The Rejected Suitor

The Wall Street Journal stooped to a new low over the weekend with its, "Sizing Up the Next Commander-in-Chief," by Robert M. Gates, a long time government wonk. Here is the Journal's brief bio on Gates: "Mr. Gates served eight presidents over 50 years, most recently as secretary of defense under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama."

The article is suppose to be a comparison of the two presidential candidates to give readers the sense of gaining factual, fair and useful information. Mr. Gates, government bureaucrat that he is, is in full dress of the usual straw man technique such folks are so noted for, pointing out first the issues as he sees them facing a new president this January, then pointing out Hillary's shortcomings and then Trumps.

In this machete wielding job he could have saved a lot of news print and space, not to mention verbiage, and simply written: I'm for Hillary. Period.  There are too many issues to take issue with, so we'll just cover a few.

Mr. Trump, he writes, is "willfully ignorant about the rest of the world, about the military and it's capabilities, and about government itself." He accuses Trump of disdaining expertise and experience, referring his own council.

Two points. If what you and your colleagues have brought us over the last 50 years is an example of non-willful ignorance, we'll opt for new blood and the willfully ignorant every time. On the second point, disdaining expertise. This is most likely too close to home for you, but if memory serves, JFK after his abysmal Bay of Pigs showing, was quoted as saying all his life he knew not to trust the experts and questioned himself why he did it then.

Let's just take two of your former bosses, starting with President Obama. Notwithstanding his brief stint in the Senate, cite for us his experience with government, the rest of the world and the military. He's another bureaucrat, a former community organizer who's never held a real job. Or how about the latter Bush? What was his great knowledge of the military, government and the rest of the world, his brief military reserve status, his connection to his father or the Texas Rangers?

Gates says all the Presidents he served under surrounded themselves with independent, knowledgeable  advisors who weren't afraid to speak up. That's an interesting charge, but one he has no evidence that will not happen in a Trump cabinet. He's doing something no man can do, extrapolate the future. Also, extrapolate human behavior. He has no evidence that Trump won't listen and surround himself with qualified people. It's also an oblique knock against those advisors Trump has so far surrounded himself with and any future ones he plans to pick that are not public knowledge.

 It's just another straw man. Somewhere in the nation's history, a president said the man doesn't make the office, the office makes the man.  Mr. Gates is so ungracious, he assumes he's correct and the judgement of millions of voters in a so much ballyhooed, so-called democracy will be wrong. There's also more than the patina of ego here. Perhaps Trump has not bent over backwards in homage to Gates' long service but chosen other just as qualified sources of input? Don't try to tell us Gates doesn't have an ego. It blatantly present in this article.

But he can't have it both ways. Either the judgement of the voters about those eight presidents he served was correct or it was incorrect. Perhaps he would like publicly to name the presidents where voters were incorrect?  It's interesting that Gates calls "thin-skinned, temperamental, shoot-from-the hip uniformed commander-in-chief is too great a risk for America." If being such means calling BS what it is, where and when you encounter it, we welcome more of it.

Gates ends his public assassination attempt with this beauty.
At least on national security, I believe Mr. Trump is beyond repair. He is stubbornly uninformed about the world and how to lead our country and government, and temperamentally unsuited to lead our men and women in uniform. He is unqualified and unfit to be commander-in-chief.

Nearly everything Gates lists as being downfalls in the Trump candidacy meshes quite well with rejection of the status quo. What Gates just can't accept is that of the rejected suitor. They just can"t believe someone, anyone, would not buy what they're selling. That's what change is and should be about. Just one other point. If you say something bad about Trump, the most likely first response of your listeners is: "You must be a Hillary supporter." On the other hand, if you do the same about Hillary, you'll get a similar response: "You must be a Trump supporter."

Gates is a card carrying member of the elite. We hope we've made our point.

Overnight

It could be a big week ahead as investors wait on the actions of the Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve Bank to decide what they are going to do. Both banks are set to hold their meeting September 20.The BOJ is closed Monday for a holiday, but the other regional markets pushed slightly higher with the Korean Kospi edging up 0.5% and the Hong Kong Hang Seng moving up 0.6% in mid-morning trade.

The Taiwan Taiex index sprung up 2.4% mostly on stocks that make Apple components for the iPhone 7 leading the charge. The Shanghai Composite index rallied 0.5% and the Shenzhen Composite moves up 0.87%.  One down market was the Australian ASX 200, off 0.35% Given all the uncertainty lately it is expected the BOJ will do something to underpin its current  monetary policy, whether that will be to take interest rates even further into negative territory remains to be seen, another factor that keeps investors nervous for now.

As once news agency reported: In the currency market, the dollar traded at 95.889 against a basket of currencies on Monday at 10:47 a.m. HK/SIN, a touch lower than an earlier session high of 96.055. The greenback had climbed from levels near 95.344 reached on Friday afternoon Asia time on the back of a higher consumer price index in August stateside.

Among the major currency pairs, the Japanese yen traded at 102.06 versus the greenback, compared to levels below 102.00 touched on Friday. The Australian dollar traded at $0.7532, compared to its last close at $0.7488. 

Oil prices climbed on Monday, with U.S. crude futures up 1.91 percent at $43.85 while Brent was up 1.75 percent to $46.57 a barrel
 
For more on the U.S. dollar and how further strength in the currency might affect Fed policy.

reuters.com/article/us-global-forex.

Click On The Link

If you don't know who this man is, read the annotated article and you will. In short, he's an apologist for the Federal Reserve's incompetence. In his other incarnation he's one of the elite. You'll also know who one of his accomplices is, a Federal Reserve member on a board that MSM wants you to swallow the big one, it's not politicized.

Earlier this week Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump took issue with the Federal Reserve’s stock market inflation games.

He remarked on CNBC that the Fed has created a “false stock market,” and that Fed Chair Janet Yellen and central bank policymakers are very political, and should be “ashamed” of what they’re doing to the country, “The Fed is not even close to being independent.”

Certainly, the idea that the Federal Reserve influences elections is not a novel concept.  For this reason, at the recent central banker’s summit in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, former Democrat Congressman, and overall repulsive being, Barney Frank, told the Fed, “Don’t raise rates before election.”

This chart is about purchasing power, pure and simply. We'd say pure and simple data but that would be too simplistic for the Fed data whores.



 So who is this man?



You'll have to click on the link to find out.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-17/why-fed-destroyed-market-economy

Room For Error

This from Barron's.

It might pose further opportunity for the Fed to miscalculate. On one side you have people saying: 25 basis points, what's the big deal. It's talked about so long, after an initial response, it could turn out to be another Brexit moment.

On the other hand a lot of less than positive data recently hit the market not to mentioned the much ballyhooed household income increase that many believe is more hooed than bally.

2009-2009 financial crisis is still haunting markets, writes Richard Daskin of RSD Advisors in a new commentary. One by-product in recent months from new regulation has been higher short-term rates — and it has nothing to do with the Fed.

Money market fund reform, passed in hopes of avoiding the government bailouts of the supposedly risk-free investment vehicles, has already caused an increase in short-term interest rates. Daskin explains:

The upshot is that there is disintermediation going on — money is flowing out of prime funds (non government money funds), estimates are up to $300 billion. This has driven up rates on short-term non-US government guaranteed commercial paper and floating rate instruments. As money goes out of these prime funds, these obligations lose a major source of demand. Libor is up about 50-75 bps and last December’s Fed Reserve target increase of ~25 bps only explains some of it. Some market participants feel this is technical and some of the increase is going to recede. I remain a bit more skeptical. Bottom line, there is a tightening going on in the short term area of the market regardless of the September 20-21st Federal Reserve deliberations.

Daskin isn’t complaining about the regulations, but he is worried that Fed officials may hike rates on top of the recent rise, which could mean more economic dampening effects than they really intend. Daskin writes:

This has many potential effects on many areas in the financial markets, including increasing the cost of funding leverage in some closed end funds in which we invest. LIBOR is a reference rate that affects a wide range of financial products throughout the world. The fact that the spread between LIBOR and short term US Treasuries is widening is an underappreciated but important event in the markets.

He concludes:

This bifurcation in money markets/ commercial paper/ floating rate LIBOR instruments  represents another retreat from risk taking, although in the scheme of things it is probably a justified change. The monetary policymakers should pay heed though in setting rates. This is a credit tightening.

The Election Circus Continues

 
 "I said I want an Hispanic or Vietnamese gardener!"

 Where is George Clooney when he's needed, stuck in immigration traffic at Lake Cuomo?

Clinton is losing traction with millennials, according to the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, "prompting campaign to bring out party stars."

FAIRFAX, Va.— Hillary Clinton’s once-commanding lead among young voters has nearly collapsed, several polls show, a factor making the presidential race much closer in recent weeks and prompting the Clinton campaign to move quickly to keep a core Democratic constituency in the fold.

In its most visible response, the campaign has begun sending the party’s most popular stars to college campuses to urge students not to sit out the election or back third-party candidates, who are drawing support from young voters.

“Elections aren’t just about who votes, but who doesn’t vote, and that is especially true for young people like all of you,’’ first lady Michelle Obama said Friday during a campaign event at a university in Virginia, a battleground state where polls show the race tightening.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a sensation among younger voters during the Democratic primaries, will campaign for Mrs. Clinton this weekend, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a liberal icon, will attend events this weekend at two Ohio universities.

Mr. Sanders previewed his message on Friday, saying he will urge young voters to look past the candidates’ personalities and instead consider Mrs. Clinton’s proposals for debt-free college and for raising taxes on the wealthy to fund government programs.

I would just simply say to the millennials, to anybody else: Look at the issues. … Stay focused on the issues of relevance to your life,’’ Mr. Sanders said on MSNBC

This last comment, Bernie, is laughable. That's what more and more people are doing, Bernie. By the way, how are you enjoying you new lakeside home? Is your caretaker Hispanic or Vietnamese?

wsj.com/articles/millennials-have-cooled-on-hillary-clinton-forcing-a-campaign-reset-1474038301

Trouble In Merkel Land

The beat against free trade deals goes on. Hello, Angela Merkel.


Tens of thousands of people protested in European cities on Saturday against planned free trade deals with the United States and Canada they say would undermine democracy and lower food safety, environmental and labor standards.

Organizers -- an alliance of environmental groups, labor unions and opposition parties -- said 320,000 people took part in rallies in seven German cities, including Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt. Police put the figure at around 180,000.

Smaller protests were also planned in other European cities, including Vienna and Salzburg in Austria and Gothenburg and Stockholm in Sweden.

In Berlin, demonstrators waved banners reading "STOPP CETA - STOPP TTIP", another placard said "People over profits".
The demonstrations are against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States and the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada, currently being negotiated by the European Union's executive with the respective governments across the Atlantic.

Opposition in Europe to the trade deals has risen over the past year, with critics saying the pacts would hand too much power to big multinationals at the expense of consumers and workers by establishing arbitration courts to settle disputes between companies and governments.

EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom defended the planned trade deals and accused the opponents of deliberately heating up the debate with "horror stories and lies".
"The idea that TTIP will lower environmental standards is simply not true," Malmstrom told German daily Bild.

"Also the assertion that we'll be flooded with genetically modified food is simply wrong. Our democracy of course won't be undermined as some seem to believe."

The charge of horror stories and lies is an interesting one coming from an EU bureaucrat, most of whom know a lot about lies and horror tales. See Brexit. See Juncker. As for GMOs we all know about the Bayer and Monsanto deal. Maybe the good bureaucrat who is so upset wants to publicly vote to veto the deal?

 reuters.com/article/us-eu-usa-ttip-id
 

The New Norm

When Hillary testified before Congress on the Benghazi screw-up, she became noted for her "What does it matter?"comment.

What does it matter is synonymous with "I don't have any skin in the game." It's elitist jabber for "I create these messes. I don't own them." Not my problem. Can't you smelly proletarians recognize Ivy League pedigrees when you see and hear one? Understand free lunches really do exist but only for them. The same goes for responsibility, yours not theirs. Responsibility and proletarians are synonyms in the eyes of the elites. Rarified air belongs solely to the chosen.

When the mother of the Marine who died at Benghazi doing his job spoke at the Republican Convention, Hillary later questioned the mother's memory. This from a woman who claims she didn't recall being briefed on the meaning of the lower case letter c in emailing unprotected classified information, a woman whose handlers claim is notorious for losing her cell phones and publicly admitted to having "mental circuit breakers."

Understand this: the elites are buying gold and building getaway shelters. As in bomb proof. There is the neocon smell of war in the air. Not new. We've written about it before. The masses are finally figuring out zero interest rates are just that, zero. Central bankers are as bankrupt as the economies they're trying to rescue. See Japan, Inc. It's bubble gum, ceiling wax and used string. Forget lava lamps. Look for paper mache' ones made out of $100 bills. You'll find them cheap at your neighborhood daily garage sale.

If Hillary falters, they will roll out the Vermont Bernster, a guy who never had a real job. Anyone who thinks he won't snap to to orders from above probably has a refrigerator full of mood-altering mushrooms. The main meme here is collapse. Joe Biden would be their favorite choice, but rumor has it he's booked up plagiarizing signatures. Somebody's got to count the gold. Elect Trump. Then collapse the markets, central bank and the economy, all under a Republican, sending the frightened, confused masses into the waiting arms of even bigger centralized government. Forget Dolly. It'll be hello Serfdom, the new globalization norm. Free trade and free borders for all. And that includes your neighborhood.

One of the oft repeated falsehoods in this election is a Trump presidency means more fiscal spending and larger deficits. Let's get clear here. It doesn't matter which of these two wins, fiscal spending will rise and the deficit will grow. Who are you trying to kid, this is neocon Hillary and wars cost money.

Much of what's happened in markets of late has been as is often the case unexpected. See the long end of the bond curve. Increasing fiscal deficits and slower than usual growth, new normal or whatever other silly term the elites come up with, just might usher in another unexpected--stagflation.

In case you didn't get it, Hillary's just been a stalking pony all along. Solar panels are nice, but a bomb shelter might be better. A friend recently informed us he looked up bomb shelter in Webster's and found this definition: "See gold."

You Read, You Decide

Maybe the money David Brock has offered to anyone who can bring some dirt on Trump will come from defrauding old people by double and triple charging their credit cards after they have made a one-time only contribution to Hillary's campaign?

financialspuds.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-smile-of-desperation

Per Wikipedia: David Brock (born November 2, 1962) is an American political operative, author, and commentator who founded the liberal blog Media Matters for America.^[1] He has been described by Time magazine as “one of the most influential operatives in the Democratic Party.”^[2]

He is also intimately involved in Hillary's campaign.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is stealing from her poorest supporters by purposefully and repeatedly overcharging them after they make what’s supposed to be a one-time small donation through her official campaign website, multiple sources tell the Observer.

The overcharges are occurring so often that the fraud department at one of the nation’s biggest banks receives up to 100 phone calls a day from Clinton’s small donors asking for refunds for unauthorized charges to their bankcards made by Clinton’s campaign. One elderly Clinton donor, who has been a victim of this fraud scheme, has filed a complaint with her state’s attorney general and a representative from the office told her that they had forwarded her case to the Federal Election Commission.

“We get up to a hundred calls a day from Hillary’s low-income supporters complaining about multiple unauthorized charges,” a source, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of job security, from the Wells Fargo fraud department told the Observer. The source claims that the Clinton campaign has been pulling this stunt since Spring of this year. The Hillary for America campaign will overcharge small donors by repeatedly charging small amounts such as $20 to the bankcards of donors who made a one-time donation. However, the Clinton campaign strategically doesn’t overcharge these donors $100 or more because the bank would then be obligated to investigate the fraud.

The fraud specialist said that Clinton donors who call in will attempt to resolve the issue with the campaign first but they never get anywhere. “They will call the Clinton campaign to get their refund and the issue never gets resolved. So they call us and we just issue the refund. The Clinton campaign knows these charges are small potatoes and that we’ll just refund the money back.”

The source said that pornography companies often deploy a similar arrangement pull. “We see this same scheme with a lot of seedy porn companies,” the source said. The source also notes that the dozens of phone calls his department receives daily are from people who notice the fraudulent charges on their statements. “The people who call us are just the ones who catch the fraudulent charges. I can’t imagine how many more people are getting overcharged by Hillary’s campaign and they have no idea.”

Carol Mahre, an 81-year-old grandmother of seven from Minnesota, is one of the victims of Clinton’s campaign donor fraud scandal. In March, Mahre said she made a one-time $25 donation via Clinton’s official campaign website. However, when she received her US Bank card statement, she noticed multiple $25 charges were made. Mahre, who said in an interview she only contributed $25 because she’s “not rich” and that’s all she could afford, contacted her son, Roger Mahre, to help her dispute the unauthorized charges. 

Roger, who is an attorney, told the Observer that he called the Clinton campaign dozens of times in April and early May in an attempt to resolve the issue. “It took me at least 40 to 50 phone calls to the campaign office before I finally got ahold of someone,” Roger said. “After I got a campaign worker on the phone, she said they would stop making the charges.”
 Read more:

 bserver.com/2016/09/exclusive-hillary-clinton-campaign-systematically-overcharging-poorest-donors/

Wells Fargo should know a thing or two about frauds.  Sounds as if some others do too.

The Smile Of Desperation

This is the smile of desperation.



The desperation is starting to mount. Hillary's recent wobbling on video owing to what is most likely a serious motor disease that has about as much in common with pneumonia and dehydration as this fellow has with objectivity. Toss in billionaire Mark Cuban's $10 million offer to interview Trump and you have some idea of how desperate they're getting.

Frankly, we're getting a bit tired of Cuban's monotonous whining about his differences with Trump, MSM  and their coverage of his candidate of choice. It's getting more boring than he is. But even in a semi-free nation we guess billionaire twerps have their right to complain.

Hillary Clinton ally David Brock is offering to pay for new information on Donald Trump, hoping that damaging audio or video on the Republican presidential candidate will be submitted to his super PAC. Brock, founder of the left-wing Media Matters and operator of Correct the Record super PAC, recently posted the plea on Correct the Record’s website and is referring to the project as “TrumpLeaks,” NBC News reported.

Brock asked for video or audio of Trump that has yet to be released.
“One of the most important things for voters to evaluate in any election is the full measure of a candidate’s views, ideas, and temperament over time,” the website states. “In making a choice for president, voters must also consider how various candidates present themselves to the public and to the world. There are few things more important in that regard than access to video or audio in the form of prior television or radio interviews or more candid video from events a candidate may have attended.” Brock’s super PAC goes on to say they can offer compensation to anyone who has new video or audio that has been obtained legally.

NBC News noted that the project is “highly unusual” and seems to “cross a new line” in modern day politics.

You need to note NBC New's brave journalistic statement at the end.

freebeacon.com/politics/david-brock-offers-money-new-dirt-donald-trump

Cheap Journalism

It's articles like this that will ultimately be the downfall of MSM.

There's enough well-chosen loaded language in here to be a gun. This is cheap journalism. It not only cheapens the integrity of what was supposedly once a half-way decent profession, but it cheapens society at large because it comes from a contemptuous view of the general population.

Some conservatives are hard at work spreading conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton’s health in an attempt to disqualify her from seeking higher office.Video footage of the Democratic nominee stumbling as she abruptly departed a 9/11 memorial on Sunday, combined with news that she had contracted pneumonia, has fueled rumors on the right that Clinton may be concealing a far worse medical condition. But it’s not just conservatives indulging in wild speculation. At least some die-hard supporters of Bernie Sanders are echoing, and in some cases amplifying, unproven claims that Clinton may be covering up serious health problems.

Latest from Politics

Birther of a Nation

For a contingent of Sanders supporters who remain convinced the primary was rigged and distrust the media and the Democratic establishment, it isn’t much of a leap to believe Clinton has been dishonest about her health. Some have even raised the possibility that she’s gone to great lengths to conceal the truth: In a video posted to Facebook on Monday that has been viewed 11,000 times, Sanders supporter Adryenn Ashley suggests that Clinton may have used a body double after leaving the memorial to conceal health problems. “I think she’s way, way, way sicker than just pneumonia,” Ashley says in the video.

This is very carefully scripted language, designed to attack the attackers. We will make a statement and stand by it. It all professions and occupations there are whores, people for sale. Whether it's money, power, fame or all  of the them. At the very least Clinton's reputation for credibility is suspect. At its worst we all know what it is. And that applies to the entire Clinton clan.

As for Clinton's health problems, anyone with a modicum of medical knowledge and experience knows that what that video and many others have shown is not the result of pneumonia or dehydration. You can pump it, twist it and stomp on it anyway you want, but there is a clear way to prove us incorrect. Release her entire medical records since her first fall, not some phony job recommendation letter.

Despite what the PC crowd wants to shove down your throats, there are pure questions in life. Here's a couple: Do you want to have a heart attack? Do you want to lose a loved one? Do you want to have a serious auto accident anytime soon? This isn't about Trump and his medical record or his BMI. If there is a more fallacious indicator in medicine than the BMI, bring it forth. This is an inflexible net so widely cast that it catches hundreds of people who are nowhere near obese, in many cases in their zeal to find sleep apnea which is another way over diagnosed condition today. In fact, at a time when jobs are hardly robust, this is an indicator that frequently knocks many hardworking poorer people out of their employment. In some cases permanently. So lets hear about how much these elites care about the poor.

A comparable situation--and if you're a true feminist, where are you?--is the number of women put on thyroid medicine with the diagnosis of hypothyroidism. If there's some young enterprising good PI attorneys out there, there's a good market for you. Clinton we're told has hypothyroidism and has been on the standard treatment for such for many years.This is not a person known before all this erupted for her healthy lifestyle and for being an exercise junkie.

Then they try to pass off what are most likely questionable lipid numbers. The LDL before this one was 118, this one 103 and her previous  HDL was 64, this one 56 with no evidence of being on a  statin, again most likely for very good reasons. We don't know her height and her current correct weight, but her current appearance suggests she herself might have a tough time passing the BMI parameter that is used to determine obesity.

So let's see if we can put this together. We have a 68 year old women soon to be 69 with a long
standing diagnosis of hypothyroidism, with a serious medical history of what could only be called vascular disease, with no previous history of following a spartan life style, on no lipid-lowering medicines with lipid numbers many healthy athletes don't have. And that leaves out her questionable blood pressure number 100/70, again absent any blood pressure medicines. And where are serial the follow-up MRIs and neurological exams.

We're not suggesting she could qualify to play linebacker in the NFL, but she is hardly petite. Maybe the renown metabolic specialist Dr. Bill Clinton could come back on the Charlie Rose show and enlighten us about her dietary regimen because nowhere in that job recommendation was there mention of a neurologist being consulted. And even if she had an auto-immune form of thyroid problems and had the gland removed, there are too many holes in this letter job recommendation letter. It's a good tale, but that's all it is, a tale.