10% of wage earners even enrolled in workplace healthcare plans in 2016 (compared to 72% in the top 10%). As a restaurant server who makes $2.13 an hour before tips -- and whose husband earns $9 an hour at Walmart -- put it , after paying the rent, "it's either put food in the house or buy insurance."
The Affordable Care Act, or ACA (aka Obamacare), provided subsidies to help people with low incomes cover the cost of insurance premiums, but workers with employer-supplied healthcare, no matter how low their wages, weren't covered by it. Now, of course, President Trump , congressional Republicans , and a Supreme Court in which right-wing justices are going to be even more influential will be intent on poleaxing the ACA.
It's housing, though, that takes the biggest bite out of the paychecks of low-wage workers. The majority of them are renters. Ownership remains for many a pipe dream. According to a Harvard study , between 2001 and 2016, renters who made $30,000-$50,000 a year and paid more than a third of their earnings to landlords (the threshold for qualifying as "rent burdened") increased from 37% to 50%. For those making only $15,000, that figure rose to 83%.
In other words, in an ever more unequal America, the number of low-income workers struggling to pay their rent has surged. As the Harvard analysis shows, this is, in part, because the number of affluent renters (with incomes of $100,000 or more) has leapt and, in city after city, they're driving the demand for, and building of, new rental units. As a result, the high-end share of new rental construction soared from a third to nearly two-thirds of all units between 2001 and 2016. Not surprisingly, new low-income rental units dropped from two-fifths to one-fifth of the total and, as the pressure on renters rose, so did rents for even those modest dwellings. On top of that, in places like New York City , where demand from the wealthy shapes the housing market, landlords have found ways -- some within the law, others not -- to get rid of low-income tenants.
Public housing and housing vouchers are supposed to make housing affordable to low-income households, but the supply of public housing hasn't remotely matched demand. Consequently, waiting lists are long and people in need languish for years before getting a shot -- if they ever do. Only a quarter of those who qualify for such assistance receive it. As for those vouchers, getting them is hard to begin with because of the massive mismatch between available funding for the program and the demand for the help it provides. And then come the other challenges : finding landlords willing to accept vouchers or rentals that are reasonably close to work and not in neighborhoods euphemistically labelled " distressed ."
The bottom line: more than 75% of "at-risk" renters (those for whom the cost of rent exceeds 30% or more of their earnings) do not receive assistance from the government. The real "risk" for them is becoming homeless, which means relying on shelters or family and friends willing to take them in.
President Trump's proposed budget cuts will make life even harder for low-income workers seeking affordable housing. His 2019 budget proposal slashes $6.8 billion (14.2%) from the resources of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) by, among other things, scrapping housing vouchers and assistance to low-income families struggling to pay heating bills. The president also seeks to slash funds for the upkeep of public housing by nearly 50%. In addition, the deficits that his rich-come-first tax "reform" bill is virtually guaranteed to produce will undoubtedly set the stage for yet more cuts in the future. In other words, in what's becoming the United States of Inequality, the very phrases "low-income workers" and "affordable housing" have ceased to go together.
None of this seems to have troubled HUD Secretary Ben Carson who happily ordered a $31,000 dining room set for his office suite at the taxpayers' expense, even as he visited new public housing units to make sure that they weren't too comfortable (lest the poor settle in for long stays). Carson has declared that it's time to stop believing the problems of this society can be fixed merely by having the government throw extra money at them -- unless, apparently, the dining room accoutrements of superbureaucrats aren't up to snuff.
Money Talks
The levels of poverty and economic inequality that prevail in America are not intrinsic to either capitalism or globalization. Most other wealthy market economies in the 36-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have done far better than the United States in reducing them without sacrificing innovation or creating government-run economies.
Take the poverty gap, which the OECD defines as the difference between a country's official poverty line and the average income of those who fall below it. The United States has the second largest poverty gap among wealthy countries; only Italy does worse.
Child poverty ? In the World Economic Forum's ranking of 41 countries -- from best to worst -- the U.S. placed 35th. Child poverty has declined in the United States since 2010, but a Columbia University report estimates that 19% of American kids (13.7 million) nevertheless lived in families with incomes below the official poverty line in 2016. If you add in the number of kids in low-income households, that number increases to 41%.
As for infant mortality , according to the government's own Centers for Disease Control, the U.S., with 6.1 deaths per 1,000 live births, has the absolute worst record among wealthy countries. (Finland and Japan do best with 2.3.)
And when it comes to the distribution of wealth, among the OECD countries only Turkey, Chile, and Mexico do worse than the U.S.
It's time to rethink the American national security state with its annual trillion-dollar budget. For tens of millions of Americans, the source of deep workaday insecurity isn't the standard roster of foreign enemies, but an ever-more entrenched system of inequality, still growing , that stacks the political deck against the least well-off Americans. They lack the bucks to hire big-time lobbyists. They can't write lavish checks to candidates running for public office or fund PACs. They have no way of manipulating the myriad influence-generating networks that the elite uses to shape taxation and spending policies. They are up against a system in which money truly does talk -- and that's the voice they don't have. Welcome to the United States of Inequality.
Rajan Menon, a TomDispatch regular , is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. He is the author, most recently, of The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention .
ThreeCranes , July 16, 2018 at 1:56 am GMT
"the United States has a per-capita income of $59,500 and is among the wealthiest countries in the world"anon [266] Disclaimer , July 16, 2018 at 2:56 am GMT"and 42% earn less than $15. That's ..$31,200 a year."
Something doesn't add up. There is no way that the per capita income of the United States is $59,500.
Ahh, upon clicking the link, I see it is the mean. Meaning it's meaningless.
But Rajan ,the American can always " honor the military " at the fast food drive through, even send a few pennies for the Wounded Warrior Project ,in addition to buying lotteries, and writing the tithe to the Mega Churches seeking blessing for the military men and women in uniform . They can sing with Trump"Make America Great Again " . They can come out of the woodshed to support wars , say things against Mexican, listen to FOX,and gather around Prospect park to celebrate birthdays , hop into a bus and continue texting to update the status on social media . They can nod with MSNBC that they have the best freedom that any corner of the world can afford . They if white can claim being discriminated by Asian Americans,if black by Mexicans,if Latinos by whites .Carlton Meyer , Website July 16, 2018 at 4:32 am GMT
Now it seems they could feel proud of the ability to guide China UK and Brazil/Argentina do the right things .Why do these experts fail to understand that our national security budget is twice that of the Department of Defense? It is no secret, POGO runs a tally showing it's twice as much:peterAUS , July 16, 2018 at 5:20 am GMTFor example, nuclear weapons are not included in our "defense budget" but eat up more than half of the budget for our Dept of Energy!
This author also fails to explain that mass immigration is the primary cause of stagnant wages for the working poor. From my blog:
Jul 16, 2018 – Illegal Immigration Replaced Slave Labor
In past blog posts, I explained how illegal immigration is a form of slave labor. It seems powerful people explained this to former President George W. Bush, but didn't tell him not to repeat it in public and that Americans no longer pick cotton by hand. As a result, Bush said this during a speech earlier this year:
"There are people willing to do jobs that Americans won't do. Americans don't want to pick cotton at 105 degrees, but there are people who want put food on their family's tables and are willing to do that. We ought to say thank you and welcome them."
Bush failed to note that millionaires pay only $10 an hour with no benefits for these tough jobs, yet most field workers are US citizens or green card holders. Illegals are hired to hold down wages and deter unions and strikes. If they would pay $20 an hour, plenty of Americans would show up to work. Most Americans don't know that millions of white Americans once picked cotton by hand, and picked more than Blacks or Mexicans.
Articles like this pop up here every now and then.Biff , July 16, 2018 at 6:07 am GMT
Something doesn't compute.If the situation is as grim as the article says, why so many people do their best to immigrate into USA?
Why more, just Westerners, try to immigrate into USA then Americans into those, just Western, countries?
I've known some Americans around here where I live.
I've known many more locals who've gone to live in USA, let alone tried to get to live in USA.Something simply does not compute.
A simple question for an American:
If a person is prudent and sensible, is it really that hard to get by, unemployed, there?Now, in similar topic an American did explain, some time ago, that there are so many ways to help those unemployed/underpaid. That the social security net isn't worse, but actually overall better, then in other Western countries.
Plus, of course, opportunities.Again, all that data from the article I can't challenge. What doesn't make sense is net migration, just within Western sphere.
I do know some people, several dozen I guess, who live in USA. They have been doing quite well. From a bus driver to a top medical professional.
Anyone cares to shed some light there ?
jilles dykstra , July 16, 2018 at 7:09 am GMTFor a fuller picture of American (in)security, however, it's necessary to delve deeper into the relevant data, starting with hourly wages, which are the way more than 58% of adult workers are paid. The good news: only 1.8 million, or 2.3% of them, subsist at or below minimum wage. The not-so-good news: one-third of all workers earn less than $12 an hour and 42% earn less than $15. That's $24,960 and $31,200 a year. Imagine raising a family on such incomes, figuring in the cost of food, rent, childcare, car payments (since a car is often a necessity simply to get to a job in a country with inadequate public transportation), and medical costs.
You forgot another expense poor communities have – governmental extraction forces GEF. Local law enforcement target the poor with the many petty offenses(they've purposely invented) to extract money for expanding and maintaining of their extortion racket. This no secret or conspiracy theory, for they readily admit to it. They target the poor because they understand that the poor do not have resources(lawyers, guns, and money) to fight back. They target the poor because they're poor, and the poor understand this as just another bill to pay – another added expense of living in their community.
Another indirect expense that makes all Americans a lot less rich – insurance. Everything that moves and everything that doesn't is at least singular insured or often double or tripled insured. Property is a good example of how one entity can be insured three times over by the owner, renter, contractor, sub-contractor. Your body is another example of how things "must be insured" ; no surprise when Obama care came along to do just that.
Trump makes clear statements, I too like them.Stripes Duncan , July 16, 2018 at 7:24 am GMT
For me the USA is a third world country, the exceptions are oversized cars and gated communities.
On one of my visits to the USA I was asked if a child could be medically treated in the Netherlands, the choice for the parents was letting the child die, or sell their house.
In the Netherlands we have treatments that cost several hundred thousands of euro's per year, paid for by our medical care system.
Per person we pay about € 100 per month.
Pensions, the same.
Though the EU is busy destroying the best pension systems in the world, those of the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries, this has not yet succeeded.
A disaster as the ENRON pension fund cannot happen here.
The USA is a great country to live in if you're rich.
And, of course, if you're willing to have the illusion that the poor have only themselves to blame for being poor.
USA society, terrible, in my opinion, 19th century, a moneycracy.
Eisenhower in his farewell speech warned for the military industrial complex, do not have the impression that anything changed since then.What percentage of the population growth of the United States since 1965 has been a result of immigrants and their descendants?H. T. , July 16, 2018 at 12:53 pm GMTYou cannot discuss the subject of this article without asking this question. It's at the very center of the issue.
3 weeks after the US-NATO FAILED coup attempt in Georgia (more than 2000 died), the petrodollar [i.e., the banks) "crashed" (and Bush gave more than additional weapons [for more than $1 Billion) to Sakashviili] .anon [228] Disclaimer , July 16, 2018 at 12:57 pm GMTMoreover, as Mr Kucinich explain, massive transfers occurred between certain banks :
ALSO, a must: The Truth About Glass-Steagall
https://www.corbettreport.com/the-truth-about-glass-steagall/
@jilles dykstraThe USA is a great country to live in if you're rich."
And if you hold large number of slaves known as immigrants from Central and S America
Immigrants serve same purpose the slaves did . It balances the poor middle class white's rage that can tilt the anger and hatred against the rich ( mostly white ).This situation goes right into the creation of US It missed the social and political and religious changes of 18 th and 19 the centuries which gave birth to pre 2000 political system and social systems of EU .
Implosion of Soviet lent more credence to the economic-political system of USA because the blind and the deaf evaluated it for teh blind and the deaf who missed the success of the system on the back of African Latin American and Asian poor newly independent ) confused ) countries. Those countries provided the ingredients- moral ,economic,emotional , – to the working white class . It b;bolstered their hatred dismissive attitude to the foreigners and cemented their love for a hateful system that hurt actually the interest of the middle class and poor whites but gave them a sense of connection ,belonging,and partnerships through color language and religion- all are false .
This is the same mindset that glues the the untouchables and the poor Hindus to the RSS- BJP – Brahmanical system of oppression
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Unknown User -> Billy the Poet Mon, 07/16/2018 - 19:31 Permalink
Conscious Reviver -> Unknown User Mon, 07/16/2018 - 20:18 PermalinkBerezovsky's Daughter Speaks Out: British Intelligence Killed Former Asset to Prevent Him Leaking
Killdo -> Conscious Reviver Mon, 07/16/2018 - 22:32 PermalinkThis two part, excellent documentary on Russia in the 90's is all about VVP and Major Russian Jewish Oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Boris took over the Kremlin. Boris shot himself in the foot, but wound up saving Russia when he picked Putin to succeed alchoholic Yeltsin. Putin took the country back.
Larry Summers, Harvard Jew American oligarch led the rape and looting of Russia.
The Rise of Putin and The Fall of The Russian-Jewish Oligarchs (1/2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Cl8lSv9Is#
The Rise of Putin and The Fall of The Russian-Jewish Oligarchs (2/2)
also described in Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine- the rise of the disaster capitalism
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Boing_Snap -> Not Too Important Mon, 07/16/2018 - 21:35 Permalink
Conscious Reviver -> IridiumRebel Mon, 07/16/2018 - 20:07 PermalinkFox News post Summit interview with Putin.
nmewn -> Not Too Important Mon, 07/16/2018 - 18:19 PermalinkGreat, informative, entertaining documentary on Russia in the 90's.
The Rise of Putin and The Fall of The Russian-Jewish Oligarchs (1/2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Cl8lSv9Is#
The Rise of Putin and The Fall of The Russian-Jewish Oligarchs (2/2)
Podesta failing to register as a foreign agent for Russia, Browder greasing the palms of the Klintons with "illicit cash" purloined from Russia...lol...oh man, this is really getting interesting!
Ahem...and just where in the world is...Mr.Mifsud? ;-)
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I Am Jack's Ma -> overbet Mon, 07/16/2018 - 18:56 Permalink
RationalLuddite -> I Am Jack's Ma Mon, 07/16/2018 - 19:33 Permalink8 of 10, and all top 5 of Hillary's (on the books) donors were Jews - a group that is under 3% of the US population.
It has been reported in multiple mainstream and Jewish news sources that Jews contribute about 50% of donations to the Democratic Party.
Wherever one looks in print or tv news media, given that Jews are <3% of the US *and* Russian population, any objective review of
anti-Russian commentators would reveal a massive over-representation of Jews.
https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/its-time-drop-jew-taboo/ri22186
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/06/phil-giraldi/hating-russia-is-a-full-time-job/
After the collapse of the USSR, under Yeltsin, a large handful of 'oligarchs' grew immensely wealthy by buying Russian assets on the cheap. This was part of a privitization drive largely overseen by American economists.
The oligarchs were mostly Jews. The chief economic advisors were largely Jews.
http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Pseudoscience/harvard_mafia.shtml
https://www.thenation.com/article/harvard-boys-do-russia/
These are *facts*
Responding to my thanks for granting me the audience at such a hectic time, Boris Abramovich commented with a faint smile: "You would be writing the book in any case ..."
I understood that my visit was somewhat imposed on him so I got right to the point:
"Boris Abramovich, the real reason for writing this book is this. As you probably know there is a television show called 'The Puppets.' Puppets of Yeltsin, Yastrzhembsky, Chernomyrdin, Kulikov, and others perform. But the main puppeteer is behind the scenes -- his name is Shenderovich. And in real life there are Yeltsin, Kiriyenko, Fedorov, Stepashin and the others. But the main puppeteer has a long Jewish name: Berezovsky-Gusinsky- Smolensky-Khodorkovsky, and so on.
"This is to say that for the first time in a thousand years, since the first Jews settled in Russia, we hold the real power in this country. I want to ask you straight out: How do you intend to use it? What do you intend to do in this country? Cast it into the chaos of poverty or raise it from the mud? Do you understand that a chance like this comes only once in a thousand years? Do you understand your responsibility to our [Jewish] people for your actions?"
Boris Abramovich responded with some difficulty: "Of course, as you see, financial power is in Jewish hands, but we have never looked at this from the point of view of historical responsibility."
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v17/v17n6p13_Michaels.html
Putin stopped the fire sale, essentially by dividing the oligarchs, leveraging some against others.
Browder was heavily involved in the looting. He is heavy in distributing anti-Russian propaganda in a heavily Jewish controlled media, and he was all in for Clinton.
And he wants Trump impeached (I recommend reading the article below if you read just 1 link)
Most readers will identify Bill Broder with Hermitage Capital, but few will recall that the investment firm was also funded by one Beny Steimetz, the Israeli oligarch and financier just arrested (August 14) by Israeli and Swiss anti-corruption officials for widescale fraud and money laundering. The Russia privatization shark who was once Israel's richest man is a subject for another report. I only bring him up here to point at two facets of this war on Putin. First, the Jewish connection in all this is something that just needs to come out. Secondly, the ring of profiteers bent on Putin's demise all have gigantic skeletons in their wardrobes. A story citing one Putin hater, when investigated, always leads to ten more. This is no coincidence.
Back to Browder, his Hermitage was at one time was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. That was before Vladimir Putin put a stop to the rape of Russia's legacy and the theft of her assets. This is undeniable fact, and even the lowliest of Russian peasants know it by now. Browder, a Chicago Jew, set out to profit from Russian privatization after Yeltsin, but was thwarted like other sharks when Putin's hammer fell on other mafiosos. RICO suits, libel cases, tax evasion charges, and ties to some of the seediest characters in world finance highlight the man who pushed the now famous Magnitsky Act into US foreign policy play. It's no coincidence that Browder has emerged as a central player in the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. The privateer who made billions off Russia privatization turned into a human rights activist, and now he's bent on seeing Donald Trump impeached!
https://m.journal-neo.org/2017/09/16/vladimir-putin-and-russia-versus-zionist-fairytales/
The war on Russia is very heavily a product of Jews pursuing Jewish group interests, internationally.
A man named Henry Ford once wrote a book on the topic. Of all the criticism it received and receives, that it is 'hate,' one will seldom find any effort to dispute its accuracy.
RationalLuddite -> El Vaquero Mon, 07/16/2018 - 18:26 PermalinkTerrific post I Am Jack. And also thank you for emphasising the unholy convergence of vested interests in Putin Russia demonization - the Jewish bankers raping Rusdia in the 90s on a scale not seen since the Mongols hordes, and Western oligarchs seeing a chance to become even more insanely wealthy (hence the London, Wall St, Pentagon, Fed, DC, Brussels etc involvement).
Putin is an extraordinary and immensely intelligent and brave individual who divided and knee-capped the world mafia. THIS is why he is demonised, not because he is some evil Tsar of Mordor. That being said he hasn't done it alone - the people of Russia made huge mistakes by allowing communism in, and economic genocide in the 1990s was wilful influcted upon them, but their resilience is extraordinary.
I hope they are all watching their backs. Putin if all people stated that he is careful about cornering rats with now way out, so i have a feeling that things are going to get unpredictable ...
Cardinal Fang -> RationalLuddite Mon, 07/16/2018 - 19:09 Permalink
http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/hating-russia-is-a-full-time-job/
Good article. Remember that Bill Browder's grandfather was head of the American Communist Party in the 1930s ...
The Killing of William Browder is compulsory reading if you want to sssure yourself about that lying theiving NPD sack of s*** Browder. Lots on him on Sott etc.
Yeah - he's got nothing to hide.
I did post about 3 months back that Browder and the trillion dollar rape Russia in the 1990s , the Money Plane etc are the key to understand current events, Putin and what is being covered up now, in my opinion, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to get traction.
Yeah but $400 mill is what he put on the table, you know there is more shit behind this...
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Whoa Dammit -> I Am Jack's Ma Tue, 07/17/2018 - 10:39 Permalink
wafm -> Whoa Dammit Tue, 07/17/2018 - 11:39 PermalinkI'd not seen the AP reporters question that triggered this before. It looks like the reporter was trying to embarrass both Putin and Trump but wound up getting his ass, Clinton's ass, and the asses of the intelligence community handed to him instead.
too right. If I remember correctly, it was in the context of Putin saying Russia is open to have FBI guys come to question the 12 GRU guys indicted (no proof yet) by Mueller.
In return, he then said Russia would like to ask a few questions to the US officials believed to have HELPED Browder funnel $400K to Clinton and probably avoid paying tax on 1.5 billion in Russia AND the US...
Browder has to be on top of the US wanted list in the not too distant future or there really is no fuckin justice.
BROWDER IS A FUCKIN TRAITOR, LOCK HIM UP!
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RationalLuddite -> overbet Mon, 07/16/2018 - 18:37 Permalink
shrimpythai -> RationalLuddite Mon, 07/16/2018 - 19:34 Permalink+50 Overbet. I posted before i read yours. I have tired of trying to convince people that 90s Russia and the thefts then and subsequent covering of crimes is STILL the key to understanding the Deep States obsession and fear of Putin and Russia. Soros, Clinton's, Chubias, the FED's off the books money printing, London money laundering , EU buying the stolen movables etc - they are all there. Browder's animus is also driving much behind the scenes with 'Russiagate'. Look people - you will see. Putin certainly didn't pluck that lying idiot's name randomly.
I urge people to at least read the 90s chapter in the Killing of William Browder (free online PDF) to begin to understand what is going on now.
RationalLuddite -> shrimpythai Mon, 07/16/2018 - 19:44 Permalinkhttps://dxczjjuegupb.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/TheKilli free pdf download 218 pages
Thanks heaps Shrimp.
The appendix on Jacob Rothschild alone and Yukos makes it worth the read. But if you read nothing else, read the chapters on Browder's interrogation and Russia in the 1990s - easy reads and give a great introduction to this orgy of psycopathy and mendacity. They are all connected
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Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
US President stirs up a hornet's nest with his press conference alongside his Russian counterpart, but it seems that no 'grand bargain' was struck on Syria, and on Iran they appear to strongly disagree
"The Cold War is a thing of the past." By the time President Putin said as much during preliminary remarks at his joint press conference with President Trump in Helsinki, it was clear this would not stand. Not after so much investment by American conservatives in Cold War 2.0.
Russophobia is a 24/7 industry, and all concerned, including its media vassals, remain absolutely livid with the "disgraceful" Trump-Putin presser. Trump has "colluded with Russia." How could the President of the United States promote "moral equivalence" with a "world-class thug"?
Multiple opportunities for apoplectic outrage were in order.
Trump: "Our relationship has never been worse than it is now. However, that changed. As of about four hours ago."
Putin: "The United States could be more decisive in nudging Ukrainian leadership."
Trump: "There was no collusion I beat Hillary Clinton easily."
Putin: "We should be guided by facts. Can you name a single fact that would definitively prove collusion? This is nonsense."
Then, the clincher : the Russian president calls [Special Counsel] Robert Mueller's 'bluff', offering to interrogate the Russians indicted for alleged election meddling in the US if Mueller makes an official request to Moscow. But in exchange, Russia would expect the US to question Americans on whether Moscow should face charges for illegal actions.
Trump hits it out of the park when asked whether he believes US intelligence, which concluded that Russia did meddle in the election, or Putin, who strongly denies it.
"President Putin says it's not Russia. I don't see any reason why it would be."
As if this was not enough, Trump doubles down invoking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server. "I really do want to see the server. Where is the server? I want to know. Where is the server and what is the server saying?"
It was inevitable that a strategically crucial summit between the Russian and American presidencies would be hijacked by the dementia of the US news cycle.
Trump was unfazed. He knows that the DNC computer hard-drives -- the source of an alleged "hacking" -- simply "disappeared" while in the custody of US intel, FBI included. He knows the bandwidth necessary for file transfer was much larger than a hack might have managed in the time allowed. It was a leak, a download into a flash-drive.
Additionally, Putin knows that Mueller knows he will never be able to drag 12 Russian intelligence agents into a US courtroom. So the -- debunked -- indictment, announced only three days before Helsinki, was nothing more than a pre-emptive, judicial hand grenade.
No wonder John Brennan, a former CIA director under the Obama administration, is fuming. "Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to exceed the threshold of 'high crimes and misdemeanors.' It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump's comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin."
How Syria and Ukraine are linkedHowever, there are reasons to expect at least minimal progress on three fronts in Helsinki : a solution for the Syria tragedy, an effort to limit nuclear weapons and save the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty signed in 1987 by Reagan and Gorbachev, and a positive drive to normalize US-Russia relations, away from Cold War 2.0.
Trump knew he had nothing to offer Putin to negotiate on Syria. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) now controls virtually 90% of national territory. Russia is firmly established in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially after signing a 49-year agreement with Damascus.
Even considering careful mentions of Israel on both sides, Putin certainly did not agree to force Iran out of Syria.
No "grand bargain" on Iran seems to be in the cards. The top adviser to Ayatollah Khamenei, Ali Akbar Velayati, was in Moscow last week. The Moscow-Tehran entente cordiale seems unbreakable. In parallel, as Asia Times has learned, Bashar al-Assad has told Moscow he might even agree to Iran leaving Syria, but Israel would have to return the occupied Golan Heights. So, the status quo remains.
Putin did mention both presidents discussed the Iran nuclear deal or Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action and essentially they, strongly, agree to disagree. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have written a letter formally rejecting an appeal for carve-outs in finance, energy and healthcare by Germany, France and the UK. A maximum economic blockade remains the name of the game. Putin may have impressed on Trump the possible dire consequences of a US oil embargo on Iran, and even the (far-fetched) scenario of Tehran blocking the Strait of Hormuz.
Judging by what both presidents said, and what has been leaked so far, Trump may not have offered an explicit US recognition of Crimea for Russia, or an easing of Ukraine-linked sanctions.
It's reasonable to picture a very delicate ballet in terms of what they really discussed in relation to Ukraine. Once again, the only thing Trump could offer on Ukraine is an easing of sanctions. But for Russia the stakes are much higher.
Putin clearly sees Southwest Asia and Central and Eastern Europe as totally integrated. The Black Sea basin is where Russia intersects with Ukraine, Turkey, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Or, historically, where the former Russian, Ottoman and Habsburg empires converged.
A Greater Black Sea implies the geopolitical convergence of what's happening in both Syria and Ukraine. That's why for the Kremlin only an overall package matters. It's not by accident that Washington identified these two nodes -- destabilizing Damascus and turning the tables in Kiev -- to cause problems for Moscow.
Putin sees a stable Syria and a stable Ukraine as essential to ease his burden in dealing with the Balkans and the Baltics. We're back once again to that classic geopolitical staple, the Intermarium ("between the seas"). That's the ultra-contested rimland from Estonia in the north to Bulgaria in the south -- and to the Caucasus in the east. Once, that used to frame the clash between Germany and Russia. Now, that frames the clash between the US and Russia.
In a fascinating echo of the summit in Helsinki, Western strategists do lose their sleep gaming on Russia being able to "Finlandize" this whole rimland.
And that brings us, inevitably, to what could be termed The German Question. What is Putin's ultimate goal: a quite close business and strategic relationship with Germany (German business is in favor)? Or some sort of entente cordiale with the US? EU diplomats in Brussels are openly discussing that underneath all the thunder and lightning, this is the holy of the holies.
Take a walk on the wild sideThe now notorious key takeaway from a Trump interview at his golf club in Turnberry, Scotland, before Helsinki, may offer some clues.
"Well, I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. Now, you wouldn't think of the European Union, but they're a foe. Russia is a foe in certain respects. China is a foe economically, certainly they are a foe. But that doesn't mean they are bad. It doesn't mean anything. It means that they are competitive."
Putin certainly knows it. But even Trump, while not being a Clausewitzian strategist, may have had an intuition that the post-WWII liberal order, built by a hegemonic US and bent on permanent US military hegemony over the Eurasian landmass while subduing a vassal Europe, is waning .
While Trump firebombs this United States of Europe as an "unfair" competitor of the US, it's essential to remember that it was the White House that asked for the Helsinki summit, not the Kremlin.
Trump treats the EU with undisguised disdain. He would love nothing better than for the EU to dissolve. His Arab "partners" can be easily controlled by fear. He has all but declared economic war on China and is on tariff overdrive -- even as the IMF warns that the global economy runs the risk of losing around $500 billion in the process. And he faces the ultimate intractable, the China-Russia-Iran axis of Eurasian integration, which simply won't go away.
So, talking to "world-class thug" Putin -- in usual suspect terminology -- is a must. A divide-and-rule here, a deal there -- who knows what some hustling will bring? To paraphrase Lou Reed, New Trump City "is the place where they say "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side."
During the Helsinki presser, Putin, fresh from Russia's spectacular World Cup soft power PR coup, passed a football to Trump. The US president said he would give it to his son, Barron, and passed the ball to First Lady Melania. Well, the ball is now in Melania's court.
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I Am Jack's Ma -> 1 Alabama Tue, 07/17/2018 - 09:57 Permalink
I Am Jack's Ma -> I Am Jack's Ma Tue, 07/17/2018 - 10:20 PermalinkThe hysteria is growing far too dangerous.
Comey and Senator Warner basically are calling for a coup because of the FALSE claim that it is 'treason' to doubt the IC.
Honestly, it's past joking about. The rabid dogs are now snarling in our front yard. Circling the house.
But it wasn't the Intelligence Community that said 'Russia hacked the DNC'... a play that was about getting you to ignore the CONTENT of Hillary/DNC emails. (Thus the quip 'Russia rigged our elections by exposing how our elections are rigged.').
It was Brennan and Clapper and a dozen 'handpicked' analysts from just 3 agencies. Even then the NSA boys only said 'moderate confidence' which is analyst speak for 'we have no real evidence.' The CIA and FBI analysts, relying on the DNC-linked CrowdStrike analysis of a server they never examined, said 'high confidence' which means 'we can't prove this but we totally believe it was Russia's government because wouldn't it be just like those aggressive Russkis?'
Trump needs to order a full intelligence agency review of Clapper's report. Someone lose to him needs to scream this into his ear.
SCREAM IT.
Listen boys, that covers Trump from all directions. A full intelligence agency review no matter what it says helps him. MOREOVER, as part of that, any serious IC assessment of CLAPPER'S report will show that it was contrived. Political. Not how such assessments are normally done.
So even if it's conclusions ended up being correct... the report itself would be exposed as complete bullshit. Which points one to Clapper, and Brennan... and Obama.
Hey listen, playtime is over. Comey and Brennan and the neocons and media are basically using Trump's very reasonable doubt as 'treason' and have turned the rhetoric up to 11. They are suggesting a coup based on Deep State/Dem/MIC lies. This is intolerable and we may be at a point where sending the Marines to CIA headquarters to take documents and arrest some folks is in order. What would the media do - go nuts?
Why didn't Clapper invite DIA to the party?
If its military (SO/SF) versus the spooks - guess who wins?
The CIA is for the most part a collection of drig and guns mafias. They operate outside the law with unlimited funding. Squeeze that funding - grab some of their operators off the fucking street and interrogate them...
You have Senator Cohen actually suggesting a coup because Trump doubts the IC which Schumer said has many ways to 'get you.'
Where's the military?
Ready to defend The Republic, I believe.
I know this because Tyler knows this.
Whoa Dammit -> I Am Jack's Ma Tue, 07/17/2018 - 10:39 PermalinkI think the triggering began with
REPORTER AP: President Trump you first. Just now President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did...
So, this is a lie. It's the 'all intel agencies' lie even the NY Times at least at one loint admitted was a lie.
This is super important.
It was a dozen or so 'handpicked analysts' - NOT a full IC review. Now why wouldnt Obama, Brennan and Clapper want a full, actual Intel Assessment?
And Clapper had final edit power. I mean its a fucking joke and the complete lack of MSM scrutiny of the problems tells me the media is truly, no kidding, captured by interests who can completely suppress basic journalism (I know there's long been *bias* - this is deliberately not reporting on a highly unusual intel assessment by a guy who hates Trump relying on a private firm founded by a guy who hates Putin which has extensive ties to the DNC.
It really isnt a Red Team Blue Team thing and you don't have to like Trump. This is about whether a small group of spooks with ties to one party and effective media cobtrol get to undo an election to pursue war in Ukraine and Syria and to justify ever more spending by acting aggressively toward Russia along its borders then framing every response as 'Russian aggression.'
We are in an incredibly dangerous time eith senators and former fbi and cia heads more or less openly calling for a coup because Trump doubts Brennan/Clapper's horseshit report.
I know I repeat myself. I have to. I'm very alarmed by this stuff. Trump needs to order a full IC assessment of Clapper's report and of Russian alleged **hacking** ASAP. (the clickbait stuff is so silly its frankly not worth addressing right now).
Secret Service should also detain and question Cohen and Comey over their remarks. Trump needs to flex a little muscle now with people talking coup.
wafm -> Whoa Dammit Tue, 07/17/2018 - 11:39 PermalinkI'd not seen the AP reporters question that triggered this before. It looks like the reporter was trying to embarrass both Putin and Trump but wound up getting his ass, Clinton's ass, and the asses of the intelligence community handed to him instead.
too right. If I remember correctly, it was in the context of Putin saying Russia is open to have FBI guys come to question the 12 GRU guys indicted (no proof yet) by Mueller.
In return, he then said Russia would like to ask a few questions to the US officials believed to have HELPED Browder funnel 400 mill to Clinton and probably avoid paying tax on 1.5 billion in Russia AND the US...
Browder has to be on top of the US wanted list in the not too distant future or there really is no fuckin justice.
BROWDER IS A FUCKIN TRAITOR, LOCK HIM UP!
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I am Groot -> ThePhantom Mon, 07/16/2018 - 19:15 Permalink
ThePhantom -> I am Groot Mon, 07/16/2018 - 19:26 PermalinkEveryone messes with everyone in their elections around the world. My first question is why is the media on both sides still pounding the American public with the "Russia did it" bullhorn. What exactly does Russia gain ? They're 9 times smaller than NATO. China has the most to gain.
The Ukrainians were working with Hillary against Trump. The Deep State has the ability to make every act of espionage look like Russia did it. The DNC didn't turn over their server to the FBI. The Awan server disappeared too. Something smells terrible, like Kankles Huma hole.
MrBoompi -> I am Groot Mon, 07/16/2018 - 22:30 Permalinkjesus they can accuse you of being a putin puppet if you don't... and how do you defend yourself.. "how dare you insult every branch of our intelligence agencies"( and the lying james clapper!!!! )how dare you...?
Hey Groot, I think these countries hack and spy on each other 24/7. It's bullshit. They appoint a special prosecutor and with the exceptions of the BS Flynn and Manafort charges the only others he's charged are non-americans. Nothing about the elephant in the room, the billion dollar + money laundering schemes and treason of the Obama/Clinton and their lackeys.
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Congratulations to President Trump for an Excellent Summit with Putin spawned numerous some I could not tell if they were sarcastic or not.For example, reader Brian stated " There is zero doubt now that Putin stole the election from Hillary. So much so that she MUST be given the nomination again in 2020. All potential challengers must step aside. To refuse her the 2020 nomination would be evidence of traitorous activities with Putin."'
I congratulated Brian for brilliant sarcasm but he piled on. It now seems he was serious. Mainstream media, the Left an the Right were in general condemnation. Numerous cries of treason emerged from the Left and the Right (see the above link)
It Happened - No Trial Necessary
A friend I highly respect commented " There is simply no question that they did it. You can legitimately claim that it's not important or that there has been no tie to Trump shown. On the Russians' side, they can say, screw off, we were pursuing our interests. But you can't take the view it did not happen. It happened. "
There is a question who did it. Indictments are just that, not proof.
The US fabricated evidence to start the Vietnam war and the US fabricated WMD talk on the second war in Iraq. US intelligence had no idea the Berlin Wall was about to fall. The US meddled in Russia supporting a drunk named Yeltsin because we erroneously thought we could control him.
They Are All Liars
It's a mystery why anyone would believe these proven liars. That does not mean I believe Putin either. They are all capable liars. Let's step back from the absurd points of view to reality.
US Meddling
The US tries to influence elections in other countries and has a history of assisting the forcible overthrow of governments we don't like.
- Vietnam
- Iran
- Iraq
- Libya
- Drone policy
All of the above are massive disasters of US meddling. They are all actions of war, non-declared, and illegal. I cannot and do not condone such actions even if they were legal.
911 and ISIS resulted from US meddling. The migration crisis in the EU is a direct consequence of US meddling. The Iranian revolution was a direct consequence of US meddling.Now we are pissing and moaning that Russia spent a few million dollars on Tweets to steal the election. Please be serious.
Let's Assume
Let's assume for one second the DNC hack was Russia-based. Is there a reason to not be thankful for evidence that Hillary conspired to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination? Pity Hillary? We are supposed to pity Hillary? The outrage from the Right is amazing. It's pretty obvious Senator John McCain wanted her to win. Neither faced a war or military intervention they disapproved of.
Common Sense
Let's move on to a common sense position from Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept.
- Debate: Is Trump-Putin Summit a "Danger to America" or Crucial Diplomacy Between Nuclear Powers?
- Greenwald vs. Cirincione: Should Trump Have Canceled Summit After U.S. Indictment of Russian Agents?
Greenwald vs. Joe Cirincione
GLENN GREENWALD : In 2007, during the Democratic presidential debate, Barack Obama was asked whether he would meet with the leaders of North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria and Iran without preconditions. He said he would. Hillary Clinton said she wouldn't, because it would be used as a propaganda tool for repressive dictators. And liberals celebrated Obama. It was one of his greatest moments and one of the things that I think helped him to win the Democratic nomination, based on the theory that it's always better to meet with leaders, even if they're repressive, than to isolate them or to ignore them. In 1987, when President Reagan decided that he wanted to meet with Soviet leaders, the far right took out ads against him that sounded very much just like what we just heard from Joe, accusing him of being a useful idiot to Soviet and Kremlin propaganda, of legitimizing Russian aggression and domestic repression at home.
GLENN GREENWALD : It is true that Putin is an authoritarian and is domestically repressive. That's true of many of the closest allies of the United States, as well, who are even far more repressive, including ones that fund most of the think tanks in D.C., such as the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia. And I think the most important issue is the one that we just heard, which is that 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons are in the hands of two countries -- the United States and Russia -- and having them speak and get along is much better than having them isolate one another and increase the risk of not just intentional conflict, but misperception and miscommunication, as well.
JOE CIRINCIONE : Right. Let's be clear. Glenn, there's nothing wrong with meeting. I agree with you. Leaders should meet, and we should be negotiating with our foes, with those people we disagree with. We're better off when we do that. And the kind of attacks you saw on Barack Obama were absolutely uncalled for, and you're right to condemn those.
JOE CIRINCIONE : What I'm worried about is this president meeting with this leader of Russia and what they're going to do. That's what's so wrong about this summit coming now, when you have Donald Trump, who just attacked the NATO alliance, who calls our European allies foes, who turns a blind eye to what his director of national intelligence called the warning lights that are blinking red. About what? About Russian interference in our elections. So you just had a leader of Russia, Putin, a skilled tactician, a skilled strategist, interfere in a U.S. election. To what? To help elect Donald Trump.
GLENN GREENWALD : I think this kind of rhetoric is so unbelievably unhinged, the idea that the phishing links sent to John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee are the greatest threat to American democracy in decades. People are now talking about it as though it's on par with 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, that the lights are blinking red, in terms of the threat level. This is lunacy, this kind of talk. I spent years reading through the most top-secret documents of the NSA, and I can tell you that not only do they send phishing links to Russian agencies of every type continuously on a daily basis, but do far more aggressive interference in the cybersecurity of every single country than Russia is accused of having done during the 2016 election. To characterize this as some kind of grave existential threat to American democracy is exactly the kind of rhetoric that we heard throughout the Bush-Cheney administration about what al-Qaeda was like .
JOE CIRINCIONE : Why does Donald Trump feel that he has to meet alone with Putin? What is going on there? I mean, that -- when Ronald Reagan met with Gorbachev at Reykjavik, at least he had George Shultz with him. The two of them, you know, were meeting with Gorbachev and his foreign minister at the time. This is -- it's deeply disturbing. It makes you feel that Trump is hiding something, that he is either trying to make a deal with Putin, reporting something to Putin. I tell you, I know U.S. intelligence officials -- I'm probably going right into Glenn's wheelhouse here. But U.S. intelligence officials are concerned about what Donald Trump might be revealing to the Russian leader, the way he revealed classified information to the Russian foreign minister when he met privately with him in the Oval Office at the beginning of his term. No, I don't like it one bit.
GLENN GREENWALD : I continue to be incredibly frustrated by the claim that we hear over and over, and that we just heard from Joe, that Donald Trump does everything that Vladimir Putin wants, and that if he were a paid agent of the Russian government, there'd be -- he would be doing nothing different. I just went through the entire list of actions that Donald Trump has taken and statements that he has made that are legitimately adverse to the interest of the Russian government, that Barack Obama specifically refused to do, despite bipartisan demands that he do them, exactly because he didn't want to provoke more tensions between the United States and Russia.
Sending lethal arms to Ukraine, bordering Russia, is a really serious adverse action against the interest of the Russian government. Bombing the Assad regime is, as well. Denouncing one of the most critical projects that the Russian government has, which is the pipeline to sell huge amounts of gas and oil to Germany, is, as well.
So is expelling Russian diplomats and imposing serious sanctions on oligarchs that are close to the Putin regime. You can go down the list, over and over and over, in the 18 months that he's been in office, and see all the things that Donald Trump has done that is adverse, in serious ways, to the interests of Vladimir Putin, including ones that President Obama refused to do. So, this film, this movie fairytale, that I know is really exciting -- it's like international intrigue and blackmail, like the Russians have something over Trump; it's like a Manchurian candidate; it's from like the 1970s thrillers that we all watched -- is inane -- you know, with all due respect to Joe. I mean, it's -- but it's in the climate, because it's so contrary to what it is that we're seeing. Now, this idea of meeting alone with Vladimir Putin, the only way that you would find that concerning is if you believed all that.
JOE CIRINCIONE : So, Trump knew that this indictment was coming down, before he went to Europe, and still he never says a word about it. What he does is continue his attacks on our alliances, i.e. he continues his attacks on our free press, he continues his attacks on FBI agents who were just doing their job, and supports this 10-hour show hearing that the House of Representatives had. It's really unbelievable that Trump is doing these things and never says one word about it. He still has not said a word about those indictments.
GLENN GREENWALD : That's because the reality is -- and I don't know if Donald Trump knows this or doesn't know this, has stumbled into the truth or what -- but the reality is that what the Russians did in 2016 is absolutely not aberrational or unusual in any way. The United -- I'm sorry to say this, but it's absolutely true. The United States and Russia have been interfering in one another's domestic politics for since at least the end of World War II, to say nothing of what they do in far more extreme ways to the internal politics of other countries. Noam Chomsky was on this very program several months ago, and he talked about how the entire world is laughing at this indignation from the United States -- "How dare you interfere in our democracy!" -- when the United States not only has continuously in the past done, but continues to do far more extreme interference in the internal politics of all kinds of countries, including Russia .
GLENN GREENWALD : The United States funds oppositional groups inside Russia. The United States sent advisers and all kinds of operatives to try and elect Boris Yeltsin in the mid-1990s, because they perceived, accurately, that he was a drunk who would serve the interests of the United States more than other candidates who might have won. The United States interferes in Russian politics, and they interfere in their cyber systems, and they invade their email systems, and they invade all kinds of communications all the time. And so, to treat this as though it's some kind of aberrational event, I think, is really kind of naive .
GLENN GREENWALD : It wasn't just Hillary Clinton in 2016 who lost this election. The entire Democratic Party has collapsed as a national political force over the last decade. They've lost control of the Senate and of the House and of multiple statehouses and governorships. They're decimated as a national political force. And the reason is exactly what Joe said. They become the party of international globalization. They're associated with Silicon Valley and Wall Street billionaires and corporate interests, and have almost no connection to the working class. And that is a much harder conversation to have about why the Democrats have lost elections than just blaming a foreign villain and saying it's because Vladimir Putin ran some fake Facebook ads and did some phishing emails. And I think that until we put this in perspective, about what Russia did in 2016 and the reality that the U.S. does that sort of thing all the time to Russia and so many other countries, we're going to just not have the conversation that we need to be having about what these international institutions, that are so sacred -- NATO and free trade and international trade organizations -- have done to people all over the world, and the reason they're turning to demagogues and right-wing extremists because of what these institutions have done to them. That's the conversation we need to be having, but we're not having, because we're evading it by blaming everything on Vladimir Putin. And that, to me, is even more dangerous for our long-term prospects than this belligerence that's in the air about how we ought to look at Moscow.
Indictments and First Year Law
Mish : I now wish to return to a statement my friend made regarding the idea " No question Russia did it ".
From Glenn Greenwald
As far as the indictments from Mueller are concerned, it's certainly the most specific accounting yet that we've gotten of what the U.S. government claims the Russian government did in 2016. But it's extremely important to remember what every first-year law student will tell you, which is that an indictment is nothing more than the assertions of a prosecutor unaccompanied by evidence. The evidence won't be presented until a trial or until Robert Mueller actually issues a report to Congress.
And so, I would certainly hope that we are not at the point, which I think we seem to be at, where we are now back to believing that when the CIA makes statements and assertions and accusations, or when prosecutors make statements and assertions and accusations, unaccompanied by evidence that we can actually evaluate, that we're simply going to believe those accusations on faith, especially when the accusations come from George W. Bush's former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who repeatedly lied to Congress about Iraq and a whole variety of other issues. So, I think there we need some skepticism.
But even if the Russians did everything that Robert Mueller claims in that indictment that they did, in the scheme of what the U.S. and the Russians do to one another and other countries, I think to say that this is somehow something that we should treat as a grave threat, that should mean that we don't talk to them or that we treat them as an enemy, is really irrational and really quite dangerous.
Mish - Six Questions
- Is this a trial or a witch hunt?
- Do we need to see the evidence or do we believe known liars?
- Is Trump guilty of treason? Before we even see proof Putin was involved?
- Is the CIA incapable of fabricating evidence?
- Even if Russia interfered in the election, why should anyone have expected otherwise?
- Has everyone forgotten the US lies on WMDs already?
Irrational and Dangerous
I don't know about you, but I have no reason to believe known liars and hypocrites. I disagree with Trump all the time, in fact, more often than not. The amount of venom on Trump over this is staggering. Adding a missing word, I stand by my previous statement: " Nearly every political action that generates this much complete nonsense and hysteria from the Left and Right is worthy of immense praise."
If you disagree please provide examples. The only two I can come up with are Pearl Harbor and 911. In both, the US was directly attacked. For rebuttal purposes I offer Vietnam, Syria, Iraq, Russia, Iran, WWI, treatment of Japanese-American citizens in WWII, and McCarthyism. Greenwald accurately assesses the situation as "really irrational and really quite dangerous." Indeed. And if indictments and accusations were crimes, we wouldn't need a jury.
Free This -> clymer Tue, 07/17/2018 - 07:25 Permalink
freedommusic -> HockeyFool Tue, 07/17/2018 - 07:37 PermalinkNo bitch here but you, bulgars!
If the DNC servers were hacked, they are evidence, where is the fucking evidence now? At the bottom of the Hudson River with concrete shoes that's where! Where are the Anwan servers, Podesta's, Wieners....where are Hillary's emails?
Fuck this is getting out of hand. All of the top spooks in the alphabet agencies are complicit, DOJ too, right up to the skinny faggot in the rainbow house!
Getting close to the time for some real fucking justice in America!
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Here is an update to the map I posted yesterday about where not to be, not sure I agree one way or the other, you decide:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn5Io6mZqXM
And Preper Nurse on wild medcines:
Don't forget to watch "Lifesaving Advice From Dirty Rotten Survival's Dave Canterbury" I posted yesterday, of all watch that.
One way to zero in iron sights on your AR-15:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=934LFFsC5Dw
And my all time favorite Uncle Ted, baby, what an interview, a must watch as well:
eclectic syncretist -> 847328_3527 Tue, 07/17/2018 - 09:09 PermalinkRule 101 of the upside down - project un to others the crimes that YOU commit...
Laowei Gweilo -> Miskondukt Tue, 07/17/2018 - 09:35 PermalinkEven if it were found to be true that Russia (and not Seth Rich) was the source of the info that revealed to the American people (and the world) that the DNC conspired to rig its own primary election, my response would be one of gratitude for shining a light on the cockroaches.
inosent -> Snaffew Tue, 07/17/2018 - 10:48 Permalinkthe zeal with which MSN and especially CNN Wolf Blitzer now defend the 'Intelligence Community' as a singular infallible flawless entity is incredible ...
... in the context of the war they waged on that very same 'Intelligence Community' in light of it being wrong about WMD in Iraq
... or the Snowden-gate about it spying on Americans.
most two-faced biased blindly-agended-based manipulative thing I've ever seen on CNN
Super Sleuth -> css1971 Tue, 07/17/2018 - 13:55 PermalinkRussian hack? hahaha, as if. Everybody knows it was an inside job. That sort of thing with all the emails is inside -> Seth Rich is a good place to look.
BESIDES! LET'S NOT FORGET ABOUT THE CONTENT OF THOSE EMAILS!!!
This guy in the article above that says Hellary "must" be given the nomination because Russia 'hacked' the election. Great! I'll be very happy to see that nasty bitch go down a second time, based on the substance of her twisted, hypocritical, and consummately evil character.
janus -> Super Sleuth Tue, 07/17/2018 - 15:24 PermalinkBILL BROWDER: The CIA Asset and Neocon Zionist Who Was Used to Restart the Cold War with Russia
---
http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=101126
" Deep State agent Bill Browder operated at the very nexus of the
U.S. and U.K. Intelligence Communities that conspired to produce
both the fake Russiagate and very real Spygate ."-- Intelligence Analyst & Former Military Officer
I Am Jack's Ma -> MoreSun Tue, 07/17/2018 - 14:44 Permalink***It is a tale, full of sound and fury, told by idiots, signifying nothing***
how can we be expected to take any of this shit seriously?
-- avowed globalist-communists opposed to any nation's sovereignty, repulsed at the faintest wiff of patriotism scolding us for our lack of patriotism?
-- political parties, intelligence agencies, the media and much of the judiciary attempting to undermine the democratic process for over a year and a half, delegitamize a Presidency, vilify half the nation, stoke the flames of enmity...now they kvetch about our skepticism?
no, langley, we do not trust you. no, media, your agitprop has no currency.
of all the reasons for hillary's defeat, no one ever mentions the fact that she campaigned on a platform of war...WWIII, no less. starting in May/June of 2016, cankles started pounding the war drums. in a scenario so stale and overused as to threadbare, the left initiated the process of demonizing russia and russians.
Trump supporters are not only pro-American, they/we are anti-war. forever spinning in a manic and frenzied swirl of hysterics, the left often loses sight of this...but as much is to be expected, in that the left doesn't think, they instead parrot the tropes fed to them on a daily basis, forever unable to assemble the fragments of these disparate priorities into a cogent whole. but if they were able to arrange this mess into coherence, the image would terrify them with its ghastliness. the left openly and earnestly serves the forces of evil -- in fact, they are the forces of evil. they depend on the idiocy and credulity of their minions to keep this reality obscured. fortunately for the left, their supporters are sufficiently dull and benighted to keep the truth forever blighted.
maybe we should play the victoria nuland tapes again...as a refresher:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QxZ8t3V_bk
we not only interfered with Ukranian/Russian politics, we overtly overthrew a democratically elected government, attempted to provoke Russia to respond militarily, started a civil war in the Ukraine, (downed a commercial airliner in a disgusting FF), funded and trained Nazis and left the nation in shambles. these are the same people calling Trump a traitor. these are the same forces who demand faith and fidelity.
it's gone...no one trusts (((you))) anymore...we know you're nothing but a bunch of bloodthristy satanists...your time is in eclipse, the more you struggle, the tighter the constraints.
"fuck the EU (for balking at WWIII)" Victoria Nuland, Clinton apparatchik, globalists, communist, satanist, kike.
janus
Creative_Destruct -> King of Ruperts Land Tue, 07/17/2018 - 10:23 PermalinkZionists are a large part of the problem (and remember what Biden said) but not at all the whole problem. Don't hyperfocus - the 'Deep State' is chock full of non-Jewish warmongers and traitors. In fact the top traitors are guys like Brennan, Comey, McCabe, Clapper, Clinton, Obama, and Strozk.
Radical Marijuana -> HopefulCynical Tue, 07/17/2018 - 12:34 Permalink" The US fabricated evidence to start the Vietnam war and the US fabricated WMD talk on the second war in Iraq. US intelligence had no idea the Berlin Wall was about to fall. The US meddled in Russia supporting a drunk named Yeltsin because we erroneously thought we could control him."
YUP! AMEN.
It's amusing to me that the Leftist's NOW have a blind-faith trust in government, whereas during the Vietnam war, and at the start of the Iraq war the opposite was (justifiably) the case.
And remember, the [neoliberal] Left was all OVER how we manipulated Russia into an Oligarchy:
VWAndy -> Radical Marijuana Tue, 07/17/2018 - 12:57 Permalink"Marxists" ???
Follow the money to its source.
There is nothing in either the dictionary definition of "Marxism," nor the social facts, which justifies using that label for the ruling classes, the pyramidion people of the globalized social pyramid systems.
The root of the runaway "mass hysteria" is the long history of the control over the public money supplies being captured by the best organized gangsters, the banksters. There is an overwhelming amount of historical evidence regarding how that happened. See Excellent Videos on Money Systems .
Some of that evidence indicates some of those banksters were behind the promotion of messianic Marxism through the Russian Revolution which resulted in the Soviet Union. (Less compelling evidence indicates similar factors were at play in the later Chinese Revolution.)
The original Marxism was relatively scientific, for its time and place in history. However, it was messianic Marxism which became the ideologies of so-called "communist" movements, all of which necessarily ended up being dominated by their own kinds of best available professional hypocrites, resulting in even steeper social pyramid systems than previously.
It is RIDICULOUS to label the banksters as "Marxists." The comment posted above by HopefulCynical only begins to make some sense AFTER one substitutes some label which refers to the banksters , rather than to some ideologies which those banksters used to covertly advance their overall agenda.
Ideologies which become publicly significant are always systems of organized lies, which operate robberies. There is actually only one political system: organized crime. Therefore, contemporary geopolitical events make more sense after one recognizes who are the best organized gangsters , which are dominating civilization, including dominating the mass media's public presentation of those events.
While President Trump is correctly presenting the degree to which the mainstream media is based on "fake news," President Trump deliberately does not engage in deeper analysis of that phrase "fake news," but rather, used his oratory skill to capture that phrase, and thereby turn it against those who originally intended to use that phrase against President Trump.
The comment above by HopefulCynical was overwhelmingly up-voted by its readers. Tragically, the indicates the degree to which so many people want to believe in bullshit.
"The Marxists who've run America (and the rest of the world) into the ground for so many decades ..."
It was NOT "Marxists," but rather the banksters, who've run America (and the rest of the world) ... for so many decades. In particular, since 1971, when the American Dollar lost its last connection with the material world, after the last vestiges of money backed by precious metals were cut, the banksters have been able to astronomically amplify their frauds, as enforced by governments, to become about exponentially more fraudulent.
That about exponentially increasing fraudulence, as demonstrated by debt slavery systems generating numbers which have become debt insanities, is at the root of the runaway manifestation of "mass hysteria" in America (and the rest of the world.)
The debt slavery systems were made and maintained by the international bankers, as the best organized gangsters, the banksters, whose persistent and prolonged participation in the funding of all aspects of the political processes (including schooling and mass media) has resulted in the public powers of government being primarily used to back up the privatized interests of big banks, and the big corporations that grew up around those big banks being able to issue the public money supplies out of nothing as debts.
Those real social facts do NOT correspond to the dictionary definition of Marxism, nor to any other goofy ideologies which were popularized to conceal the real social facts, and permit public discussion of those facts to be drowned under the bullshit of false fundamental dichotomies and the related impossible ideals.
There continues to be a lot of awful nonsense presented in articles and comments published on Zero Hedge , because of the degree to which the authors of those like to continue to believe in their favourite kinds of impossible ideals, by mislabeling what they do not like in erroneous ways, which ignore both the actual facts and definitions of those labels.
BANKSTERS' "psychopathic dreams of total control" require that it will be possible for systems based on being able to enforce frauds can continue to become about exponentially more fraudulent. However, endless exponential growth is absolutely impossible.
Rising popular awareness and resistance to the banksters is manifesting through various political movements. However, so far, those movements continue to mostly be forms of controlled "opposition." Anyone who continues to misuse the labels such as "capitalism versus communism," or abuses the label "Marxist," etc., is still actually a form of controlled "opposition," because of the degree to which their thinking and communication is still based on taking for granted the biggest bullies' bullshit, which has become the banksters' bullshit .
After the banksters kicked the shit out of Russia during the 20th Century, Russia has returned having learned something from those experiences. The results are that Russia is slightly more able and willing to advance its national interests against the international banksters. That is the main reason why Russia is being demonized by those who are still almost totally the banksters' puppets.
President Trump appears to be a relative anomaly, whose social successfulness was based on the apparently increasing anomalies, due to the systems based on enforced frauds becoming about exponentially more fraudulent. It was that diffuse awareness of mass media propaganda being systematic lying, serving the interests of the owners of those mass media, that was one of the factors which enabled President Trump to win the election.
Some of his most significant campaign promises were to diminish the demonization of Russia, and thereby diminish the threat of war with weapons of mass destruction spinning out of control, which continues to potentially be the greatest of threats, which are somewhat under human control, but which look like those are going more and more out of control.
However, in my opinion, President Trump tends to NOT go beyond superficially correct analysis of the accumulating apparent anomalies, whose root causes are the systems of enforced frauds being amplified by about exponentially advancing technologies to become about exponentially more fraudulent, which factors are at the root of the accumulating "mass hysteria."
The best overall ways to approach understanding current geopolitical events are that the excessively successful applications of the methods of organized crime through the political processes are resulting in civilization manifesting runaway criminal insanities, which situation is so serious that people who attempt to reduce that insanity are attacked by those who want to increase that insanity.
The deeper reasons for the underlying issues are that there must be some death control systems, precisely because endless exponential growth is absolutely impossible, and therefore, death control systems develop to stop that happening, which drives those death control systems to become murder systems which maximize maliciousness.
The longer term consequences of the social successfulness of maximized maliciousness are that the biggest bullies' bullshit almost totally dominates civilization, including the layers of controlled "opposition" that surround the central core of the best organized gangsters, which have become the banksters . Hence, most of those who believe that they are "resisting" continue to think and communicate in ways which still take for granted most of that bullshit .
Yep. These false ideologies are just cover stories to keep people from focusing on the corruption.
Turns out Hypocrisy is the only form of government we have ever known.
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SybilDefense -> inosent Tue, 07/17/2018 - 11:58 Permalink
One question could clear this up:
Mr Podesta, how long have you used "PASSWORD" as a password for your access to the DNC?
Ons24-%&@yy zfo-%78 - password the day before the hack, changed daily
Password - password use the day of the hack
I can't even buy something from amazon with an account password "Password". Yet he can control the entire DNC without one security question?
Trusting the gov since Reagan is laughable. Thinking Bush didn't create 9-11 is inexcusable. Simply Believing anything said by Strozck, FBI, CIA, DOJ Clinton clapper, comer Brennen et al is idiotic to the level of drinking koolaid at the church retreat. It just isn't being done (successfully).
Frogs gonna boil.
Say goodbye to your Dem friends or help them see the light of reason. Stupid does not last long in Darwin's evolutional theory.
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Stackers -> HockeyFool Tue, 07/17/2018 - 07:40 Permalink
Free This -> Stackers Tue, 07/17/2018 - 07:45 PermalinkLet's give these morons the point of "ok, Russia did interfere, they did hack DNC and Podesta, and it did cost Hillary election"
No one has refuted what was exposed in the "hacks"
So they "interfered" by exposing just how corrupt the DNC, Hillary, and her legions of career cronies actually are .... uh - Thank You ?
Son of Loki -> Free This Tue, 07/17/2018 - 07:53 PermalinkNo proof of any hacks that I have seen, leaks are more likely the case - Seth Rich?!
Maybe Hillary's unsecured server was hacked, but she was allowed to wipe it with a fucking cloth ROFLMAO
rejected -> Son of Loki Tue, 07/17/2018 - 09:35 PermalinkAmericans care about:
1) immigration;
2) jobs;
3) health care costs;
4) terrorism;
5) fbi corruption.
Americans do NOT care about:
1) Russia;
Americans care about:
1) immigration;
2) jobs;
3) health care costs;
4) terrorism;
5) fbi corruption.
You're right,,, and they are all still doing just fine.
1) immigration; up
2) jobs; unemployed... unchanged / up
3) health care costs; up
4) terrorism; up
5) fbi corruption. maxed.
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NumberNone -> 847328_3527 Tue, 07/17/2018 - 09:45 Permalink
scribe1 -> NumberNone Tue, 07/17/2018 - 10:40 PermalinkPersonally I'm getting fucking sick of all this. They call the hack the equivalent of the Cuban Missile crisis but no one in government has seen Hillary's server. This is like Kennedy going on tv and saying 'we are going to threaten Russia with nuclear war over Cuba. No government agency has actually seen the photos of missiles but we are told by a credible source of the "Americans against Russia" group that they are there'
Even NBC can't find verbal gymnastics to dispute this.
The FBI did not examine the DNC servers -- after allegations that they had been hacked by the Russians -- and says it was rebuffed by the DNC in efforts to do so. The DNC insists the FBI never asked to see the server.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna891756
Why the fuck are they still denying the FBI access? Why do the Dems hate and mistrust the fine men and women that serve our country in the FBI?
Jim in MN -> scribe1 Tue, 07/17/2018 - 11:09 PermalinkNYPD has Weiner's laptop with all the goods. they will not release the evidence. obviously. they would all hang.
GeezerGeek -> NumberNone Tue, 07/17/2018 - 11:39 PermalinkMy favorite line in the FBI IG report was when the NYPD analyst mirrored the Weiner laptop hard drive. They opened one email at random, looked at it and said:
'We can't be reading this'
And promptly reported it to the FBI.
Which buried it.
NumberNone -> GeezerGeek Tue, 07/17/2018 - 12:01 PermalinkPerhaps it's the Mandala effect, but I recall watching Adlai Stevenson laying out black-and-white pictures of Soviet missiles on some military base which he claimed was in Cuba (Cuber in Kennedy-speak). He did this while giving a speech to the UN Security Council in October 1962 berating the Soviet Union and Nikita Khrushchev in particular for putting missiles in Cuba. For those too young to remember or too lazy to look it up, Stevenson was Kennedy's Ambassador to the UN.
Are you telling me that Stevenson lied about where the military base was? Do we owe a posthumous apology to Nikita, who incidentally transferred political control of Crimea from the Russian portion of the USSR to the Ukrainian portion of the USSR (where Khrushchev was from)?
History certainly is convoluted enough; I hope it's not changing on me.
Jim in MN -> GeezerGeek Tue, 07/17/2018 - 13:10 PermalinkI don't think you were catching my point. I was not disputing the basis for the Cuban Missile crisis from the US side.
My point being that we are willing to bare our teeth and threaten Russia on the basis of a 3rd party review of the DNC server paid for by the DNC.
If we are going to raise the Russian hack to the equivalency of Russia placing nuclear missiles off the coast of Florida...shouldn't the basis for this be based upon an actual government agency review of the hack?
No, he meant that the current BS story is like IF Kennedy had made it all up. Not that Kennedy actually did make it all up.
Those U2s were pretty cool in their day.
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Endgame Napoleon -> macholatte Mon, 07/16/2018 - 21:12 Permalink
The puzzling thing is the double standard.
A guy from a foreign country made a ton of money in Russia, rather than creating businesses in his own country, and he neglected to pay taxes on it. The Clinton campaign was fine with contributions from that source. The Clinton-supporting mainstream media was fine with her having it since the ends justify the means.
Russia & China both have [different] political systems than the system that our Founders created in the USA, but it is okay to maintain good relations with China since so many elites, including the Clintons, have made a lot of money either directly off of investing in the racially homogenous, cheap-labor market in China or via deep-pocketed contacts there.
The media is horrified that Trump would talk to Putin, but was not horrified in the Nineties, when the decision was made to give communist, mercantilist, dictatorial China MFN trading status, thereby expediting the offshoring of millions of breadwinner jobs, plus the forfeiting of millions of SS retirement fund contributions that would have been made if those jobs with US-owned companies had stayed in the USA.
Some might say -- combined with all of the policies in the Nineties that facilitated the offshoring of jobs to foreign countries with cheap labor markets, amounting to a grand total of 5 million offshored jobs -- THAT was a betrayal of America's best interests, sapping our national economic strength.
After 30 years of wanton offshoring and even more libertine immigration policies, the USA now has 101 million working-age citizens out of the workforce, 78 million marginally self-employed gig pieceworkers and 42 million EBT-eligible citizens and noncitizens with US-born kids, holding only part-time jobs to stay under the income limits for the welfare programs in traceable earnings.
Even though after all of that welfare-bolstered immigration we have a bigger working-age young generation than the Boomers -- the Millennials -- they are so underemployed that the SS trust find that we all pay into at either 7.65% or 15.3% of every dime we earn up to the $128,400 cap is no longer running surpluses, threatening its solvency.
The USA was stripped of its economic strength by the America Last economic policies of the Nineties, and the Clintons (and many other neoliberal politicians) were with the foreigners at every turn, with Bill telling Americans to just stoically accept what Ross Perot called the "giant sucking sound of jobs going across the border." Americans should just train for the jobs of the future.
Forget about all of those breadwinner jobs (and SS contributions) lost to China, said Bill, as he accepted campaign contributions from deep-pocketed Chinese sources.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nationalreview.com/2017/07/chinese-ill
That does not even count the technology transfers -- the intellectual property losses with military implications, like when Bill Clinton's Administration reclassified a satellite technology so that the Chinese could have access.
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/18/us/clinton-says-chinese-money-did-no
It was all for bid'ness.
There is a double standard on human rights, too, since all of this resetting of the relationship with China occurred less than 10 years after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, when the Chinese government ran over students protesting for democracy with tanks.
It has been 30 years since the wall came down in Germany -- -- -- -30 years, not less than a decade.
That said, Trump was not elected for foreign policy reasons. He was elected primarily to get out-of-control illegal & legal immigration rates under control. He was elected so that, at least, Americans are not undercut in the jobs left on US shores by immigrants with instant-citizen US-born kids who qualify them for free EBT food, free rent, monthly cash assistance and up to $6,431 in refundable child tax credits, making it easy for them to work for beans, resulting in 40 years of falling wages for most US citizens.
As foreign policy goes, US politicians can have high standards for human rights, applying those standards even to what happens within foreign countries, but not without the hypocrisy being noted when those high standards only apply when the profits of US elites are not on the line.
What Putin did in the Ukraine -- a country in close proximity to his own country, much like Taiwan is with China -- was not the same thing, morally speaking, as China running over students with tanks in 1989. Putin can argue that a country as close to Russia as the Ukraine is the business of Russia, in the same way that the US POTUS could argue (successfully) that Russian missiles close to our shores in Cuba were our business in the Sixties.
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not dead yet -> jcaz Mon, 07/16/2018 - 22:31 Permalink
The Dreadnought Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:13 PermalinkInstead of falling all over yourselves congratulating Putin for outing the Clinton's you should peruse other mainstream news outlets ABC, NBC, FOX, CNBC, MSNBC, Yahoo, CNN and others. Except for Hannity it's 100% condemnation of Trump selling out to the Russians and not a single mention about the $400 million for the Clinton foundation.
The Washington Examiner printed an article full of the usual lies about Russian aggression that if true would make the US look like a saint compared to Russia. I imagine Wapo and the NY Slime were just as bad.
As I stated the other day unless Trump crushed Putin, which was never gonna happen even if the Donald wanted too, the knives would come out and even Republicans would stomp on him.
If you saw Hillary's face you would see she is laughing her ass off and dreaming of being president in 2020. The calls for impeachment will come from all over the political spectrum and the propagandized Americans, sheeple and the "well informed intelligent people" who read the drivel in Wapo and NY Slime and there fellow travelers and believe it 100%, will back it.
Those willing to print the truth will be drowned out by the propaganda and be called Putin's bitches with renewed calls to shut down the "fake news" that tells the truth.
847328_3527 -> The Dreadnought Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:31 PermalinkReal News that Fake News ignores...
Must. Protect. The. Narrative.
Anunnaki -> 847328_3527 Mon, 07/16/2018 - 20:13 PermalinkAll the news outlets bashing Trump Putin interview as "disgusting" which is odd because I liked it because he called out the real criminals---Comey, the fbi, DNC, Clinton, Strzok, etc.
khnum Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:15 PermalinkThe Presstitutes hate accountability of the Deep State Neocons
You Only Live Twice -> khnum Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:30 PermalinkChances of this being reported by CNN,MSNBC etc are about the same as winning the state lottery.
warpigs Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:16 PermalinkPretty much. This other bombshell from the conference, in which Trump spilled entirely in the open that the whole Syria thing hinged on Israel at the request of "Bibi" left me jaw-dropped. Haven't seen a mention anywhere about this one...
DingleBarryObummer -> DingleBarryObummer Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:24 PermalinkIt never fucking ends. I am watching all of my Dem friends howl about Trump being owned by Puty Pute but not a darn mention about HRC sucking bags of unethical dicks.
Volkodav -> DingleBarryObummer Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:59 PermalinkAnd plus, I thought Putin Blames "Ukrainians Or Jews" For Election Meddling: "Maybe The US Paid Them" | Zero Hedge
Now it's hillary. Did he change his mind?
dlweld -> DingleBarryObummer Mon, 07/16/2018 - 19:58 Permalink
Better get someone Russian language explain you
complete correct quote and context
cos you have not clue...
He didn't blame them - just said if you have no specific evidence pointing to Russians, it could just have easily been Ukranians, or Jews or??? which is certainly true.
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Creative_Destruct -> King of Ruperts Land Tue, 07/17/2018 - 10:23 Permalink
" The US fabricated evidence to start the Vietnam war and the US fabricated WMD talk on the second war in Iraq. US intelligence had no idea the Berlin Wall was about to fall. The US meddled in Russia supporting a drunk named Yeltsin because we erroneously thought we could control him."
YUP! AMEN.
It's amusing to me that the Leftist's NOW have a blind-faith trust in government, whereas during the Vietnam war, and at the start of the Iraq war the opposite was (justifiably) the case.
And remember, the [neoliberal] Left was all OVER how we manipulated Russia into an Oligarchy:
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Thordoom -> onewayticket2 Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:31 Permalink
Everybody should watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu9DMxfTGhY Billy boy admitting Sergei Magnicky was not a lawyer. He was an accountant who was stealing money with shitbag Bill Browder.
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Super Sleuth -> css1971 Tue, 07/17/2018 - 13:55 Permalink
Creative_Destruct -> King of Ruperts Land Tue, 07/17/2018 - 10:23 PermalinkBILL BROWDER: The CIA Asset and Neocon Zionist Who Was Used to Restart the Cold War with Russia
---
http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=101126
" Deep State agent Bill Browder operated at the very nexus of the U.S. and U.K. Intelligence Communities that conspired to produce both the fake Russiagate and very real Spygate ."
-- Intelligence Analyst & Former Military Officer
Boing_Snap -> eclectic syncretist Tue, 07/17/2018 - 09:43 Permalink" The US fabricated evidence to start the Vietnam war and the US fabricated WMD talk on the second war in Iraq. US intelligence had no idea the Berlin Wall was about to fall. The US meddled in Russia supporting a drunk named Yeltsin because we erroneously thought we could control him."
YUP! AMEN.
It's amusing to me that the Leftist's NOW have a blind-faith trust in government, whereas during the Vietnam war, and at the start of the Iraq war the opposite was (justifiably) the case.
And remember, the [neoliberal] Left was all OVER how we manipulated Russia into an Oligarchy:
Boing_Snap -> eclectic syncretist Tue, 07/17/2018 - 09:43 PermalinkPutin handed Trump a means of openly investigating Killary's/CIA's manipulation of US politics via the Browder investigation, the crime of manipulating the DNC to remove Bernie can also loop into the mix.
Let's hope Trump follows through and exposes the nest of vipers. The majority of people are now seeing the light, only the people with skin the game or those far too controlled through an excellent propaganda/mass mind control experiment do not.
Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebels could only dream that their methods would go this far.
"But being dependent, every day of the year and for year after year, upon certain politicians for news, the newspaper reporters are obliged to work in harmony with their news sources."
― Edward L. Bernays , Propagandawafm -> NumberNone Tue, 07/17/2018 - 11:24 PermalinkPutin handed Trump a means of openly investigating Killary's/CIA's manipulation of US politics via the Browder investigation, the crime of manipulating the DNC to remove Bernie can also loop into the mix.
Let's hope Trump follows through and exposes the nest of vipers. The majority of people are now seeing the light, only the people with skin the game or those far too controlled through an excellent propaganda/mass mind control experiment do not.
Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebels could only dream that their methods would go this far.
"But being dependent, every day of the year and for year after year, upon certain politicians for news, the newspaper reporters are obliged to work in harmony with their news sources."
― Edward L. Bernays , PropagandaUnless Herr fuckin Mueller comes up with some damn FUCKIN PROOF, and SOON, he should hang.
Browder IS a major scumbag and there is plenty of fuckin proof of that. Putin knows. 400 millions to the Clinton campaign. The sooner she fuckin hangs the better.
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two hoots -> Free This Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:25 Permalink
$400,000,000 doesn't stay in a campaign, it is spent or transferred (if it made it that far?). So where did it go, who received it? Surely it was reported if true? If not................? Putin is not likely to put his questionable integrity out to dry in front of the world. Mueller is all over it already?
Critical piece of the statement: " Intelligence agents funneled" (Clinton>State>Embassy>CIA (Brennan).
divingengineer -> two hoots • Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:34 Permalink
You are right, that was a PRETTY BIG STATEMENT, right in front of the world. I wonder what was said in that two hour talk between him and Trump? Man, I would love to have been a fly on the wall. Things are going to get spicy now.
samsara -> two hoots Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:46 Permalink
Not Too Important -> samsara Mon, 07/16/2018 - 18:04 PermalinkWasn't there news back around election time of something like $1.8 billion sent from Clinton foundation to Qatar? As confirmed by BIS https://theinternationalreporter.org/2016/10/17/hillary-clintons-sudden
DivisionBell -> two hoots Mon, 07/16/2018 - 18:02 PermalinkCharles Ortel knows all: http://charlesortel.com/
EddieLomax -> two hoots Mon, 07/16/2018 - 18:35 PermalinkI suspect some of that $400M made its way to media organizations. Behold: motive
wonderfulme -> two hoots Mon, 07/16/2018 - 19:33 PermalinkPutin just nailed the US intelligence establishment. Up until now they've been cynically trying to limit Trumps freedom of action by laying out allegations of Russian collusion. Now they're in a spot of bother when every time they start to wind up the anti-Russia campaign someone points out that they've got a vested money interest.
I'd love to see the FBI and CIA cleaned out from top to bottom over this, trials of hundreds of sleazeballs with their assets confiscated and pensions cancelled. Although its pretty obvious you'd need a lot of security on your side to deal with that.
YourAverageJoe -> jcaz Mon, 07/16/2018 - 18:17 PermalinkIf you've been watching Putin since the year 2000, you'd know he's not exactly known for throwing around wild accusations. Less so, very precise accusations. He will be asked about that and he will not mumble words but likely expand. The Browder Affair is well known so I don't really know why anyone is remotely surprised.
Antifaschistische -> jcaz Mon, 07/16/2018 - 19:01 PermalinkI believe Putin is right and that John Brennan was a key player enabling this fraud.
FreeMoney -> helltothenah Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:18 PermalinkThis is a perfect opportunity for the Social Justice Warriors to INSIST that all foreign contributions to domestic US politicians or political parties be immediately outlawed or they will march on Washington IMMEDIATELY!!
While they're at it....they should also include all contributions made by multi-national corporations both public and private.
and while they're at it...they should also include all contributions made by foreign governments or agents of foreign governments.
samsara -> Boing_Snap Mon, 07/16/2018 - 18:00 PermalinkFinally, a major head of state names the Clinton Foundation as accessory to crime. Muller? Sessions?
Browder, Rothschild, Clinton. Remember this back when Rothschild et al got their butt hurt from Putin? "As is known, despite the public promise not to engage in political activity after his release from prison, former Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been actively involved in the financing of various media and political projects. The structures of Khodorkovsky actively communicated with the international fraudster William Browder and helped to lobby for the adoption of anti-Russian sanctions in the US Congress. However, the projects of Khodorkovsky, as it turned out, have more high patrons and sponsorship streams than only the means of the former oligarch."
Read this https://www.voltairenet.org/article168007.html This shit is really starting to get good (PS. Fuck you Rothschild et al)
chubbar -> jcaz • Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:40 Permalink
Now we understand why some of the intelligence agencies are bending over backwards to incriminate Russia along with Brennan, et al., crying treason when in reality it was those people and agencies actually doing it. This is way beyond fucked up and the damn MSM is ignoring every bit of it.
Trump needs to take some sort of action that draws this so far out into the open that it can't be denied. The fucking GOP senators that were out today bad talking Trump need to be indicted for their likely crimes as well. Fuck these creeps!
spqrusa Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:22 Permalink
WillyGroper -> spqrusa Mon, 07/16/2018 - 19:33 PermalinkThe Looking Glass warned us 2016 would be a pivotal election where the People would finally realize the CIA (really MI6) runs our country with a complicated web of compromise, corruption and illegal funding. Too bad it was off by a few years...
what do you notice in this clip?
i'm only on page 2 of the comments, but not 1 person has mentioned it. perhaps it's only symbolic, but it's there never the less.
Savyindallas Mon, 07/16/2018 - 17:31 Permalink
Putin has a thousand times more credibility and honor than Mueller. Mueller is a stinking crook. He was instrumental as head of the FBI in certifying to the Bush administration that Saddam had WMDs. He covered up the real (and known) anthrax terrorists while he went on a witch hunt against Hatfield -which eventually resulted in the US Government paying Hatfield $8 million for defamation of character. Mueller is pure scum -a fiend and traitor who belongs in prison for the rest of his miserable life.
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Free This -> Bulgars Tue, 07/17/2018 - 07:25 Permalink
otschelnik -> Free This Tue, 07/17/2018 - 07:38 PermalinkOur intel agencies ARE corrupt...they walk into DNC HQ and leave without the server...cause of Hillary you know that right. Fucking bought and paid for by her, just like everything else in America!
Lookit, Trump is on the up and up, and all the little fags are crying foul? fuck 'em!
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Trump just broke a tabu by failing to do homage to the sacred cow of our intelligence community.
From Strzok testimony we saw (what we knew already) that Shillary's server was compromised by a 'foreign actor' and Strzok and Comey did nothing. What about that?!?!?!?
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Bay of Pigs -> gdpetti Mon, 07/16/2018 - 21:54 Permalink
And them you hace this:
What the MSM doesn't want YOU to KNOW.
We have a Strzok in Iran, Peter Sr. We have a Strzok in Russia, Mark. We have a Strzok in the SEC, Melissa. We have a Strzok in the FBI, Peter jr. We have a Strzok links to Russian uranium mines that are apart of Uranium One. Enter Clinton, Obama & Mueller. Pay, Play & Prosecute
The father of Peter Strzok is Peter Strzok Sr. The brother of Peter Strzok Sr is Mark Strzok. The wife of Mark Strzok is Mariana Strzok. Mariana Strzok is the daughter of General James Cartwright. General James Cartwright, was pardoned by Barrack Obama on his last day of office.
The wife of Peter Strzok, Melissa Hodgman. Just so happens she was promoted to the role of director of the SEC at the same time the FBI was drafting the exoneration letter for the HRC. Peter Strzok was the last person on earth to see the deleted HRC emails. Nothing to see here.
The father of Peter Strzok, Peter Strzok Sr, just happened to be in Iran in 1979, the year that the Shan was removed from power & the 2,500 years of continuous Persian monarchy was replaced with an Islamic Republic under the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. CIA? Dot-Dot-Dot.
You mean the indictments for crimes when Obama was president? The same Kremlin officers that when Rice was briefed on Russian meddling, she gave a stand down order? You lie @RepAdamSchiff Nothing today had anything to do with President Trump. Oh, I think we all know who the coward is here.
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Jul 15, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
As we just discussed , some major news stories have recently dropped about what a horrible horrifying menace the Russian Federation is to the world , and as always I have nothing to offer the breathless pundits on CNN and MSNBC but my completely unsatisfied skepticism. My skepticism of the official Russia narrative remains so completely unsatisfied that if mainstream media were my husband I would already be cheating on it with my yoga instructor.
I do not believe the establishment Russia narrative. I do not believe that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to rig the 2016 election. I do not believe the Russian government did any election rigging for Trump to collude with. This is not because I believe Vladimir Putin is some kind of blueberry-picking girl scout, and it certainly isn't because I think the Russian government is unwilling or incapable of meddling in the affairs of other nations to some extent when it suits them. It is simply because I am aware that the US intelligence community lies constantly as a matter of policy, and because I understand how the burden of proof works.
At this time, I see no reason to espouse any belief system which embraces as true the assertion that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections in any meaningful way, or that it presents a unique and urgent threat to the world which must be aggressively dealt with. But all the establishment mouthpieces tell me that I must necessarily embrace these assertions as known, irrefutable fact. Here are five things that would have to change in order for that to happen:
1. Proof of a hacking conspiracy to elect Trump.The first step to getting a heretic like myself aboard the Russia hysteria train would be the existence of publicly available evidence of the claims made about election meddling in 2016, which rises to the level required in a post-Iraq invasion world. So far, that burden of proof for Russian hacking allegations has not come anywhere remotely close to being met.
How much proof would I need to lend my voice to the escalation of tensions between two nuclear superpowers? Mountains. I personally would settle for nothing less than hard proof which can be independently verified by trusted experts like the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Is that a big ask? Yes. Yes it is. That's what happens when government institutions completely discredit themselves as they did with the false narratives advanced in the manufacturing of support for the Iraq invasion. You don't get to butcher a million Iraqis in a war based on lies, turn around a few years later and say "We need new cold war escalations with a nuclear superpower but we can't prove it because the evidence is secret." That's not a thing. Copious amounts of hard, verifiable proof or GTFO. So far we have no evidence besides the confident-sounding assertions of government insiders and their mass media mouthpieces, which is the same as no evidence.
2. Proof that election meddling actually influenced the election in a meaningful way.Even if Russian hackers did exfiltrate Democratic party emails and give them to WikiLeaks, if it didn't affect the election, who cares? That's a single-day, second-page story at best, meriting nothing beyond a "Hmm, interesting, turns out Russia tried and failed to influence the US election," followed by a shrug and moving on to something that actually matters.
After it has been thoroughly proven that Russia meddled in the elections in a meaningful way, it must then be established that that meddling had an actual impact on the election results.
3. Some reason to believe Russian election meddling was unwarranted and unacceptable.The US government, by a very wide margin , interferes in the elections of other countries far, far more than any other government on earth does. The US government's own data shows that it has deliberately meddled in the elections of 81 foreign governments between 1946 and 2000, including Russia in the nineties. This is public knowledge. A former CIA Director cracked jokes about it on Fox News earlier this year.
If I'm going to abandon my skepticism and accept the Gospel According to Maddow, after meaningful, concrete election interference has been clearly established I'm going to need a very convincing reason to believe that it is somehow wrong or improper for a government to attempt to respond in kind to the undisputed single worst offender of this exact offense. It makes no sense for the United States to actively create an environment in which election interference is something that governments do to one another, and then cry like a spanked child when its election is interfered with by one of the very governments whose elections the US recently meddled in.
This is nonsense. America being far and away the worst election meddler on the planet makes it a fair target for election meddling by not just Russia, but every country in the world. It is very obviously moral and acceptable for any government on earth to interfere in America's elections as long as it remains the world's worst offender in that area. In order for Russia to be in the wrong if it interfered in America's elections, some very convincing argument I've not yet heard will have to be made to support that case.
4. Proof that the election meddling went beyond simply giving Americans access to information about their government.If all the Russians did was simply show Americans emails of Democratic Party officials talking to one another and circulate some MSM articles as claimed in the ridiculous Russian troll farm allegations , that's nothing to get upset about. If anything, Americans should be upset that they had to hear about Democratic Party corruption through the grapevine instead of having light shed on it by the American officials whose job it is to do so. Complaints about election meddling is only valid if that election meddling isn't comprised of truth and facts.
5. A valid reason to believe escalated tensions between two nuclear superpowers are worthwhile.After it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Russia did indeed meddle in the US elections in a meaningful way, and after it has then been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Russia actually influenced election results in a significant way, and after the case has been clearly made that it was bad and wrong for Russia to do this instead of fair and reasonable, and after it has been clearly proven that the election meddling went beyond simply telling Americans the truth about their government, the question then becomes what, if anything, should be done about it?
If you look at the actions that this administration has taken over the last year and a half, the answer to that question appears to be harsh sanctions, NATO expansionism, selling arms to Ukraine, throwing out diplomats, increasing military presence along Russia's border, a Nuclear Posture Review which is much more aggressive toward Russia, repeatedly bombing Syria, and just generally creating more and more opportunities for something to go catastrophically wrong with one of the two nations' aging, outdated nuclear arsenals, setting off a chain of events from which there is no turning back and no surviving.
And the pundits and politicians keep pushing for more and more escalations, at this very moment braying with one voice that Trump must aggressively confront Putin about Mueller's indictments or withdraw from the peace talks. But is it worth it? Is it worth risking the life of every terrestrial organism to, what? What specifically would be gained that makes increasing the risk of nuclear catastrophe worthwhile? Making sure nobody interferes in America's fake elections? I'd need to see a very clear and specific case made, with a 'pros' and 'cons' list and "THE POTENTIAL DEATH OF LITERALLY EVERYTHING" written in big red letters at the top of the 'cons' column.
Rallying the world to cut off Russia from the world stage and cripple its economy has been been a goal of the US power establishment since the collapse of the Soviet Union, so there's no reason to believe that even the people who are making the claims against Russia actually believe them. The goal is crippling Russia to handicap China , and ultimately to shore up global hegemony for the US-centralized empire by preventing the rise of any rival superpowers. The sociopathic alliance of plutocrats and intelligence/defense agencies who control that empire are willing to threaten nuclear confrontation in order to ensure their continued dominance. All of their actions against Russia since 2016 have had everything to do with establishing long-term planetary dominance and nothing whatsoever to do with election meddling.
Those five things would need to happen before I'd be willing to jump aboard the "Russia! Russia! Russia!" train. Until then I'll just keep pointing to the total lack of evidence and how very, very far the CIA/CNN Russia narrative is from credibility.
* * *
Internet censorship is getting pretty bad, so the best way to keep seeing the stuff I publish is to get on the mailing list for my website , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader and listener-funded, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following my antics on Twitter , checking out my podcast , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , or buying my book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers .
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Jun 20, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Energy news, 06/14/2018 at 4:42 am
BENGHAZI, Libya, June 14 (Reuters) – Libya's Es Sider oil port was shut on Thursday due to armed clashes nearby and at least one storage tank in the neighbouring Ras Lanuf terminal was set alight, an engineer in the area said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/libya-security-oil/update-2-clashes-shut-libyas-es-sider-oil-port-ras-lanuf-tank-on-fire-engineer-idUSL8N1TG1L6
Photo on Twitter: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfpGCWwWAAA2wUj.jpg ReplyGuym , 06/14/2018 at 8:40 am
Drop in the bucket to what is happening right now. US will be about 500k less than their (IEA's) expectations into 2019 due to transportation constraints.George thinks Venezuela will approximate zero by 2019, as do others.
Give them the benefit of doubt and say a one million decrease from 1.6 at the beginning of this year.
IEA is still using production vs export capabilities, which has to change. Europe's refineries have largely stopped buying Iran's oil, as has India. That's 1.1 million that has to be sold elsewhere, or not. On shipping, insurance, and financing that is not affected by the restrictions. I count 2.6 million into 2019 that is not on IEA's plate.
Yeah, as said above, 2019 is going to be quite interesting, most of which we will see the end of 2018. None of this takes into consideration any increase in demand for 2019 that is over the US production projection for 2019 (.9). nor any shortage carried over from 2018. Yeah, we should be hunky dory.
In the investment world, we will still be watching EIA weeklies, to determine what is happening in the rest of the world for awhile. So increased cognitive function won't happen soon.
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Jul 16, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Energy News, 07/11/2018 at 1:14 pm
US total (oil + products) inventories made a new low (from the high February 2017)Mushalik , 07/11/2018 at 3:45 pmUS ending stocks July 6th
Crude oil down -12.6 million barrels
Oil products down -0.7
Overall total, down -13.3 (shown on chart)
Natural Gas: Propane & NGPLs up +6.1 (not included in chart)
Chart: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dh1-upjXUBEOjvn.jpgWeekly change in US total (oil + products) inventories
Chart: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dh1_SuAXUAcbc5M.jpg11/7/2018Hickory , 07/12/2018 at 11:12 am
US crude oil imports and exports update April 2018 data
http://crudeoilpeak.info/us-crude-oil-imports-and-exports-update-april-2018-dataYes indeed, excellent article as always Matt."Conclusion. No matter what clever US energy independence calculations are out there, the fact remains that the US is physically dependent on around 8 mb/d of crude oil imports, 4.3 mb/d out of which come from countries where oil production has already peaked and/or where there are socio-economic or geopolitical problems. As of April 2018 US net crude imports were about 6 mb/d, far from oil independence."
I note also that about 45% of USA imports come from Canada, as well depicted in in your Fig 1. Thus we are 'captives' of Canada (to use the terminology of trump), but don't seem to have much appreciation or respect for their position.
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Jul 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Local news differs because it is mixed with first-hand experience, as well as second-hand reports from witnesses–neighbors and friends. Gossip is one way of regulating this local flow of information. It provides details about who can be believed, and who might embellish.
Locally, there is an organic structure of information flow. This alone doesn't make it accurate, but it gets closer by triangulating from where you get your information.
And the further you get from the ability to triangulate from different sources, the faker news gets. I don't mean different sources, as in, different news outlets. I mean first-hand knowledge mixed with historical context, access to first-hand accounts, information about the reliability of witnesses and experts, and so on.
The further away the news gets from you, the harder it is to mix the news with other intelligence. At that point, it is easier to manipulate the truth.
But even if a piece of news about a far-off event is not attempting to misconstrue the truth, it could do so inadvertently. Without the full context of what is happening, events across the world can give the wrong impression.
Were chemical weapons used in Syria? If so, who used them? And who exactly is fighting who ?
The conflict in Syria is the perfect example of fake news. You have a complicated event with many different sides and no clear good guys. There are few first-hand accounts from people we know personally. There are some entities who wish to purposely distort the truth and others which want to hide the full extent of their actions.
All I can do to find out is trust various news sources. And that is what I mean when I say everything is fake news. Just picking which events to report on truthfully can end up presenting a basically fake story.
The Same Old Story
Years ago it was easy to control the spread of information. There were only a handful of television networks and newspapers. All news passed through the channels of official gatekeepers before making its way to the consumer.
But already the government was creating and disseminating fake news through programs like Project Mockingbird. The CIA had thousands of journalists on its payroll to disseminate false news and bury certain real reports.
So the government's problem is not fake news. Governments are concerned that they have lost their monopoly control of fake news. They were the gatekeepers.
Social media "has made things much worse," because it "offers an easy route for non-journalists to bypass journalism's gatekeepers, so that anyone can 'publish' anything, however biased, inaccurate or fabricated," says John Huxford, an Illinois State University journalism professor.
"Journalism's role as the 'gatekeeper' of what is and isn't news has always been controversial, of course. But we're now seeing just how bad things can get when that function breaks down."
Are we seeing how bad things can get? It seems that there was always fake news, but at one time, everyone believed it. Now there is fake news, and no one trusts any news. That is a better situation to be in. It is the rejection of manipulation by the elites, the gatekeepers.
Distrust in unverifiable news is better than blind trust in government propaganda. Better to hold agnostic beliefs about certain national events, versus believing what the government feeds us.
My default position is distrust of the government. So whatever narrative they seem to be pushing, if not outright false, has a purpose behind it. They are trying to shape the behavior of the masses and very rarely is this beneficially to individuals.
Huxford said many internet users are not adept at telling fake news from the real thing, making the role of major news organizations critical.
"This is why Trump falsely labelling the mainstream media as 'fake news' is so toxic," he said.
"It means that, at a time when there is a lot of fabrication and falsehoods swirling through the system, the credibility of the most reliable sources of news is being undermined."
As someone who believes in a grassroots approach to solving problems, starting with individuals, I am naturally averse to the idea of controllers from on high making decisions for me.
And that is why I think it is beneficial to have more distrust in news the further it gets from you, and rather use what you can confirm to live personally as you see fit.
Probably the best example of this is people signing up for the military directly after 9/11 to go kick some al-Qaida ass. They trusted the national news to deliver accurate facts about what happened, and how to stop it from happening again. And they threw themselves into the fight without having an accurate picture of why, or how the war they were signing up for would help.
In the end, they may have ended up supporting a worse regime than the one they were fighting.
Never knowing what you can believe is not ideal. But it beats a false sense of security that the news you get is real. It isn't. And if people are finally waking up to that, perhaps they will stop lining up to fight other people's wars.
You don't have to play by the rules of the corrupt politicians, manipulative media, and brainwashed peers.
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Jul 15, 2018 | www.unz.com
Miro23 , Next New Comment
July 14, 2018 at 1:04 pm GMTIf history is any precedent, empires without economic foundations, sooner or later crumble, especially when rising regional powers are capable of replacing them.
This is worth repeating. Empire and wars are expensive. For example the British world trade network was doing fine until the "Imperial" idea came along with wars and economic failure. The US is doing even worse in trying to fight its Imperial wars on credit.
The result is that Trump faces the real prospects of a decline in exports and popular electoral support – especially from those adversely affected by declining markets and deep cuts in health, education and the environment.
He may well be blindsided by a candidate who actually implements Trump's own election platform 1) no more wars 2) domestic infrastructure spending 3) stopping mass immigration 4) draining the swamp. Trumps electoral weakness is that didn't follow through on his promises.
The electoral oligarchy and the mass media will force him to retreat from the trade wars and surrender to the globalizing elites.
No doubt that the globalized elite want Friedman's "World is Flat" concept – profit maximizing world markets, world production, stateless corporations, free movement of labour and capital (without troublesome national identities) represented by an exclusive and vastly wealthy rootless elite ruling over a global worker hive. The "Empire" is only the military/enforcement side of this, with sanctions/wars against dissidents.
Trump is in the strange situation of having been elected to fight the Empire while needing elite Imperial support to stay in his job.
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Jul 14, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
House GOP members led by Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (NC) have drawn up articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, according to Politico .Conservative sources say they could file the impeachment document as soon as Monday , as Meadows and Freedom Caucus founder Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) look to build Republican support in the House. One source cautioned, however, that the timing was still fluid. - Politico
GOP legislators could also try to hold Rosenstein in contempt of Congress prior to actual impeachment.
The knives have been out for Rosenstein for weeks, as Congressional investigators have repeatedly accused the DOJ of "slow walking" documents related to their investigations. Frustrated lawmakers have been given the runaround - while Rosenstein and the rest of the DOJ are hiding behind the argument that the materials requested by various Congressional oversight committees would potentially compromise ongoing investigations.
In late June, Rosenstein along with FBI Director Christopher Wray clashed with House Republicans during a fiery hearing over an internal DOJ report criticizing the FBI's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation by special agents who harbored extreme animus towards Donald Trump while expressing support for Clinton. Republicans on the panel grilled a defiant Rosenstein on the Trump-Russia investigation which has yet to prove any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
"This country is being hurt by it. We are being divided," Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said of Mueller's investigation. "Whatever you got," Gowdy added, "Finish it the hell up because this country is being torn apart."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/4uN9uIqNqxg
Rosenstein pushed back - dodging responsibility for decisions made by subordinates while claiming that Mueller was moving "as expeditiously as possible," and insisting that he was "not trying to hide anything."
"We are not in contempt of this Congress, and we are not going to be in contempt of this Congress," Rosenstein told lawmakers.
Republicans, meanwhile, approved a resolution on the House floor demanding that the DOJ turn over thousands of requested documents by July 6 . And while the DOJ did provide Congressional investigators with access to a trove of documents, House GOP said the document delivery was incomplete , according to Fox News .
That didn't impress Congressional GOP.
" For over eight months, they have had the opportunity to choose transparency. But they've instead chosen to withhold information and impede any effort of Congress to conduct oversight," said Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a sponsor of Thursday's House resolution who raised the possibility of impeachment this week. " If Rod Rosenstein and the Department of Justice have nothing to hide, they certainly haven't acted like it. " - New York Times (6/28/18)
Rep. Meadows, meanwhile, fully admits that the document requests are related to efforts to quash the Mueller investigation.
"Yes, when we get these documents, we believe that it will do away with this whole fiasco of what they call the Russian Trump collusion because there wasn't any ," Meadows said on the House floor.
Meanwhile, following a long day of grilling FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte blamed Rosenstein for hindering Strzok's ability to reveal the details of his work.
"Rosenstein, who has oversight over the FBI and of the Mueller investigation is where the buck stops," he said. "Congress has been blocked today from conducting its constitutional oversight duty."
While Rosenstein's appears to be close to the chopping block, whether or not he will actually be impeached is an entirely different matter.
el buitre -> Ecclesia Militans Sat, 07/14/2018 - 10:24 Permalink
IridiumRebel -> TeamDepends Sat, 07/14/2018 - 10:48 PermalinkI think this attempt to impeach Rosenstink is ridiculous. First of all, it is bound to failure as it would require a 2/3 majority in the Senate. Second, the impeachment clauses in the constitution were designed for a sitting president who was granted immunity from traditional prosecution for committing crimes. Rosenstink serves at the pleasure of Trump, who apparently, at least in "reality" shows, is quite adept at firing people for incompetence and malfeasance. Let Trump fire him and then impanel a grand jury to indict him. I think upon conviction he should be required to eat the 12 ham sandwiches which fellow conspirator Mueller recently indicted.
Adolfsteinbergovitch -> JimmyJones Sat, 07/14/2018 - 11:22 PermalinkI love the people that say "Rosenstein is a Republican! Mueller is a Republican!"
THEY ARE DEEP STATE ANTI-AMERICAN F**KS
Rosenstein, seth rich murder connection?
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/07/activists-sully-second-anniver
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Jul 14, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
by Tyler Durden Fri, 07/13/2018 - 18:45 12 SHARES Authored Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
On the matter of immigration, even many commentators who support ease of migration also oppose the extension of government benefits to immigrants.
The idea, of course, is that free movement of labor is fine, but taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize it. As a matter of policy, many also find it prudent that immigrants ought to be economically self sufficient before being offered citizenship. Switzerland, for instance, makes it harder to pursue citizenship while receiving social benefits.
This discussion often centers around officially recognized "welfare" and social-benefits programs such as TANF and Medicaid. But it is also recognized that taxpayer-funded benefits exist in the form of public schooling, free clinics, and other in-kind benefits.
But there is another taxpayer-supporter program that subsidizes immigration as well: the US military.
Government Employment for ImmigrantsLast week, the AP began reporting that " the US Army is quietly discharging Immigrant recruits ."
Translation: the US government has begun laying off immigrants from taxpayer-funded government jobs.
It's unclear how many of these jobs have been employed, but according to the Department of Homeland security, "[s]ince Oct. 1, 2002, USCIS has naturalized 102,266 members of the military ."
The Military as a Jobs ProgramImmigrants, of course, aren't the only people who benefit from government jobs funded through military programs.
The military has long served as a jobs programs helpful in mopping up excess labor and padding employment numbers. As Robert Reich noted in 2011 , as the US was still coming out of the 2009 recession:
And without our military jobs program personal incomes would be dropping faster. The Commerce Department reported Monday the only major metro areas where both net earnings and personal incomes rose last year were San Antonio, Texas, Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. -- because all three have high concentrations of military and federal jobs.
He's right. While the private sector must cut back and re-arrange labor and capital to deal with the new economic realities post-recession, government jobs rarely go away.
Because of this, Reich concludes "America's biggest -- and only major -- jobs program is the U.S. military."
Reich doesn't think this is a bad thing. He only highlights the military's role as a de facto jobs program in order to call for more de jure jobs programs supported by federal funding.
Given the political popularity of the military, however, it's always easy to protect funding for the military jobs programs than for any other potential jobs programs. All the Pentagon has to do is assure Congress that every single military job is absolutely essential, and Congress will force taxpayers to cough up the funding.
Back during the debate over sequestration, for example, the Pentagon routinely warned Congress that any cutbacks in military funding would lead to major jobs losses, bringing devastation to the economy.
In other words, even the Pentagon treats the military like a jobs program when it's politically useful.
Benefits for enlisted people go well beyond what can be seen in the raw numbers of total employed. As Kelley Vlahos points out at The American Conservative , military personnel receive extra hazard pay "even though they are far from any fighting or real danger." And then there is the "Combat Zone Tax Exclusion (CZTE) program which exempts enlisted and officers from paying federal taxes in these 45 designated countries. Again, they get the tax break -- which accounted for about $3.6 billion in tax savings for personnel in 2009 (the combat pay cost taxpayers $790 million in 2009)– whether they are really in danger or not."
There's also evidence that military personnel receive higher pay in the military than do their private-sector counterparts with similar levels of education and training.
Nor do the benefits of military spending go only to enlisted people. The Pentagon has long pointed to its spending on civilian jobs in many communities, including manufacturing jobs and white-collar technical jobs.
This, of course, has long been politically useful for the Pentagon as well, since as political scientist Rebecca Thorpe has shown in her book The American Warfare State , communities that rely heavily on Pentagon-funded employment are sure to send Congressmen to Washington who will make sure the taxpayer dollars keep flowing to Pentagon programs.
Whether you're talking to Robert Reich or some Pentagon lobbyist on Capitol Hill, the conclusion is clear: the military is both a jobs program and a stimulus program. Cut military spending at your peril!
Military Spending Destroys Private Sector JobsThe rub, however, is that military spending doesn't actually improve the economy. And much the money spent on military employment would be best spent on the private, voluntary economy.
This has long been recognized by political scientist Seymour Melman who has discussed the need for "economic conversion," or converting military spending into other forms of spending. Melman observes :
Since we know that matter and energy located in Place A cannot be simultaneously located in Place B, we must understand that the resources used up on military account thereby represent a preemption of resources from civilian needs of every conceivable kind.
Here, Melman is simply describing in his own way what Murray Rothbard explained in Man, Economy, and State . Namely, government spending distorts the economy as badly as taxation -- driving up prices for the private sector, and withdrawing resources from private sector use.
Ellen Brown further explains :
The military actually destroys jobs in the civilian economy. The higher profits from cost-plus military manufacturing cause manufacturers to abandon more competitive civilian endeavors; and the permanent war economy takes engineers, capital and resources away from civilian production.
But, as a classic case of "the seen" vs. "the unseen," it's easy to point to jobs created by military spending. How many jobs were lost as a result of that same spending? That remains unseen, and thus politically irrelevant.
Military fan boys will of course assure us that every single military job and every single dollar spent on the military is absolutely essential. It's all the service of "fighting for freedom." For instance, Mitchell Blatt writes , in the context of immigrant recruits, "I'm not worried about the country or origin of those who are fighting to defend us. What matters is that our military is as strong as it can be." The idea at work here is that the US military is a lean machine, doing only what is necessary to get the job done, and as cost effectively as possible. Thus, hiring the "best" labor, from whatever source is absolutely essential.
This, however, rather strains the bounds of credibility. The US military is more expensive than the next eight largest militaries combined . The US's navy is ten times larger than the next largest navy. The US's air force is the largest in the world, and the second largest air force belongs, not to a foreign country, but to the US Navy.
Yet, we're supposed to believe that any cuts will imperil the "readiness" of the US military.
Cut Spending for Citizens and Non-Citizens AlikeMy intent here is not to pick on immigrants specifically. The case of military layoffs for immigrants simply helps to illustrate a couple of important points: government jobs with the military constitute of form of taxpayer-funded subsidy for immigrants. And secondly, the US military acts as a job program, not just for immigrants but for many native-born Americans.
In truth, layoffs in the military sector ought to be far more widespread, and hardly limited to immigrants. The Trump Administration is wrong when it suggests that the positions now held by immigrant recruits ought to be filled by American-born recruits. Those positions should be left unfilled. Permanently.
cougar_w Fri, 07/13/2018 - 18:53 Permalink
Expendable Container -> cougar_w Fri, 07/13/2018 - 18:58 PermalinkNo you retarded fuck, the military is a taxpayer-funed merc army supporting the overseas hegemonic goals of American-style Corporatism . That the military is full of the sons and daughters of poor people is only because rich whites won't send their trustfund babies to kill brown people for oil.
Smedley Butler, 1935: " War is a Racket "
How anyone still gets this wrong is symptomatic of too much inbreeding.
cougar_w -> Expendable Container Fri, 07/13/2018 - 19:12 PermalinkThe military is a taxpayer-funded merc army supporting Isra hell's goals none of which benefit the US.
TeethVillage88s -> cougar_w Fri, 07/13/2018 - 19:08 PermalinkNo, asshole. It's about money. About cash and gold. Profit. Markets. Growth. About cheap or free resources. Access to labor. New customers.
War makes companies rich, it might be the ONLY way they can get rich. War is waged when GM wants to sell trucks to the Pentagon. When Boeing wants to sell jets. When MIT wants money for arms research. When NATO wants a reason to exist. The dogs of war are loosed when oil gets tight. When countries won't "accept our cultural freedoms". When trade agreements aren't enough to open up new markets.
Isreal has fleeting nothing to do with it, except maybe when war aligns with their perceived need for hegemony in their own sphere. But by loading all this on Isreal you encourage others to miss the real fox in the henhouse. You could wipe Isreal off the Earth tomorrow and still have wars for profit for a thousand years to come.
This nation was born in war. It has practiced war since that day and will be at war with the rest of the world until humans are killed to the last and the last ounce of profit from war is had.
Idiocracy's Not Sure Fri, 07/13/2018 - 18:56 Permalinkor from systematic corruption of all US Institutions and the politicization of all US Institutions... you need a job, you want to work here, you say this, and you do this, ... tow the line, no politics, no whistleblowing,... and we won't blackball your ass from the industry... got it... u got debts, keep ur nose clean!
Quantify -> Idiocracy's Not Sure Fri, 07/13/2018 - 18:58 Permalinkthe US military has slacking pay.
AudiDoug Fri, 07/13/2018 - 19:17 PermalinkYes the pay sucks but you get more done before 8am than most people do in a week. But seriously its a pretty good gig in the long run. Medical care a decent retirement system, travel a chance to meet and integrate with different cultures and kill them...its pretty cool.
Debt Slave Fri, 07/13/2018 - 19:22 PermalinkExcluding a small percentage, the military is much like the DMV. We have a cartoon vision of all enlisted being GI Joe, ready to grab a gun and fight evil. This in not the case at all. Most positions are very simple, repetitive bureaucratic positions. Really is a giant Jobs program to keep people busy.
DingleBarryObummer Fri, 07/13/2018 - 18:59 Permalink"The idea at work here is that the US military is a lean machine, doing only what is necessary to get the job done, and as cost effectively as possible."
Then why are we still in Afghanistan?
No need to answer, the question is rhetorical.
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Jul 14, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Hickory
x Ignored says: 07/11/2018 at 11:20 amLooks like OPEC 14 peaked two years. Can they beat it?, perhaps by a small amount in a world without chaos.Today orange fatty called out Germany for being captive to Russia. I'm pretty sure he was referring to German dependence on imported fossil energy from Russia.
As of 2015 Germany net energy imports are 64% of total [USA 12% for comparison]. If this means 'captive', then perhaps we should acknowledge that 11 of our top 13 trading partners are highly dependent on imported energy from either Russia or the big OPEC producers.
'Captives' so to speak. Better get used to that idea, and learn how to get along with others. Only Canada and Mexico aren't 'captives', but we don't look to good at being friends with them either.
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Jul 14, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
coffeeguyzz x Ignored says: 07/13/2018 at 6:22 pm
Director's Cut out for May North Dakota just released.Guym x Ignored says: 07/13/2018 at 9:17 pmNew record production for both oil and gas with pretty low – 42 -- well completions reported as preliminary figures.
How much was production?coffeeguyzz x Ignored says: 07/13/2018 at 9:36 pm38,583,489 bbl. 1,244,629 bbld. 96% from Bakken TF (1,189,982 bbld).phatom x Ignored says: 07/13/2018 at 8:19 pmGas – 71,881,378 Bcf. 2.3 Bcfd.
Oil increase is about 1.6% above previous month.
The completed around 95 according to my data. The is lag in the data on confidential wells that will show up next month in the final data. Also if the Bakken was to get and hold 1.4 million barrels a day the would need to complete around 1500 wells per year.
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Jul 14, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
kolbeinh x Ignored says: 07/11/2018 at 6:11 pm
I managed to erase my own comment on this. And my comment was simple, the only true measurement of market balance for oil going forward is global inventory level. Everything else is perhaps manipulation or guesses.Guym x Ignored says: 07/11/2018 at 7:31 pmI agree, with all the intentional and unintentional confusion it stays confused. I stay confused trying to figure out what is confused. Inventory levels will be the only clear measure of what is happening. US inventories should not be dropping fast, as we are about the only country with increased production, but we dropped over 30 million last month. That's really not small potatoes, as commercial stocks are just a little over 400 million. Though, I think the US will be one of the last that would hit the danger zone.Tita x Ignored says: 07/12/2018 at 3:57 pmGood point. My intention was not to give more confusion. These are forecasts from eia and, I always like to remind this, they forecasted Brent averaging 105$ for 2015 in the STEO of October 2014. They never forecast big surplus or deficit.Guym x Ignored says: 07/12/2018 at 4:35 pmI messed with the numbers of the STEO from 2018 to guess when the are reliable. Inventory levels are accurate for the US from the monthly report, which is 3 months old (april for July STEO). Other inventory levels are less accurate, but stock changes are reliable from 4-5 month data.
Global inventories increased in April (0.74 Mb/d) and May (1.14 Mb/d). This would be quite a change, as April would be a record inventory build since January 2017, and it would be followed by another record. This have to be confirmed later.
So, now I know what I will look for in these STEO.
You gave data that I did not use before, and understand better, now. You did not confuse.Eulenspiegel x Ignored says: 07/13/2018 at 3:55 amHow does this fit with production and consumption?AdamB x Ignored says: 07/11/2018 at 11:14 amI thought we have still increasing consumption of about 1.5 mb/year, and production in April/May didn't jumped thad much – Opec flat and Permian already near it's pipeline bottleneck.
As much as I know, many storages are unknown, especially Opec / China. There are these satellite measurements, but there are additional deep storages.
Gathering all comsumption / raffinery input / production data would give an additional picture. Still not easy.
With 1mb/day surplus we should go soon into the next oil price crash to 30-40.
Permian price is then at 0-10$.
Even if we haven't hit peak yet, the fact that production is likely to be going up by a snail's pace the next 3 years is a problem. If consumption just goes up 0.75% a year we need 600K extra a year. That seems like a big challenge to a layman like myself.Timthetiny x Ignored says: 07/11/2018 at 12:57 pmWell what will happen is that the price of oil will hit $150-$200 a barrel to ration demand.Fernando Leanme x Ignored says: 07/11/2018 at 1:51 pmWhich will cause much pain and ruction and gnashing of teeth among the voters, but Europe has had those oil equivalent prices owing to taxation for quite some time and they manage high living standards. $200/bbl probably destroys 10 million a day in superfluous 'Becky driving by herself to the mall in a 3 ton SUV for no reason' kind of demand and incentivizes quite a bit of production.
The transition period will be moody for sure, but at $200/bbl, the amount of economic EOR targets in the US is somewhere in excess of 70 BBO from old conventional fields from the industry reports I have seen – its just not economic to do since there isn't enough CO2 available to flood them, so you need to use more expensive techniques which require very high prices (ethane flooding might be useful????). Worldwide its hundreds of billions. High prices that encourage us to use the resource wisely and not waste the goddamn stuff liberally would be a godsend, if we could quit wasting gigatons of plastic bullshit and 40% of our food – i.e. if everything made from oil was more expensive as well.
It would be painful economically, but Mad Max isn't coming our way. After 5 years of pain, we might actually finally get our shit together and research some goddamn alternatives.
I believe sugar cane ethanol is very competitive at $120 per barrel. This allows converting grass cattle grazing ground to cane. I believe soy and palm will also become very attractive crops. And I suspect countries like Haiti and Nicaragua will continue having riots.kolbeinh x Ignored says: 07/11/2018 at 4:32 pmYes, I believe you are right. The future energy picture is complex, but authors writing books about this say sugar cane ethanol could have EROEI (energy return on energy invested) of up to 4. Even based on mechanised agriculture. And the big advantage of this crop is that it is not very nitrogen intensive, the biggest fertilizer, currently energy intensive when it comes to natural gas usage. Even when it comes to preindustrial crop rotation, the nitrogen intensive main food crops were often rotated with legume crops which were not nitrogen intesive in the hope to rebuild nitrogen content in the earth. So very long term, sugar cane ethanol is a superb type of renewable energy. (that is what I read, no expert).Brazil has the biggest potential out there when it comes to size, and it is not inconceivable that they can cover much of domestic fuel demand with this outside aviation and possibly shipping (no need for diesel and gasoline ;-)). It would be in competition with food crops and concerns about deforestation, but still; a big potential there. Brazil is well off in a more renewable future btw, having loads of hydro power, wind power, in addition to biomass power (sugar cane the most promising).
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Jul 14, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Boomer II x Ignored says: 07/13/2018 at 6:11 pm
From the WSJ Exxon story.Boomer II x Ignored says: 07/13/2018 at 3:46 pm"[Exxon's] approach is a gamble in a new era of energy breakthroughs such as fracking and electric vehicles. Many of Exxon's competi-tors are transforming their businesses to move away from oil exploration, and have begun to spend carefully and diversify into renewable energy ."
"'Most investors like Exxon, but they like other companies better,' said Mark Stoeckle, chief executive of Adams Funds, which owns about $100 million in Exxon shares. 'The market is not willing to reward Exxon for spending today in hopes that it will bring good returns tomorrow.'
"Exxon has been pledging to produce more oil and gas for years, but its output of about four million barrels a day is no higher today than it was after its merger with Mobil Corp. in 1999. Even if Exxon succeeds in doubling last year's earnings of $15 billion (excluding impairments and tax reform impacts) by 2025, as Mr. Woods vowed in his eight-year spending plan, it would still be making far less than in 2008, when it set what was then a record for annual profits by an American corporation, at $45 billion .
"Exxon's fracking prospects in the Permian basin in West Texas and New Mexico, developed by its XTO unit, remain among its most profitable opportunities, the company says. Still, its U.S. drilling business has lost money in 11 of the last 15 quarters."
The Wall Street Journal has a big article on Exxon. I won't bother with a link because you won't be able to see it if you aren't a subscriber.Basically it says we've seen peak Exxon.
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Jul 14, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Tita x Ignored says: 07/11/2018 at 1:21 pm
I did a more thorough analysis of the STEO using their excel tables. Just comparing dec 18 production with dec 19 production. I just corrected some inconsistency with UK data, as dec19 had a drop of 300kb/d.Guym x Ignored says: 07/11/2018 at 2:05 pmnon-OPEC 2018 increase: 2.8 Mb/d
US increase: 2 Mb/d,
of which 1.4Mb/d of crude, 0.6Mb/d of NGL. Offshore increase of 400kb/d (to 1.89 Mb/d). Onshore increase of 1Mb/d.
Canada increase: 130 kb/d
Brazil increase: 176 kb/d
Russia increase: 211kb/dSo, indeed EIA doesn't forecast any constrains in US production. June to december growth for onshore production is forecasted at 430kb/d. The 1.4Mb/d figure comes probably from the monthly data. They are very optimistic, but there is nothing wrong.
When it says "crude" is that crude plus condensate, or is the condensate included in NGLs? The reason I ask that, is that the monthlies include crude plus condensate. 1.4 million increase does not tie into their summary page. 1 million crude per your spreadsheets does not agree to 600 to the Permian, plus 600 from the rest of the US, including the GOM. The summary analysis has 1.2 million. Adding onshore and GOM from the numbers you pulled is 1.4 million. Adding 2 million from the US plus Canada gives 2.13 million, not 2.3 per the summary. Adding 400 to the ending monthly for the GOM for 2017, gives a lot more than 1.89. Nothing jives. They are supposed to be just "optimistic" when the expect 430k to just magically appear in Cushing or Gulf coast without the aid of pipelines, trains, or trucks? No, wait, 400k of that is supposed to come from the Bakken and Eagle Ford, of which little has happened yet, nor will much. So, most of it has already figured out a way to get teleported. Or, is the optimism politically motivated.Ron Patterson x Ignored says: 07/11/2018 at 2:51 pmNo, the OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report reports crude only. Their data does not include condensate.George Kaplan x Ignored says: 07/12/2018 at 12:22 amThe EIA figures are always Crude+Condensate or Total Liquids. The EIA never reports crude only and OPEC never reports C+C.
NEB currently has Canada increase at about 250kbpd (for both yearly average and December exit rate), that may come down as they incorporate the upgrader outage and East Coast turn arounds.Guym x Ignored says: 07/12/2018 at 8:12 amThe GoM is not going to add 400 kbpd, it's more likely to be negative on average (December may be up slightly as 2017 had three major unplanned outages then (but at the moment EIA are reporting about 30 kbpd which don't come from any reported wells or leases so they may know something else). GoM has to replace about 20 kbpd per month of decline, which it isn't doing at the moment, plus overcome any planned/unplanned outages, which seem to be getting more frequent.
Brazil is going to struggle to get 180 kbpd increase. They were down 20 kbpd in May from December. They have two FPSOs ramping up but are fighting 30+ kbpd decline per month (and increasing). The are other FPSOs due but seem delayed and the ramp ups are slower than in the past, principally because of lack of drilling capacity. Probably they need two new development wells per month to keep level, given the normal delivery rate and that some are for injection, they only have 8 rigs, not all on new developments, but there may be some predrilled wells available.
Russia has more fields coming on stream, but it depends how much the mature fields decline – there must be a limit some time on how much in-fill drilling can be done.
So, replacing the EIA estimates with our own, we get for non-OPEC growth:Boomer II x Ignored says: 07/12/2018 at 1:29 pm
650. US (550 from the Permian, 100 Bakken)
Eagle Ford may drop
250. Canada
180. Brazil
300. Russia being generous1380. Total which is 1.42 short of their 2.8 million, or 2.6 (1.180) if you use their summary page. Even adding another 350 to the US still is close to 1 million short. OPEC contribution seems somewhat "optimistic", and does not factor in any Iranian drop. Yeah, should balance out.
Then, we have 2019, which is damn scary. The only potential partial offset is demand. If part of demand is computed based on funky supply numbers, then it is likely to be less than estimated. But not that much lower. Half a million is an overestimation. This much is politically motivated. The latest monthlies that will be posted before November will be August. Only four months to the end of the year. Going to be tough to keep this up. Four more months of inventory drops before November. OMR out, and indicates OPEC is stretched. I still find it easier to plug in my estimates with the OMR report. I get 2 million a day draws through 2019, at a minimum using their June report, and correcting.
https://www.iea.org/oilmarketreport/omrpublic/currentreport/
Their first page graph pretty much depicts serious draws without adjustment. They have a 2 million a day increase in non-OPEC production for 2018, lowered to 1.97 in this report.If the EIA is intentionally misrepresenting available supply, do they know better and are just trying to postpone some sort of economic panic?Guym x Ignored says: 07/12/2018 at 1:35 pmMisrepresenting is too strong a term. That would assume they are reporting the actual numbers wrong, which they do not do. These are projections, and they can be manipulated to serve the best purpose of keeping prices down until the elections. That's pure speculation.Ron Patterson x Ignored says: 07/12/2018 at 10:44 amAnother Chart.Guym x Ignored says: 07/12/2018 at 11:07 am
Thanks. Yeah, it's much worse. Looking at that, one could guess 1380- 400 non-OPEC (less US Canada and Russia) for 2018. But, because we were short in 2017, we've gone nowhere.George Kaplan x Ignored says: 07/12/2018 at 11:16 am180 for Brazil is a stretch. Fort Hills and Horizon have finished ramping up so 250 for Canada is also probably a stretch. US NGL may be a chunk to include but I wonder what the global decline for NGL on mature gas developments is. North Sea looks not as good as expected. The only place doing better than I thought is Mexico, and I think that could turn the other way any time.Guym x Ignored says: 07/12/2018 at 11:23 amEIA reports condensate, so does my estimate. There's about 300k extra in their detail of NGLs that I can't account for.George Kaplan x Ignored says: 07/12/2018 at 11:47 amBut i think there's a lot of NGPLs (i.e. butane and lighter) in the all liquids numbers, it's not just condensate (C5+).Guym x Ignored says: 07/12/2018 at 11:52 amAre the details of OPEC, IEA and EIA reports getting more and more focussed on short term issues, as if they have no idea how supply can meet demand longer term? Or am I missing something.
Unless, EIA is using a double standard in their STEO report for US vs Non-OPEC, I believe it would be crude plus condensate, only. It's crude plus condensate for US, for sure.Ron Patterson x Ignored says: 07/12/2018 at 12:27 pmThe STEO, table 3b, Non-OPEC, is total liquids. Table 4a, US only, is Crude plus Condensate. Table 3c, OPEC, is crude only.
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Jul 14, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Tita
x Ignored says: 07/13/2018 at 7:37 am Just saw this looking for the release date of the next DPR report, on the EIA website:"NOTE:
Productivity estimates may overstate actual production which could be limited by logistical constraints."So, EIA actually acknowledge these constraints, and admit they may be overstimating production, without saying by how much. Reply Guym x Ignored says: 07/13/2018 at 9:35 am
Reliable estimates of takeaway capacity for the Permian. Similar to Genscape, current pipeline capacity is estimated to be about 2.8. Drilling info does not mention total takeaway capacity, but Genscape estimates it at 3.3. Per the article, it was at 3.2 the end of May. The ending production, the end of 2017, was 2.8 from the Permian, making the end of May increase at 400k. I gave the projected increase 550k, because Genscape said 25k of additional trucking, may happen. Note, Drilling info lists some very small additional capacity that should come online this year, and soon, so it will probably wind up to be about 50k higher. Maybe. The gathering terminal gets it from New Mexico and West Texas to the Midland terminal, only, as I understand. The rest of the articles are mostly badly written press, but I think you can rely on Genscape and Drillinginfo.Guym x Ignored says: 07/13/2018 at 10:50 am
https://info.drillinginfo.com/permian-oil-and-gas-takeaway-capacity-improvements-on-horizon/Sometime soon, there will be an odd mixture of increased production and shut ins.
Also, if I estimate Permian production at 600k (generously), it equals the new EIA estimate. The remaining 600k US C&C production will have to come from other shales and the GOM. Good luck with that, it's July, already, and prices are too up and down, to date. Contrary to the EIA's and other analysts thoughts, $65 to $70 oil is pretty ho hum to producers. Also, there is no allowance here for other declines, of which there are some.
So, an updated revision to US increases (liquids) would be:
700 c@c US (600 Permian, 100 Bakken and others, GOM 0)
400 US NGLs ? Seems real high for an increase
250 Canada
180 Brazil
300 Russia
Total 1.83 versus a projection of an increase by EIA in the non-OPEC section of the STEO of 2.6, and I think mine is very "optimistic". And, as Ron points out above, it does not include roughly about 300 to 500k in declines that may happen to non-US, Russia and Canada non-OPEC production. The EIA's STEO report can be found in the local library next to Mother Goose.According to the EIA, we are pretty much finished with inventory declines.
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Jul 14, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Some owners are watching hundred of miles of battery range in their Model 3 simply evaporate while the car is parked.
^ Owners' Club ***e
Sunday at 6:02 PM • ©
I left our М3 parked in our driveway at the Jersey
Shore for the last 48 hours. Checked the app and had
only 62 miles of range! When I parked it Friday
afternoon it had about 180. What am I doing wrong!It's been super hot here. Is this usual? Is there a
setting I need to look at?©Keubiko ^0
@Keubiko
New Jersey now drains batteries, not just souls.
9:29 AM - Jul 7, 2018
Q? 21 See Keubiko's other Tweets
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Jul 14, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Tom Skraby
@TomSoCal
#ElonMusk Proud owner Model 3. Unfortunately, rear ended 2 weeks after delivery, a $700 bumper repair has turned into $9k.
Why are the battery packs not better protected? Barely touched, 5 weeks later, no car still. Steel cage?? It would seem there is a better alternative
1:22 PM-Jun 20, 2018
Q 19 ^ See Tom Skraby's other Tweets
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Jul 14, 2018 | beyondmoney.net
Fake News, Fake Money, How to Tell the Difference Posted on February 21, 2018 | Leave a comment Why is it so hard these days to tell fact from fiction? Who can be trusted to tell us what's really going on? Can the New York Times and Washington Post still be believed? And what about money? Can we still trust the dollar, the euro, the pound sterling? What supports national currencies, anyway? Is this Bitcoin thing real or fake money, and should I buy some?
Here's a compelling presentation by Andreas Antonopoulos, that addresses all of these questions. Antonopoulos is a technologist and entrepreneur and probably the most knowledgeable and insightful expert on bitcoin, blockchain technology and the profound changes that lie just ahead.
MUST WATCH!
Here's the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/i_wOEL6dprg
Now take a deep dive into the political realities of our time by watching this presentation by CIA officer Kevin Shipp, in which he exposes the Shadow Government and the Deep State. If you question his credibility here is a brief bio from Information Clearing House:
Kevin Shipp, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, intelligence and counter terrorism expert, held several high-level positions in the CIA. His assignments included protective agent for the Director of the CIA, counterintelligence investigator searching for moles inside the CIA, overseas counter terrorism operations officer, internal security investigator, assistant team leader for the antiterrorism tactical assault team, chief of training for the CIA federal police force and polygraph examiner. Mr. Shipp was the senior program manager for the Department of State, Diplomatic Security, Anti-Terrorism Assistance global police training program. He is the recipient of two CIA Meritorious Unit Citations, three Exceptional Performance Awards and a Medallion for high risk overseas operations. Website/book: fortheloveoffreedom.net
Here's the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/rQouKi7xDpM
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Jul 14, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
shortonoil -> SRSrocco Sun, 07/08/2018 - 16:00 Permalink
SRSrocco -> shortonoil Sun, 07/08/2018 - 16:55 PermalinkHi Steve, this is exactly what we have been talking about for the last 8 years. To make matters worse there seems to be a completely irrational belief that Shale will save the day. Outside of the fact that shale is not processable without heavier crude, and it is at best energy neutral, and probably negative, it is also long term unaffordable. There are 1.7 million Shale wells in the US. Over the next 5 years 1.4 million of those wells will have to be replaced to just keep production even. That will be $6.2 trillion even if done on the cheap. $6.2 trillion is equal to the total cost of all the finished product that will be consumed by the US for the next 12.8 years (@ $75/barrel). Expending 12.8 years of sales revenue to produce 5 years of oil is just not going to happen!
There seems to be a black out on this terrible situation. Some of that may be just plain ignorance, but I suspect that the main reason is that it is politically unspeakable. For that reason nothing is being spoken. As I have been saying for some time no one should expect big oil, big government, or big anything to come riding to the rescue. The individual is now completely on their own. Chose your options with discretion.
BW
Zen Xenu -> SRSrocco Sun, 07/08/2018 - 19:48 Permalinkshortonoil,
Agreed. The U.S. Shale Oil Ponzi Scheme will likely begin to disintegrate within the next 1-3 years. Already, the Permian oil productivity per well has peaked.
Then when the next Shale Oil ENRON event takes place... watch as the dominos fall.
steve
MrNoItAll -> SRSrocco Sun, 07/08/2018 - 21:21 Permalink@SRSrocco, U.S. Tight Oil depends on cheap credit. Regardless of oil prices.
Once cheap credit dries up and the previous debts are unable to be paid by drilling new wells, the entire scheme falls apart.
Oil prices do not drive U.S. Tight Oil as much as cheap credit from easy loans.
Eventually, U S. Tight Oil using new credit cards to pay debts on old credit cards will catch up with a vengence. Rising interest rates will be the catalyst. Rising oil prices only prolong the increasing debt.
Cloud9.5 -> Anonymous_Bene Mon, 07/09/2018 - 07:23 PermalinkDidn't the EIA publish something not long ago stating their concerns that we could see oil shortages by 2020? And around the same time, I recall that the Saudi Oil Minister came out and stated that without more investment, we would likely see oil shortages by 2020. And then at the recent OPEC meeting, I believe it was the Oil Minister from UAE who stated that we need to find a new North Seas equivalent oil field EVERY YEAR to meet projected demand, which of course is not going to happen. It has been a long slow grind since 2008 to get to this point, but from here on out I anticipate that things will start unraveling at an ever faster pace. Big changes on the way. But one thing that will NEVER happen is that the POTUS or some other world leader comes out and says we are running short on energy. Instead it will be Trade Wars, the damned Russians or some other lame propaganda -- anything but the truth.
EddieLomax -> JamcaicanMeAfraid Mon, 07/09/2018 - 04:33 PermalinkThis is a synopsis of the German Army study produced in 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyUe7w1gDZo
If you want the English translation of the study in its entirety, it can be found here: https://www.permaculturenews.org/files/Peak%20Oil_Study%20EN.pdf
The mitigation section of the study was most telling. It simply stated that local sustainable economies would replace the modern era. These economies included local food production and energy production. As this process unfolds, I simply do not see how a high rise is going to remain habitable.
Chief Joesph Sun, 07/08/2018 - 13:02 PermalinkZero hedge put a news story a while ago where (I think 2016) the US oil industry lost more in that it earned in the previous 7 years (mining in general), so more investment wouldn't have been coming in the US anyway - the price wasn't high enough to justify it.
Worldwide we are going to see some almightly crunch, whether it will arrive after 2020 will be seen. Ironically it might save Trump anyway if the world is seen to be beset by a oil supply crunch since its hard to blame that on him.
El Vaquero -> Chief Joesph Sun, 07/08/2018 - 13:31 PermalinkThe U.S. needs to get off its dead ass and start developing better batteries, solar power, and other alternative energy sources. This was talked about in 1973, during the Oil Embargo days, and its just astonishing the U.S. has done little since to ween itself off of oil. And now we now have a tariff against Chinese made solar panels. DUH!!! How dumb can you get?
bshirley1968 -> El Vaquero Sun, 07/08/2018 - 14:10 PermalinkLook at the energy density of those power sources. You'll never run an industrial civilization off of them. Electric cars may be great for zipping a couple of people around town from day to day, but you're never going to run the large mining and shipping equipment needed for our society. If you want to do that, you're going to have to develop viable breeder reactors and the technology to manufacture liquid fuels with that energy - and this is doable.
Right. There is nothing.....NOTHING....that can replace oil and gas as it is used and utilized by the modern industrial society. Nothing......
What needs to happen right now is a steady rise in prices that will condition our population to start learning to do with less cheap, easy energy. We have got to curb usage to give society a chance to begin to learn another way.
The major obstacle to doing this responsible, rational action? The egregious, criminal banking system that has gotten the world awash in debt to feed their greed. Any cut back in the use of energy will destroy the economy and their gravy train.
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Jul 14, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
But the doozie in the minutes was about the flattening "yield curve."
The yield curve is formed by Treasury yields of different maturities: normally, the two-year yield is quite a bit lower than the 10-year yield. Over the last several decades, each time the yield curve "inverted" – when the two-year yield ended up higher than the 10-year yield – a recession followed. The last time, the Financial Crisis followed.
So this has become a popular recession indicator that has cropped up a lot in the discussions of various Fed governors since last year. Today, the two-year yield closed at 2.55% and the 10-year yield at 2.84%. The spread between them was just 29 basis points, the lowest since before the Financial Crisis.
The chart below shows the yield curves on December 14, 2016, when the Fed got serious about raising rates (black line); and today (red line). Note how the red line has "flattened" between the two-year and the 10-year markers, and how the spread has narrowed to just 29 basis points:
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Jul 14, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Michael Cembalest, JPMorgan Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy, via LinkedIn.com, While some suggest a US-China war is inevitable , there's also enormous economic pressure on China and the US to find common ground. Compared to adversaries of the past 100 years, economic linkages between the US and China are much larger. In a prior post, we illustrated how in-country sales of US subsidiaries operating in China are almost as large as Chinese exports to the US, leaving the US highly vulnerable to retaliation by China if trade wars escalate. These trade tensions are just one part of the broader Chinese-US relationship; some observers expect military conflict between the US and China as well :
* In a 2017 survey by C100, 50% of Chinese citizens, 33% of Chinese business leaders and 35% of Chinese policy experts responded that war with the US was "very likely" or "somewhat likely". The percentages were only slightly lower amongst US respondents to the same question
* Harvard's Thucydides's Trap Project found 16 cases over the last 500 years in which a major nation's rise disrupted the dominant state. Twelve of these rivalries ended in war and four did not. The project is directed by political scientist and Presidential advisor Graham Allison, whose recent book is entitled " Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? "
* The Chinese state-owned newspaper Global Times wrote in 2015 that "if the United States' bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea"
Perhaps, but there's also enormous economic pressure on China and the US to find common ground. Compared to adversaries of the past 100 years, economic linkages between the US and China are much larger. The chart below is something I've been working on for the last few months. The idea is to measure the economic linkages between adversaries of the past and present. To do this, we add the outstanding stock of bilateral foreign direct investment, the amount of bilateral annual trade, and the amount of government bonds owned by the other country's Central Bank. Compare China/US today to Europe and Asia in the 1930's, to US/Russia in the 1980's and to India/Pakistan.
besnook Mon, 07/09/2018 - 17:58 Permalink
the zionists will stop at nothing to save the empire. they will fail but it is your life that is at stake, not theirs.
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Jul 10, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
"In this industry, to build a big book, you have to run afoul of the regulators" -Charles M. Hallinan
A former Main Line investment banker known as the "Godfather of payday lending" for preying on low-income borrowers was sentenced Friday to 14 years in federal prison and stripped of over $64 million in assets, reports philly.com .
Lawyers for 77-year-old Charles M. Hallinan argued that the prison term might as well be a "death sentence" given his age and declining health, however District Judge Eduardo Robreno gave no quarter as he rendered his verdict after a jury convicted him of 17 counts, including racketeering, international money laundering and fraud.
"It would be a miscarriage of justice to impose a sentence that would not reflect the seriousness of this case," Robreno said. "The sentence here should send a message that criminal conduct like [this] will not pay."
In all, government lawyers estimate, Hallinan's dozens of companies made $492 million off an estimated 1.4 million low-income borrowers between 2007 and 2013, the period covered by the indictment.
Robreno's forfeiture order will strip Hallinan of many of the fruits of that business, including his $1.8 million Villanova mansion , multiple bank accounts, and a small fleet of luxury cars , including a $142, 000 2014 Bentley Flying Spur. In addition, the judge ordered Hallinan to pay a separate $2.5 million fine. - philly.com
When given the opportunity to address the court before his sentence was handed down, Hallinan remained silent.
Hallinan's case calls into question the legality of business tactics engaged in by predatory lenders across the country - such as Mariner Finance , a subsidiary of former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner 's private equity firm Warburg Pincus.
Many of the loans Hallinan made had exorbitant interest rates which greatly exceeded rate caps mandated by the states in which the borrowers live, such as Pennsylvania's 6% annual cap.
In court Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Dubnoff argued that there was little difference between the exorbitant fees charged by money-lending mobsters and the annual interest rates approaching 800 percent that were standard on many of Hallinan's loans. - philly.com
"The only difference between Mr. Hallinan and other loan sharks is that he doesn't break the kneecaps of people who don't pay his debts," Dubnoff said. "He was charging more interest than the Mafia."
Hallinan "collect[ed] hundreds of millions of dollars in unlawful debt knowing that these businesses were unlawful, and all the while devising schemes to evade the law," wrote Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sara L. Grieb and Maria M. Carrillo.
Hallinan's attorneys argued that Hallinan should receive house arrest after a recent diagnosis of two forms of aggressive cancer.
"What is just, under the circumstances?" Jacobs asked. "If there is going to be a period of incarceration, one that makes it so that Mr. Hallinan doesn't survive is not just."
Judge Robreno largely ignored the plea, though he did give Hallinan 11 days to get his medical affairs in order before he has to report to prison.
Hallinan's orbit
Many of those whose careers Hallinan helped to launch are now headed to prison alongside the "godfather" of payday lending, " a list that includes professional race car driver Scott Tucker, who was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison in January and ordered to forfeit $3.5 billion in assets," reports Philly .
Hallinan's codefendant and longtime lawyer, Wheeler K. Neff, was sentenced in May to eight years behind bars.
Hallinan got into the predatory lending business in the 1990s with $120 million after selling his landfill company to begin making payday loans over phone and fax. He rapidly grew his empire of dozens of companies which offered quick cash under such names as Instant Cash USA, Your First Payday and Tele-Ca$h.
As more than a dozen states, including Pennsylvania, effectively outlawed payday lending with laws attempting to cap the exorbitant fee rates that are standard across the industry, Hallinan continued to target low-income borrowers over the internet.
He tried to hide his involvement by instituting sham partnerships with licensed banks and American Indian tribes so he could take advantage of looser restrictions on their abilities to lend. But in practice he limited the involvement of those partners and continued to service all the loans from his offices in Bala Cynwyd. - philly.com
" He bet his lifestyle on the fact that we would not catch him. He lost that bet ," said U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, William M. McSwain. " Now, it's time for Hallinan to repay his debt with the only currency we will accept: his freedom and his fortune, amassed at his victims' expense ."
1982xls -> HilteryTrumpkin Tue, 07/10/2018 - 14:59 Permalink
EmmittFitzhume -> 1982xls Tue, 07/10/2018 - 15:03 Permalinkhttps://www.washingtonexaminer.com/republicans-kill-obamas-awful-operat
https://reason.com/blog/2017/08/18/good-bye-and-good-riddence-to-operat
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/5/eric-holder-anti-gun-op
MasterPo -> EmmittFitzhume Tue, 07/10/2018 - 15:06 PermalinkCharles Shylock Hallinan
Mr. Universe -> Four chan Tue, 07/10/2018 - 15:27 PermalinkJust some pond scum floating on top of the swamp.
Most people have no clue what is about to be revealed, and it will rock their world. But for those of us that were red-pilled early on, it is heartening to see.
#WWGOWGA
[Just caught the picture of the mansion.
"There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house." - Mother Goose
That Mom Goose sure called 'em like she saw 'em...]
charlewar -> Mr. Universe Tue, 07/10/2018 - 15:31 Permalink64 million in stripped assets. I wonder how much of that is going back to those who were fleeced? How much goes to .gov? Oh and inquiring minds want to know, what happened to the other 400 million plus?
A Sentinel -> charlewar Tue, 07/10/2018 - 16:56 PermalinkAll goes to the govt. The small fish need sue what's left.
any_mouse -> A Sentinel Tue, 07/10/2018 - 17:19 PermalinkThis is an evil business.
finally someone got tagged for ripping off us plebs.
COSMOS -> CriticalUser Tue, 07/10/2018 - 18:07 PermalinkSo you think.
Did any peons receive any restitution?
Maybe a buck each from a class action brought on by Saul's Legal Team.
Parasites. Parasites with Political, Financial, and Social control.
Think of the damage a parasite could do, if that parasite could control what the host sees, hears, thinks, feels, and even control the muscles. You would be in pain, but not feel it. You could be poisoning yourself with bitter poison, while believing it is sweet honey.
Giant Meteor -> COSMOS Tue, 07/10/2018 - 18:23 PermalinkIn all fairness this dude is pocked change compared to the tribe bankers.
http://theweek.com/articles/479867/federal-reserves-breathtaking-77-tri
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/secrets-and-lies-of
None of the schmucks pulling off trillion dollar heists went to jail.
MoreFreedom -> Mr. Universe Tue, 07/10/2018 - 16:27 PermalinkSure, sure, point taken. But I don't believe that is a valid defense .. I get it, believe me. But I suspect if some higher profile cases with equilvalent outcomes aren't soon undertaken, some enterprising folks may soon take matters into their own hands .. And one could not blame them really ..
vato poco -> MoreFreedom Tue, 07/10/2018 - 17:11 PermalinkOne thing's for sure. There won't be any payday lenders operating in Pennsylvania, and poor people who need short term loans to deal with unexpected bills won't be getting any help, and instead will be suffering from the very high interest effective interest rates of late payment penalties. In defense of Hallinan, he didn't force anyone to sign up for these loans, he didn't break any kneecaps, and I'll bet his customers default on their loans at a high rate. There is also the legal question of from where the loan is made; given he had partners on Indian reservations and operated over the internet on behalf of those partnerships. Seems to me, the government is just grabbing this dying man's money. I'll bet he appeals the conviction to a higher court.
And does anyone believe US attorney Dubnoff who claims (which begs the question how he knows) that Hallinan charges more interest than the Mafia?
My other bet: Timothy Geithner won't be prosecuted for using the same tactics. And the poor will suffer more. While the article makes hay of Hallinan's wealth, he sold a waste management company (and I wouldn't be surprised there was political corruption involved in its growth given he lived in Philly) for $120 million and was already rich.
For a perspective in support of pay-day lenders, read these two Reason articles:
http://reason.com/blog/2017/04/13/payday-lenders-check-cashers-servon
http://reason.com/archives/2017/02/18/living-without-banks
Full disclosure: The only money I ever borrowed was a few thousand for a student loan, and for my home mortgage.
Giant Meteor -> MoreFreedom Tue, 07/10/2018 - 18:00 Permalinkthat's a good post on an issue that's too easy to go all knee-jerk on. +1 for you.
I've got a coupla terrific young relatives that I'm schooling in financial knowhow - because their parents are knuckleheads about money - and lesson #2 was 'payday loans are financial crack.'
but.
but the guy's lawyer WAS right to a degree: nobody made those victims/dumbasses sign up for them, and then not pay it back, thus flinging them into the ol' vicious downward spiral. also, there's this little fact: kids, if you find yourself lacking funds for a sudden unexpected financial expense, call it $500, you can 1) bounce a check 2) take a cash advance on your credit card, assuming you have any room left on it or 3) do the payday lender thing. let's say you only need the $ for 10 days, then ... I dunno .... then your tax refund check arrives.
cost of bouncing check (fees, etc), and bear in mind the bank will clear the big check first, thus making several other small checks bounce = $100? more?
cost of credit-card cash advance = $50, plus or minus
cost of payday loan vig = $15, plus or minus
they're kinda like handguns: just a tool. whether that tool saves your butt or ruins your life is entirely up to you, the adult. (the kids do not like this lesson very much - something about trying to avoid responsibility?)
the world is not necessarily all black and white. that said, I do hope that POS dies of treatable rectal cancer botched horribly by prison docs, resulting in a long, drawn-out, horribly agonizing death in a pink diaper
An interesting take. A friend to the poor . Never quite looked at it that way, and now, I have a tear in my eye . The poor fellow, friend to the poor working stiff.
Fucking friends like that . But at at least he wasn't breaking their knee caps and all. A real humanitarian!
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Jul 13, 2018 | www.globalresearch.ca
The world today is controlled by a small elite group that has been increasingly concentrating power and wealth in their own hands. There are many observable facets to this power structure, including the military security complex that president Eisenhower warned against, the fossil fuel interests, and the neocons that are promoting U.S. hegemony around the world, but the most powerful and overarching force is "the money power" that controls money, banking, and finance worldwide. It is clear that those who control the creation and allocation of money through the banking system are able to control virtually every other aspect of global society.
Having taken control of the political leadership in North America and western Europe, they are determined to use military force, if necessary, to create a unipolar world order in which the power elite enjoy "full spectrum dominance." Based on a long established pattern of covert and overt interventions, it is evident that they are willing to employ, either directly or through proxies, a wide range of tactics, including propaganda, bribery, cooptation, deception, assassinations, false-flag attacks and war. Large segments of the media and entertainment industries, education, and the military power have been captured to help manufacture public consent.
Be that as it may, I believe that the natural course of human evolution tends toward a multi-polar world order based on honesty, openness, compassion, cooperation, and fairness, but that requires a well-educated and informed populace and "broad spectrum" participation in the political process. Fortunately, the internet and world wide web have enabled people to be better informed than ever before and to engage with one another directly, bypassing intermediaries that control and limit what people can share. On the other hand, the political machinery has been so thoroughly taken over by the power elite that the will of the people has thus far been of little consequence in deciding the course of world affairs.
So what can be done to turn the tide? How can we the people empower ourselves to effectively assert our desires for a more fair, humane and peaceful world order? Is it possible to influence the behavior of those in power? Or is it possible to install new leaders who will act more responsibly and in accordance with the popular will? Or is necessary, or even possible, to reinvent and deploy political and economic structures by which people can more directly assert themselves?
It seems reasonable to assert that action must be taken on all levels, but I am inclined to believe that the greatest possibility of bringing about the desired changes lies in economic and political innovation and restructuring.
The monopolization of credit
I came to realize many years ago that the primary mechanism by which people can be, and are controlled, is the system of money, banking, and finance. The power elite have long known this and have used it to enrich themselves and consolidate their grip on power. Though we take it for granted, money has become an utter necessity for surviving in the modern world. But unlike water, air, food, and energy, money is not a natural substance -- it is a human contrivance, and it has been contrived in such a way as to centralize power and concentrate wealth.
Money today is essentially credit, and the control of our collective credit has been monopolized in the hands of a cartel comprised of huge private banks with the complicity of politicians who control central governments. This collusive arrangement between bankers and politicians disempowers people, businesses, and communities and enables the elite super-class to use the present centralized control mechanisms to their own advantage and purpose. It misallocates credit, making it both scarce and expensive for the productive private sector while enabling central governments to circumvent, by deficit spending, the natural limits imposed by its revenue streams of taxes and fees. Thus, there is virtually no limit to the amounts of resources that are lavished on the machinery of war and domination.[i]
In today's world, banks get to lend our collective credit back to us and charge interest for it while central governments get to spend more than they earn in overt tax revenues, relying on the banking system to monetize government debts as needed. These two parasitic drains on the economy, interest and inflationary monetization of government debts, create a growth imperative that is destroying the environment, shredding the social fabric, and creating ever greater disparities of income and wealth. At the same time, this scarcity and misallocation of money, which belies the abundance that exists in the real economy, leads to violent conflicts and provides the power elite with the means to pursue policies of domination, even at the risk of global nuclear war.
What most people still fail to recognize is that regardless of the nominal form of their government, their political power has been neutralized and exhausted by the political money and banking system. Democratic government in today's world is more an illusion and a hope than a reality. As Prof. Carrol Quigley wrote in his book, Tragedy and Hope (1966),
" the powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences."[ii]
In the succeeding decades since Quigley's revelation, their control mechanisms have been refined and extended to include the intelligence services and military power, political think tanks, the media, and virtually every segment of society. The U.S. agenda of regime change over the past several years[iii] is not so much about taking mineral and petroleum resources, that is a side benefit. By examining the pattern of interventions by the U.S. and NATO powers, it is clear that the primary objective is to force every country of the world into a single global interest-based, debt-money regime. No exceptions will be tolerated. Thus, Saddam Hussein had to go, Gaddafi had to go, Assad has to go, and Putin has to go (but deposing Putin will not be so easy). The war against Islam is also related because a significant proportion of Islamists are serious about eliminating riba (usury) which is an essential feature in the creation of all political money throughout the world today. The United States military is the enforcer that is used when threats, bribes, cooptation and covert operations prove insufficient. Thus, the United States, Britain and their NATO allies have become the greatest perpetrators of state-sponsored terror in the post-World war II era.
The Dollar Crisis? Nine Mind-Blowing Facts About Money, Debt Default and Reserve CurrenciesHow can such a power be confronted?
Fortunately, we the people have in our hands the means of our own liberation. It is the power to allocate our credit directly without the use of banks or political money. How to effectively assert that power is the main theme of my most recent book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization .
Over the years there has been a long parade of "reformers" who wish to take the power to create money away from the banks. This is an admirable objective that I wholeheartedly endorse. But the alternatives that they propose have been either to revert to commodity money, like gold, which has proven to be inadequate, or to transfer the money-issuing power to the central government -- what I call the "greenback solution." The latter harks back to Abraham Lincoln's scheme for financing the Civil War. That proposal calls for the federal government to bypass the Federal Reserve and the banks by issuing a national currency directly into circulation from the Treasury. At first glance that may seem like a good idea, but there are many flies in that ointment. First of all, the greenback solution does not propose to end the money monopoly but merely to put it under new management. But it is a gross delusion to think that the Treasury is, or might become, independent of the interests that now control the Federal Reserve and the major banks. Consider the fact that most of the recent Treasury secretaries have been former executives of Goldman Sachs, the most powerful financial establishment in the country. It is naïve to expect that they will serve the common good rather than the money power that has spawned them.
Second, central planning of complex economic factors has been shown to be unworkable. That is especially true with regard to money. Neither the Fed nor the treasury is qualified to decide what kind of money and how much of it is necessary for the economy to function smoothly. The issuance and control of credit money should be decentralized in the hands of producers of needed and desired goods and services. Thus the supply of money (credit) must automatically rise and fall in accordance with the quantity of goods and services that are available to be bought and sold. If private currencies and credit clearing exchanges are allowed to develop and grow without interference from the vested interests in political money, their superiority will quickly become apparent.
Third, the greenback solution does nothing to eliminate deficit spending and inflation which are enabled by legal tender laws. As long as political currencies are legally forced to circulate at face value, the abusive issuance of money, the debasement of national currency value, and the centralization of power will continue. All government programs, including social programs and the military budget, ought to be funded by legitimate government revenues, not by the underhanded means of monetary debasement. Centralized control of credit money and the imposition of legal tender laws enable the hidden tax that is called inflation. Salmon P. Chase , who as Lincoln's Treasury Secretary presided over the issuance of greenbacks, argued later as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court that the issuance of greenback currency was unconstitutional and exceeded the powers of the federal government. He said,
"the legal tender quality is only valuable for the purposes of dishonesty."
Finally, the political process has been so thoroughly corrupted and taken over by the power elite that political approaches to solving the money problem have virtually no chance of passage anyway.
... ... ...
*
Thomas H. Greco, Jr . is an educator, author, and consultant dedicated to economic equity, social justice, and community empowerment. He specializes in the design and implementation of private and community currencies and mutual credit clearing networks. His latest book is The End of Money and the Future of Civilization. His main website is https://beyondmoney.net/ . He can be reached at thgreco@mindspring.com .
Notes
[i] As E.C. Riegel put it in his book, A New Approach to Freedom , " as long as our governments are vast counterfeiting machines, Mars can laugh at peace projects."
[ii] This and other works of Carroll Quigley can be downloaded at the Quigley website, http://www.carrollquigley.net/ .
[iii] View General Wesley Clark's two minute revelation at https://youtu.be/9RC1Mepk_Sw .
[iv] An animated video that makes clear the credit nature of money and its sound basis is The Essence of Money , https://youtu.be/uO7uwCpcau8 .
[v] My 15 minute video, Disruptive Technologies Making Money Obsolete , https://youtu.be/ty7APADAa8g , describes how communities and businesses can escape the debt trap and become more resilient and self-reliant.
[vi] These arguments are more fully developed in my book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization . My Solar Dollar white paper at https://beyondmoney.net/2016/08/26/solar-dollars-a-private-currency-with-multiple-benefits/ provides the basic framework for the design and issuance of a private currency.
[vii] Some details on how to do this are outlined in chapter 15 of my book, an excerpt of which can be found at https://beyondmoney.net/excerpts/limiting-factors-in-the-operation-of-commercial-trade-exchanges/ .
The original source of this article is Beyond Money Copyright © Thomas H. Greco, Jr. , Beyond Money , 2018
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Jul 12, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Justin Raimondo via AntiWar.com,The kookification of the "mainstream" continues, with none other than Jonathan Chait – the most conventional sort of boring corporate liberal – producing an unhinged diatribe purporting to prove that Donald Trump has been a Russian agent since 1987 – and that his path to the presidency was paved by his Russian handlers, who were planning it all along. And not to be outdone, formerly rational person Marcy Wheeler, whose investigations as "emptywheel" won her some renown, is now claiming that she not only has definitive proof of Trump's collusion with the Kremlin, but that, as a result, she was forced to turn one of her sources into the FBI for some vague cloak-and-dagger-ish reason.
I looked in on the Chait production, and came upon his reiteration of the Alfa Bank computer link – this was a story, you'll recall, that claimed there was a stream of communications between this "Kremlin-connected" bank and the Trump organization. This, we were told, was almost certainly Vladimir Putin sending instructions to his zombie-agents in the Trump White House. Yes, this was actually the story, backed up by several computer "experts" – except it turned out to be advertising spam . Chait repeats this story, adding it on top of the several dozen other conspiracy factoids he throws in the mix – but without mentioning that the computer signals were simply ad-bots. On the basis of this, and a string of other "interactions" with Russians, we are supposed to believe that the omnipotent Russian intelligence agencies hatched a plot 30 years ago to put Trump into the White House. This is a conspiracy theory that's so shoddy and far-fetched that not even Alex Jones would touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Which brings us to an interesting question: do these people really believe their own craziness?
In some instances, it's pure psychopathology. That's the case, I believe, for Marcy Wheeler, Louise Mensch, and the more active online Twitter-paranoids. These people have been so shocked by the unexpected – the election of Trump – that they have been forced into a dubious mental state bordering on insanity.
However, in the case of Jonathan Chait, it's pure viciousness and cynicism. He even says of his own theory that it's "unlikely but possible." It's just a show for the suckers. The same is true for most of the other journalists who have enlisted in #TheResistance and given up any pretense at objectivity: they are simply doing what they do best, and that is taking dictation from their spookish sources. The treatment of Russia-gate in the media parallels precisely what occurred with Iraq's storied "weapons of mass destruction" – reporters are taking it all on faith, and they don't even necessarily believe it. Thus the biggest hoax since Piltdown Man is reported as "fact." And of course all this is coming to the fore as Trump takes on NATO and our European "allies."
For anti-interventionists, Trump's trip to Europe could not be more timely or enlightening. He went to the NATO meeting with a few admonitory tweets up front , complaining that America pays far more than a fair share of the alliance's monetary costs, and no sooner does he get off the plane than he notes that for all the anti-Russian rhetoric coming out of our allies, the Germans are cuddling up to the Russians on the energy front with the Nord Stream II pipeline. Merkel shot back that Germany is, after all, an independent country and can do what it likes. True, but then why the weird contradiction between claiming that Russia is a military threat and also setting up the mechanism of energy dependence?
Before getting on the plane for his European sojourn, the President reiterated his longstanding position:
"We pay far too much and they pay far too little. The United States is spending far more on NATO than any other country. This is not fair, nor is it acceptable."
And the cost is not just measured in monetary terms: there's also the incalculable cost of risking war, under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which obligates us to come to the aid of a NATO ally that's under attack, or at least that claims to be under attack. In which case, the government of tiny Montenegro, with a population of a bit over half a million, could declare that the Russians are trying to pull off a coup, and US troops would be in country "defending" it against an incursion that may not even exist.
Take a look at the Euro-weenies squirming in their seats at that "bilateral breakfast," which was turned into a lecture by the President about why the burden of empire should not fall only on our shoulders. Pompeo and Kay Bailey Hutchinson don't look happy, either, but that's just too bad, now isn't it? The President is speaking truth to the once high-and-mighty – and more power to him!
Meanwhile, the main event is going to be in Helsinki: NATO is just a sideshow. After all, militarily the alliance is really nothing but the United States and a few Brits: the Europeans carry little actual weight. The really serious business will take place with Putin, although there is a relentless propaganda campaign in progress to prevent Trump from making the Helsinki summit a success.
What must be addressed in Helsinki is the backsliding of both countries when it comes to preventing a nuclear catastrophe. The program to find and secure loose nukes, which became a problem after the breakup of the Soviet Union, needs to be renewed, in addition to the mutual disarmament agreements that have fallen by the wayside , with the US and the Russians re-arming . As tensions between Washington and Moscow rise, the possibility of a nuclear conflict increases, along with the chances of an accidenta l nuclear exchange. The nuclear death machine is on automatic, with all kinds of scenarios where it could be set off by something other than an enemy attack : a terrorist strike in Washington, D.C., or anywhere, involving nuclear material, or simply a computer software glitch. Americans would be horrified to learn just how close we are to an extinction event.
The Trump-haters would rather the President fail than give him credit for securing the peace. They would much prefer to wage a new cold war with Russia than put an end to the horrific threat of utter annihilation that's cast a dark shadow over the world for all this time. In preferring universal ruin to the vindication of their enemies, they fit the very definition of what it means to be evil.
Trump is out to transform US foreign policy by – finally! – recognizing the reality that's been in place since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The old structures that served us when Communism was thought to be a threat to Europe are no longer functional, and haven't been for quite some time. NATO today is nothing but a gigantic subsidy to two major beneficiaries: our European "allies" and the big arms manufacturers such as Boeing, Raytheon, etc. The current arrangements allow the European welfare states to huddle under the US nuclear shield while dispensing all kinds of goodies to their citizens. It's quite a racket for all concerned: as NATO countries must continually update their military equipment to meet rising standards, American taxpayers are footing most of the bill.
Whether Trump succeeds in getting the incubus of NATO off our backs, or not, this outmoded institution is bound to wither away no matter who is in the White House, for the simple reason that it no longer serves any useful purpose. Those howls of outrage you're hearing are all coming from self-interested parties being cut off from the gravy train – and, as such, all that noise should be music to our ears. Tags Politics War Conflict Commercial Banks Commercial Aircraft Manufacturing Oil Related Services and Equipment - NEC Aerospace & Defense - NEC
Comments Vote up! 27 Vote down! 3
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GunnyG Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:45 Permalink
jm -> GunnyG Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:46 PermalinkUnhinged loons all. The only collusion seems to be between the Magic Nigger and Putin along with Hellery and Mueller and Uranium One.
President Obama : "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility."
President Medvedev : "I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir, and I stand with you."
Dickweed Wang -> jm Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:48 PermalinkWe're over it.
Automatic Choke -> Dickweed Wang Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:53 PermalinkMore projection from the left . . . accusing Trump of the very thing(s) they themselves are guilty of. It's really getting obvious.
Billy the Poet -> Automatic Choke Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:55 PermalinkI have a good friend. Intelligent, usually quite well balanced, but a bad case of TDS. She keeps falling back on "where there is smoke there must be fire....we keep hearing about Russia and Trump, so it must be true."
I have yet to point out to her that is precisely what was behind Goering's philosophy of "tell a lie often enough and people will believe it to be true". After all, she is also jewish, and the Goering reference might make her head explode.
DingleBarryObummer -> Billy the Poet Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:58 PermalinkHave you shown her the Steele dossier which lists Kremlin agents and Russian spies as sources A, B, C and G?
Boing_Snap -> DingleBarryObummer Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:23 Permalinklet's get some Likud/Chabad Lubavitch-gate articles
lazarusturtle -> Boing_Snap Thu, 07/12/2018 - 19:05 PermalinkRussiaGate was spawned as Trump was calling her out for her crimes, the ties to the Uranium One scam were obvious and public. So in typical fashion she paints her opponent with the the false brush of her crimes to deflect the reality.
Besides the MI6 need to smear the Russians was first on the agenda anyway, can't have the Russians looking good on anything.
MillionDollarButter -> lazarusturtle Thu, 07/12/2018 - 20:25 PermalinkThank Q for exposing all the closet zionists. When you replace the word "Russiagate" with "Israelgate", then all the 'fire & fury' over the Trump presidency actually starts to make sense.
TBT or not TBT -> MillionDollarButter Thu, 07/12/2018 - 20:56 PermalinkTo the new owners of ZH. Everyone knows what's up.
Rapunzal -> DingleBarryObummer Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:23 PermalinkCrazy OR cynical? Embrace the healing power of and.
WallHoo -> Rapunzal Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:34 PermalinkNo it's just a hollow divide and conquer meme, to keep the sheeple arguing about nonsense and keep the flow of fake news at a high level. Don't give the sheeple a moment of a break, they might start to think for themselves.
Nature_Boy_Wooooo -> Automatic Choke Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:56 PermalinkCome on rapu dont say that,you can do better!!
Life rule number one if someone supports something beyond reason that means that they benefit from it.
stant -> Automatic Choke Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:00 PermalinkI think deep down these people know it's nonsense, they just hate Trump so much they feel the need to be dishonest just to try and hurt him.
It blows my mind because these are the same people who would have a meltdown if a prosecutor went after a black man with these tactics. Somehow they feel that a malicious prosecution is acceptable just this one time.
Consuelo -> Automatic Choke Thu, 07/12/2018 - 18:05 Permalinkthe tribe has a cult following. the crack pipe has second hand smoke
Consuelo -> Automatic Choke Thu, 07/12/2018 - 18:05 PermalinkAncient hatred of ethnic Russians from the old Khazarian empire, now known as 'Ukraine'...
It is no wonder, nor surprise that Khazarian cockroaches who infest the halls of U.S. foreign policy are apoplectic regarding any warming of common-sense relations with Russia.
Is-Be -> Automatic Choke Thu, 07/12/2018 - 18:13 PermalinkDup.
TeamDepends -> jm Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:51 PermalinkHer head will explode with Guilt.
https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Tell_the_Truth_and_Shame_the_De
lookslikecraptome -> TeamDepends Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:03 PermalinkTrump Acceptance Resistance Disorder induced hysteria. So, crazy. And yet, many are some of the most cynical creatures you'll ever meet- true misanthropes. So there's that.
Boing_Snap -> TeamDepends Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:30 Permalinkhow about something interesting.You know about dick eater McAffe and the crypto world.We all know the dem/lib shit about Russia and Trump is already complete bullshit.
I Am Jack's Ma -> jm Thu, 07/12/2018 - 18:28 PermalinkYes, the Libtards that think they're smarter than everyone else are the most trapped by their ego.
Present fact, logic and reasonable discourse and these geniuses lose their sheet and produce fallacy, fake news, and eventually run away from the conversation or end up in tears.
Funny and sad at the same time.
new game -> GunnyG Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:09 PermalinkThe anti-Russia hysteria comes from all over the Left as well as parts of the Right...
But as with Chait, Mensch, Kristol, Appelbaum, Gessen and on and on and on you find Jews wildly over-represented in the Putin bashing (which is one thing - he's a politician in bed with some bad hombres and not at all above criticism) and Russia itself.
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/hating-russia-is-a-full-time-job/
GunnyG -> new game Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:22 Permalinki was just up at a lake in northern mn and there was two loons going nutso on the lake! guess what i was thinking?
lol...
it was pretty cool. it was like a spat on the water, or a sexual experience. don't know cept they were making a hell-of-a-lot of cool sounds...
esum -> GunnyG Thu, 07/12/2018 - 18:40 PermalinkThe Americanus Liberalum Loonicus does not make cool sounds. It screeches, mewls, whines, and bitches and moans.
N0TME -> GunnyG Thu, 07/12/2018 - 19:32 PermalinkDEMS/LIBTARDS
suk ya dick for a dolla
LawsofPhysics Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:48 PermalinkI have a question. Why is this still an issue?
I thought it was over.
1 Alabama -> LawsofPhysics Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:25 PermalinkWar is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Get in line comrade!
LawsofPhysics -> 1 Alabama Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:33 Permalinkignorance is also bliss, far from strength
louiedafag -> LawsofPhysics Thu, 07/12/2018 - 18:00 PermalinkStill nothing useful to add and completely ignorant of history...
expected.
NukeChinaNow -> LawsofPhysics Thu, 07/12/2018 - 21:17 Permalinksmall is big. big is small.
Biggy Small
attah-boy-Luther Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:48 PermalinkSexual deviance is pride.
Infanticide is choice.
Invader is undocumented migrant.
It's a hell of a LONG list the evil bastards have going-to try to destroy western civilization with cutesy little names to deflect from the truth about what they REALLY support.
But hey, what do I know?
I'm sure there are a lot people who can easily add to my list. Have at it.
cheech_wizard -> attah-boy-Luther Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:54 Permalinkonly ones that believe russsia-gate rev.1.0/2.0/3.0 etc are:
______________________________________________
Copy and paste and fill-in!
TeamDepends -> cheech_wizard Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:17 Permalinkonly ones that believe russsia-gate rev.1.0/2.0/3.0 etc are:
Congressman Adam Schiff-for-brains -or- the thoroughly rabid idiots over on Democratic Underground
Copy and paste and fill-in!
What did I win?
shovelhead -> TeamDepends Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:30 PermalinkA Full Del Monte from Stormy Daniels and parting gifts.
Consuelo -> cheech_wizard Thu, 07/12/2018 - 18:07 PermalinkIs that a melon salad?
Lost in translation Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:49 PermalinkDoesn't Schiff have some Epstein to diddle with at the Pizza joint...?
TeamDepends -> Lost in translation Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:20 PermalinkI'll take demonically-possessed for $800, Alex.
1 Alabama -> Lost in translation Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:27 PermalinkBingo! Communism is merely thinly-veiled Luciferianism. Take the Alinskyites, please.
geno Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:49 PermalinkWhat is the U.S. gvt?
geno -> geno Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:50 PermalinkMeanwhile look at this "elite" Russian military tech FAILURE..:
http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-admits-defeat-su-57-not-going-int
Billy the Poet -> geno Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:59 PermalinkI actually like Russia and hope for a good relationship with them, but the US must fail and Russia is the best cheer-leading on this site has become unbearable.
chestergimli -> Billy the Poet Thu, 07/12/2018 - 19:04 PermalinkI see lots of folks here who want both the US and Russia to succeed. That's one of the reasons we support the President and his policy of peace, commerce and honest friendship with old Cold War enemies. It's not 1949/1950 anymore.
Is-Be -> geno Thu, 07/12/2018 - 18:23 PermalinkI'd like to see them get together with CHIna and do the Jews in.
cheech_wizard -> geno Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:58 PermalinkGet it through your thick skull,
Just because Russia exists, does not imply any action is required from the USA.
As the ancient and venerable ancestral religions of Asatru and Vanatru say, "There are many ways of Being in the world, and this is natural and Good".
Tend to the mote in your own eye.
new game -> cheech_wizard Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:16 PermalinkSo the Russians realized that US equipment is crap and can be handled by what they already have.
No real surprise there. U.S. military equipment is in many cases relying on electronic components from the 70's and 80's rather than upgrading their electronic systems.
shovelhead -> cheech_wizard Thu, 07/12/2018 - 17:40 Permalinkgrift and graft has succeeded in making the military a pork barrel of overprice inferior stuffs.
quantity but not quality. sooooo many problems associated with uuuuuge budgets..
don't know where to go-just so many issues that could be solve by shrinkage.
half it and see what happens for strters...
Is-Be -> cheech_wizard Thu, 07/12/2018 - 18:29 PermalinkRussia won't waste money on an impractical design that's really not worth the enormous cost? Why, that's crazy.
Instead of spending millions to make a pen write in 0 G, they use a 2 cent pencil?
Barbarians.
dietrolldietroll Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:49 Permalink
US. military equipment is in many cases relying on electronic components from the 70's and 80's rather than upgrading their electronic systems.
That's a surprisingly pertinent observation.
So where did the $21 TRILLION dollars that Catherine Austin Fitts found missing Go, if not into weapons upgrades?
That sort of coin buys you a whole new civilization.
Incredulity is not an argument.
GoHillary2016 Thu, 07/12/2018 - 16:50 PermalinkCrazy, cynical, moronic. Yeah.
Is-Be -> GoHillary2016 Thu, 07/12/2018 - 18:30 Permalinkthey are very similar to Trump fanatics, they will believe any crazy shit.
If you say so, it must be true, O great Oracle.
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Jul 11, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
It seems that widespread suspicions that Tesla CEO Elon Musk resorted to cutting corners in his pursuit of ramping up Model 3 production to meet his lofty production targets may be valid.
Martin Tripp - the former Tesla engineer who on June 20 was sued by Tesla for trying to "sabotage" the company - is alleging several egregious safety violations that, if true, could destroy what remains of Musk's tattered credibility.
In an email sent by Meissner Associates, a law firm which has represented whistleblowers to the SEC and which was retained by the whistleblower, Tripp alleged that Tesla made misstatements to investors about placing batteries with holes punctured in them into vehicles to help pad out its Model 3 production numbers in pursuit of Musk's goal of producing 5,000 Model 3s a week.
He also alleged that Tesla placed battery cells too close together and didn't properly secure them, raising the risk of future combustion, and that the company "systematically" reused parts that had been deemed to be scrap or waste.
Tripp's claims remind us of some inconsistencies highlighted by Vertical Group's Gordon Johnson , who pointed out that some of the supposedly "finished" cars had been labeled "factory gated", meaning they still required additional testing and quality inspections.
So far Tesla shares appear unaffected by the report.
Canadian Dirtlump -> Impoverished P Wed, 07/11/2018 - 12:13 Permalink
Canadian Dirtlump -> The Dreadnought Wed, 07/11/2018 - 12:37 PermalinkI think we are seeing more and more the calling card of a sociopath / psychopath. Not surprising to us here, but to the wider population. Again, as with several other examples - simple honesty would have been smarter, yet the guy lies through his teeth. Hilary Clinton syndrome. A pathological need to lie even when it will work out badly for you.
snblitz -> Canadian Dirtlump Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:01 PermalinkThey certainly ger erratic and lash out when they get challenged. As the heat gets turned up, especially when questioning their intelligence, the LOCO dial gets cranked.
WhackoWarner -> Canadian Dirtlump Wed, 07/11/2018 - 12:51 PermalinkThey certainly get erratic and lash out when they get challenged
Over the last 15 years and especially in the last 5 years I have noticed the generally population acting similarly.
The slightest challenge is met with a barrage of nasty words and uncontrolled anger.
Lately I have been thinking this might be due to over medication.
Maybe wealth causes it too?
RubberJohnny Wed, 07/11/2018 - 12:07 PermalinkBipolar operates differently than a run of the mill sociopath or heavens? psycho.
Bipolar does impulse and then knows not how to "walk it back".
Bipolar with good intelligence will resist drugs that numb the mind. Then the fly off the handle operates.
Bipolar is not the way to go with a billion dollar Ponzi. Though the bipolar CEO may believe every single dodge and lie.
And bipolar head of company will lash out without control. Bipolar is no fun and is not really reliable despite the "genius" of creativity.
Guy should be given a long rest away from other people's $.
Bipolar is prone to grandiose project dreaming...
Automatic Choke -> RubberJohnny Wed, 07/11/2018 - 12:10 PermalinkNothing new here. All great innovators have experienced the negative and disparaging onslaught from the unwashed illiterate rabble who lash out in jealous fury accompanied by a liberal dose of envy at those people who lead rather than grovel in the shit dropped by the herd.
Stay strong Elon and God Speed.
Rubberjohnny.
Juggernaut x2 -> RubberJohnny Wed, 07/11/2018 - 12:17 Permalinkditto
Juggernaut x2 -> RubberJohnny Wed, 07/11/2018 - 12:21 PermalinkElon is not an innovator, dipshit, he just figured out a way to sell electric cars to rich assholes for an exorbitant price.
RubberJohnny -> Juggernaut x2 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 12:28 PermalinkThat's not innovation- it's marketing. A Nissan Leaf does the same thing for $35K but some soulless Silicon Valley millionaire needs to buy a Tesla to feel validated. It's just a bunch of batteries wired together to power an electric motor- it was done basically the same way 140 years ago.
snblitz -> RubberJohnny Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:08 PermalinkSounds like you bought one and you're not happy.
Elon is blasting off a rocket next week and even offered a sub to the Thai Government to assist with the rescue of those youngsters from that flooded cave.
Was your submarine in the shop?
I just think people are piling on a bit too heavy on the guy.
JamcaicanMeAfraid -> RubberJohnny Wed, 07/11/2018 - 12:54 PermalinkSo, what's the problem? [selling high priced electric cars to the rich]
The problem is taking Elon at his word, math, and physics. The stated goal of Tesla is to save the planet from emissions related to fossil fuel.
The Teslas driving around Silicon Valley burn twice as much fossil fuel per mile driven as do light duty diesels and the Telsas pollute more too.
https://www.finitespaces.com/2018/02/14/electric-cars-use-twice-as-much-oil-as-diesel-vehicles/
Goodsport 1945 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 12:14 PermalinkInteresting that you call him a visionary. Firstly as has been noted above that electric cars were among some of the very first automobiles built. So nothing new there.
The United States government through the DOE were conducting research during Bush 43's tenure in the area of fuel cells and fuel cell powered automobiles. Pretty visionary stuff that. Yeah spare me the issues surrounding fuel cells, I know them all. However as soon as Obama turned up guess who was first in line to see to it that the US Government subsidized battery powered autos and stopped all work on fuel cell powered vehicles. Why that would be Musk; visionary, savior of the planet, greenie all the way. Why then lobby Barry and his ilk to kill off fuel cells. Musk wanted no part in a competitive alternative, some might argue a better one.
By the way if you want an example of Musk's commitment to the environment take a look at the Fremont factory via any of the mapping applications. It's very apparent that Telsa is certainly only committed to the betterment of the climate through words and not deeds. No recycling at that plant.
Goodsport 1945 -> MonsterSchmuck Wed, 07/11/2018 - 12:17 PermalinkWhistle blowers - whom I refer to as honest, diligent employees - are the only real protection consumers and investors have to defend themselves from a congress that caters to corporations and banks. We can support them this fall by firing every complicit house member and 1/3 of the senate. In January, we could have a house of representatives working for us. In two years, we could have a majority of the senate truly representing the people of our nation.
rosiescenario Wed, 07/11/2018 - 12:23 PermalinkA self promoting one at that who fails to realize real wealth is earned by delivering quality products, not by Wall st and it's ridiculous P/E ratios.
thebigunit Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:04 PermalinkWhile Elon has various character defects that make him a grating personality, he has still managed to create the first new car company to be seen in many decades. I am no fan, but it is still impressive.
More FUD from the Tesla short squeezeiings. "Did we make Tesla stock crater yet?"
MORE FUD! MORE FUD! MORE FUD!
Isn't the SEC supposed to notice this kind of stuff and say something?
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Jan 11, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
President Trump is, rightly, stirring the pot in Europe today, reportedly demanding that NATO leaders increase their defense spending targets from 2 to 4% , according to the Bulgarian president.
"President Trump, who spoke, raised the question not just to reach 2%, today, but set a new target – 4%," Bulgarian president Rumen Radev told reporters, according to Reuters, citing BNR public radio.
"NATO is not a bourse a which one can buy security. But yes, on the other hand, President Trump is right, as each country should build its effective capabilities, and the unwillingness with which Bulgaria spends money on defense is obvious."
As a reminder, US only spends 3.57% of GDP (which is the most), and as one French official noted, "it wasn't a demand, rather just a mention.".
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders confirmed that:
"During the president's remarks today at the NATO summit, he suggested that countries not only meet their commitment of 2 per cent of their GDP on defence spending, but that they increase it to 4 per cent," Sanders said after the closed-door meeting of NATO leaders.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was reluctant to endorse such a move.
"I will focus on what we have agreed and we have agreed that we committed to the pledge increasing defense spending to 2 percent," he told reporters. "And let's start with that. We have a way to go."
"We do have disagreements, but most importantly, we have decisions that are pushing this alliance forward and making us stronger," Stoltenberg said.
"At the end of the day, we all agree that North America and Europe are safer together."
And then President Trump doubled-down on his earlier shot at Germany:
"Germany, as far as I'm concerned, is captive to Russia because it's getting so much of its energy from Russia," Trump told NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a fiery on-camera exchange that was among the harshest in the history of the post-World War II alliance.
"We have to talk about the billions and billions of dollars that's being paid to the country we're supposed to be protecting you against," Trump said, referring to European purchases of Russian natural gas.
blasting "What good is NATO if Germany is paying Russia billions of dollars for gas and energy?"
Trump then returned to the broader NATO membership, asking "Why are their only 5 out of 29 countries that have met their commitment? The U.S. is paying for Europe's protection, then loses billions on Trade."
Trump ended with ALL CAPS: " Must pay 2% of GDP IMMEDIATELY, not by 2025. " As a reminder, NATO members agreed in 2014 to spend at least 2 percent of their respective GDP on defense by 2024. The goals are also for each country's own defense budget, not payments into the alliance.
One glance at the current spending levels and it is clear that Trump is right.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Still, it all seems smiles in Brussels for now...
Jayda1850 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:10 Permalink
HankPaulson -> Jayda1850 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:11 PermalinkTrump has the MIC's dick so far up his ass that it is coming out of his mouth.
skbull44 -> IridiumRebel Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:14 PermalinkWait - isn't the master supposed to pay the servants?!
Looney -> skbull44 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:16 Permalink'Defense' spending....Making the MIC great again.
Rapunzal -> silverer Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:29 PermalinkIf Trump wants to sell more military hardware to the European deadbeats, he should stop nagging them to death and, instead, promptly pull out of NATO.
Their militaries are almost non-existent and when they lose the Article V Umbrella, they will come crawling, lining up around the block, and begging us to sell our hardware to them.
Germany, France, and the UK do have a few shitty planes, tanks, and ships, but it would take 15-20 years to mass-produce them.
We've been resting on our laurels since the fall of the Berlin Wall and our hardware ain't much better than theirs – we just happen to have a lot of it.
So, Donald, pull the fuck out – show them (and us) that you can actually WALK AWAY. Pretty please with a dingleberry on top? ;-)
Looney
macholatte -> Drater Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:29 PermalinkAll wars are bankers wars. The Cold War was fake and only created by both sides to control their population and tax them. Listen to US colonel who delivered all US military patents and the nuclear bomb to Stalin. Those decisions are made by a few, very powerful.
luckylongshot -> IronSights on'um Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:24 PermalinkFuck the EU!
- Victoria Nuland-Kagan
Drater -> IridiumRebel Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:26 PermalinkSeems to be a development of his idea that Mexico should pay for the wall to keep illegal immigrants out of the US. This version is that the EU should pay for the costs of the US bullying and interfering in other countries affairs even though it only benefits Israel.
Case in point the middle east where thanks to Israeli US meddling the EU has been saddled with dealing with the refugees. Now Trump wants the EU to pick up the costs of the US military meddling as well. Classis symptoms of a screw loose.
farflungstar -> Muroluvmi Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:16 PermalinkIf you like your NATO you can keep your NATO...
TheRideNeverEnds -> farflungstar Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:25 PermalinkYep fuck NATO let EU pay for their own defense against a ginned up imaginary enemy.
Winston Churchill -> Md4 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:30 PermalinkWhat is NATO supposed to be defending against anyway? The USSR fell a generation ago and the current threat is third world Muslims flooding into the west but they welcome that.
I could see maybe if NATO was sinking ships in the med and gunning down packs of invaders at the borders to Europe they would have a place but they are doing exactly the opposite of this.
Rothbardian in -> Petrodollar Sy Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:29 PermalinkOnly the Balts and Poland want to be US occupied territory and they don't want pay for the occupation either if
it means having to buy overpriced MIC junk.
Trump is trying to dissolve NATO, but just how will that pass the Senate ?
I wonder what 'his' generals think about it.
JuliaS -> GunnyG Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:45 PermalinkIs alpha code for narcissistic idiot?
optimator -> Umh Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:16 PermalinkThe problem is that many countries in Eastern Europe are useless economically. Without being played like pawns by militant imperialists they cannot survive. So they accepts bribes from the West and from the East, pretending they haven't made up their mind as to which side they want to be on. And the truth is - they're on the side of money.
They don't care if there are radar stations or missile silos installed on their soil. They don't care even about becoming a potential target in case a war breaks out. All they want is to extort maximum buck out of rivaling factions. Some NATO members can afford to disband the organizations. For smaller players it's a cash cow and a source of employment. Without NATO they would be non-competitive economically.
Umh -> optimator Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:45 PermalinkPerhaps you know? Does the Germany still pay for the occupation forces and does that count as part of their military budget?
arby63 -> optimator Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:47 PermalinkYou got my curiousity going... US bases in Germany are...
- leased out from Germany to US rent-free
- any improvements/extensions during US tenure paid by US
- PX sales exempt from German VAT
- when a base or other facility is closed, the property is returned to Germany as is.Md4 -> Umh Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:27 PermalinkWhat's not to know? Ever served in any military? It's all self evident in Europe for sure. The U.S. has simply been biding time. Our over-priced bases are a waste of time. The land war preparations of NATO are extinct for now.
Things change over time but technology has changed warfare. This world doesn't need another war. Sure, it's easy to gang up on the U.S. for ventures into the Middle East but any nation would do the same.
When is the last time ZH ran an article about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan? Conveniently forgotten? It wasn't that long ago.
optimator Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:13 PermalinkThe U.S. isn't in Europe solely because of NATO...
optimator -> economessed Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:18 PermalinkHow many of those countries will now consider spending more, but for their indigenous aircraft. Oh, and cancelling, finally, thej boondoggle of the F-35. Saab Grippen costs less and is made for European skies.
CoCosAB Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:15 Permalink"Guns will make us powerful, butter will only make us fat".
H. W. Goring
medium giraffe Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:22 PermalinkmutTrump just wants to boost the SALES of weapons from american manufacturers.
FUCK NATO! Just a WASTE of FIAT CURRENCY and other RESOURCES!
Zorba's idea -> medium giraffe Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:36 PermalinkAs NATO is a tool of the American Empire, I'm somewhat bemused to see American opinion manipulated toward seeing it as 'unfair'. Please, by all means, disband the North Atlantic Terrorist Organisation, and perhaps that other tool of American Imperialism - the UN- too.
medium giraffe -> Zorba's idea Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:47 PermalinkWhich America are you referring to? Seems like NATO is more aligned with the .01%r's/CIA/CFR/NWO etc. clans. I for one would welcome the NATO divorce, except like the rest of the 99.9%, I ain't in the Empire club.
arby63 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:27 PermalinkWell, whoever runs the Evil Empire. Darth Soros, probably. Crying about having to pay for Europeans is at odds with the realisation that keeping this shitshow alive past the cold war was the Empire's fucking idea in the first place. If you don't think it's the Empire's party, why are STANAG standards lead by the US?
Sandmann -> arby63 Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:29 PermalinkThe United States IS NATO. He has it all right. The economics of NATO are self-evident to anyone possessing the skills of 1st grade mathematics.
Times have changed. The charm of a post WWII world is a distant memory. It is without argument that the United States has been taken for granted since probably 1960. Life goes on and we enter the turbulent 70's. The U.S. is still carrying the NATO weight for another 40 years.
NATO is probably somewhat an irrelevant throwback to another time. Some alliances are natural so they won't necessarily "go away" with reductions of U.S. contributions.
The real problem with NATO is the uniquely "European" problem with filling everything with over-paid bureaucrats. Therein lies the rub.
ToSoft4Truth Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:23 PermalinkNATO is how the US keeps its Empire. Boston Tea Party was because Colonists did not pay for defence but made money building warships for British Empire.......they wanted a free ride
Dead Indiana Sky Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:50 PermalinkRearrange a few names:
Goodfellas: Fuck You, Pay Me
therover Wed, 07/11/2018 - 13:50 PermalinkWhere is the mention of the US reducing spending in equal proportion to the other countries increases? LULZ
Why is Trump stating nations should pay more ?
Why doesn't the US just pay less ?
Pay the average percentage...nothing more.
If Trump is suggesting each nation pay 4% of GDP, and the US currently pays 3.6%, then the US is going to pay MORE ?
WTF ?
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Jul 11, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
After building out Merrill's mortgage trading floor basically from scratch, then moving to the buyside at Pimco, one year ago Harley Bassman, more familiar to Wall Street traders as the "Convexity Maven" - a legend in the realm of derivatives (he helped design the MOVE Index, better known as the VIX for government bonds) - decided to retire (roughly one year after his shocking suggestion that the Fed should devalue the dollar by buying gold ).
But that did not mean he would stop writing, and just a few days after exiting the front door at 650 Newport Center Drive in Newport Beach for the last time, Bassman started writing analyst reports as a "free man ", in which the topics were, not surprisingly, rates, derivatives, cross asset interplay and, of course, convexity.
And, in his latest note, Bassman takes on a topic that has become especially dear to the Fed and most market observers: the continued flattening of the yield curve, the timing of the next recession, and what everyone is looking but fails to see, or - as he puts it - what is truly different this time.
Bassman's full thoughts below:
The Path Forward
Let me offer a follow-up comment related to " Catch A Wave " from June 29, 2018. The Yield Curve, as described as the difference between the T2yr vs T10yr rates, will not invert until near the December FOMC meeting . This is when to start the clock for the typical 18-month lead-time to a recession (sometime in mid-2020). Vote up! 34 Vote down! 2
El Hosel Tue, 07/10/2018 - 14:39 Permalink
dead hobo -> El Hosel Tue, 07/10/2018 - 14:41 PermalinkDing Ding Ding fucking ding
eforce -> dead hobo Tue, 07/10/2018 - 14:43 PermalinkMoney pros are really dumb.
Rather than assume the yield curve forecasts what it would have forecast in 1970 or 1980 or 1990 or even 2000, why not assume it's useless now due to world wide central bank rate management / manipulation?
Why not assume it's a coiled spring and that rising short term rates are stored energy that will cause long rates to spring and power up to normalization? Perhaps 4% to start on the 10yr? Quickly when it hits?
Calling money pros dumber than a sack of rocks insults rocks.
BTW, quickly rising long rates = capital loss with long bonds = margin issues = liquidity crisis = everything goes down fast.
Money pros, the smartest ones only - whistling past the graveyard.
Also, the story at the top is absolute gibberish. Really goofy and unintelligible. Money pros are really stupid.
Also BTW, Ding.
ParkAveFlasher -> eforce Tue, 07/10/2018 - 14:48 PermalinkI suppose it will be an inverse analogy this time as the printers will go full steam ahead rather than reverse.
FreeMoney -> ParkAveFlasher Tue, 07/10/2018 - 15:13 PermalinkIf I read another market doom article, I'm going to have to open up ZH tomorrow and read 10 more market doom articles.
Theosebes Goodfellow -> FreeMoney Tue, 07/10/2018 - 15:33 Permalinkmaybe tomorrow we get a good "giant asteriod heading for earth. Illiminati run for bunkers." article.
DownWithYogaPants -> Theosebes Goodfellow Tue, 07/10/2018 - 15:38 PermalinkAsteroid or not, my bet is to be all cash before Labor Day. Sept-Oct. promises the crash of the century. YMMV.
I lose nothing sitting out and can go bargain-hunting in November.
a recession (sometime in mid-2020)
Did I not say that the Federal Reserve was playing the movie "Get Trumpy"?????
Thus, similar to how WW1 was the unintended conflict, a global trade war could be the unfortunate result of clashing egos
Uh No. It was said at the Chosenite Banker congress in the 1890's that there would be 3 world wars when there had never been one before. How did they know this? They all just had crystal balls right? The Private Central Bankers made it happen. In addition in order to have WW1 the Chosenite Bankers knew they needed to monetize the vast wealth of the USA to have their little shindig. That's why:
- Federal Income Tax
- Federal Reserve Bank - not Federal and has no reserves. It is a private cartel.
were created. Rothschild horse traded getting the USA into the war for the creation of Israel. See the Balfour Declaration.
So do you really really still think that WW1 was just some unhappy Murphy's Law accident?
FYI: The USA helped develop Japan and Germany between the Civil War and 1900. Then all of a sudden we ended up in a war with both of them. Do you think that is an accident too?! For bankers broken window theory really does work. Not so much for the rest of us.
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Jul 09, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
THE ENERGY CLIFF APPROACHES: World Oil & Gas Discoveries Continue To Decline
by SRSrocco Sun, 07/08/2018 - 11:25 17 SHARES
By the SRSrocco Report ,
As the world continues to burn energy like there is no tomorrow, global oil and gas discoveries fell to another low in 2017. And to make matters worse, world oil investment has dropped 45% from its peak in 2014. If the world oil industry doesn't increase its capital expenditures significantly, we are going to hit the Energy Cliff much sooner than later.
According to Rystad Energy, total global conventional oil and gas discoveries fell to a low of 6.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent (Boe). To arrive at a Boe, Rystad Energy converts natural gas to a barrel of oil equivalent. In 2012, the world discovered 30 billion Boe of oil and gas versus the 6.7 billion Boe last year:
In the article, All-time low for discovered resources in 2017, Rystad reports , it stated the following:
"We haven't seen anything like this since the 1940s," says Sonia Mladá Passos, senior analyst at Rystad Energy. "The discovered volumes averaged at ~550 MMboe per month. The most worrisome is the fact that the reserve replacement ratio in the current year reached only 11% (for oil and gas combined) - compared to over 50% in 2012." According to Rystad's analysis, 2006 was the last year when reserve replacement ratio reached 100%.
The critical information in the quote above is that the world only replaced 11% of its oil and gas consumption last year compared to 50% in 2012. However, the article goes on to say that the last time global oil and gas discoveries were 100% of consumption was back in 2006. So, even at high $100+ oil prices in 2013 and 2014, oil and gas discoveries were only 25% of global consumption.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, global oil capital investment has fallen right at the very time we need it the most. In the EIA's International Energy Outlook 2017, world oil capital investment fell 45% to $316 billion in 2016 versus $578 billion in 2014:
In just ten years (2007-2016), the world oil industry spent $4.1 trillion to maintain and grow production. However, as shown in the first chart, global conventional oil and gas discoveries fell to a new low of 6.7 billion Boe in 2017. So, even though more money is being spent, the world isn't finding much more new oil.
I believe we are going to start running into serious trouble, first in the U.S. Shale Energy Industry, and then globally, within the next 1-3 years. The major global oil companies have been forced to cut capital expenditures to remain profitable and to provide free cash flow. Unfortunately, this will impact oil production in the coming years.
Thus, the world will be facing the Energy Cliff much sooner than later.
Check back for new articles and updates at the SRSrocco Report . Tags Business Finance Environment
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He-He That Tickles Sun, 07/08/2018 - 12:44 Permalink
GoinFawr -> He-He That Tickles Sun, 07/08/2018 - 13:17 PermalinkGuess they better sell what's left really, really expensively.
ThorAss -> GoinFawr Sun, 07/08/2018 - 15:11 PermalinkYeah tHis article is ridiculous, resident ZH self-purported Mensa members like Tmos' have proven beyond any doubt that 'abiotic oil' replenishes the world's supply of easily accessed hydrocarbons every fifteen minutes or so, regardless of increasing consumption rates; indeed regardless of any veritable facts whatsoever.
Zen Xenu -> ThorAss Sun, 07/08/2018 - 19:35 PermalinkWorked by whole life in the oil business. Depletion is real. Abiotic oil replenishment is Magic unicorns dancing on rainbows. Oil won't run out ever, but the energy required to extract the oil will make remaining oil reserves uneconomic at some point.
DanDaley -> ThorAss Mon, 07/09/2018 - 06:17 PermalinkWell said. Agreed.
ZIRPdiggler -> ThorAss Mon, 07/09/2018 - 06:27 PermalinkHence Colin Campbell's book The End of Cheap Oil .
Sid Davis -> GoinFawr Sun, 07/08/2018 - 16:12 PermalinkIt went from the cost of one barrel to extract 100 back in the 19th century, to present day 5 barrels.
GoinFawr -> Sid Davis Sun, 07/08/2018 - 18:03 PermalinkSo I guess in your experience, oil wells don't go dry, ever.
But I wonder, why do you think the Saudis pump water into oil wells or the Mexicans pump in Nitrogen?
Shemp 4 Victory -> GoinFawr Sun, 07/08/2018 - 20:33 Permalink"So I guess in your experience, oil wells don't go dry, ever."
indeed, regardless of any veritable facts whatsoever...
Thanks for comin' out!
Victor999 -> GoinFawr Mon, 07/09/2018 - 01:21 PermalinkGood sarcasm is an underappreciated art form.
Adahy -> Victor999 Mon, 07/09/2018 - 02:47 PermalinkStrange that the oil industry does not agree with you. And it's strange that reserves all over the world are not stable but decreasing. Your Mensa idol is full of shit.
ebear -> Adahy Mon, 07/09/2018 - 08:16 Permalink*whoosh* Right over the head.
I know /s is more difficult to detect with only text but damn, he was pretty obvious in his sarcasm.Slomotrainwreck -> GoinFawr Mon, 07/09/2018 - 06:41 Permalink"...he was pretty obvious in his sarcasm."
Plain as day.
I was unaware of abiotic oil. Looked it up. Seems like a reverse shale oil scam to me. Not much profit motive to either explore or drill.
I'm out.
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Jul 09, 2018 | www.thestreet.com
It isn't rosy in all Wall Street research departments.
Citigroup analysts are predicting a "full-on bear market" within months based on historical trends, according to a new note by equity strategist Robert Buckland. Here's how you can protect your portfolio .
Assess Your RiskMost everyone will suffer losses in a bear market ( short-sellers are winners, of course), but investors can decide now for themselves how much they are willing to risk says certified financial planner Alexander G. Koury of Values Quest, Inc.
"The first thing to do is check the current risk of the portfolio," Koury said. "This will help the investor determine what would be the worst case scenario if the market were to go into a bear market. That means an investor will know how much they're willing to lose of their portfolio, and they can determine whether or not that is comfortable for them."
Investors who don't plan to make withdrawals from their portfolios for decades could leave their investments be until the next bull market, but investors planning on retiring soon might want to limit their exposure. Koury recommends that investors should seek the help of either a financial planner or software to see if a reallocation is necessary to help them meet their goals.
Set Aside What You Need To LiveIn addition to limiting their exposure to equities, retirees and other investors living off of their portfolio's returns also should prioritize their living expenses over investing when the market's down.
"If you are taking income from your portfolio, always be sure you have a couple year's worth of withdrawals in money market or short term bonds," said Edward Snyder, certified financial planner at Oak Tree Advisors. "The rest of your portfolio should be diversified among major asset classes, including intermediate term bonds. This should allow you to ride out a down market without having to sell stock investments while the market is down."
Mentally Prepare YourselfYour own bad investment decisions can cost your portfolio as much as market losses, certified financial planner Patrick Amey thinks.
"Prepare yourself emotionally to 'ride it out' and tune out the noise," Amey said. "Yes, your portfolio will go down in value. But you have the cash you need so you can give your portfolio the time it needs to recover. Stay consistent with you allocation and don't make knee jerk decision."
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Jul 09, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
"We Are Headed For The Status Of A Colony": Boris Johnson's Full Resignation Letter
by Tyler Durden Mon, 07/09/2018 - 17:01 89 SHARES
The much anticipated resignation letter penned by the former UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson has been released, and in as expected, he does not mince his words in unleashing a brutal attack on Thersa May, warning that "we have postponed crucial decisions -- including the preparations for no deal, as I argued in my letter to you of last November -- with the result that we appear to be heading for a semi-Brexit, with large parts of the economy still locked in the EU system, but with no UK control over that system ."
He then adds that while "Brexit should be about opportunity and hope" and "a chance to do things differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximise the particular advantages of the UK as an open, outward-looking global economy", he warns that the " dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt. "
He then compares May's proposal to a submission even before it has been received by the EU, noting that "what is even more disturbing is that this is our opening bid. This is already how we see the end state for the UK -- before the other side has made its counter-offer . It is as though we are sending our vanguard into battle with the white flags fluttering above them."
And his punchline: the UK is headed for the status of a colony:
In that respect we are truly headed for the status of colony -- and many will struggle to see the economic or political advantages of that particular arrangement
Explaining his decision to resing, he then says that "we must have collective responsibility. Since I cannot in all conscience champion these proposals, I have sadly concluded that I must go."
It remains to be seen if his passionate defense of Brexit will stir enough MPs to indicate they are willing to back a vote of no confidence, and overthrow Theresa May in what would be effectively a coup, resulting in new elections and chaos for the Brexit process going forward.
Meanwhile, as Bloomberg adds, the fact that Boris Johnson, or those around him, made sure his resignation statement came out in time for the evening news - before it was formally issued in the traditional way by May's office, hints at his continued interest in leading the Conservative Party.
His full letter is below (highlights ours):
Dear Theresa,
It is more than two years since the British people voted to leave the European Union on an unambiguous and categorical promise that if they did so they would be taking back control of their democracy.
They were told that they would be able to manage their own immigration policy, repatriate the sums of UK cash currently spent by the EU, and, above all, that they would be able to pass laws independently and in the interests of the people of this country.
Brexit should be about opportunity and hope. It should be a chance to do things differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximise the particular advantages of the UK as an open, outward-looking global economy.
That dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt.
We have postponed crucial decisions -- including the preparations for no deal, as I argued in my letter to you of last November -- with the result that we appear to be heading for a semi-Brexit, with large parts of the economy still locked in the EU system, but with no UK control over that system.
It now seems that the opening bid of our negotiations involves accepting that we are not actually going to be able to make our own laws. Indeed we seem to have gone backwards since the last Chequers meeting in February, when I described my frustrations, as Mayor of London, in trying to protect cyclists from juggernauts. We had wanted to lower the cabin windows to improve visibility; and even though such designs were already on the market, and even though there had been a horrific spate of deaths, mainly of female cyclists, we were told that we had to wait for the EU to legislate on the matter.
So at the previous Chequers session we thrashed out an elaborate procedure for divergence from EU rules. But even that now seems to have been taken off the table, and there is in fact no easy UK right of initiative. Yet if Brexit is to mean anything, it must surely give Ministers and Parliament the chance to do things differently to protect the public. If a country cannot pass a law to save the lives of female cyclists -- when that proposal is supported at every level of UK Government -- then I don't see how that country can truly be called independent.
Conversely, the British Government has spent decades arguing against this or that EU directive, on the grounds that it was too burdensome or ill-thought out. We are now in the ludicrous position of asserting that we must accept huge amounts of precisely such EU law, without changing an iota, because it is essential for our economic health -- and when we no longer have any ability to influence these laws as they are made.
In that respect we are truly headed for the status of colony -- and many will struggle to see the economic or political advantages of that particular arrangement.
It is also clear that by surrendering control over our rulebook for goods and agrifoods (and much else besides) we will make it much more difficult to do free trade deals. And then there is the further impediment of having to argue for an impractical and undeliverable customs arrangement unlike any other in existence.
What is even more disturbing is that this is our opening bid. This is already how we see the end state for the UK -- before the other side has made its counter-offer. It is as though we are sending our vanguard into battle with the white flags fluttering above them. Indeed, I was concerned, looking at Friday's document, that there might be further concessions on immigration, or that we might end up effectively paying for access to the single market.
On Friday I acknowledged that my side of the argument were too few to prevail, and congratulated you on at least reaching a Cabinet decision on the way forward. As I said then, the Government now has a song to sing. The trouble is that I have practised the words over the weekend and find that they stick in the throat.
We must have collective responsibility. Since I cannot in all conscience champion these proposals, I have sadly concluded that I must go.
I am proud to have served as Foreign Secretary in your Government. As I step down, I would like first to thank the patient officers of the Metropolitan Police who have looked after me and my family, at times in demanding circumstances.
I am proud too of the extraordinary men and women of our diplomatic service. Over the last few months they have shown how many friends this country has around the world, as 28 governments expelled Russian spies in an unprecedented protest at the attempted assassination of the Skripals. They have organised a highly successful Commonwealth summit and secured record international support for this Government's campaign for 12 years of quality education for every girl, and much more besides. As I leave office, the FCO now has the largest and by far the most effective diplomatic network of any country in Europe -- a continent which we will never leave.
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Jul 09, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
So this has become a popular recession indicator that has cropped up a lot in the discussions of various Fed governors since last year. Today, the two-year yield closed at 2.55% and the 10-year yield at 2.84%. The spread between them was just 29 basis points, the lowest since before the Financial Crisis.
The chart below shows the yield curves on December 14, 2016, when the Fed got serious about raising rates (black line); and today (red line). Note how the red line has "flattened" between the two-year and the 10-year markers, and how the spread has narrowed to just 29 basis points:
... ... ...
So just in the nick of time, with the spread between the two-year and the 10-year yields approaching zero, the Fed begins the process of throwing out that indicator and replacing it with a new indicator it came up with that doesn't suffer from these distortions.And I have to agree that the Fed's gyrations over the past 10 years have distorted the markets, have muddled the calculations, have surgically removed "fundamentals" as a consideration for the markets, and have brainwashed the markets into believing that the Fed will always bail them out at the smallest dip. And the yield curve, reflecting all those distortions to some extent, might have become worthless as an indicator of anything other than those distortions.
ambrit , July 7, 2018 at 5:22 am
Skip Intro , July 8, 2018 at 1:32 amIsn't the Fed theoretically independent? Why then should they take cognizance of what the President, or, for that matter, any politician wants? The Feds behaviour over the last decade has demonstrated institutional capture in its' purest form. Everything for the financial sector and nothing for the "Main Street" sector.
The Fed is carrying out a grand experiment. Do these 'Quaint Quant Quotients' have a measurable relationship to the 'Real World' or do they not? My criteria for how well this 'realignment' amongst the 'Financial Stars' works out is going to be the severity of the next "Recession."
jrs , July 8, 2018 at 1:53 amTo be fair, Obama himself was provided by Citigroup.
skippy , July 8, 2018 at 2:33 amI guess a possibility is the Fed let's the economy get really bad (not that we haven't seen that recently even but it could be worse) in order to punish Trump. Yea but people are going to suffer and die in the next recession, they not only already do in recessions anyway, but there is literally no economic slack in most people's lives anymore. Yea this whole economic system is screwy as can be, but if they produce mass unemployment we need a guaranteed income at that point just to keep people from dying.
Jim Haygood , July 7, 2018 at 9:08 amPlease jrs read about the broader ideological opinions of those that forwarded a UBI or GI, same mob wrt the Chicago plan.
Jim Haygood , July 7, 2018 at 9:38 am"(Don't Fear) the Yield Curve" is the title of the staff paper, riffing on "(Don't Fear) the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult which evidently still exerts a powerful sway on the Fed's balding eggheads 42 years on.
What distinguishes this model is its use of an interest rate dear to the hearts of economists but absent from bond market quotes: the forward rate . Or as the Blue Oyster Cult fanboys explain:
The current level of the forward rate 6 quarters ahead is inferred from the yields to maturity on Treasury notes maturing 6 quarters from now and 7 quarters from now. In particular, it is the rate that would have to be earned on a 3-month Treasury bill purchased six quarters from now that would equate the results from two investment strategies: simply investing in a Treasury note that matures 7 quarters from now versus investing in a Treasury note that matures 6 quarters from now and reinvesting proceeds in that 3-month Treasury bill.
Not a big deal to calculate -- so voracious is Big Gov's appetite for borrowing as we approach the promised land of "trillion dollar deficits forever" that 2-year T-notes are auctioned monthly, meaning there's always a handy pair of notes with maturities 18 and 21 months ahead whose yields can be used to derive the 6q7q forward rate for the long end of the spread.
The joke is likely to be on the Fed, though. As their chart shows, the 0-6q forward spread is volatile, and could well lurch down to meet the 2y10y spread any time. Moreover, despite the June 28th date on the staff paper, the chart is stale, showing a 0.5%-plus value for the 2y10y spread which last existed several months ago.
In other words, prepare to hoist the Fedsters on their own forward-rate petard.
And they ran to us
Then they started to fly
They looked backward and said goodbye
They had become like we are-- (Don't Fear) the Reaper
Synoia , July 7, 2018 at 1:31 pmFrom the WSJ's Treasury page, the yield on a note due 12/31/2019 is 2.470%, while the 3/31/2020 note yields 2.511%. Yield on the current 3mo T-bill is 1.951%.
http://wsj.com/mdc/public/page/mdc_bonds.html?mod=topnav_2_3020
Doing a little exponential maff, we can derive a 6q7q forward rate of 2.76%, for a spread of 0.81% over the current 3mo T-bill. This compares to a 2y10y spread of only 0.28%.
So according to the Fed's shiny new moved goalpost, there's room for three more rate hikes, whereas the old goalpost would've allowed just one.
Carry on, lads
Jim Haygood , July 7, 2018 at 2:14 pmIf the policy is not supported by the understanding of the evidence, change the understanding.
Seems very reasonable. For witchcraft.
See -- she floats = A Witch! Kill her.
See– she sinks = Not a witch. Dies.Outcome -- as desired.
aka: Tell the Boss what he wants to hear.
Chauncey Gardiner , July 7, 2018 at 3:04 pmWe're gonna hold the Boss responsible with our own data. Here are the traditional 2y10y and new 6q7q fwd yield curves for 2018:
First one to hit the x-axis is the crack of doom.
Note that the two curves almost coincided on Feb 9th, and could do again one day soon. :-)
Jim Haygood , July 7, 2018 at 4:13 pmIt is well within the Fed's capabilities to sell Treasury and Agency bonds with maturities concentrated in the long end of the yield curve. Were the Fed to do that, particularly against a backdrop of deep corporate tax cuts and the resultant increased supply of Treasury debt, what is likely to happen to mortgage rates, real estate and collateral values?
I suspect the people complaining loudest about this emergent Fed policy are those who have benefited most from both longtime negative real interest rates and a positively sloping yield curve. Those were lucrative monetary policy features for them over the past nine years.
bruce wilder , July 7, 2018 at 10:49 amOne more note in the Fed's chart, the new 6q7q fwd spread dips below zero during the Russia/LTCM crisis in 1998, whereas the 2y10y spread didn't.
So it's not quite as reliable. When both go negative, it's " game ovahhhhh "
Blue Pilgrim , July 7, 2018 at 12:12 pmI have long been annoyed by the way Fed staff / hobbyists blithely treat the yield curve as just another "indicator", as if they were forecasting the weather from changes in barometric pressure or temperature.
Seeking a forecasting crystal in a calculated "forward" rate, supposedly mirroring "expectations" of (a representative?) investors reflects a world view that imagines economic actors confidently act on expectations that they believe will be fulfilled. It is not taking uncertainty seriously.
The yield curve has worked not thru magic, but because it reflects a fundamental mechanism of sorts that drives credit and the transformation of maturities: that some key institutions borrow short and lend long, to coin a phrase, in the creation of credit that typically drives the expansion of business activity. Inverting the yield curve forces the contraction of credit by institutions that hedge a borrow short, lend long strategy with Treasuries.
It probably is not lost on those with a memory of past cycles that speculation about whether things will be different this time with regard to the yield curve qua indicator emerges regularly from Fed hobbyshops near the end of very long expansions. If memory serves the Cleveland Fed research shop circulated such speculation in the 2005-7 period.
Admittedly, I haven't had my coffee yet, but I think I may have reached a conclusion: a country whose economic system can't be understood in an hour is doomed to failure.
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Jul 09, 2018 | www.unz.com
Rurik , September 9, 2015 at 12:09 am GMT
@Jimtbraton , September 9, 2015 at 1:35 am GMT"More than 1/2 of Jewish success is due to corrupt and criminal means."
Utter nonsense.
Jews own the Federal Reserve Bank and can hit some keys on their computer and create a few trillion Federal Reserve notes just like *that* .
They've been injecting hundreds of billion$ into Jewish dominated Wall Street for decades if not longer. Especially since the 2008 mass-looting of the American tax-slave. The big banks like Goldman Sachs and Chase are all dominated by Jews, just like the Treasury. The cash flows to other well connected Jews and gentiles, but Jews are MASSSIVELY over-represented as the recipients of the swindled lucre.
It was rabbi Dov Zakheim who was the comptroller of the Pentagon when over two trillion went missing. Do you suppose that cash ended up in the coffers of Presbyterian churches or injected into the economy of Appalachia?
When some yeshiva decides they need a few tens of thousands or more for 'security'. especially following 911, where 'lucky' Larry Silverstein collected his billions, they go to the Treasury.
Madoff, Scott Rothstein. others.. are just the tip of the iceberg.
But the big one is the Federal Reserve Bank where they and they alone have their own counterfeiting machine, and one thing you can say about Jews, is that they look after their own.
There are very many hard working and intelligent Jews who earn their money, and they deserve our admiration. But there is also a lot of graft and fraud and downright treason to the success of many of them. The scum at Goldman Sachs and guys like Jon Corzine high on the list.
@Rurik"The scum at Goldman Sachs and guys like Jon Corzine high on the list."
I would not argue over your point that Jon Corzine is scum, but I would argue with your insinuation that he is Jewish (otherwise why mention him in a paragraph dealing with Jews). He's not. He's Protestant.
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Jul 09, 2018 | www.g2mil.com
I once traded stocks. It was fun and I made some easy money, but the events of 2008 shook my faith in the system. It has become a casino run by computers, so great companies with solid profits can lose half their value in a few weeks. The collapse pattern starts when overhyped companies that never made a profit quickly lose value, as they should. As speculative investors see their balance sheet fall and need cash to meet margin calls, they sell their solid stocks to book profits so they don't have to sell and book losses from their speculative ones. Index funds are huge, so when investors sell shares all stocks get sold, even the healthy, profitable ones. Other funds and investors decide to reduce their holdings and begin to sell all stocks, and the downward momentum snowballs.
Speculative stocks aren't just small corporations. For example, s ince it went public eight years ago, Tesla's share price has risen nearly 2000 percent and the company is still unprofitable! CEO Elon Musk said he expects Tesla to turn a profit in the third and fourth quarters of 2018. Tesla's stock market value is $56.7 billion, surpassing Ford's market value of $43.2 billion and General Motors' value of $55.5 billion. This is despite the fact that Ford and GM sell several times the number of cars Tesla does, and have consistently delivered profits over the last several quarters. This means that if Tesla helps crash the market, Ford and GMs stocks will fall too!
Most agree the current market is due a pullback. The S&P 500 value remains the same as the beginning of this year. This is the same pattern as 2008 and I've been looking for a sell signal , which should occur when bitcoin and it's related crypto scams unravel. These imaginary coins are quickly losing value and may soon become worthless , wiping out hundreds of billions of dollars in fantasy wealth. This is a sign of a pending downturn, and Tesla may report another unprofitable quarter in August. If I had stocks, I'd sell all and sit on cash the rest of this year.
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Jul 08, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Harvard Professors Expose 'The Real Problem With Stock Buybacks'
by Tyler Durden Sun, 07/08/2018 - 15:25 22 SHARES First published in The Wall Street Journal,
Many critics say buybacks crimp investment. But the real problem is that - unlike dividends - buybacks can be used to systematically transfer wealth from shareholders to executives..
There is a problem with share buybacks - but it isn't the one many critics and legislators are obsessed with.
Some critics claim that repurchases starve firms of capital they could invest for the long term, harming workers to enrich shareholders. Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin agree and have introduced legislation to "rein in" corporate stock buybacks. The bill would give the Securities and Exchange Commission authority to reject buybacks that, in its judgment, hurt workers. It also would require boards to "certify" that a repurchase is in the "best long-term financial interest of the company." Sen. Baldwin has introduced another bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), that goes even further: It bans all open-market repurchases.
This criticism of buybacks is flawed; there is simply no evidence that the overall volume of dividends and repurchases is excessive. The real problem with buybacks is that they tend to enrich executives at the expense of shareholders. Fortunately, there is a simple remedy.
Flawed argumentBuyback critics say S&P 500 firms don't have enough investment capital because dividends and repurchases routinely exceed 90% of their net income. Between 2007 and 2016, for example, these companies distributed $7 trillion to shareholders, mostly via repurchases. That was 96% of total net income. But our research shows that public firms recover from shareholders - directly or indirectly - about 80% of the capital distributed via repurchases. Shareholders return this capital by buying newly issued shares, mostly from employees paid with stock, but also directly from firms. Taking into account all types of equity issuances, net shareholder payouts in S&P 500 firms during the decade 2007-2016 were only about $3.7 trillion, or 50% of total net income .
At this level, net shareholder payouts don't appear to impair investment capacity . Indeed, our research shows that total R&D expenditures by public firms are at the highest level ever. A broader measure of investment intensity at public firms, the ratio of capital expenditures and R&D to revenue, has been rising over the past 10 years and is near peak levels not seen since the late 1990s.
One might argue that firms would invest even more if they had more cash at their disposal. But there is no shortage of cash. During 2007-16, cash balances at S&P 500 firms also rose by 50%, reaching around $4 trillion, providing ample dry powder for additional expenditures. This astonishing level of idle cash suggests that net shareholder payouts may actually be too low.
The real problem is that buybacks, unlike dividends, can be used to systematically transfer value from shareholders to executives. Researchers have shown that executives opportunistically use repurchases to shrink the share count and thereby trigger earnings-per-share-based bonuses. Executives also use buybacks to create temporary additional demand for shares, nudging up the short-term stock price as executives unload equity. Finally, managers who know the stock is cheap use open-market repurchases to secretly buy back shares, boosting the value of their long-term equity. Although continuing public shareholders also profit from this indirect insider trading, selling public shareholders lose by a greater amount, reducing investor returns in aggregate.
[ZH: As a reminder, senior executives and directors of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google parent Alphabet have dumped $4.58 billion of stock this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg . They're on track to exceed $5 billion for the first six months of 2018, the highest since Facebook went public in 2012.]
Executives can use repurchases to enrich themselves because disclosure requirements are woefully inadequate. When executives trade personally, they must publicly disclose the details of each trade within two business days. The spotlight created by such real-time, fine-grained disclosure helps curb trading abuses by executives. By contrast, the SEC only requires a firm to report, in each quarterly filing, the number of shares repurchased in each month of the quarter and the average price paid per share. Investors see this filing a month or so into the next quarter, one to four months after the buybacks occur. And they never see individual repurchases, just aggregate transaction data. Researchers can detect the existence of buyback abuses across a large sample of public firms, but investors cannot easily identify the particular executive teams using repurchases to line their own pockets.
A solutionA simple, common-sense regulatory change would curb such abuses. In particular, the SEC should require a firm to disclose each trade in its own shares within two business days, as it does for executives personally trading company stock. This two-day rule would shine a spotlight on repurchases, discouraging executives from using them opportunistically . For example, if such real-time disclosure leads investors to believe that executives are using a buyback to buy underpriced stock, the stock price would start rising, reducing executives' indirect profits from any subsequent repurchases, and thereby increasing public investors' returns.
Perhaps all we need is a modest regulatory tweak: subjecting firms to the same trade-disclosure requirement as their own executives.
A two-day rule won't unduly burden firms' use of repurchases for proper purposes, just as the rule doesn't unduly burden individual insiders. Indeed, some of the largest stock markets outside the U.S. already require even more timely disclosure by firms trading in their own shares. In the U.K. and Hong Kong, firms must report a repurchase to the stock exchange before trading begins the next day. Japan requires same-day disclosure, and Swiss investors see these trades in real-time.
Even if the two-day disclosure rule doesn't eliminate completely executives' abuse of buybacks, it will generate fine-grained data about repurchases that can be used to decide whether more aggressive regulation is desirable.
The regulatory reforms currently under consideration, such as empowering the SEC to block buybacks, might curb these abuses even more. But they also could generate huge economic costs by impairing the circulation of capital in the economy. It would be foolish to go straight to such drastic measures rather than start with a modest regulatory tweak: subjecting firms to the same trade-disclosure requirement as their own executives.
* * *
Prof. Fried is a professor at Harvard Law School, and Prof. Wang is an associate professor at Harvard Business School.
puckles -> dead hobo Sun, 07/08/2018 - 19:42 Permalink
The real point here is that this is malinvestment, pure and simple. If any of these corporations had truly responsible (and responsive) boards, never mind activist shareholders, this would not and could not happen. US (and to a large extent, worldwide) boards have become rubber stamps for whatever senior management wants to do, which is always and forever now to enrich themselves at the cost of the shareholders. This is not capitalism. It is sheer thievery.
konadog Sun, 07/08/2018 - 16:08 Permalink
dead hobo -> konadog Sun, 07/08/2018 - 16:14 PermalinkBuybacks are a clever way to avoid dividend taxes, but when companies start borrowing money, cutting R&D, laying off employees, and so on to fund buybacks, that's called FRAUD. If the SEC did anything but twiddle their thumbs and whistle past the graveyard, these crooks masquerading as "executives" would be in prison.
Sorry, but it's not fraud or even illegal. Especially if the board approves it. Bad management is not illegal. Becoming a top executive is the brass ring. Nobody else matters as long as the rest of the people at the top get theirs.
Stealing inventory is illegal. Borrowing money to fund a stock buyback for the purpose of enriching the people at the top is perfectly OK.
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