Monthly Archives: November 2016

All Aboard! Trump’s Express Train to the Future, by Bill Bonner

Posted on November 30, 2016 | Leave a comment

There’s got to be a catch to borrowing a lot of money, even at low interest rates, for the federal government to “invest” in infrastructure projects that produce uncertain returns. From Bill Bonner at bonnerandpartners.com:

Yesterday, the Dow punched up above 19,000 – a new all-time record.

And on Monday, the Dow, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq, and the small-cap Russell 2000 each hit new all-time highs.

The last time that happened was on the last day of December 1999.

Just a few months later, the dot-com bubble burst and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 80% of its value.

And the U.S. stock market, overall, lost about 50%.

Free Money!

But investors are bullish. They believe President-elect Trump will be good for stocks.

He is supposed to arrive in Washington for his inauguration and march directly over to the Capitol to demand a tax cut.

This will return over $6 trillion to the private sector over the next 10 years… not to mention a proposed $1 trillion splurge on “infrastructure.”

As Trump’s chief adviser (and former Goldman alum), Stephen Bannon, explained to Michael Wolff of The Hollywood Reporter last week:

“Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” he says. “It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Shipyards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks.”

Whew!

Everybody’s talking about the feds’ opportunity to “invest” free money.

It makes us nervous; we know how hard it is to get a good return on investment – especially when you don’t know what you’re doing.

To continue reading: All Aboard! Trump’s Express Train to the Future

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Debt, Economics, Financial markets

Tagged

Following the Fourth Amendment Would Help Make America Great Again, by Kelli Sladick

Posted on November 30, 2016 | Leave a comment

The federal government might want to shore up the Fourth Amendment out of sheer self-interest. From Kelli Sladick at tenthamendmentcenter.com:

During the last eight years, the Obama administration failed to live up to its promise reverse the Bush era’s mass surveillance of American citizens. In fact, it was expanded and justified. If you were silent, the sweeping power controlled by the president may not be on your radar for the right reasons. While there is a deep fear resonating, at least half looked the other way when “their guy” held the powers of the presidency.

So let’s put aside the distractions roaring through the media, and let’s walk down memory lane.

The Fourth Amendment was assaulted relentlessly under Bush and it continued through both of Obama’s presidential terms. The hits came from two sides, one by mass surveillance and the other by undermining data security. Now, as my focus may just be on progressives for the moment, the truth remains that neither party, Republican nor Democratic has limited its power, especially in regards to surveillance. Know full well, I have no illusion that Trump will set a new trend of limitations.

Has the federal government moved because of its love of the Constitution, or rule of law? No, but it should at least be motivated to protect the Fourth Amendment because if there is one thing that we have seen in the past few years, it is that DC is not untouchable. Whether that is the silver lining for progressives or disdain for Republicans, we have seen just in the past few years how mass surveillance and the undermining security affects everyone, including the federal government – maybe even your dear leader. While the Fourth Amendment was assaulted relentlessly under Bush and Obama’s presidential, the hope is to end that trend during the Trump years.

To continue reading: Following the Fourth Amendment Would Help Make America Great Again

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Government

Tagged ,

Fertility Rates Keep Dropping, And It’s Going To Hit The Economy Hard, by Caitlin Cheadle

Posted on November 30, 2016 | Leave a comment

The other economic quandary facing the world that begins with the letter D is demographics: birth rates are declining. From Caitlin Cheadle at the Visual Capitalist via zerohedge.com:

Total fertility rates, which can be defined as the average number of children born to a woman who survives her reproductive years (aged 15-49), have decreased globally by about half since 1960. This has drastically shaped today’s global economy, but as Visual Capitalist’s Caitlin Cheadle explains, a continued decline could have much more severe long-term consequences.

If the world has too many elderly dependents and not enough workers, the burden on economic growth will be difficult to overcome.

Fertility Rates Start to Decline

First, it’s important to address some of the reasons for these falling fertility rates.

In developed nations the introduction of commercially available birth control has played a large role, but this also coincided with several major societal shifts. Changing religious values, the emancipation of women and their increasing participation in the workforce, and higher costs of childcare and education have all factored into declining fertility rates.

Birthrates Wane, Economy Gains

Initially, reduced child dependency rates were actually beneficial to economic growth.

By delaying childbirth, men and women could gain an education before starting a family. This was important in a shifting labor market where smaller, family-run businesses were in decline and a more skilled and specialized labor force was in demand.

Men and women could also choose to start their careers before having families, while paying more in income taxes and enjoying the benefits of a higher disposable income. Increased spending power creates demand, which stimulates job growth – and the economy benefits in the short-term.

To continue reading: Fertility Rates Keep Dropping, And It’s Going To Hit The Economy Hard

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

NATO’s Rear-Guard Actions, by Brian Cloughley

Posted on November 30, 2016 | 2 comments

Why should the US be paying the bulk of the freight to defend Europe from largely nonexistent threats? From Brian Cloughley at strategic-culture.org:

In the military a rearguard action is defined as ‘a defensive action carried out by a retreating army’ and it is an appropriate description of the desperate scrabbling by NATO to convince the rest of the world — and especially Donald Trump — that its existence is justified.

President-elect Trump has never said that the US should actually leave NATO. Certainly Hillary Clinton declared that he ‘wants to pull out of NATO’ but this was just another of her lies, and what he said back in April was that it is ‘obsolete’ which is a gentle way of indicating that it’s hopeless. He did, after all, tell a town hall meeting in Wisconsin: «Maybe Nato will dissolve and that’s OK, not the worst thing in the world», but although that may have sent shivers up the supple spine of NATO’s Secretary General Stoltenberg, it was by no means a definitive statement of intention.

The fact remains that The Donald is unhappy with NATO, and he’s perfectly right to consider that it’s a vastly expensive and largely ineffective military grouping that indeed should be disbanded. On the other hand, the massive propaganda campaign waged against Russia has convinced much of the world that Moscow has expansionist plans and that the only way to counter its supposed ambitions is to spend more money — lots and lots more money — and deploy troops and aircraft and ships all over the place to make it look as if gallant little NATO is defending the so-called Free World against the might of an illusory aggressor.

To continue reading: NATO’s Rear-Guard Actions

 

2 Comments

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Military

Tagged , ,

WASHINGTON POST REFUSES TO REVIEW PRIME DECEIT, CITES RUSSIAN INFLUENCE!

Posted on November 29, 2016 | 1 comment

cropped-prime-deceit-final-cover.jpg

STRIKE A BLOW AGAINST THE

MAINSTREAM MEDIA! GET YOUR 

COPY OF PRIME DECEIT!

GET YOUR AMAZON PAPERBACK

GET YOUR KINDLE EBOOK

1 Comment

Posted in Humor, Literature

Tagged

He Said That? 11/29/16

Posted on November 29, 2016 | Leave a comment

From Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Anglo-Irish writer and satirist, The Examiner No. XIV (1710):

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.

Leave a comment

Posted in Society

Tagged ,

The End of the High Church, by The Zman

Posted on November 29, 2016 | 1 comment

Christianity in the US is being supplanted by another religion, statism. From The Zman on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

Years ago, I had cause to be at the Episcopal cathedral in Albany for a mass. A friend was being ordained into the church as a priest, so I went up to celebrate the occasion with his family. I noted the subtle beauty of the church, particularly inside. It just oozed tradition, which is quite imposing in the spiritual setting. The outside of the building was rather plain, which is what made the inside impressive. I walked in expecting a utilitarian facility and instead I walked into a beautiful cathedral with arches and stained glass.

The mass was not well attended, despite the fact there were half a dozen people being minted as priests that day. My guess, at the time, was that most of the people were relatives of the condemned. Talking a bit with some people after the mass, I was told that attendance at Episcopal services in the area was down to a sprinkling and most of the regulars were old people. If what I saw in Albany is typical for the church as a whole, I’d bet they are finished in a generation at best. A church without worshipers is a building.

This is a common story with mainline Protestant churches. The local Presbyterian Church is lightly attended and the average age is somewhere in the 60’s. They used to have a grammar school, but that closed. They still run a daycare center, but I suspect that is just a business. They hope that the mothers dropping off their kids will decide to attend services at some point. Until then it is a cash relationship for services rendered. There’s a good chance government subsidies play some role as the kids are mostly black.

To continue reading: The End of the High Church

 

 

1 Comment

Posted in Government, Religion

Tagged

The Tyranny at Standing Rock: The Government’s Divide-and-Conquer Strategy Is Working, by John W. Whitehead

Posted on November 29, 2016 | Leave a comment

There is a general preoccupation with the specifics of standoffs with the government by various groups, but the general trend of usurpation of civil liberties and expanding government repression is being ignored. From John W. Whitehead at rutherford.org:

What we’re witnessing at Standing Rock, where activists have gathered to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline construction on Native American land, is just the latest incarnation of the government’s battle plan for stamping out any sparks of resistance and keeping the populace under control: battlefield tactics, military weaponry and a complete suspension of the Constitution.

Militarized police. Riot and camouflage gear. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Drones. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Concussion grenades. Arrests of journalists. Intimidation tactics. Brute force.

This is what martial law looks like, when a government disregards constitutional freedoms and imposes its will through military force.

Only this is martial law without any government body having to declare it.

This is martial law packaged as law and order and sold to the public as necessary for keeping the peace.

These overreaching, heavy-handed lessons in how to rule by force have become standard operating procedure for a government that communicates with its citizenry primarily through the language of brutality, intimidation and fear.

What Americans have failed to comprehend is that the police state doesn’t differentiate.

In the eyes of the government—whether that government is helmed by Barack Obama or Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton—there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, between blacks and whites and every shade in the middle, between Native Americans and a nation of immigrants (no matter how long we’ve been here), between the lower class and the middle and upper classes, between religious and non-religious Americans, between those who march in lockstep with the police state and those who oppose its tactics.

This is all part and parcel of the government’s plan for dealing with widespread domestic unrest, no matter the source.

Divide and conquer.

To continue reading: The Tyranny at Standing Rock: The Government’s Divide-and-Conquer Strategy Is Working

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Insurrection

Tagged

Presidential War Is Unconstitutional, by Ivan Eland

Posted on November 29, 2016 | Leave a comment

President Obama is using the 2001 congressional authorization of war against al Qaeda to fight a war against a group in Somalia, al-Shabab, that wasn’t in existence back then. From Ivan Eland at antiwar.com:

The Obama administration has decided to stretch the 15-year-old congressional authorization for war against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, or those harboring them, to include an illegal war against a group in Somalia – al-Shabab – that wasn’t even in existence at the time of the attacks in 2001.

In fact, as with many of its Islamist terrorist opponents worldwide – including the original al Qaeda, the perpetrator of 9/11 that arose from U.S. arming of Mujahideen guerrillas against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s and al Qaeda in Iraq, which arose to combat the US invasion there and morphed into ISIS – the United States inadvertently helped create al-Shabab in the first place. Al-Shabab did not arise until after 2007, long after 9/11, when the US sponsored an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia to wrest control of the country from a milder Islamist council. The more virulent al-Shabab was rose to attempt to repel this foreign invasion.

More generally, after 9/11, rather than following the congressional authorization and focusing like a laser beam on countering the original al Qaeda group and their patrons, the Afghan Taliban, the George W. Bush administration launched a general “war on terror,” which covered all terrorist groups of international scope, regardless of whether or not they focused on attacking US targets. In the end, this massive Bush administration violation of the narrow 2001 authorization led to illegal US drone wars and airstrikes in countries all over the Middle East and Southwest Asia, Somalia (against al-Shabab), Yemen (against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), Pakistan (against the Pakistani Taliban), and Iraq, Syria, and Libya (against ISIS). The Obama administration then accelerated all these unconstitutional wars. Now Obama is trying shore up the already thin legal fig leaf, so that it can pass such travesties – which actually make Islamist groups more rabid each time the US intervenes – onto the incoming Trump administration. When Obama took office, he complained that he inherited from the Bush administration an economic meltdown and a military quagmire in Iraq, but he in turn is bequeathing a legal quagmire to his successor.

To continue reading: Presidential War Is Unconstitutional

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Government, Law, War

Tagged ,

Things Are Getting Serious in Mexico’s Corporate Debt Crisis, by Don Quijones

Posted on November 29, 2016 | Leave a comment

Debt will be the undoing of the global economy, but one never knows what straw will break the camel’s back. Mexico may be a candidate. The strong dollar is certainly not helping. From Don Quijones at wolfstreet.com:

Fearing “a large-scale crisis” in foreign currency debt.

Since central banks embarked on their madcap ZIRP and QE during the Financial Crisis, emerging-market companies have not been able to resist the fatal allure of cheap dollar debt. As the good times rolled, the risks were ignored.

In relative terms, dollar-denominated debt recently reached a record 17% of global GDP excluding the US, a ratio that has doubled over the past 20 years. Some countries are more exposed than others. In its latest report on Mexico, the IMF pointed out that almost a quarter of all of the corporate debt in circulation in the country is denominated in dollars. That’s roughly the equivalent of 25% of Mexico’s GDP ($1.1 trillion in 2015).

Foreign denominated liabilities jumped 83% over the past four years to 1.7 trillion pesos ($82 billion). During the same period, Mexico’s non-petroleum exports increased by just 10%, meaning that the ability of private companies to generate the dollars needed to continue meeting their burgeoning dollar-denominated debt obligations has weakened significantly.

To make matter worse, the Mexican peso can’t stop losing value, in particular against the U.S. dollar. The Bank of Mexico has already raised the country’s benchmark rate twice since February, from 2.3% to 2.8%, but to little avail: the peso has still fallen nearly 20% against the dollar so far this year.

Hence the debt problem. According to the IMF, Mexico’s corporate debt binge is no biggie. Having dollar-denominated corporate debt worth 25% of GDP is apparently “relatively low” by today’s standards, it says. What’s more, some of the exposure is hedged.

To continue reading: Things Are Getting Serious in Mexico’s Corporate Debt Crisis

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Debt, Economy, Government

Tagged