This Week

Besides tonight's debate there's a lot of other stuff on tap, not the least of which is to see what effect the debate has in Monday Night football. Here's a quick look at the week ahead as it features the heads of three central bank leaders starting Monday with ECB leader Mario Draghi and Bank of Japan Hiruhiko Kuroda  and Fed Chair Janet Yellen in her trip up the Hill to speak to The House Financial Services Committee.

Investors remain confused. And the Federal Reserve in it's infinitely incompetent leadership is proposing another territorial grab by driving banks out of the commodity business. Like other interventionists, the excuse is to save the banks from themselves. This time unpredictable natural disasters that, according to the WSJ, would protect them against "environmental disasters that might cause huge liabilities, would require banks to hold billions of dollars of extra capital in their commodities businesses."

This is about liquidity. It's also about the Fed's failed monetary policies and an economy after all these years that basically sucks.. Apparently, the Fed excludes it's own role of being a natural disaster when it requires higher large capital reserves at banks for other Fed-caused reasons. The article states Goldman Sachs will be hit the hardest. At first blush that's great. Anything that hits Goldman hard is welcome. But this is a gloss-over tactic to take some of the well-deserved heat off the Fed.

As the Wall Street Journal reports:  This week brings speeches by the heads of central banks in the U.S., Europe and Japan, while trade, inflation and other data releases will shed light on the health of a number of large economies.
More:
wsj.com/articles/global-economy-week-ahead-yellen-draghi-and-kuroda-speak-eu-and-japan-inflation

Sometimes it's the stories that you missed that are the more important.

blacklistednews.com/Little_Girls_Lemonade_Stand_Shut_for_Not_Getting_a permit

newstarget.com/2016-09-13-nyt-warned-clinton-to-delete-her-emails.html

newstarget.com/2016-09-14-clinton-camp-threatening-a-free-press-for-daring-to-cover-her-health-issues.

bill-clinton-mocks-the-coal-people-in-west-virginia-kentucky-for-supporting-trump-video

gundlach-puts-his-finger-on-bond-market-tipping-point

Tyranny Traitor_and_Cowardice_In_a_Fight_For_Our_Nation

business/how-to-pick-the-fastest-line-at-the-supermarket.html?

gdp-now-dips-to-3-3-nowcast-at-2-8-4th-quarter-nowcast-1-7

You Decide

Well, it's here, the first debate people have been waiting for despite all the complaints. It's estimated that 100 million viewers could tune in, many of them no doubt wanna be stand-up comics looking for free material.

It should get interesting, especially if something untoward happens like the moderators wearing signs  declaring whom they're going to vote for. To cop a favorite of the PC crowd, no undeclared permitted. That's probably too objective for MSM. At any rate here are some of those factoids everyone hates and loves to manipulate, 26  in all, from Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, 


You can find the rest there.

Factoids

#1 When Barack Obama entered the White House, the U.S. government was 10.6 trillion dollars in debt.  Today, the U.S. government is 19.5 trillion dollars in debt, and Obama still has several months to go until the end of his second term.  That means that an average of more than 1.1 trillion dollars will be added to the national debt during his presidency.  We are stealing a tremendous amount of consumption from the future to make the economy look much, much better than it otherwise would be, and we are systematically destroying the future in the process.
#2 As Obama prepares to leave office, the rate at which we are adding to the national debt is actually increasing.  During the fiscal year that is just ending, the U.S. government has added another 1.36 trillion dollars to the national debt.

#3 It isn’t just the federal government that is on a massive debt binge.  Total U.S. corporate debt has nearly doubled since the end of 2007.

#4 Default rates on U.S. corporate debt are the highest that they have been since the last financial crisis.
#5 Corporate profits have fallen for five quarters in a row, and it is being projected that it will be six in a row once the final numbers for the third quarter come in.
#6 During the month of August, commercial bankruptcy filings were up 29 percent compared to the same period a year ago.
#7 The rate of new business formation in the United States dropped dramatically during the last recession and has hovered at that new lower level ever since.
#8 The Wall Street Journal says that this is the weakest “economic recovery” since 1949.
#9 Barack Obama is on track to be the only president in all of U.S. history to never have a single year when the U.S. economy grew by at least 3 percent.
#10 In August, the Cass Freight Index dipped to the lowest level that we have seen for that month since 2010.  What this means is that the total amount of stuff being shipped around the country by air, by rail and by truck is really dropping, and this is a clear sign that real economic activity is slowing down in a major way.

EpiPen Follow-up

Here's a follow-up to our recent financialspuds.blogspot.com/2016/09/spread-wealth. story on EpiPen and what looks increasingly like a family affair with clear Congressional connections.

The post-hearing dead cat bounce in Mylan stock is over. The "blood in the streets" buyers are in trouble as the stock is tumbling following WSJ reports that Mylan is admitting its pre-tax profits for EpiPen are actually 60% higher than they told Congress.

 It seems congress had a hunch that something was up... (as Reuters reported 2 weeks ago)

The chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee probing Mylan NV's EpiPen price hike on Friday said its response to his query was "incomplete," and called on the drugmaker to give more details over how much government health insurance programs pay for the allergy treatment.
"It's an incomplete response and wouldn't satisfy my constituents who are upset about the EpiPen price increases. It doesn't provide the full picture that I requested, and it doesn't answer all of my questions," U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley said in a statement. He added that it is still unclear how many patients will benefit from Mylan's expanded assistance programme.

But then again in this consequence-less world, what difference does it make?

• Reuters 
•  zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-26/mylan-admits-epipen-profits-60-higher-it-told-congress-stock-slips

Lockstep Music

"We won't be shopping at Walmart," is the way one person involved in this story expressed his right to free speech in what has become a less than semi-free nation owing to PC.

According to the story, Walmart issued an apology. What's funny about Walmart is for years the PC crowd blocked the firm's expansion efforts in places like New York. And the PC Not Welcome sign has been shoved in the company's face other places too.

We have written before about one's right to exercise one's purchasing power only to be criticized by Google. It seems one has still the right to exercise it but not the right to talk about it if you blog on Google. The only ones with such rights are those who express views Google agrees with. Like not using Google searches to look up information about certain people.

The Internet is an information highway. That's why certain forces--and the public needs to know who they are and what they are about--are trying to centralized it to globalization bureaucrats who wake up every morning to lockstep music. Apparently, it's the same music that some employees at this Walmart bakery like to also hear.

macon.com/news/nation-world/national/article104188001

Divided We Are

Anyone following the upcoming debate tomorrow night knows the billionaire Mark Cuban has switched from Trump to Hillary and is reported that he will be in the first row at the debate. To which we say bully, bully!

We've never been Mark Cuban fans. And we've never been afraid to say it out loud or up close and in person.  In fact, taking on billionaires in part is what this election is about. What makes his switch from Trump to Hillary interesting is it shows how deeply divided we are. And that, we believe, is one of the healthiest things to come out of this circus. The openness of it all.

More and more Americans are no longer willing to quietly take any more BS from the PC crowd. It's out, it's open and it's on. No more pretending or phony nonsense about this nation being bipartisan or ever being such. It never was and it never will be. So, yea, we welcome the Mark Cubans.

Here is another well known person who has switched the other way, from Hillary to Trump. We don't know and have never met either man. What is important here is that those who disagree with the Mark Cubans are not racists, xenophobes, homophobes, ignoramuses or any of the other epithets MSM have been labeling them since this whole freak show began. We speak for nobody except ourselves.

We don't intend to vote for either person. Nor any of the other candidates. But when you witness the fear Trump traction has caused among the status quo, you know a major nerve has been probed. And probed deeply, a quite healthy thing in itself. There is nothing evil or incorrect about disliking another human being and saying so publicly. It's been around since time began. And it will be around a long time after these days are history and mostly naturally spread to the robot generations ahead.

The only thing that sets the Mark Cubans of the globe apart is their wealth gives them a platform, something the dispossessed, the downtrodden and the over-looked don't have. Cuban is no less an elitist than the rest. You know elitists because they pretend to have the answers that the rest of us are incapable of having in their view. You know elitists because theirs is always a zero sum game. For them to win, someone else must lose. Without the masses, in other words, there's no need for elitists.

Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert, switched his endorsement from Clinton to Trump today. His primary reason for the switch has to do with confiscation of property via estate taxes. His rationale on “persuasion” is much more interesting.

Please consider Why I Switched My Endorsement from Clinton to Trump.

mishtalk.com/2016/09/25/dilbert-creator-switches-endorsement-from-hillary-to-trump/

Standing Room Only

Maybe someone should pass the word along. Be careful, Hillary, whom you invite to those debates. It might make your eyes start rolling again and bring back not your Bonnie but another round of walking pneumonia.



NEW YORK – Bill Clinton’s alleged sex assault victims are likely so numerous that “we could fill the entire audience,” stated Kathleen Willey when asked by this reporter if she would hypothetically be willing to attend tomorrow’s presidential debate.
Willey, a White House aide during the Clinton administration who famously accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault, joins accusers Juanita Broaddrick and Paula Jones in commenting on the audience of tomorrow’s debate.
Stated Willey:

Most of us are well known and our stories have been repeated several times over the years, but what concerns me the most are the voices of my sisters who are still afraid to come out of the darkness. I have communicated with a number of them and they are still terrified of publicly sharing their experiences with the Clintons.
The real story here is not one of our presence in the front row at any of these debates, but the unhindered lust for power that the Clintons have displayed for decades. Hillary Clinton has lied, cheated and stolen our lives from us. People have died in her wake of deceit.
We could fill the entire audience. I would like to see the day when these women can step into the light and share their stories of brutality, terror and intimidation without the kind of fear of intimidation and recrimination that we have experienced for far too many years.

Regarding whether she would attended the debate if asked, Willey decided, “I would refrain for now. Let her do herself in on her own.”
The issue of Clinton’s alleged mistresses and accusers was put back in the headlines Saturday when Donald Trump threatened on Twitter to bring Gennifer Flowers to the first presidential debate after Trump troll Mark Cuban said he’d sit in the front row. Flowers, who says she had a 12-plus year relationship with Clinton, responded promptly on social media, writing, “Hi Donald Trump… I’m in your corner. Of course I will see u at the debate!!”
After first denying any relationship with Flowers during a 1992 60 Minutes interview, Clinton later admitted to one sexual encounter with her in a 1998 deposition for the Paula Jones lawsuit. Read more:

breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/09/25/exclusive-kathleen-willey-clinton-sex-victims-fill-entire-audience-presidential-debate

Overnight

Monday overnight started off down for many markets. Last week it was about two central banks, Bank of Japan and the Federal  Reserve while this week's highlight will most probably be the first Presidential debate. There are three schedules presidential and one vice presidential debates on tap all toll. So investors will have some distractions from their usual routines.

Asia markets opened lower on Monday, with sentiment this week likely to be dominated by the first U.S. presidential debate, as well as an upcoming informal meeting of OPEC producers.

In Australia, the ASX 200 was down 0.43 percent in early trade, with most sectors trading lower. The energy sector was down 0.77 percent, materials was lower by 0.6 percent and the heavily-weighted financial sector fell 0.27 percent.

Major banking stocks in the country were slightly lower, with ANZ down 0.33 percent, Commonwealth Bank of Australia off 0.16 percent,Westpac down 0.16 percent and the National Australia Bank dropping 0.25 percent. Japan's Nikkei 225 was down 0.59 percent, while across the Korean Strait, the Kospi dropped 0.18 percent."Asia Pacific investors are bracing for a sell day, after European and U.S. traders took some hard-won risk off the table," said Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets.

In the currency market the dollar index traded at 95.477 against a basket of currencies off from the 96.00 it hit briefly last week before the Fed's new holding pattern announcement. The yen hit 100.75 not fat off levels reached at 100.00 last week.

Spread The Wealth

Last count we noted Big Pharma had 5,200 lobbyists in Washington. You want to know what's wrong with the country, you can start here. Both sides do it.

The news comes just a week after the announcement that Boehner will be joining the board of Reynolds American, the tobacco company responsible for brands such as Camel and Newport cigarettes. The tobacco board seat will likely earn Boehner over $400,000 a year in stock and cash. The Squire Patton Boggs salary has not been disclosed, but lawmakers of Boehner’s stature have easily obtained salaries at similar gigs in the seven-figure range.

They 're talking about John Boehner, the former Republican Speaker of the House. In case you don't know it, he is a huge smoker. That's the connection there, a $400,000 annual one.

Boehner is reportedly declining to register as a lobbyist for his new job at a lobbying firm, but that label makes little difference these days. Thousands of professionals engaged in government affairs positions work to influence policy on behalf of well-heeled special interests every day without registering under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. The law governing lobby registration is virtually unenforced.

Want to guess why that law is unenforced?
blacklistednews.com/John_Boehner_Cashes_Out_Joins_Corporate_Lobbying_Firm_That_Represents_China.

More recently we had the Mylan EpiPen scandal. It looks like a troika, momma, daddy and daughter. The difference here is all three are powerful elitists. One supposes that's how a U..S senator,  head lobbyist and a big firm CEO get characterized--a family affair.

After Gayle Manchin took over the National Association of State Boards of Education in 2012, she spearheaded an unprecedented effort that encouraged states to require schools to purchase medical devices that fight life-threatening allergic reactions.

The association’s move helped pave the way for Mylan Specialty, maker of EpiPens, to develop a near monopoly in school nurses’ offices. Eleven states drafted laws requiring epinephrine auto-injectors. Nearly every other state recommended schools stock them after what the White House called the "EpiPen Law" in 2013 gave funding preference to those that did.

The CEO of Mylan then, and now, was Heather Bresch. Gayle Manchin is Heather Bresch’s mother.

Mylan is the subject of congressional investigations related to huge price hikes the company announced last month. It also faces an antitrust probe by the New York attorney general stemming from its EpiPen sales contracts with schools.

Bresch is testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday at a hearing called by Republican and Democratic members of the panel.

In October 2012, Mylan sponsored a morning of health presentations at the association’s annual conference. The presentations included a panel described as being on three of the biggest school health concerns, including food allergies.

The presenter at the panel, Chicago-based allergy doctor Ruchi Gupta, received more than $400,000 last year from Mylan for research on which she was the principal investigator, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services records. The center began releasing drug and device makers’ payments to doctors in 2013, when Gupta got more than $17,000 from Mylan for speaking, education, food and travel.

About this time, Mylan launched its "EpiPen4Schools” program, which has provided more than 700,000 free EpiPens to 65,000 schools, about half the nation's schools. The New York attorney general's investigation centers on this program, which required schools to buy EpiPens rather than its competitors if they got discounted versions, but Mylan has since changed the policy.

In December 2012, the association announced an "epinephrine policy initiative" designed to "help state boards of education as they develop student health policies regarding anaphylaxis and epinephrine auto-injector access and use," according to a press release that month. The resulting policy “discussion guide” listed key components that school policies and state legislation should have, including protection from legal liability for the school.

It was the first time the group had addressed food allergies as policy despite its own admission that it had been a growing issue since about 2000.

Previously, the association carefully avoided corporate influence, especially when its policy guidance was involved, says Brenda Welburn, the former longtime executive director. Companies would sponsor conference meals at the most, she said.

Manchin became president-elect of the education association in late 2010 and Welburn retired at the end of 2011. Welburn recalls Manchin stopping by her office saying her "daughter's company" could donate to the group. The following year, it did.  "It just looked so bad to me," Welburn said. "She (Manchin) becomes president and all of a sudden NASBE is saying EpiPens are a good thing for schools."

Pappa Manchin is a Democrat Senator from West Virginia, a former governor there. The company was founded and first started doing business in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia in 1961.  Read more:

usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/20/family-matters-epipens-had-help-getting-schools-manchin-bresch

The Cliff At The End

"We must select the illusion that appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion."
                                                                                                             Cyril Connolly

Tomorrow evening the American people--those who care to tune in, perhaps giving up for the moment another American tradition, but one seemingly declining in popularity of late, Monday Night football--will be offered the first of another episode in what has become known every four years as a debate.  Choosing one's brand of nepenthe is one the few reaming freedoms of choice still left for now.

It's supposed to be about choice, the differences and the opportunity to clear things up for those who might care to express their personal opinions a few weeks later. That is to say, who might be the better choice for the nation's future. It isn't.

The illusion is there's a difference between the two participants.There isn't. One offers a future of being bitten to death socially and economically slowly by a flock of ducks, the other devoured by a hungry 500 pound African male lion. Such fanfares are usually taunt with well-worn popularized MSM themes served up with the proper hand-picked settings and moderators, another illusion, this one of probity and faux fairness.

Contrary to the opinion of many, this is not about which lives matter, race, creed or color. This is about power and control. It's about riling up and preparing the masses for the next big one, something that's much closer than most realize. In this case the powers that be, aided by their cohorts in MSM, have worked long and hard to reverse the sexes. It's part of the illusion. Skillful to be sure, but still arrogantly deceptive. The cliff at the end of this road has many names, but it's always spelled the same--One World Government.

Do You Really Want More Of Same?

If it seems like much of the long standing status quo is coming down around society today there are plenty of good reasons. Here's just one of then. This is from the Daily Bell thedailybell.com/news-analysis/loss-of-fbi-reputation-irredeemable-james-comey-must-resign. Name an institution not tainted or under suspicion of such. And here's the MSM joke: They want you to vote now for more of the same.

Fresh proof the FBI’s Hillary email probe was a joke … Yet another surprise revelation suggests strongly that the FBI’s probe of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail mess was anything but a by-the-book investigation.  House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said he learned only Friday that the Justice Department gave immunity deals to Clinton’s former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, and two other aides. That brings to five the number of Clintonistas who got a pass in exchange for testimony and/or information. -New York 

The FBI’s erosion of reputation – taking place this very day and minute as a result of the Clinton email mess – could not have happened to a more deserving operation.

For 75 years, the FBI has terrorized the American public with increasing vigor and brutality. Much of the FBI “crimes” it focuses on – insider trading and the like – weren’t even thought to be criminal a few decades ago.

It is increasingly clear that the drug-dealing prosecuted by the FBI takes place at the highest levels of America’s political office. Enough has been reported (certainly in the alternative media) about Clinton/Bush/CIA cocaine or heroin dealings to generate what may be a believable profile of these operations.

When it comes to white collar banking crime, the American public is increasingly skeptical about the engine of the industry – central banks themselves.

Generally speaking, there are lingering and expanding  questions about whom is being prosecuted (for what) in finance, banking and drug crime.

When it comes to terrorism, there is significant skepticism, especially among the alternative media, as to whether incidents are being staged to give the FBI something dramatic to do.

And now come high-profile reports in major New York newspapers calling a  major FBI investigation a “joke.”

But it is not the investigation that is a “joke” but the FBI itself. Somehow people seem to have forgotten the “hair evidence” fiasco that came to light in 2013.

Here from the Guardian:

In July 2013, the FBI admitted that the foundations of what it called “hair comparison evidence” – a technique that its agents had used in hundreds of criminal cases nationwide and spread through the training of state-based detectives potentially through tens of thousands of other cases – were scientifically invalid. A preliminary review of the FBI’s follicular flaws found that:

-Microscopic hair analysis could not scientifically distinguish one individual to the exclusion of all others.
-Statistical weight could not be given to comparisons to suggest a likelihood that the hair derived from a specific source.
-Expert witnesses should not cite the number of hair analyses they had conducted in the lab to bolster the idea that they could definitively state that a hair belonged to a specific individual.

Tens of thousands may have been put in jail mistakenly based on hair evidence that some in the FBI knew to be false. Exactly how many lives were ruined is not clear as the FBI has surely never published a definitive account.

In fact, this is part of the problem. The FBI is generally not held to account in any single aspect of its operations.

In bluntest terms, the FBI performs a function similar to that of the 20th century KGB. It creates high-profile “criminal cases” to reinforce elite memes. For instance, banking elites are currently fixated on creating a “war on terror.” The FBI is charged with finding and arresting terrorists to buttress this narrative.