PRIVACY

There's a saying about one good story deserves another.

Given all the uproar about DV surrounding an assistant football coach at Ohio State that seems to have also snared the head football coach there, Urban Meyer, here's another apparent DV case involving another college head coach.

There 's been no information whether the coach at Brown University reported the incident to the Title IX folks, but there was a clear DV charge filed.  From the response of her attorney and Brown University, privacy seemingly sways to a different toon in Rhode Island than in the state of Ohio.

BROWN UNIVERSITY'S HEAD WOMEN'S BASKETBALL COACH, A FEMALE, CHARGED WITH DV... FIVE DAYS AGO.

+1 HS

by Kmp10

August 7, 2018 at 1:40pm

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Was anyone aware that Brown University's female head women's basketball coach, Sarah Behn, was charged with domestic violence against her husband about a week ago? I wasn't. That's kind of interesting... I guess outrage only works one way and double standards are alive and well, not only in the media, but also with the variety of different rights groups and movements permeating today's society. Apparently, DV is only newsworthy when it's a male assistant coach allegedly attacking his wife, but not when a female head coach has actually been charged with attacking her husband. The attorney and the university spokeswoman quotes are also interesting.

Jerome Sweeney, an attorney for Behn, said: “She denies the allegation. It’s a private matter.”

A spokeswoman for Brown University declined comment, saying “the university is not at liberty to discuss individual employees outside the context of their work activities, or any individual employee matters, which are not public.”

I realize that Brown is a private institution, but there seems to be contradictory standards at play here. Meyer, a guy who isn't even the focus of a domestic violence charge, is being skewered for mucking up a presser, and for something one of his assistants allegedly did, while a female head coach at one of the country's most prominent and exclusive universities was legally charged with DV and it's barely a blip on the media's radar. Different situations, yes, but enough overlap to show that the media's moral outrage is very selective.

Until They Aren't Anymore

"Everybody's talking about a new way of walking," go the lines of  a long forgotten popular tune.

And that seems to be the case with investors now and their growing concerns about rising volatility. Just how out of wack is current volatility? Not much by one criterion since after years of suffering a bad case of somnambulism, thanks mostly to the Fed, it has simply reverted to normal levels.

That new way of walking appears to be in the Treasury market as in bonds. Until recently bonds softened investor fears about falling equity prices and rising volatility. As investors in previous scary times flooded into bonds, bond prices escalated and bond yields declined. It was a safe no-brainer for many.  For others it became the average investor's version of the Federal Reserve under Fed Chair Yellen's put option. It was always there.

We've now had a 10 percent correction. But unlike the previous four 10 percent corrections, bond yields have not declined and bond prices have failed to rally, according to data on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note. Still another interesting indicator this time is the change in investor sentiment as they shy away from the long end of the bond parade and pile into shorter-term offerings.

So just walk right in and sit right down. Everybody's talking about a new way of walking. Daddy let your mind roll on. Like all of us, most things are there until they aren't any more. Some people refer to such as a paradigm change. Good or nay? As zen master said: "We shall see!"

For Now

As we noted yesterday the unseen gorilla in the room could be inflation--that is, it will surprise to the upside more than most economic gurus and market soothsayers expect. That would no doubt cause the Fed to hike rates even higher than many anticipate and Monday's decline could be the first of other signs to come. Hard hat time.

With Monday's drop the S&P 500 unofficially touched a 10% decline from its late January high. And with China rattling its economic sabers, saying it will respond proportionately to the U.S. imposed trade tariffs, investor jitters might be with us for awhile.

Bloomberg reported: China will respond to any tariffs imposed by the U.S. against alleged violations of intellectual property rights with the same proportion, scale and intensity, said its U.S. ambassador Cui Tiankai.

Cui’s comments, in an interview with state-run CGTN English news channel Tuesday, are the first to indicate that China will retaliate on a scale that matches U.S. plans for additional duties on Chinese imports. The U.S. is readying duties on $50 billion of Chinese products as punishment for what Washington sees as widespread violations of intellectual property rights. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has until Friday to propose a list of Chinese products to be targeted to compensate for what he said was harm caused to the U.S. economy by China’s policies.

How much is bluster and how much is real remains to be seen, but Cui warned of a tit-for-tat development that could prove interesting. “If they do, we will certainly take counter measures of the same proportion and of the same scale, same intensity,” Cui said in the television interview. He said China has made good progress strengthening protection of intellectual property rights and is ready to look at cases where violations have occurred.

After announcing that tariffs on 128 kinds of imported goods from the U.S. would take effect Monday, China urged trade talks with the U.S. to prevent greater damage to relations. The reciprocal tariffs, a response to U.S. tariffs on metals announced in March on national security grounds, are imposed on goods valued at about $3 billion, a tiny fraction of its U.S. imports.

China holds a lot of U.S. Treasuries. So stay tuned. Now might be as good of time as any to expect the unexpected. As for money, that's what we like for now--cash.

Looking Out

                       

If you look now it looks like a breath of divergence is wafting its way into the market as the usual safe-haven seeking suspects apparently aren't so usual this time around.

The Dow topped at it latest high in late-January and since then, a recent Wall Street Journal article noted, gold, U.S. Treasuries and the Swiss franc have broken ranks by not following the dollar and Japanese yen higher.

It's divergence that, some say, is confusing analysts and investors, pinpointing a sharp reversal from other recent turmoil in the market. To be blunt this has been a market on fire for some time and
change is scary in such environments. The big question is unchanging, however: Is this the prelude to the big correction nearly everyone thinks is more than a day and a whole lot of dollars late?

Unwinding the Federal Reserve's full throttle-ahead monetary spigot is one explanation for investor jitters, some offer. Rising interest rates bode ill for competitive investments like gold and outstanding bonds. And then there's the volatility issue, now perhaps moving from the back to the front burner.

Shadows hide many things and despite recent calm inflation could be one. A recent report noted Washington policy has crimped certain labor supplies, possibly giving existing labor more leverage at the wage bargaining table.

Then, too, trouble in FANG paradise hasn't helped as many investors search for another, new pony to safely ride. The carry trade--borrowing cheap to invest riskier in higher yields--seems to have dried up. See the yen's two percent-plus rise against the dollar since January. Another safe haven, utility shares, have also declined uncharacteristally given past performance.

New computer games come along almost daily. So far we've not heard of any called, Looking Out. However, that might be one investors become exceedingly more interested in if a real market sea-change washes ashore.

What You Witnessed

What you witnessed last night if you watched the Super Bowl was a healthy sign for the NFL--the beginning of the end of the B&B run of terror.

Brady and Bilichick, the Batman and Robbin tandem of do anything--including bending the rules to win--took a hit last night, one long overdue. To be sure, the League has it's problems, not the least of which are falling attendance and viewer numbers (According to reports we've seen today, viewership hit an eight year low for the lastest SB event.).

The concussion and kneeling down dilemmas are another problem, over exposure with NFL junk television on all year round. Moreover, the preliminary thrust to expand outside the U.S. is, in our view, another sign of over-saturation. But the game itself has problems. Bad or certainly confusing calls and interpretation of the rules is another thorn much bigger than many, including those in the front office, realize.

The so-called promise of video reviews and replays is the game's version of ying and yang, bringing with it many unintended consequences. In last night's game near the end, a pass was thrown by the Eagles into the end zone where the Patriot defender clearly with both hand pushed the intended receiver way before the already in flight ball got there. If that was not interference, Big Bill Belichick doesn't try to commandeer the sideline signals of other teams.

Those who argue such big games should not be decided by a penalty miss the point. It's about consistency. Change the rules then. Annouced the referees will enforce the rules for, say, three and a half quarters and then anything goes. Or why have any rules at all? This is not a problem isolated to the NFL. College football has similar problems. Missed calls, incorrect calls or none at all. A panoply of lousy decisions by a cadre of so-called experts. It's enough to make you want to not trust a Federal Reserve economist.

Another statistic we espied before the game, one apparent survey claimed only 16 percent of those fans asked wanted the Patriots to win. More powerful owners like Robert Kraft and Jerry Jones is hardly what the league needs, either. Strong arming taxpayer funds, from many of whom don't even know what a football is, to pay for elaborate stadiums remains another. Blame greedy politicians in part for this one.

One other point, SB advertisements. Many viewers from what we've heard tune in mostly for the ads not the game. That too--given this year's pathetic progressive PC crop--also seems in decline.  Perhaps the most ridiculous was Budweiser's "We're here when you need us."

SB 52 in the annals.

Something Rotten

Here's a shoutout to the real, legitimate 2017 College Football National Champions--the University of  Central Florida.

Though two teams next Monday night will play for the phoney College Football Playoff crown, the Knights beat Auburn New Year's Day 34-27 to end their season,13-0. The Tigers this past regular season whipped both Alabama and Georgia. Apologists for the Southeastern Conference claim Auburn didn't play up to their standard because they were still emotionally recovering from their disappointing loss to Georgia in the conference title game.

The SEC apologists also claim UCF didn't play anyone during the regular season. That's interesting. Neither did Alabama. More important, if Auburn went into the Peach Bowl knowing they weren't going to give ticket-purchasers and the television audience their best, honest effort, either the head coach should be fired for failing to get them fully prepared or the school should refund the money they pocketed from the game. And football fans across the country who just tune into the sport because they love the game might want to consider not viewing future Auburn games. Ever. Or until new coach comes around.

We say congratulations to UCF, the true, legitimate 2017 National Champions of college football. And just for the record, we have no ties, associations or whatever to any of the teams and universities mentioned in this article. What we know is this: The current CFP is clearly more pitiful and more biased than the system it replaced.  A shifty bunch, indeed, with six of the 13 committee members toting a heavy Southern bias.

We urge football fans across the nation to purchase UCF champion t-shirts and other paraphenalia and sport it around the country as a protest to the CFP. Speak with the only power tool you possess, your wallet. Forget Denmark.There's something really rotten in college football. And it needs to be corrected quickly. We don't want to spell it out, but we'll give you a hint--heavy regional bias.

Oh! And there's one more thing. All you sponsors who make Auburn games available on national television might want to perk your ears up. Football fans don't want to get hoodwinked into putting serious pocket money out to purchase either tickets or products for a game where one team is going to phone their game in.

Phoning things in can be contagious. Just ask the CFP committee.

Bloated By Corruption And Cover Up

It isn't even bloated Midnight Madness time yet. We don't often go off on other topics, particularly sports, the real life's blood of this sports  junkie nation. But this one doesn't deserve a pass. Signs don't lead; they follow. And the signs have been there longer than a stuttering preacher's sermon.

A teenage high school kid gets a basketball scholarship to go to one of the big boy schools.  Where's the foul in that?  Can somebody ask Jim Boeheim, please?

Pitino spoke about Bowen's recruitment with WHAS-840 Radio's Terry Meiners shortly after the player committed in June.

"We got lucky on this one," Pitino told Meiners. "I had an AAU director call me and ask me if I'd be interested in a player. I saw him against another great player from Indiana. I said 

'Yeah, I'd be really interested.' They had to come in unofficially, pay for their hotel, pay for their meals. We spent zero dollars recruiting a five-star athlete who I loved when I saw him play. In my 40 years of coaching this is the luckiest I've been."

The criminal complaint outlines the involvement of a University-6 coach, who is not listed by name but is described as an assistant coach. 

Rick Pitino most likely uttered the above last June during a radio interview with a straight face. And that's just part of the story of the recent blockbuster in an FBI sting operation into tne corruption, abuse and bribery now swirling around college basketball big time. Pitino for non-sports fans is head basketball coach at the University of Louisville, a school, like it's head coach, that is no stranger to questionable goings-on in college basketball. It's the Big Money Game, forget The Big Dance

If the allegations turn out to involve Pitino, it's hard to think of a more deserving big time college basketball cheat. Recall over the years there's been many. Rumor has it Pitino is considering Dick  Vitale, one of the games biggest apologist, to defend him. Jumping full 360 slam dunk that would be a fun court room scene. Pitino lying through his teeth and Vitale spitting through his.

For anyone who believes there hasn't been dark and dank shenanigans going on in this game for many still in their teens for years, roll over Beethoven and tell the higher-ups at the NCAA the news. Tell them too about the money. A while ago we had some deflated footballs in the news. Maybe this time with a little luck we will get a lot of air let out of the round ball in a game that is reportedly about competition, character building and integrity for student athletes on their journey into adulthood.

Remember Pitino's claim: "We spent zero dollars recruiting a five-star athlete....In my 40 years of coaching this is the luckiest I've been."  If there's fire related to this current smoke, the luckiest Pitino may ever get is staying out of jail, a joint where some thinks he would fit in well. He could coach dome real pick-up games there.

Here are two words for you, Coach Pitino: Prove it.

See https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/dont-be-shocked-college-hoops-is-dirty-be-surprised-it-took-so-long-to-get-exposed/

 

Roll 'Em Out

In their minds though they won't admit it publicly it's a pejorative, an unflattering term meant to ruffle and scare the future feathers off the masses.

Now we have something in the vernacular--PLUs and PLTs--to summarize the whole thing. People like you, elites, and people like them, the struggling, disaffected masses who have once again started to embrace the term on a global scale. That's more than bothersome to the PLU crowd. It's outright threatening and dangerous.

In case you haven't guessed yet, the term is populism. It's alive and well and growing especially given the upcoming 2017 elections in the Euro zone. With the 2016 surprises of Brexit and Trumpism, the elites have had their caves shook, rattled and quite possibly soon to be rolled. A good thing that could be ultimately a great thing.

Elites for the most part are behind the climate change hoax. Their global footprints stain the planet from all sides and all places in between. Much of the uproar has them scrambling to figure out and offer phony memes for what happened. Their remedy is a familiar one, periodic crumb tossings, so you now have the  PLUs and PLTs. What concessions in the form of not real concessions can we offer the PLTs to quiet them down and return them to their inferior state of oblivion they so cosmically deserve for not being a card carrying PLU member?

There was reportedly no room for them at Davos. That's absurd. And without globalization we're all doomed. So we will create the false meme of how many have globalization lifted from abject poverty. Such ingrates to question things we the elites, the PLUs, see so clearly. Surely their ignorance is the cause for their lot. Why is that so difficult for them, the PLTs to understand?

The Financial Times goes into near conniptions daily with their rants about Trump's anti-free trade and time for tough decisions talk. It's probably giving Martin Wolf, the Times' resident economic bloviator, dyspepsia. It's been time for tough decisions for a long time. Trump is actually really late to that board game. Now that the Times' and the Democrat Party's handpicked stooge has vacated the White House, there is no moral necessity to follow any of his last minutes retaliations against all those who voted red. In fact, the real moral necessity is to overturn them one by one.

Let it be a message from the PLT to the PLU. Turn your gaze next to France, a political psychological basket case of the first degree. The entertainment value their is priceless. More Rolaids for the EU bureaucrats, please! Get 'em while the phony free trade meme is still being pushed as the globe's economic panacea.

Throat Print?

The foot print of Google.

As associate calls it the throat print.

The YouTube channel of influential conservative politics and law website Legal Insurrection has been removed by the video sharing service, citing copyright infringement claims.
“This account has been terminated because we received multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement regarding material the user posted,” explains YouTube, in a notice posted to channel’s page.

Legal Insurrection founder and publisher and Cornell University Law Professor William Jacobson voiced his anger and astonishment at the channel’s removal. “It’s very frustrating, it’s very scary, to have 8 years of content removed without a chance to defend yourself,” he told FoxNews.com.

Founded in 2005, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion the following year. YouTube now has over a billion users, encompassing almost one third of all users on the Internet.
More: foxnews.com/tech/2017/01/13/youtube-removes-influential-conservative-websites-channel.

The Year Ahead

Gurus come and gurus go. Today, nearly everyone is a guru.

Here's a look at what one popular guru has to say about the the year ahead, Jeffery Gundlach. He always has some interesting thing to say.
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Investors will confront excessive debt, high P/E levels and political uncertainty as they enter the Trump presidential era. In response, according to Jeffrey Gundlach, U.S.-centric portfolios should diversify globally.

Gundlach is the founder and chief investment officer of Los Angeles-based DoubleLine Capital, a leading provider of fixed-income mutual funds and ETFs. He spoke to investors via a conference call on January 10. Slides from that presentation are available here. This webinar was his annual forecast for the global markets and economies for 2017.

Before we look at his 2017 predictions, let’s review his forecasts from a year ago. His two highest conviction forecasts were that the Fed would not raise rates more than once, despite the Fed’s own predictions, and that Trump would win the presidency. Both predictions were accurate.
But he was also downbeat on emerging markets, and singled out Brazil and Shanghai as likely underperformers. Brazil turned out to be the best-performing emerging market last year, gaining 69.1%, but he was correct about Shanghai, which was the worst performing market, losing 16.5%.
Gundlach said he had a “low conviction” prediction that the yield on the 10-year Treasury would break to the upside. It began 2016 at 2.11% and ended at 2.45%.

He said the probability was that U.S. equities would decline in 2016, yet the markets gained approximately 13%. Gold, he said, would hit $1,400 at some point in 2016. It began the year at approximately $1,100, hit a high of $1,365 during the summer and closed at approximately $1,150.
Let’s look at his forecasts for 2017, including the one which he called “the chart of the webcast.”

Doomed by debt?
The U.S. household debt-servicing ratio is at its lowest level since 1980, according to Gundlach, despite what he called an “explosion” in private-sector debt. That ratio would change adversely if rates rise, he cautioned, although that might be offset by an increase in income.
Public-sector debt is at 75% of GDP, not including the portion of the debt owned by the Fed, he said. Gundlach has warned of fiscal debt problems, as he has done in the past, but pointed out that since 2011 federal debt has “leveled out” as a percentage of GDP. But he warned that Trump’s policies would lead to a “steeper slope upwards” as compared to the congressional budget office (CBO) debt projections, which show a 141% debt-to-GDP ratio by 2046.

Trump may deliver the tax cuts he promised to the rich in return for infrastructure and defense spending, Gundlach said, and that would lead to structural debt problems – it would get us to the 141% level sooner than in 2046, he said. Those spending initiatives will not kick in this year, he noted, and might take as long as two years to get going.

Gundlach offered data showing that the deficit will increase faster than it has in the post-crisis period, although those projections were made prior to Trump’s victory, and that the portion of the deficit allocated to mandatory (entitlement) spending has grown steadily over the last 50 years.

The recession watch
The historical pattern has been that a recession has occurred during the first term of a new president, especially when following a two-term presidency. But Gundlach said that the leading economic indicators (LEIs) are positive, and there has never been a recession without those indicators going negative. CEO confidence is “moving up” and consumer confidence is “exploding,” he said, which further supports his prediction that a recession is not imminent.
“President Trump will lead to a breakout of the ‘forever 2% GDP growth’ we have seen for six to seven years,” Gundlach said. “Animal spirits have been stirred.” He noted that a small-business sentiment report released that day was the most bullish it had been in a long time.


More: advisorperspectives.com/articles/2017/01/11/gundlach-s-forecast-for-2017