MSM Tactics

People easily toss around the term hate in today's world. But who gets to define that term, you, us or some distant agenda-driven bureaucrat or elected official. Just what is hate speech, anything that differs with your beliefs and opinions? Or ours?

So we'll use the term detractor. Detractors are usually a little more subtle about their disdain or dislike. We all know the two current presidential candidates have, like most who seek this office, lots of detractors. One persistent Trump detractor is a guy named Rob Garver, a writer for the Fiscal Times. Garver likes to use deceitful or misleading material to make his point. Here's an example aimed at Trump's possible VP choice.

Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the prestigious Foreign Relations Committee, was being considered for the post by the Trump campaign. He appeared with Trump on the campaign trail Tuesday, and was showered with praise by the presumptive nominee.

By Wednesday, though, Corker told The Washington Post that he had informed Trump that he was no longer interested in being considered. In a later interview with CNN, he said, "I feel like I'm better suited to other kinds of things and I think there are probably better suited people for this particular job for now.”

The technique here is to make it look as if Coker doesn't want to be associated on the same ticket with the rogue Trump. And that could well be true. But there are other public recorded things about Coker having little to do with Trump that could be just as true for his decision to decline.

This is shaping up to be a bloody, down and dirty campaign, maybe one of most in history. Both sides are going to scraping the bottom looking for dirt, any dirt each might conclude useful and productive. Some even if they feel they don't have anything to hide will opt out for obvious reasons.

Coker's from Tennessee and he's had known problems--some call them over sites--more than once filing his income tax statements correctly. Coker was a real estate investment multiple millionaire long before her came to the Senate. In fact, some of his real estate associations came up again in his hometown of  Chattanooga not too long ago. This is not to suggest Coker did anything wrong, just to point out people have lots reasons for doing what they do.

Garver's intent is clear. A well-known Trump detractor, Garver spends a good deal of his time attacking Trump. Attacking is fine, but insinuating is one of those pathetic, slimy MSM tactics people like Garver try to slide past others everyday. 

When someone asked Carl Sandburg years ago why he wrote three time consuming volumes about Abraham Lincoln, Sandburg relied, "I thought I was in good company."

What's your excuse, Mr. Garver?

A Bridge Closer Now Than Ever

If there's a more pitiful excuse for a political pundit than Karl Rove, we've yet to see him.

His recent WSJ diatribe--a pathetically poorly disguised attack against Donald Trump, "The Off-Staged Battle to Sign Up Voters"--is so full of straw men it would go well on an autumn hayride.

"The GOP is gaining in key states. But with Trump atop the ticket, will that be enough," he writes. Even a high school kid in one of the weakest high school English classes in one of America's weakens high schools--and there are plenty--sees that curves ball coming.

Trump has cut the fat out presidential election year organizing, dispersing with many local party insiders, proving as he has that it can be done without all this dead weight. Rove characteristically true to his biased colors notes:

Mr. Trump prides himself on not needing a conventional organization (Oh! So he's independent enough to have less indebtedness to the status quo.), so he appointed few state chairmen during the primary campaign and virtually no county and local leaders."

Now get ready. The rotund Rove continues: the word fortunately is a surrogate for the conjunction but. And we all know what follows but.

"Fortunately, the Republican National Committee and most GOP parties have made voter registration a top priority." Roves next paragraph is a thing of straw man beauty.

"Given Mr. Trump's disturbing lack of emphasis on building a traditional ground game and his continued gaffes, only time will tell whether the GOP's efforts will be enough to keep the registration advantage Republicans enjoyed going into this election year." In other words, they had what they believed was a better candidate in mind.

Did he omit any of Trump's sins in that paragraph?  Let us count the ways: "continued frequent gaffs"; failed to come genuflecting and begging for their help; shunned the traditional ground game, disturbing lack of emphasis, only time--that great healer--will tell if the GOP's efforts will be enough to undue the damage the intractable, renegade, unpredictable Mr.Trump has done.

Rove, however, is not done there. He cites what those villainous Democrats are doing and urges the only road to victory is to copy cat the pattern of those political cretins. We feel a certain small--very small--tinge of remorse for the Roves and their kind because their time has come and gone. And so too has it for the other side.

If Trump traction represents anything, win or lose, it's bridge sooner or later, and we think sooner, to separate--and leave behind the American people and their greatness--these two pathetic bankrupt parties of so-called democracy.

Especially In This Day And Time

 

Especially in this day and time.

Covenants are not worth the paper they're written on. As an investor you need to know and never lose sight of that. The recent news that six British property funds have pulled a Third Avenue Junk bond move, blocking investors from withdrawing their funds, should tell you plenty.

Sure there are apologists claiming this isn't new, that it's happened before and they will have their obligatory numerous examples to cite. If you get bamboozled by that one you deserve your fate. This has serious contagion possibilities. Probabilities are more likely.

The globe is in a mess. Central bankers are little more than court jesters trying to keep the crowds entertained until they figure out what they're doing. Goldman Sachs, that Wall Street brotherhood closest connected to the Fed, recently issued its 17 stocks set to fall off a cliff and it's list of 13 equities set to soar. That's all part of the entertainment. The one sure thing you know, they had their long and short positions in place before putting out those two blurbs.

An apparent innocent black man was gunned down yesterday outside St. Paul, Minnesota for complying with the law.This is an election year, a very unusual one. There are rumblings among the electorate that the monolithic African-American vote is growing soft on its long-time Democrat party ties with more speaking up and moving toward Trump.

All the facts are not in yet, but these shootings are are too frequent and too timely to be just random. The outrage here will surely take some of the outrage about FBI Director James Comey's insulting, pathetic testimony before Congress earlier today and Hilary's email scandal out of the public eye. This is the kind of story the mouthpiece for the entrenched, MSM, will be all over.

There is also evidence percolating to the surface now that in the terrible Orlando tragedy the timeline of those killed is more than a bit shaky. We questioned the shooting of the UK PM, a proponent of stay, just before the Brexit vote. Desperate people do desperate things and the elitist reaction to Brexit and Trump traction has shown how nervous this controlling Neocons are getting.

Life is cheap today. And murdering an innocent black male has more political cache than the other way around. It's plays to gun control, electing one of the entrenched and a host of other inflammatory issues dividing this nation today. But put nothing above those who will stop at noting to stay in power. That's why and how they got there.

When all the of those insane central bank policies these past several years failed to revive global growth, the establishment blamed the consumers. And why not. They're an easy target. These dangerous people are, however, treading a fine line because if these same consumers lose all confidence in financial markets, it will be point, set, match.

In the 1920s mutual funds were a new, hot proliferating ticket. When the market finally rolled over it took 25 years before they regained their previous popularity and status. Forewarned is forearmed, they say. Protect yourself. Especially in this day and time.

Overnight

Sooner or later everyone has a nightmare. For fixed income investors, fund managers and insurance companies that nightmare is spelled Treasuries as these instrument now sport record low yield right out the yield curve to 30-years.

Reuters reported that there are "$10 trillion government debt around the world offering only negative yields." that can cause a lot of pain not to mention shock and awe if there is an unexpected flush of inflation or rising interest rates.

Meanwhile, Asian shares were mixed overnight Thursday as the Fed showed its more dovish side and oil  finished higher in the U.S. The Nikkei 225 was down 0.25%,  the Kospi traded up 1% and the Hang Send edged higher 0.95%. Mainland Chinese shares were down slightly with Shanghai Composite off 0.17% and the Shenzhen down 0.2%. this followed the previous sell off yesterday as concerns abut global growth captured the attention of investors.

In the currency market, CNBC noted, the dollar traded at 96.081 against a basket of currencies, coming off levels near 96.290 it traded at on Wednesday afternoon Asia time.

The Japanese yen, a safe-haven currency, traded at 100.96 against the greenback, strengthening from an earlier session low of 101.40, and compared to levels near 103 on Friday. Analysts said the fresh strength in the yen was due to a flight to safety amid jitters across financial markets.
The British pound traded at $1.2940 as of 10:35 a.m. HK/SIN on Thursday. The pound dropped to a fresh 31-year low of $1.2796 on Wednesday amid persistent uncertainty surrounding the U.K.'s future as a result of its decision to leave the European Union.

Perhaps the biggest Asian news centered on Australia and Standard & Poor's downgrading the country's sovereign debt to AAA negative, saying that the country's road back to budget surpluses looked weak. That delivered a hit to the Australian dollar. Standard and Poor released a statement saying: “We are revising the rating outlook on Australia to negative from stable because we believe that without remedial action, the government’s fiscal stance may no longer be compatible with the country’s high level of external indebtedness,”

Collection Day

The truth is the Fed doesn't have any better or more insightful outlook on the U.S. economy than anyone else. And that's a truth that needs to be told wide and loud.

Minutes from the last FOMC meeting are out today and MSM will, as is their style, be all over these backward geared notes. A big difference with these minutes is the timing. The meeting took place a week before what now is capturing the attention of nearly all, the mighty Brexit. Though the market has recovered from much of the initial impact, Brexit continues to fray nerves. Rumor has it that's one of the reasons pharmaceutical stocks are up. But we have not checked the numbers.

Things weren't so rosy looking before the UK vote and so pundits will scan the tea leaves of this meeting to postulate more theories to tell us what we already know. It keeps these pundits employed. Fed Chair Janet Yellen, just before the vote, released this blockbuster, it "could clearly have consequences," for markets and the economy. Yellen has a reputation for her cut-to-the-chase specifics.

Since Brexit was a UK event we could have received pretty much the same sterling information for apparently a lot less taxpayer money by simply surveying some public garbage collectors. That's what  author William A. Sherder did way back in 1998. In his book, The Fortune Sellers: The Big Business of Buying and Selling Predictions, Sherder, a business consultant, cites a 1985 article from the Economist that compared the accuracy of UK sanitation workers' predictions with the heads of several top-drawer multinational firms about Britain's future economic growth.

The results: They tied.  Next Tuesday is our collection day. Up to now all we've been doing is tossing the guy an occasional early morning wave. Maybe we can get a better return on our buck and cancel all those expensive subscriptions from here on.

Extremely Careless

Anybody want an "extremely careless" babysitter? How about an "extremely careless" plummer or proctologist?

In medicine there is a game that gets played called damning by faint praise. That's when a department chief wants to get rid of a poor performing intern or resident and writes him or her a letter of recommendation to send his or her butt somewhere else. It's an anywhere but here letter. Poor fund of medical knowledge is another term.

Employers do it and so do school teachers. We don't know if the birds and the bees do. But now we know the FBI does. That's what they called Democrat presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton after supposedly perusing her e-mails when she was Secretary of State. The implication was one of impropriety otherwise called breaking the f.....g law.

Now that that's all cleared up we can all rush out and finally elect an "extremely careless' President. We don't know about you, but we feel less angst already. We've not, thank God, attorneys and we have it on good report that some attorneys still mention God, not in vain of course, but we think there is something in law labeled negligence.

Now we haven't looked it up. Maybe some barrister will send it to us. But to our non-Ivy League pedigree rube commodity-trading ears, those two things sound fungible. And that brooks another question: Are "extremely careless" people on one job "extremely careless" on the next?  But before you get all upset and start thinking about changing your mind whom you're going to vote for this November, let us put your mind extremely at ease. We must admit, however, it extremely troubled us, too.

This should make you feel extremely better. We came across one of those double blind crossover peer reviewed studies only extremely real scientists do and, with all respect to the New England Journal of Extremely Real Medicine, here are the reassuring results. There is one caveat we should tell you. It was a relatively small sample. Probably too small to be extremely significant. Only a million participants.

For every 998,000 "extremely careless" workers, two were not "extremely careless" in their next position. But here the best part. So you can stop worrying. We just found this out. One of the questions aspiring proctologists are asked when applying to their programs is: "Are you 'extremely careless."


.

Overnight

Taking their lead perhaps form Wall Street, Japanese equities fell overnight as global uncertainty seems on the rise again with the British pound taking a pounding at one point hitting $1.2874 in Asian trading before recovering slightly.

The Nikkei dropped 3.1% as the yen strengthened, sending shivers through Japanese exporters who get rocked in the exchange rate differentials. The Nikkei has staged a six-day rally though Monday as investors assumed central banks would further easy monetary policy. The Kospi shed 2.1%, the Australian S&P 200 declined 1.3%, the Hang Send Index lost 2.0% and the Shanghai Composite Index was off 0.2%. All of the Topix's 33 sub-sectors were also in the red.

The pound's downfall hit a 31-year low and comments by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney didn't help when he revealed the bank would not be able to offset all of the economic turmoil. Pain or the prospect thereof sends investors flocking to safer ground and that is what happened as they moved into the yen, Asia's perceived safe currency port in rough times. July 14 becomes now a watershed moment unless something changes before then as that's the date of the next UK MPC meeting and where investors expect Carney to change monetary policy.

News out of China was not that comforting either as Monday, one agency reported, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang noted it would not be easy to achieve a growth rate of 6.7 percent in the first quarter. Some economists feel China is headed for a depression once all the economic skeletons are out in the open. Meanwhile, the dollar moved higher against a basket of currencies and gold rose to $1,367.56 an ounce up from $1,320 last week. In Japan, the yield on the 10-year Japanese government bond fell as much as negative 0.271 earlier in the session before climbing back slightly to negative 0.269.

 

Economic Euthanasia

Generals so they say are noted for fighting the last war.

You might not want to think of it this way, but central bankers deep down see themselves as generals.
And this group has been furiously fighting deflation like they've never seen it before. And they haven't.  Most new diseases they claim take a while to run their course. It's running that course a few thousand or so cases that allows one to assign an average time.

Average times have different names, incubation is just one. Denouement is another. That leaves all that middle ground stuff. A lot of people believe WWII is what took America out of the depression. Others, mostly Keynesians, fantasize it was FDR's programs. The truth as it has a way of doing probably hides someplace in the middle.

So you want to take notice of the rise of bellicosity going on around the globe today. There are too many places to name, but with a little effort you find them. The move to create a cashless society is just one. There are more subtle moves going on like destroying pensions and veteran benefits. Government's only resources are what they take from others, be it land, benefits or money. Global governments need money. They want the money.

A friend's father is 94 years old. He's a 100% service connected veteran in a government paid nursing home the administration contracts with as it does for hundreds like him across the nation. The home where he is has been in business 58 years. That means it's passed a gaggle of Veteran's Administration inspections over the years until this year.

What happened? Who knows. But the Veterans Administration sent a 30-day notice letter to my friend saying her father would have to be moved pronto at her expense. The home didn't pass inspection and the VA has a one and done inspection policy. No fixing the problem. No second chances. That's peculiar because if one knows anything about Veteran facilities they are given--and have been--multiple chances to fix problems. In fact, problems are Veteran facilities' stock and trade.

Now her father is demented and has been in the facility for several years. Neither he nor his daughter chose the facility. The Veteran's administration did. Approved by them, chosen by them. So it's clear that whatever happened is not the fault of neither her nor her father. She lives over 1,000 miles away, makes frequent trips at her own expense to see him. By the time she received the rubber-stamped letter it was already a week old.

Most professionals worthy of the name will tell you older, demented seniors do poorly in unfamiliar surroundings. In other words, they decline faster. During the past eight years this administration froze social security and other COLAs twice under the phony guise there was no inflation. Each time for two years. That's four out of the eight years this crowd has been around.

During that time rents have soared and so has the real cost of eating. Likewise, the cost of healthcare for seniors. Some might call that economic.euthanasia.

Without Warning

The search for yield has been the main theme for investors and it has been for a while now.

After a torrent of monetary easing from global central banks to make even a hard core nymphomaniac say: "Enough already!" the cries for more continue. As the WSJ reports today four sectors of the S&P 500 are higher than they were at the start of the Brexit vote. Those four--utilities, telecom, consumer staples and health care--should tell you more than you want to know.

The first thing is growth is like the honest soul Diogenes with his lantern went searching for--non-existent. The second is that silly 2% inflation target global central bankers have been chained to also remains non-existent, for now. Smart traders supposedly take the other side of a trade few want. That rules out most ordinary souls because most have been brought up in ordinary ways. Don't stand out. Fit in. Go to an Ivy League school.

After more than 20 years of deflation one might suspect that hot water bottle is getting pretty cool. We remember a well-known Treasury bond trader buying 30-year bonds years ago yielding 14-15%. He's now in that other dimension but most likely trading bonds. But back then he still had enough testosterone on board to tell everyone, including MSM mavens, what he was doing.

Nothing braggadocios. Just straight forward talk. It was about as unpopular then as the sniveling, driveling wealthy elite are now. He was in New York. The guffaws were so loud one could hear them in Puget Sound. As far as we know he never did it. But he probably years later wanted to cop a page from Nigel Farage who stood in front recently of all those stunned EU bureaucrats and told them to their faces: "You're not not laughing now!"

We suggest, and that's all anyone can really do--so hold your guffaws for another time, that's an approach you might want to take to this market. Overlook all the numbers-cranking palaver and focus on human behavior. It's like the weather. It can change without warning.

We Guess Not, Joe

 
Just when you think things can't get any funnier, guess what? They do.

The recent uproar about Democrat presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton's government e-mails has brought out many quotes ranging the gamut. But the one we find perhaps the most hilarious (no pun intended) is this one from Vice President Joe Biden.

Now Biden has a known reputation for saying some dumb s....! He also has had his share of run-ins with alleged plagiarism and, to put it kindly, telling the truth. Ready: "I find it," Biden was quoted, "hard to believe Hilary would do anything 'intentionally' wrong."

We guess not, Joe.

We were at a soiree a few days back, you know, one of those evening parties where people stand around outside in groups drinking cocktails and telling stories, when we heard a guy in the group next to us relating in an excited voice how he just won a $1,000 in an online contest. The crux of contest was you were to submit your idea of your worst nightmare. The guy's wining entry, from what we could tell, went like this.

You awake one morning and before you've rubbed all the sleep out of your eyes, you realize you're sitting on the stand, in a courtroom, on trial, being prosecuted for a lack of veracity. But just as you clear all the sleep and focus around the room, you see your attorney standing in front of the court, calling Joe Biden as your star character witness.

We guess not, Joe