Overnight

A down day on Wall Street set the tome for Asia overnight as the Nikkei 225 hit a three-week low Wednesday with the index-off 0.9% at 16,249.97 as investors showed their apparent disappointment in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's latest attempt to stimulate the Japanese economy.The Topix was down 1.3%, the Kospi dropped 1%  and after the Reserve Bank of Australia cut it s cash rate 25 basis point to 1.50%, the ASX 200 fell 0.8%.  The dollar was up 0.4 percent on the day at 101.25 yen , but as it stayed near a 3-week trough of 100.680 hit overnight. The yen's recent strength impacts Japan's exporters.The Hang Send was down 1.6%.

Meanwhile, oil prices traded higher with U.S. crude up 0.68 percent to $39.78. Global benchmark Brent futures traded up 0.55 percent at $42.03.he Wall Street Jurnal reported that China’s service sector expanded at a slower pace in July, data from Caixin Media Co. and research firm Markit showed. The Caixin China services purchasing managers index slipped to 51.7 in July from 52.7 in June.  The fall came after an 11-month high reading in June, pointing to renewed softness in the nation’s service sector, despite the government’s efforts to bolster economic growth.

Overnight

Oil prices have been in a swoon of late falling below $40 a barrel and Monday on Wall Street the trend continued affecting some say overnight trading in Asia Tuesday as shares there fell in early trading.

Tuesday is an important day also for another Asian central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia, as it's policy board decides whether to cut rates or leave them where they are at 1.75 percent in an effort to head off low inflation and a rising currency. Last week investor eyes were focuses on the Fed and the Bank of Japan. Economists are not so good at predicting much of anything and interest rate cuts  or hikes are no exception. The majority are calling for a quarter percent, 25 basis point, cut when the meeting concludes. But recent upturns in things like manufacturing, business confidence and jobs might put a hold on such. Australian shares were off a fraction I nearly trading.

The Nikkei 225 dropped 0.8% as the yen strengthened against the dollar. The MSCI, the broadest index of Asian-Pacific shares  excluding Japan, edged lower 0.2% while Hong Kong  was shut down in light of Typhoon Nida threatening to come ashore. The Kospi was down 0.4%, the Shanghai composite was up 0.1%

In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet is likely to approve a 28 trillion yen ($273 billion) stimulus package on Tuesday, though direct fiscal spending will total only about 7 trillion yen, according to two people briefed on the matter, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, a warning from Japan's head bank regulator in the WSJ.

TOKYO—Japan had its financial crisis long before the West. A quarter-century of stagnation later, the country’s top bank regulator has a warning for his global counterparts: Overreacting to the bust could undermine the recovery.

“Supervisors’ emphasis on clean bank balance sheets...may have had side effects,” Nobuchika Mori said when asked in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal what lessons he would offer from his country’s experience cleaning up a burst bubble.

“Looking back from today’s vantage point, we wonder if we should have done things differently, paying more attention to economic growth,” he said.

It is a contrast with the tone in Washington, where bank overseers continue to add capital requirements and other restrictions. The Federal Reserve and other regulators have defended the steps as necessary to keep the banking system safe. But critics in the industry say they are in some cases deterring banks from taking the risks and offering the credit needed to fuel faster economic activity.
 

Mr. Mori spent most of his career at Japan’s powerful Ministry of Finance, working in various divisions from international finance to national budget, before moving next door to the Financial Services Agency in 2006.

He became commissioner of the agency a year ago, making him the country’s top financial regulator. His one-stop-shop agency combines the functions of a broad range of American overseers, from the market monitoring of the Securities and Exchange Commission to the bank supervision of the Fed and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Crude oil bounced back 0.6% to $42.60 a barrel. Gold remained slightly changed Tuesday, still near its three-week high made last Friday at $1,355.10 ;partly on the growing expectations U.S. interest rate hikes have been tabled  for now. U.S. gold was flat at $1,359.8 an ounce.

They Know No Bounds

 
This is great stuff. We've been writing about people like this for some time now. This is exactly what will bring these people down, their inherent arrogance, conceit and contempt for anybody who dare differ with their view. It's pure Ivy League endemic.

Now we've been onto this dude for awhile, but we want to thank you, Professor, for coming out of the closet at this time. Moreover, for scrolling the line of separation deeper and clearer in the sand. You're a good man, sir.

This is what these people as we've said before whether you're brown, yellow, black, white or rainbow-colored think of you. It does not matter your occupation or profession, this is how the elites see you. Not just you but your offspring or anyone even faintly like you. Thank you, sir. No more sub rosa. This gets it out in the open. A very, very healthy kind of party. Daylight. You're a tribute to your kind and breed, sir. Maybe some day they'll make the face of one of their noble coins in your likeness.

Shocked by the inexplicable realization that Americans are stubbornly unwilling to bow down and blindly accept the political and economic views of the educated elites in this country, Harvard Professor Gregory Mankiw recently took to the New York Times to pen an op-ed where he concluded that the only possible reason for the lack of conformity to his point of view is the stupidity and racism of the electorate.  An article by Adam Button at forexlive, called our attention to the recent op-ed which he described as a "dazzling display of contempt for the public from a Harvard professor who can't believe that voters aren't listening to the gospel of the economic elites."

Questioning why American's object to increasing globalization, Professor Mankiw pointed to three main conclusions:

"The first is isolationism more broadly. Trade skeptics tend to think, for example, that the United States should stay out of world affairs and avoid getting involved in foreign conflicts. They are not eager for the United States to work with other nations to solve global problems like hunger and pollution."

"The second is nationalism. Trade skeptics tend to think that the United States is culturally superior to other nations. They say the world would be better if people elsewhere were more like Americans."

"The third is ethnocentrism. Trade skeptics tend to divide the world into racial and ethnic groups and think that the one they belong to is better than the others. They say their own group is harder working, less wasteful and more trustworthy."

The good professor seems to have missed a vital point. The only people trying to export American culture are the neocons, sticking their noses into places they hardly belong, propping up vile dictators for clandestine, hegemonic reasons, secretly signing trade pacts that benefit the few and harm the many.

 Assassinating people they differ with, using drones to kill innocent children they never knew. Those are high watermarks of a civilized tribe, sir. But his third point, ethnocentrism, is perhaps his most cute, claiming trade skeptics divide the globe into racial and ethnic groups, thinking their group is better than all the others. It's seems the good professor has his own kind of division, one he appears to be quite proficient at.

Hunger and pollution. If such came from the mouth of a rightist rather than a leftist, and we're neither, it would sound the tocsin of apple pie and motherhood. Elitists like zealots know no boundaries. Professor Mankiw appears to be a card carrying member of both. And we say: good for you, sir. Good for you.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-31/apparently-if-you-disagree-harvard-economist-then-youre-stupid-and-racist

Overnight

Fallout or spillover takes different forms and the fact that the U.S. economy has been weaker than predicted or expected by those economic soothsayers came to light as Reuters noted overnight: U.S. gross domestic product increased at a 1.2 percent annual rate in the April-June period, less than a half of a 2.6 percent growth rate economists had expected.

"Investors have been shifting money to Asia, which is likely to be least affected by Brexit and as the U.S. Fed appears to be in no hurry to raise interest rates," said Yukino Yamada, senior strategist at Daiwa Securities. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS rose 1.1 percent, hitting its highest level in about a year. Asian markets showed limited reaction to a better-than-expected private survey on China's factory sector.

The Caixin/Markit Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' index (PMI) rose to a 1 1/2-year high of 50.6, beating market expectations of 48.7 and up from 48.6 in June. An official survey showed factory activity eased in July.

The Nikkei 225 was up0.30%, turning around an earlier loss; the Korean Kospi edged higher 0.6%; the Hang Seng rallied  nearly 1.4% and the Australian ASX 200 gained 0.79% while in China shares took a break with the Shanghai Composite falling 1.08% and Shenzhen Composite down almost 2%.

The U.S. dollar hovered near a three-week low against the yen after it's surge Friday following the BOJ's action disappointed investors who were hoping for more help. Up nearly 3% on Friday at 101.97, the yen settled lower overnight at 102.59 against the dollar. The dollar stood near a three-week low against the yen, which got a lift on Friday after the Bank of Japan's stimulus fell short of markets' expectations. Gold XAU= also hit a near three-week high of $1,355.1 per ounce on Friday and last traded at $1,351.5.

Meanwhile, NewYork Federal Reserve President William Dudley made some news, suggesting it was "premature" to count out any rate hikes this year if the economy suddenly improved. Dudley is close with Fed Chair Janet Yellen and viewed as a dove by many. He is, however, along with Yellen and one or two others the top dogs at this Fed  and his barking gets attention accordingly.

Stop At Nothing

Whom do you trust?

Well, if you're a German a fair question today is, do you trust Chancellor Angela Merkel when it comes to your safety?

Given recent events in Germany more and more Germans are saying no, they don't trust her, as the division about open borders spreads around the globe. Globalists want to criticize any and all who question them and their madness for one world government.

Here in the last two paragraphs of the Economist, a globalist-pushing magazine, is everything you need to know if you don't like that status qou and have any questions about the way the globalists have been running things.

They are from the latest issue

As for tactics, the question for pro-open types, who are found on both sides of the traditional left-right party divide, is how to win. The best approach will differ by country. In the Netherlands and Sweden, centrist parties have banded together to keep out nationalists. A similar alliance defeated the National Front’s Jean-Marie Le Pen in the run-off for France’s presidency in 2002, and may be needed again to beat his daughter in 2017. Britain may yet need a new party of the centre.

In America, where most is at stake, the answer must come from within the existing party structure. Republicans who are serious about resisting the anti-globalists should hold their noses and support Mrs Clinton. And Mrs Clinton herself, now that she has won the nomination, must champion openness clearly, rather than equivocating. Her choice of Tim Kaine, a Spanish-speaking globalist, as her running-mate is a good sign. But the polls are worryingly close. The future of the liberal world order depends on whether she succeeds. 

economist.com/news/leaders/21702750-farewell-left-versus-right-contest-matters-now-open-against-closed-new?

There is just about everything you need to know in those two paragraphs if you value personal liberty, sovereignty and free speech. It's also a testimony about how biased MSM is.

As for the Merkel situation, Germans are noted for their reportedly stubbornness. Merkel recently displayed her defiance and lack of concern for the voices of many of her citizens. Callousness is a clear characteristic of the elite class.

With Germany having gone through a surge of seemingly daily killings in the past two weeks when 15 people have died, including four assailants, leaving dozens injured since July 18, the result of two terror attacks and a third killing carried out by men who entered the country as refugees, no one has seen their reputation impacted as much as Angela Merkel. And yet, despite admitting several weeks ago that "terrorists were smuggled in Europe's refugee flow", Merkel has been unrelenting on her immigration policy. 

Seaking at an annual summer press conference in Berlin on July 28, a defiant Merkel ignored critics of her refugee policies and insisted there would be no change to her open-door migration stance. She also said she bears no responsibility for a recent spate of violent attacks in Germany. "We are doing everything humanly possible to ensure security in Germany," she recently said but added, "Anxiety and fear cannot guide our political decisions." Merkel said the goal of jihadists was to "divide our unity and undermine our way of life. They want to prevent our openness to welcoming people. They want to sow hate and fear between cultures and also among religions." The chancellor said she knows that Germans are worried about their personal safety: "We are doing everything humanly possible to ensure security in Germany," she noted, but added, "Anxiety and fear cannot guide our political decisions."
Merkel concluded by refusing to budge: "For me it is clear: we stick to our principles. We will give those who are politically persecuted refuge and protection under the Geneva Convention." She added: "I cannot promise you that we will never have to take in another mass wave of refugees."

The problem for Merkel is that increasingly less of her countrymen share her sentiment. A recent poll found that two-thirds of Germans oppose a fourth term for Merkel. Only 36% of respondents said they wanted Merkel and her CDU to lead the government after federal elections in 2017.
* * *
It got even much worse for Merkel yesterday when Bavaria's premier, a key coalition ally for Merkel's CDU, whose state bore the brunt of recent attacks in Germany, took aim at Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy on Saturday by rejecting her "we can do this" mantra, withdrawing his support over this key aspect of Merkel's domestic policy.

blacklistednews.com/Thousands_Of_Germans_Demand_Merkel's_Resignation.

The people of California several years ago voted on a referendum to tamp down on its borders. The measure passed by a good margin. What did the status quo do, they took it to the judicial system where it's reportedly still tied up. This is what the entrenched think of your right to vote. It's a titular right in every definition of that term.The recent Brexit outcome is still another example as those who opposed the leave results yelled and stomped for another vote owing to the closeness of the outcome or for invoking a system of their elitist checks and balances to correct ignorant rabble mistakes.

As more and more voters in states like California went to referendums to correct government abuses of power, just what you'd expect happened, the call for limiting referendums irrespective of the difficult qualifications necessary to get them approved. Understand, you might be middle management, professional, blue collar, a successful business owner or, heaven forbid, an academic, brown, back, white or the color of a barber pole, it doesn't matter. To these elites you're just rabble.

They want what they want and will stop at nothing to get it.

Not So Fast

More air, please.

All due apologies to Tom Brady.

When in doubt, things looking frail, spirits down, pump more air into the balloon. That balloon goes by the name consumer confidence. MSM has been pushing the pedal for it friends at the Fed that the economy is on more terra firma owing to strong consumer spending. But as one television personality like to chortle, Not so fast.

In an environment where the Fed recently described household spending as "growing strongly," we have often questioned why consumer delinquencies would continue to grow (see "Subprime Auto Delinquencies Soar Past Crisis Levels, Now Highest In 20 Years" and "Subprime Snaps: Largest US Subprime Auto Lender Delays Earnings Due To "Accounting Matters"") if household financial conditions were truly improving.  It turns out that UBS pondered the same question and agrees that deteriorating lending standards just might have something to do with it.  Matthew Mish of UBS, recently updated his strategy piece on the health of the US consumer and the results are less than stellar with Mish concluding that consumer incomes are not expanding in line with consumer credit and therefore "consumer delinquencies...will not fall in coming quarters, consistent with our broader thesis that the credit cycle is in the later innings".  Mish found a growing divide between consumers that are financially sound and those at the lower end of the earnings spectrum where financial conditions are deteriorating.  So while aggregate data may suggest improvement in the consumer overall it's unlikely to impact deteriorating delinquency rates on consumer loans. Per Matthew Mish of UBS:

Our analysis of the consumer lending environment and stressed US consumer fundamentals seems to support the thesis that while lending is extending to riskier consumers, the finances of those consumers are not materially improving. The recipe is likely to result in consumer delinquencies that will not fall in coming quarters, consistent with our broader thesis that the credit cycle is in the later innings as ebbing fears about a corporate earnings recession are offset by rising concerns over higher delinquencies and tighter credit availability.

.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-30/consumer-lending

The Fix Is In

Here are two stories both about Reuters, owned by the New York Times, that should tell you something about so-called objective journalism.

It should also tell you just how bad the status quo wants a Hillary win in November. If possible, forget who wins for a second and try as hard as it might be to ask yourselves about the state of MSM. Read both depictions of what Reuters just did and see if you feel there is anything wrong here when it comes to journalistic integrity.

This is much like the elites who bitched after the Brexit vote came in saying we'd extended this phony democracy they toss around too far and need to put in checks and balances to over-ride rabble stupidity. In other words, overturn your vote because they don't like your choices.This is hardly new. But what is new is just how blatant it is.

Unfortunately, tragically, human life these days is cheap. But your vote is cheap today too because you can see firsthand how they denigrate and disrespect it. The fix for November is in.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-29/why-reuters-tweaking-its-presidential-poll

zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-30/clinton-lead-over-trump-surges-after-reuters-tweaks-poll

Vote Like It

We had no idea when we wrote our two recent pieces about Morgan Stanley global strategist, Ruchir Sharma, he would don the cover of our Saturday morning copy of Barron's.

But here's a guy who apparently keeps tossing out a lazy jab that just cries out to be countered. In his Barron's interview, "Global Thinker," he notes, discussing Brexit, Trump and the global populist uprising: Particularly in emerging market countries, populists leaders, once in power, often turn into demagogues who end up pursuing income-retributive policies that can burn down entire economies. Right-wing populists who now control Poland and Hungry, rarely deliver long-term economic growth because, without the checks and balances of a democracy, strongman rule eventually devolves into cronyism and poor decision-making,

After reading that a couple of times ask yourself these questions:

1. What has occupied the White House these past eight years other than a strongman deliberately trying to expand executive power?

2. Income-redistributive policies sound a lot like the Fed's monetary madness of pumping up asset prices the wealthy not the rabble mostly profit from?

3. Artificially tamped and stomped down interest rates that practically wiped out a whole class of people around the globe living on pensions and fixed incomes?  That sounds like redistribution.

4. Where is and has been the long term economic growth of the status quo, things like wages, benefits and income equality?

5. Cronyism: has it not been alive, well and blossoming under the status quo? What was Graham-Dodd all about, supposedly cronyism.

6. What democratic checks and balances? Does he mean, the ones the elites want to instill now to counteract any so-called foolish voting mistakes the rabble might make by voting for policies or candidates the status quo disdain?

It's no coincidence he mentions Poland and Hungry. At least one of those leaders has made the MSM's major misstep of being complimentary to Trump. Sharma then lists his 4Ds--depopulation, deglobalization, deleveraging and de-democratization. Two of his four, deleveraging and de-democratization are shams. Global debt levels, as he point out, are astronomical and in need of a huge economic global enema. It ain't going to happen without a cataclysmic event. War is one. See Italian banking and Matteo Renzi. Who wants to be the first to bite the economic bullet? The European Union has been arrogantly discriminatory in its policies against its smaller members.

Mr.Sharma conveniently skips over one of the real causes of de-democratization--PC. The policy makers, regulators and power elite create more de-democratization a year that a whole gaggle so-called populists could in decade.  It's cute stuff, he proffers. The trade agreements have benefited the few and, as is often the case with the status quo, harmed the many. The left-wing controlled U.S Senate has threatened China to strengthen its currency for years. See Chuck Schumer. Sounds like a beggar-thy-neighbor tactic to us.

The Federal Reserve is an incompetent, out of control bully and has been, allowing the U.S. to put its political proboscis where it doesn't belong. That's spells industrial-military complex. Sharma does have the decency to admit he's been wrong in the past. We say decency because it might just be the plain  absence of arrogance, a trait that usually never arrives until one has been publicly skinned to the bone without benefit of clergy.

Sharma then notes an interesting category he breaks down into good and bad billionaires. The good ones, of course, are in America and the bad ones places like Russia and Mexico. Let's take the bad first. He classifies them as, Barron's notes, making their fortunes "largely the result of  chicanery, family connections and payoff." Apparently, for all his worldliness he hasn't paid much attention to American politics.

The good ones he cites, pretty much all first or second generation American immigrants, are "self-made who created their wealth by developing unique products and services that boosted jobs and economic growth."  Obviously, to Sharma, payoffs and such are not a part this group. He studies those who inherit their wealth as if what many in this country seek to make a crime and associates it with "wealth achieved through other than honest means."

There are many in this country we would classify in the bad category, the whole gaggle of billionaire climate change nuts who are using their funds to force feed others who question them; the billionaires right and left who attempt to buy election outcomes. He states most of the bad guys loiter in the rent-seeking categories like real estate, energy and mining. In his his rent-seeking category he omits governments themselves. How many Americans became billionaires off their government connections, he fails to mention.

Sharma is an elitist talking down to you. Globalization is your banker's friend not yours. If this or any other government were serious about closing  the income gap they would pass term limit legislation immediately with no possibility of return. That would level the playing field a bit. Bring back a sound, sovereign currency would also help. One nearly billionaire off government connections is running for president.

Meanwhile, hold not your breath or imbibe the Street's favorite pablum.You're on your own. Walk like it, talk like it and vote like it.

Out Of Sync

Apparently, the left hand and the right hand at Morgan Stanley are not in sync. We recently noted a WSJ Opinion article, "The Dollar--the Fed--Still Rule," by Morgan Stanley global strategist Ruchir Sharma who claimed the dollar's demise had been greatly overstated and the economy is all right.

 See financialspuds.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-only-thing-new.

The dollar is set to fall 5 percent in the next few months, the Federal Reserve isn’t raising interest rates anytime soon and U.S. economic data is only going to get worse. That’s what Morgan Stanley chief global currency strategist Hans Redeker told clients in a note published Thursday, citing in-house indicators showing U.S. domestic demand is set to fade in the coming months. It didn’t take long for markets to prove him prescient. The greenback fell 1.3 percent Friday, capping its worst week since April, after the Commerce Department said U.S. second-quarter gross domestic product advanced at about half the rate economists had forecast.

www.wsj.com/articles/the-dollar and-the-fedstill-rule

 
“We are quite pessimistic about, first, the outcome of the U.S. economy,” Redeker said in an interview on Bloomberg Television Friday, before the GDP report’s release. “When you look at our internal indicators, which capture domestic demand very well, they are suggesting that the demand strength is going to fade from here.”

The greenback had rallied in recent weeks on mounting speculation the Fed will hike rates in the coming months following better-than-expected data on jobs, retail sales and industrial production. Dollar bulls’ hopes were dampened Wednesday after a lukewarm policy statement from Fed officials that signaled only a gradual pace towards tighter monetary policy. They were dashed after Friday’s GDP print, which showed a 1.2 percent annualized increase in the April-June period, less than the 2.5 percent median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

Derivatives traders are now betting there’s only about a 1-in-3 chance of a rate hike this year, down from more than 50 percent at the beginning of the week. July data on payrolls and manufacturing, set for release next week, will give investors a clearer read on the path of Fed policy through the end of the year.

Further dollar strength will be limited as policy divergence between the U.S., Japan and Europe slows, according to Steven Englander, global head of Group-of-10 currency strategy at Citigroup Inc.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-30/morgan-stanley-warns-currency-traders-worst-to-come-for-dollar 
  
As we said in our post cited above, Sharma's article was about dismantling Trump not really about the dollar or the Fed except to keep up the charade about the importance of the Fed and it's role for keeping the status quo of globalization going.

Getting Rid Of Debt

 
Once upon a time it was the Russians are coming. Now it's the Russians who are pushing Donald Trump. Who says paranoia doesn't run deep and wide in the Democrat party.

The media, one and all, have decided that the DNC hack was the work of the Russian government, and the Democrats have taken this one step further and declared that Moscow is pushing the candidacy of Donald Trump due to his oft-stated hope to “get along” with Vladimir Putin. And US government officials have added their voices to this chorus, with the New York Times reporting that unnamed members of the “intelligence community” believe “with high confidence” that the Russian state is behind the hack, Justin Raimondo over on Stockman's Contra Corner reports 

We love MSM and their attribution skills, a source close to my kid sister's mother-in-law who knows one of the janitors whose uncle works in the intelligence community believes with high confidence the Russians did it. Trump says he wants to get along with Putin and now he's in cahoots with them and a possible collaborator. A real Richard Quisling amongst us. This from that pathetic excuse for an objective newspaper, the New York Times. We have another suspicion, a well known CNN broadcaster who got carried away dancing while toasting Hillary's acceptance speech. Booze does some strange things to one's head.

We just had a Hillary advisor, a white dude, tweet in one of those hacked DNC files he hates stupid white people, especially those who support Trump. Do you think the Russians know who Mitch Stewart is yet? That sounds like hate speech to us. We know one thing it most likely wasn't Paul Krugman who conjured up this doozy. This is beyond his level. But it could've been Al Franken. He's a Harvard man with a sense of humor. He might be the only one in the Democrat party. Someone needs to promptly find out who the real culprit is before Joe plagiarizes the whole malarkey and turns it in to a future convention speech. Another good possibility is that politician who hates super-sized sugar drinks. Maybe the Russians were overdosed on them. Naw! That's too linear. It couldn't have been any of these people. It's got the earmark of brilliance.

The Russians did it. They're a convenient target. The neocons want to start a Third World War anyway and if you check around the globe today you'll see their ramping the rabble up for one. The problem with that theme is be careful what you wish for. Just outright defaulting on all that debt might be a kinder, more gentle way of getting rid of it since you have not been successful so far inflating it away. Your game plan from the first time you heard someone say: Ben Bernanke.

But it has to go, so they can get on with the next round of globalizing. Man, those Russians, they think of everything. Some of them must be bankers. 
davidstockmanscontracorner.com/who-hacked-the-dnc