The Omaha Hypocrite

 
Here is another BS MSM story, this one about multi-billionaire Warren Buffett. Buffett, in image of a Nebraska replica of Garrison Kellior, likes to spin his own folsky yarns.

He also likes to tell other people how they should live their lives. Like how much taxes they should cough up on their California digs while he brags about paying much lower one on his folky homestead on the prairie in Middle America.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says that for wealthy people there comes a point where money “has no real utility.”

In an interview with Yahoo Finance’s editor-in-chief Andy Serwer at the Concordia Summit, the 86-year-old Berkshire Hathaway CEO discussed The Giving Pledge, which he founded with Bill and Melinda Gates in 2010. The pledge is a signed commitment by the wealthiest people to give away more than half of their money to philanthropy either during their lives or when they die.

Buffett argued that excessive wealth doesn’t do much for the rich and their families.

“There comes a point where money really has no real utility,” he said. “You can use it to show off, but you can’t do much else with it. I don’t think it’s good for your family. It can do wonders for people around the world.”

He noted that when the Forbes’ “rich list” of 400 wealthiest people debuted in 1982 the total wealth was around $92 billion. Now it’s $2.4 trillion.

“There’s a greater concentration of wealth than there was 30 or 20 years ago,” he noted. “What can you do with it? It seems so obvious to me you can take wonderful care of yourself. Are 10 houses better than one? Do you really want a boat?”

Buffett ranks No. 3 in the world on the rich list with an estimated net worth of $63.5 billion. He’s always maintained a low-key lifestyle, living in a modest home in Omaha and driving a practical car.

To date, 150 people have signed the pledge.

If money reaches a point in life where it has no utility why is he and billionaires like George Soros still trying to rig elections with their money. And they're not alone. Buffett is a known hypocrite. Other people have written about him. One of the people money has done wonders for is him. He boastfully uses it to pay less taxes than his secretary. 

It's okay for him to take advantage for those dirty loopholes regulators in their zeal to try to level that which is beyond being leveled, human nature, but don't let the rest of us try it. To say that Buffett and other billionaires, right and left, don't use money to push agendas is what known in polite company as a lie.

Part Of The Globalist Agenda

 
Here's another Obama move you should be quite leery of if you value your freedom and sanity.This from the Peterson Institute of International Economics.

WHITE HOUSE MAKES ANOTHER EX-IM MOVE: The Obama administration late Friday made another play at getting the Export-Import Bank fully operational again by nominating Claudia Slacik, a former senior vice president for export finance at the bank, to the agency’s board of directors.

With the nomination, two officials are now awaiting approval by the Senate Banking Committee to fill open seats on the bank’s board. Committee chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) has so far refused to act on Obama’s previous nomination, Mark McWatters, leaving the bank’s five-member board with only two seats filled. Without a quorum of at least three members, the bank has been unable to approve deals worth more than $10 million. Slacik, who worked at Ex-Im from 2013 until May of this year, previously worked for JP Morgan and Citigroup, the White House said.

politico.com/tipsheets/morning-trade/2016/09/peterson-institute-trumps-trade-proposals-horribly-destructive-obama-continues-courting-gop-establishment-on-tpp-white-house-makes-another-ex-im-

The last thing you want if you value your your sovereignty and independence is the Ex-Im bank to return to being fully operational. This is a topic that came up earlier this year. This is a bank in the name of free trade that subsidizes multi-billion dollar corporations like General Electric and its CEO and close Obama friend, Jeffery Immelt.

The Peterson Institute is a Washington-based think tank sump masquerading as a nonpartisan outfit. Check out its board of directors and other close associates. It reads like a whose-who list of globalists. One thing we all no in Washington there is no such thing an a nonpartisan outfit. Big Pharma reportedly has 5,200 lobbyists there.

Note the arrogance just oozing from the opening paragraph of this second article on the same subject. It's as if the world would stop turning if this elitist didn't share his brilliance with the rest of us. If you like GMOs you'll love these people.

For months Steph Haggard has been on my case to write about Donald Trump, the political economy of trade, and KORUS. I counselled patience, but he got so frustrated that he even took a shot himself. Good things come to those who wait, and today we unveil the Big Kahuna.

For the last few months, Gary Hufbauer, Sherman Robinson, Tyler Moran and I have been working on an analysis of the two major presidential candidates. In our report, we take Hillary Clinton to task for her opposition to TPP. We think that such opposition is wrong on both economic and geopolitical grounds and is not in the best interests of either the United States or South Korea. But as any American with a cable TV subscription knows, Secretary Clinton’s opponent, Donald Trump, takes her reticence on trade policy to new radical depths. Trump has advocated punitive sanctions on Mexico and China, at times advocating firm-specific tariffs (which are historically unprecedented, illegal, and probably unconstitutional), has talked about abrogating “disastrous” free trade agreements (including that “job-killing” KORUS agreement, which along with NAFTA, he seems to regard with particular ire), and even talking about withdrawing from the WTO which could undo 80 years of economic diplomacy and plunge the US back into the Smoot-Hawley world of the 1930s. When asked about trade wars, he insouciantly replied “who the hell cares about a trade war?”

piie.com/blogs/north-korea-witness-transformation/how-donald-trump-could-terminate-job-killer-korus

The institute chairman is Peter G. Peterson, former chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, former United States Secretary of Commerce, and one of the founders of the Blackstone Group. Vice chairman is United Technologies Corporation Chairman, George David.
Other prominent members of the institute's board of directors include:

• Leszek Balcerowicz, former Chairman of the National Bank of Poland;
• Ronnie Chan, Chairman, Hang Lung Properties;
• Chen Yuan, Governor of the China Development Bank;
• Jessica Einhorn, Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies;
• Mohamed A. El-Erian, Co-CEO and Co-CIO, PIMCO;
• Stanley Fischer, Governor of the Bank of Israel;
• Jacob A. Frenkel, Vice-Chairman of American International Group and former Governor of the Bank of Israel;
• Maurice R. Greenberg, former CEO of American International Group;
• Carla A. Hills, Chairman, Hills & Company; former United States Trade Representative; former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; former Assistant Attorney General of the United States;
• Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore;
• Reynold Levy, President of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts;
• Paul O'Neill, former United States Secretary of the Treasury;
• David O'Reilly, Chairman of Chevron Corp.;
• Peter R. Orszag, Vice Chairman of Citigroup and former director of the Office of Management and Budget;
• James W. Owens, Chief Executive of Caterpillar Inc.;
• David Rockefeller, former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank;
• Edward W. Scott, cofounder of BEA Systems;
• Lawrence Summers, former United States Secretary of the Treasury;
• Jean-Claude Trichet, former President of the European Central Bank;
• Laura D'Andrea Tyson, former Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors;
• Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve;
• Marina v.N. Whitman, Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy at the Ross School of Business;
• Ernesto Zedillo, former President of Mexico.

Your Area Or Mine?

Here is an interesting development, one that shows you how divided America is.

Everyone knows the definition of a recession. It's when your neighbor loses his or her job. It only becomes a depression when you lose yours.

Texas, which has taken in more refugees than any state in the nation over the past year, is threatening to leave the federal refugee program if the Obama administration does not meet its security demands.

The dispute comes as the Obama administration has announced a new goal of resettling 110,000 refugees in the United States in the coming year, including an unspecified increase in the number from Syria.

 Without an agreement, Texas would join Kansas and New Jersey in withdrawing state participation in the refugee program over the federal government's vetting procedures to screen out potential terrorists.

chron.com/news/politics/article/Texas-threatens-to-exit-the-federal-refugee-9236722.php 

Obama is a lame duck president. These are in-your-face retaliatory actions. There are peaceful ways to express your objections. This is clearly a local versus central debate. At which point do the citizens and residents of a particular state have the ultimate right to decide their fate and that of the off spring? It's the same question wrapped in different wrapping paper as to when do the taxpayers of one state have the right not to send off their tax dollars to the centralized government just to be rerouted to those in another state to buoy programs you neither like nor support.

Another question here, who gets to decide how many are enough, the residents of the area who will have to contend with the change these things impose or some distant bureaucrat? Despite what others will say, this is a good thing to come just before this election. It's healthy. They are giving you the chance to express your vote on this and many other issues. Whichever side you are on, the choices could not be more clear. There ought to be no name calling here. Vote your vote.

And if you think it can't happen to you and your area, keep chomping on those mushrooms you have stored in your refrigerator. It can happen to any of us in a second. That's what elitism is about. This is hardly an issue many will want to trust the court system to decide. Everything has its history. Elitism is no exception.

Our View

Many people think today's biggest problem is making the best choice to whom is best prepared to lead us. Interesting, to be sure, but not even close.

Here are some random names: MSM,CDC,BLS, FBI, DEA, RNC, DNC, CIA, BLM, USDA, to list just a few. The biggest problem we see, especially in this election year, facing the American public, and its huge with huge implications, is deciding who is the biggest liar.

Yes, we said liar. Rather harsh but a long, long way from being untruthful. And the more interesting thing is, the public is beginning to get it. One can only postulate what is in store when they finally get the whole picture. We've said it before and we will say it again, both of these political parties are bankrupt and are a poorly disguised perpetuation of the status quo and the elites are right now quaking in their Gucci slippers trying to figure out how they will steal this election without blowing their cover. In this case many of them are pacing the floor weekend in their recently built  home way from home bomb shelters.

If you recommend gold--and according to what we read the Russians just bought a boatload--you're a fiat money hater and a gold bug. That should tip you off right there. If you question the elites with their expertise--and given Harvard's recent limp endowment fund performance--some of them are quaking lately when their check their safe deposit boxes, you're an ignoramus, maybe even worse. As Twain told anyone who would listen years ago, there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics.

You don't need a program these days to tell who gets their oxygen pumped into their econometric cellars. As the elites get more bold, arrogant and determined to drive you back into your acquiescent place, just as in the upcoming election, you have to make a tough choice: turn the cheek or let your voice be heard. Only the clearly destructive religion of PC prevents you from calling BS what it is, when it is and where it is when you encounter it.

That means you have to take the time to gather the one thing they never want you to gather, information. That's why they spend so much time distorting it. And that's why the free Internet--kooks, dreamers, grammatically weak, phobia freaks of every strip and shape, scholars, entrepreneurs, lazy, ambitious or otherwise, is their biggest threat.

Let them farm that out and you've clamped shut those shackles on your own ankles whether you're black, white, brown or look like a barber pole.

That's our view. We hope you know yours.

Central Bank Bureaucrats.

We spent a lot of time in our Overnight post talking about clarity and investors seeking it ahead of the Bank of Japan meeting today. Here are two reports from Reuters.

The Bank of Japan made an abrupt shift on Wednesday to targeting interest rates on government bonds to achieve its elusive inflation target, after years of massive money printing failed to jolt the economy out of decades-long stagnation.

While the BOJ reassured markets it would continue to buy large amounts of bonds and riskier assets, the policy reboot appeared to open the door for an eventual winding down of its huge asset purchases, and tried to repair some of the damage caused by its shock move to negative rates early this year.
"The impression is that the BOJ is starting to pull back some of its troops from the battlefront," said Katsutoshi Inadome, senior fixed-income strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.
The BOJ's increasingly radical stimulus efforts are being closed watched by other global central banks which are also struggling to revive growth, such as the European Central Bank. Many investors fear central banks have nearly exhausted the limits of what monetary policy can do, putting pressure back on governments to step up spending.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe welcomed the BOJ's shift and said the government would work with the central bank to boost his "Abenomics" economic growth program.

reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-boj

Billionaire investor Daniel Loeb who runs  hedge fund Third Point had this view of the bank's changes., also from Reuters. Billionaire investor Daniel Loeb, whose Third Point has recently pushed for change at Japanese companies, on Wednesday said he approved of the Bank of Japan's monetary policy move but added corporate reform is still needed to help revive growth.

The central bank announced earlier on Wednesday it would target interest rates on government bonds and Loeb said the move will have "very positive implications for the market." Loeb, whose $16 billion Third Point has been investing in Japan for years, was speaking at the Reuters Newsmaker event featuring Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

After making bets on Japanese companies ranging from Sony Corp , to robot maker Fanuc Corp and most recently retailer Seven & i Holdings Co Ltd , Loeb said foreign investors are being welcomed more now. Some large Japanese institutions agreed with his views, Loeb said, noting he has "allies" in Japan and "our interests are aligned."

But he also said the potential for increased government protection of small and medium-sized companies was misguided. "Let the market determine where workers’ labor is best allocated, let people who allocate capital determine that,” Loeb said.

reuters.com/article/us-japan-abe-loeb

So what does this all mean. We said before these two banks were set to meet that the market had started to do what central banks failed miserably to do, their jobs. The markets started to tighten.
It reminds of  Keat's famous poem, La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

                                      O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
                                            Alone and palely loitering?
                                                 The sedge has withered from the lake,
                                                        And no birds sing.

                                             O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
                                                     So haggard and so woe-begone?
                                                       The squirrel’s granary is full,
                                                           And the harvest’s done.

                                                 I see a lily on thy brow,
                                                     With anguish moist and fever-dew,
                                                       And on thy cheeks a fading rose
                                                          Fast withereth too.

Be careful what and whom you put your faith in, central bank bureaucrats notwithstanding.
                                  

Not Your Father's Beanery

Just yesterday we wrote financialspuds.blogspot.com/2016/09/bloomberg-no-decency, essentially about the shameful lack of truth telling in MSM. Accidental is one thing. Intentional another.

Today there is a Congressional inquiry going on about the lack of truth telling at Wells Fargo, one of the too-big to fail banks, that is expanding to include not just the CEO but the board of directors. One of the  heavy hitters on the inquiry is noted leftist Senator Elisabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

The implications of that tough Congressional talk from the likes of the seemingly outraged Warren is  that the higher ups should be held responsible, as well they should, but not just in corporate America but also the government. We are waiting to hear from you Senator Warren. The Bloomberg news outlet is, as we and others have written about, notorious for coloring the facts. Who is the headman there?

Now today comes this news about all those so-called new jobs from the Bureau of Labor. It turns out there were new jobs okay, but half of them were figments of some bureaucrats that run this mess who are long on imagination and short on truth. As you read this keep in mind that the head of BLS is a close associate of Fed Chair Janet Yellen and they both coauthored a while back materials about jobs. Keep in mind too jobs and their importance to the Fed and its so-called policies. Keep in mind also there is an election coming up and now MSM's  more than just apparent struggle with presenting the public the truth. And finally keep in mind that not all Whoppers are served through drive-in windows at local beaneries.

You can’t find lazier people than in the mainstream financial press, but their exuberant cheerleading about the purported 5.2% gain in the real median household income in 2015 surely was a new high in mendacity. And we are not talking about the junior varsity here: The Washington Post was typical with a headline of superlatives followed by even more exuberance in the text:

U.S. household incomes soared in 2015, recording biggest gain in decades………The data represents the clearest evidence to date that the nation’s long, slow and topsy-turvy economic recovery has finally begun to deliver prosperity for wide swaths of workers.

The self-evident fact is that the median household couldn’t have had an after-inflation income gain of 5.2% in 2015. There is not a single data point in the mountains of “incoming” economic data that is consistent with that proposition. Yet nothing in the Post story, or any other mainstream coverage, even hints that the Census Bureau’s whopper isn’t on the level.
In the context of what was by all accounts a sputtering economy during 2015, in fact, the Census Bureau unleashed the largest year-over-year gain in recorded history. But not a single reporter smelled a fish.

So let’s first put in perspective these ballyhooed claims about the purported 2015 gains. The latter still represents nearly a 17% real shrinkage of the median income since the year 2000, if you use an honest measure of inflation like our Flyover CPI; and a 2.2% decline even when incomes are deflated by the BLS’ sawed-off inflation measuring stick called the CPI-U-RS.
Either way, there is absolutely nothing to celebrate about a trend that has headed south longer than anytime in modern US history.

 
 
zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-21/biggest-washington-whopper-yet

We call it the “birther” theory of the labor market. It turns out that 52% of all the new jobs—-5.25 million—-reported by the BLS since the end o the recession were imagined, not counted.  This amounts to still another whopper from the government statistical mills, and more evidence that the so-called recovery is based on a tissue of lies

Overnight

Wednesday is the big central bank day for the central banks of Japan and the Federal Reserve Bank, but it's an even bigger day for investors trying to get a glimpse of what's ahead a d adjust their portfolios.The BOJ is expected to make negative interest rates the centrepiece of a new policy framework.

Whether that happens could trigger either a sell off or a buying spree of safe assets such as the long end of the bond market which has been tightening rates up before bankers reveal their cards. Shares were mixed in early trading with the Nikkei 225 down 0.5% following yesterday 's decline of 0.2%. 
Meanwhile, the S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.2%, theHang Seng Index was flat, the Shanghai Composite Index was down 0.1% and Korea’s Kospi edged 0.1% higher.

Growth and inflation have eluded central bankers who are now split over whether to continue with the experiment. After 3 1/ years of trying more normal monetary policy to recover the economy, central bankers opted for negative interest rates earlier this year. Confidence is becoming an important factor for central bankers everywhere and Japan is most likely, notwithstanding the Fed, facing more pressure at the moment.

South Korea's Kospi index traded flat at 2,026.13. In Hong Kong, theHang Seng index traded flat at 23,527.92. Chinese mainland markets moved little in early trade, with the Shanghai composite flat at 3,020.85, while the Shenzhen composite gained 0.15 percent. In Japan, banking and export stocks traded mostly lower as the market looked ahead to the BOJ's decision due mid-day, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The dollar at 95.980 was lower in early trading from 96.026, up from level mid-dat Tuesday.
Oil prices advanced on Wednesday, with U.S. crude gaining 1.73 percent to $44.81 a barrel, while Brent added 1.2 percent to $46.43. The uptick in oil followed stateside data from the American Petroleum Institute that showed a 7.5 million barrel drawdown in U.S. crude inventories for the week ended September 16, according to Reuters.

Gold traded at $1314.80.

Bloomberg: No Decency

In MSM the bloom just never comes off the berg. It 's a steady drumbeat of misinformation, distortion and phony good tidings. That's something people need to take a closer look at. Who but the media would continue to publish in many cases what is just bold-faced misinformation?

The recent new housing start numbers missed the hoped for mark and Bloomberg chose to color the numbers cheerful. We understand your chosen candidate is up to her pneumonia vaccine in a tight election race. We understand who you want to win. But one would think you had a modicum of journalistic decency and respect for the truth somewhere in your claim of being professional.

You have no pride, no shame. Decent journalists would print the truth, not spin it, no matter what it looked and smelled like. You're not worthy of any respect. It's a mystery how you look your children, if you have any, in the face every day and give council about their future.

New home starts dipped 5.4%, led by single family starts down 6.0%.
Total starts came in at 1.142 million (SAAR), well under the consensus estimate of 1.190 million, and beneath the entire Econoday Range of 1.170 million to 1.220 million.
Nonetheless the Econoday robot said the “details are not as weak as the headlines”. Let’s investigate the claim.

Bloomberg spin.

The details are not as weak as the headlines as the new home market remains one of the positives for the economy. Housing starts and permits did fall in August, down a sharp 5.4 percent for starts to a lower-than-expected 1.142 million annualized rate and down 0.4 percent for permits to 1.139 million which is also lower than expected. But permit growth for single-family homes, which is a key indication on housing demand, rose a very solid 3.7 percent to a 737,000 rate which is about where permits were trending earlier in the year.

 mishtalk.com/2016/09/20/housing-starts-down-5-4-percent-bloomberg-says-not-as-weak-as-it-looks

 This chart below is further evidence that Bloomberg is one of MSM's leading spinmeisters.
 
 

Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO at Gallup
The Invisible American
I've been reading a lot about a "recovering" economy. It was even trumpeted on Page 1 of The New York Times and Financial Times last week.
I don't think it's true.

The percentage of Americans who say they are in the middle or upper-middle class has fallen 10 percentage points, from a 61% average between 2000 and 2008 to 51% today.

Ten percent of 250 million adults in the U.S. is 25 million people whose economic lives have crashed.
What the media is missing is that these 25 million people are invisible in the widely reported 4.9% official U.S. unemployment rate.
Let's say someone has a good middle-class job that pays $65,000 a year. That job goes away in a changing, disrupted world, and his new full-time job pays $14 per hour -- or about $28,000 per year. That devastated American remains counted as "full-time employed" because he still has full-time work -- although with drastically reduced pay and benefits. He has fallen out of the middle class and is invisible in current reporting.
More disastrous is the emotional toll on the person -- the sudden loss of household income can cause a crash of self-esteem and dignity, leading to an environment of desperation that we haven't seen since the Great Depression.
Millions of Americans, even if they themselves are gainfully employed in good jobs, are just one degree away from someone who is experiencing either unemployment, underemployment or falling wages. We know them all.
There are three serious metrics that need to be turned around or we'll lose the whole middle class.

1. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of the total U.S. adult population that has a full-time job has been hovering around 48% since 2010 -- this is the lowest full-time employment level since 1983.
2. The number of publicly listed companies trading on U.S. exchanges has been cut almost in half in the past 20 years -- from about 7,300 to 3,700. Because firms can't grow organically -- that is, build more business from new and existing customers -- they give up and pay high prices to acquire their competitors, thus drastically shrinking the number of U.S. public companies. This seriously contributes to the massive loss of U.S. middle-class jobs.
3. New business startups are at historical lows. Americans have stopped starting businesses. And the businesses that do start are growing at historically slow rates.

Free enterprise is in free fall -- but it is fixable. Small business can save America and restore the middle class.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-20/we-havent-seen-great-depression-gallup-ceo-destroys-recovery-lie 

Google Spreads It Tentacles

 
We've been warning for a longtime now Google is a huge octopus with more tentacles than the one in Washington. It continues to encroach on your privacy.

Google spread its tentacles further into the world of travel this week with the launch of Google Trips, a new smartphone app described by the internet giant as a “personalised tour guide in your pocket”.

Google, which is also working on a project to prevent ageing, claims Trips will not only help users manage their travel arrangements – from hotel bookings to flights – but also chaperone them around popular tourist attractions. Tour guides will no doubt be worried.  

The app works offline – travellers can download everything to their phone before setting off – though it does require users to log in with a Google account, from which the app extracts relevant information about your trip from Google Mail, such as hotel confirmations and e-tickets.  

Assuming it does work, Google Trips might seem like a handy travel companion. However, there are some issues travellers may want to consider before using it, chiefly privacy. In its policy, Google makes no bones about it: one of the reasons it mines information from you is to better target you with adverts. The more you give it, the better it gets at selling to you

It might not bother you at first, but data in the wrong hands--and as we have discovered with credit cards, that can happen, see Home Depot, Target, Citi and other large firms--but what and where is all that data used for and going? Your local friendly neighborhood terrorist?  There is another issue here, however, just the sheer power of Google.

There also a political issue. Despite statements to the contrary, there no such thing as impartial in today's charged world. And Google, whatever your feelings are, has not been squeaky clean or nonpartisan. There is also Google's role in censorship, a fact not a supposition.

Doing business with firm that might be behind the scenes trying to do in your very core beliefs is an interesting dilemma.

telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/google-travel-app-wants-to-be-your-tour-guide-but-is-that-a-good-thing/