Media Whores

Main stream media are such whores.

And one of the biggest whores is the Financial Times. "US transition Wave of infighting, " is one of the top left column headlines today. That's by design. Then they go into a rant that's intended to make the Trump transition as chaotic as they would like it to be by citing differences between Trump people and to use their well-worn and most revealing phrase "the Washington foreign policy establishment."

Hell, man, don't you get it: Much of the red vote was to distance themselves from the Washington foreign policy hacks. And Eliot Cohen is one of them. A neocon of the first order, another academic from Johns Hopkins who pulled out his coloring crayons and went on Twitter because they wouldn't listen to him. Now the whole world will come apart, Europe might have to help pay for its own defense instead of mooching off Americans and the neocons, left and right, will have to stop supporting dictators only to have to later kill them and thousands of innocent people in another phony war.

Cohen is either an idiot or one of the most naive persons on the planet. He decimates Trump with some nasty language before the election and then apparently expects them to offer a hero's welcome. Such is the unreal, street-ignorant world these arrogant academics reside in and exactly why they're dangerous to your health and welfare. In dealing with this crowd one might be wise to consider Shakespeare's passage about Caesar. They weren't there to praise him.

                                   

Forget America. Neocons are dangerous to the world. And they have names too--Bush, Clinton, the editorial board at the Wall Street Journal and the New York and Financial Times and Washington Post and half of both political parties. And there are all the electronic ones. The good news is newspapers and MSM electronic outlets are in decline. Just look at their revenue sheets. Or read junior Sulzberger's recent pathetic letter to his staff. It's reeks with contempt.and deceit.

In another Times article today, Martin Wolf, the Times blowhard Keynesian apologist, "Trump's false promises to his supporters," concludes his hatchet job with this beauty.

Mr Trump promises a burst of infrastructure spending, regressive tax cuts, protectionism, cuts in federal spending and radical deregulation. A big rise in infrastructure spending would indeed help construction workers. But little else in these plans would help the working class. Overall, his plans might indeed generate a brief economic surge. But the longer-term consequences are likely to be grim, not least for his angry, but fooled, supporters. Next time, they might be even angrier. Where that might lead is terrifying.

Fifty-five million American people Wolf doesn't know and never met and they're all fools. Only he and his elitist friends are smart enough to see the scam. That's the kind of contempt,conceit and arrogance you earn for exercising your so-called right to vote your belief in this phony democracy. Thank you, Mr. Wolf. This makes excellent locker room postings.  It also tells you how scared these phonies are. It's nearly two full month before he even takes office and they are busting their fat in many cases asses to denigrate and belittle.

We have a question, Mr. Wolf. Which scam are you talking about, yours or Trump's? The two most accurate sentences in your diatribe, Mr.Wolf, are the last two. And we can't wait. Trump indeed is on thin ice. And especially people like you better hope he does a decent job because that's what Brexit and the Red vote were about. And anyone naive enough to think half the globe is going to anytime soon return to the criminal element that just went home wiping crocodile tears from their eyes or the Saul Alinsky tribe about to depart the premises is badly mistaken.

And we didn't support Trump.

Overnight

The 10-year Japanese government bond yield did something it has not done in a while, moved into positive territory Tuesday and early Wednesday the Nikkei 225 responded to that and a weaker yen to tack on 1.2% and trade at 17,882.08.

Again,despite all the negativity about Trump investors seemed convinced his proposed programs will lead to inflation and higher fiscal spending as it pushed the U.S.dollar to a five-month high against the yen at 109.34. The ASX 200 was up 0.1%, the Kospi added 0.72%, the Hang Seng edged 0.525% higher while most Asian currencies held their ground against a strengthening dollar. Asian financials were one of the big winners as Trump's policies are viewed by many as being good for banks.

One news organization noted: "Overnight, American banks rose as investors largely stuck with the recent trend of dumping bonds and dividend-paying shares like utilities in favor of financial and infrastructure shares. One news organization noted:  "Overnight, American banks rose as investors largely stuck with the recent trend of dumping bonds and dividend-paying shares like utilities in favor of financial and infrastructure shares." 

Another reported:  "Meanwhile, crude oil prices shot up overnight, as members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries hammered out the details of a proposed output cut, which helped shares of producers across Asia. Japanese oil explorer Inpex 1605, +3.00%   was 3.5% higher, while Japan Petroleum Exploration 1662, +2.24%   added 2.3%. Australia’s Oil Search OSH, +3.35%   and Woodside Petroleum WPL, +2.44%   jumped 3.9% and 2.8%, respectively. Brent, the global oil benchmark, was recently down 0.3% after rallying more than 3.0% in the previous session. The OPEC news “gave a lot of optimism,” said Jingyi Pan, a market strategist at IG Markets. “We are pretty close to the [Nov. 30] meeting, so some of this optimism is getting priced into the market."

Gold investors still seem to be trying to figure out which is it: tax cuts or more fiscal spending or both
with the Trumpster as the yellow metal traded at 1230.40 an ounce. The bond sell-off seems to be saying it will be higher interest rates which would be negative for gold prices. But could higher rates fool investors and push gold higher as some believe? Time will tell.

Firm

Hold your ground Brexit supporters. Never dilute your leverage.

Strength is the only thing these government careerists understand. There's a new realism afoot and it has nothing in common with a new normal. Firm is as firm does.
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Angel Merkel has for the first time signalled that she is willing to compromise on the issue of freedom of movement in the wake of Britain’s Brexit vote.

In comments seen as a significant shift, the German Chancellor suggested that the European Union needs to “discuss further” the rules around freedom of movement.
It suggests for the first time that Britain may be able to gain full control of its borders while still retaining access to the single market, something that EU leaders including Jean-Claude Juncker have previously said would be impossible.

Until now, Mrs Merkel has always insisted that there would never be any movement on the issue of freedom of movement, which gives EU citizens the right to live and work in any country on the continent.

Theresa May has pledged that freedom of movement is her “red line” during Brexit negotiations and that she will insist on full control of the country’s borders. Mrs Merkel’s comments came just hours after Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, said it is “nonsense” to suggest that freedom of movement is one of the “fundamental freedoms” of the EU.

 Brexit supporting MPs last night said Mrs Merkel’s comments signal “the beginning of a new realism in the EU” and Whitehall sources told the Telegraph it is “the first crack in the armour”.

 telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/15/angela-merkel-suggests-she-is-willing-to-compromise-on-free-move

They Didn't Care

Well, guess what, not everyone likes Obama Care.

And here's why. Regulators will never tell you about the paralysis their rules invoke because they frankly don't give a damn. They want what they want. And if it's in your face, so be it the say. This was a program they had to know and just didn't care that it would single out older Americans and force them out of the job market. They didn't care. And they never will.
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What the media never explained to people, as they never do about employers, were all the regulations that sent small businesses spinning into chaos who now had to buy expensive tracking software and monitor all their employees or face huge fines.
 
First, we had to deal with the 9.5% "affordability" penalty, whereby an employee could never be forced to pay more than 9.5% of his gross earnings to health care costs.  That was revised slightly higher to 9.6% this fiscal year.  What it did was force employers to track an employee's wage every month to see if his earnings exceeded that artificial benchmark.  It left us scrambling constantly, discussing rate increase with our brokers as well as allocated hours to make sure we didn't screw it up.  The vigilance of such regulations was hugely demanding of our time.
In addition, and even more perversely, we were forced to offer "affordable" coverage to any employee working over 30 hours per week.  This forced us to begin looking at employees differently.  They were now all potential liabilities to the company, land mines that could go off any time, triggering a penalty.  So since our staff always had variable hours (not fixed), we were forced to track the part-time (less than 30 hours) versus full-time every month, and if any went over that amount, we had to immediately investigate why with each manager – who had to, in turn, talk to the employee who violated that arrangement.  The time spent with these discussions were commonplace and took us away from actually running our business.

Soon, the twenty-niner club was born out of necessity, and we had more part-time staff than full.  It created less loyalty in the workforce, higher turnover, and poorer morale.  Part-time employees had to find another part-time job elsewhere to get more hours.  It was absolutely foul.  Even more pernicious was the potential for ageism, since elderly employees had a higher premium and thus a higher cost to the company.  There was a natural in-built incentive to avoid hiring older employees due to a higher cost associated with them. 

Finally, the amount of time and money spent tracking, talking, monitoring, paying fines, and new taxes; filling out 1095 forms; and truly now being more of a health care company (thanks, Obama) that just happened to be in retail on the side just goes to illustrate how out of touch and callous Obama was, with a complete disregard for both individuals as well as employers in living their own lives.  And all for what, in the end?  To help breed dependency within the small percentage of folks who went to the exchanges and onto a subsidy so he could ingrain patronage and mine new votes from an increasingly dependent class?  

We have lost so much – not just as a company.  Our nation has wasted eight years with this vain and costly experiment in statist coercion.  It has stalled our economy and been hostile to hiring in general since now all you're doing is taking on new liabilities.  

americanthinker.com/articles/2016/11/obamacare_the_destroyer_how_it_has_hurt_small_business.

The Voice of Monetary Irrelevance.

Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer, one of the head honchos at the Eccles building in Washington, gave another speech today, this one "Post-Crisis."

What crisis, sir? The one you and your central banking buddies around the globe caused? Someone posted this question: "Why is he still taking?" You have nothing to say, sir. People have heard your meaningless economic babble before. Your opinion is about as relevant as a baby gnat on the ass of a huge adult male elephant. The problem, in case you don't get it, is you're getting paid big bucks with taxpayer money to deliver this gibberish. The kind word for that is waste. The more accurate one, BS.

In case you have not noticed there's a huge amount of debt floating around the globe these days.

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Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer is speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, on the topic of "Do We Have a Liquidity Problem Post-Crisis?"

Not surprisingly, Fischer's answer is that "liquidity is adequate by most measures, in most markets, and most of the time" and adds that it is “certainly too soon to declare that a broad reduction in market liquidity has occurred." Perhaps he should speak to actual market participants to get a true sense of what has happened to broad market liquidity.

He adds that there is no “convincing evidence” that liquidity has declined in equity, UST, corporate bond markets and adds that transaction costs seem to suggest liquidity has improved; however, measures of aggregate costs in corporate bond market may underestimate embedded liquidity costs. 
Fischer says that because trading volume is high, it shows no obvious signs of liquidity problem. Nonetheless, there is the potential for liquidity to evaporate in times of stress “deserves careful scrutiny,” along with broader risks to financial stability. While the potential for fire sales in bond markets is one area of concern, leverage at largest intermediaries is lower than before crisis due to recent regulation and supervisory changes; vulnerabilities from potential fire sale risks “are less significant.”

Fischer notes that it is possible that regulations have altered business model of dealer firms and liquidity; however, regulatory changes likely have enhanced financial stability and appear to be having positive effect, and believes that benefits may outweigh potential costs of possible reduction in liquidity.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-15/do-we-have-liquidity-problem-post-criris-fed-vice-chair-fischer-answers-live-feed 

Abolish

It's spelled ABOLISH!

No, that's not a cheer at some weekend Fall football game. It's an action that devoutly needs to be done.

Here you have another academic economist-bureaucrat flapping his forked tongue with scare tactics. That's what these people do best when their private reserves get scrutinized, try to scare people into continuing what is a failed process and in this case miserably failed institution. We say forked tongue because he tells us it's good for us. It isn't. It's good for the elites and their gaggle of academic, useful shills.

The truth is the central bank could disappear tomorrow and except for the initial shock any change usually begets, nothing terrible would happen. In fact, we just might see the return of real, sound money that the Federal Reserve and it apologists have so horribly destroyed over the years.They controlled inflation so well this time that the  people who got screwed by these central bank  bureaucrats paid dearly with a huge drop in their standard of existence. We say existence because for these people that's all it's been. And these geniuses knew that going in. 

Narayana Kocherlakota is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is a professor of economics at the University of Rochester and was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 2009 to 2015. He's a Bloomberg columnist. Do yo need to know any more? Independence is a misnomer. Abolishing is a far better option.
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Research has documented that central banks around the world have been better able to control inflation if they enjoy independence from elected officials. The election of Donald Trump seems like a good time to remind ourselves that, historically, the executive branch has presented the greatest threat to the independence of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Since its founding in 1913, the Fed has experienced two big failures of independence. The first occurred during World War II and its aftermath, when the central bank held long-term interest rates down to allow the government to borrow cheaply. Inflation soared to nearly 10 percent during the early days of the Korean War, until the arrangement ended with the so-called Fed-Treasury accord in 1951.

The second failure occurred in the latter half of the 1960s and the 1970s. Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon put (largely covert) pressure on Fed chairs William McChesney Martin and Arthur Burns to provide monetary stimulus to keep unemployment low and generate more popular support for their administrations.  This led, in part, to the so-called Great Inflation of the 1960s and 1970s.

bloomberg.com/view/contributors/APvwpZqjDaA/narayana-kocherlakota

Who Caused It?

 We've been saying for a while now, central banks have failed.

Central bankers bailed out the big banks based on a meme they use about every generation or so, the financial system is on the brink. It's one of their favorite big lies. So they deliberately chose to screw the COLA crowd not to mention others, many still employed, with their crazy monetary nonsense.

But even if it were on the brink, there's another more important question here: Who caused it, you? What role did the elites and the politicians who take money from the elites to do their dirty work? No matter how you slice it, it's a pure straight forward question and it deserves the same pure, straight forward answer:Who caused the financial turmoil, them or you?

It's important to remember that this was a deliberate, premeditated choice by these central bank bureaucrats. Their aim was obvious, save the elites. Feet and flames often go together and need to. The huge orchestrated Trump blacklash is an attempt to negate that.
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Central bankers lowered interest rates to near zero or below to try to revive their gasping economies. In the process, though, they have put in jeopardy the pensions of more than 100 million government workers and retirees around the globe.

In Costa Mesa, Calif., Mayor Stephen Mensinger is worried retirement payments will soon eat up all the city’s cash. In Amsterdam, language teacher Frans van Leeuwen is angry his pension now will be less than what his father received, despite 30 years of contributions. In Tokyo, ex-government worker Tadakazu Kobayashi no longer has enough income from pension checks to buy new clothes.

Managers handling trillions of dollars in government-run pension funds never expected rates to stay this low for so long. Now, the world is starved for the safe, profitable bonds that pension funds have long needed to survive. That has pulled down investment returns and made it difficult for funds to meet mounting obligations to workers and retirees who are drawing government pensions.

As low interest rates suppress investment gains in the pension plans, it generally means one thing: Standards of living for workers and retirees are decreasing, not increasing.
“Unless ordinary people have money in their pockets, they don’t spend,” the 70-year-old Mr. Kobayashi said during a recent protest of benefit cuts in downtown Tokyo. “Higher interest rates would mean there’d be more money at our disposal, even if slightly.”

The low rates exacerbate cash problems already bedeviling the world’s pension funds. Decades of underfunding, benefit overpromises, government austerity measures and two recessions have left many retirement systems with deep funding holes. A wave of retirees world-wide is leaving fewer active workers left to contribute. The 60-and-older demographic is expected to roughly double between now and 2050, according to the United Nations.

wsj.com/articles/era-of-low-interest-rates-hammers-millions-of-pensions-around-world

Overnight

The Nikkei dropped 0.3 percent to 17,625.48 after opening higher as Asian shares were mixed Tuesday and Asian currencies and bonds continued to sell lower despite what some viewed as more positive economic data in an area hoping for such. Rate hikes are still in the air as is expectations for more fiscal stimulation.

The yen fell ti its lowest level in five months against the U.S. dollar,trading down 0.8% at 107.49. Much of the yen downturn followed the election results and the dollar's increased strength against several currencies. Monday, the yield on 30-year Treasurys rose above 3% in Asian trading hours for the first time since January. Investors are reasoning that Mr. Trump’s plans to spend more on areas such as infrastructure could spark higher inflation, leading the Fed to raise interest rates sooner than expected.

As U.S. bonds have become more attractive, money that had flowed into emerging markets this year has gone into reverse, pushing up the dollar’s value and raising yields on Asian government debt. Bond yields rise as their prices fall.

For now, rising U.S. bond yields are outweighing investors’ positive thoughts about Asian economies. Beside Monday’s strong GDP numbers from Japan, Malaysia last week reported better-than-expected third-quarter growth, rising to 4.3% from 4% in the previous quarter.
The selloff “appears to have been driven by a general rise in investor risk aversion,the Wall Street Journal reported. In other markets, the ASX 200 was off -0.36%; the Shanghai Composite dropped slightly, -0.15%; the Kospi -0.0-8% while the Hang Send was up 0.46%.

Gold traded up 0.45 percent at $1,225.45 an ounce. In the U.S. on Monday, gold prices fell to a five-month low of $1,211.08 an ounce, pressured by a stronger dollar and expectations that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates in December. Oil prices gained ground during Asian trade; U.S. crude futures added 2.03 percent, at $44.20 after settling at $43.32 a barrel, while Brent futures at $45.21, up 1.76 percent from its settlement price at $44.43. Tuesday the Reserve Bank of Australia
held rates steady as she goes at their all-time low of 1.5%. It was some decreed a bet  that inflation was on its way back.

Tax Payer Supported Crap

Taxpayers are supporting all this crap. Money coming from those who oppose such silliness. Have it if you want though not on their tax dime. In states were this is happening, taxpayers should consider demanding this tax season refunds from state coffers or tax deductions on their returns if they resent any of their tax dollars being spent on play dough, coloring books and cry-ins.

It might even be reasonable to bring legal action against taxpayer-funded universities and the states they operate in to get the refunds.
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One of the more amusing bits of fallout from last week’s election has been the safe-space response of many colleges and universities to the election of the “wrong” candidate. But on closer examination, this response isn’t really amusing. In fact, it’s downright mean.

Donald Trump’s substantial victory, when most progressives expected a Hillary Clinton landslide, came as a shock to many. That shock seems to have been multiplied in academe, where few people seem to know any Trump supporters — or, at least, any Trump supporters who’ll admit to it.
The response to the shock has been to turn campuses into kindergarten. The University of Michigan Law School announced a ”post-election self-care” event with “food" and "play,” including “coloring sheets, play dough (sic), positive card-making, Legos and bubbles with your fellow law students.” (Embarrassed by the attention, UM Law scrubbed the announcement from its website, perhaps concerned that people would wonder whether its graduates would require Legos and bubbles in the event of stressful litigation.)

Stanford emailed its students and faculty that psychological counseling was available for those experiencing “uncertainty, anger, anxiety and/or fear” following the election. So did the University of Michigan’s Flint campus.

Meanwhile, even the Ivy League wasn’t immune, with the University of Pennsylvania (Trump’s alma mater) creating a post-election safe space with puppies and coloring books:

usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/11/14/trump-liberal-college-campuses-michigan-yale-glenn-reynolds-column

Failed Central Banks

Before the Trump victory people given the PC world many have been forced to live in were smart enough not to come right out and say whom they would vote for, one of the reasons the polls despite all of MSM's attempts to rig things were so far off base.

Trump's victory has changed all that for the good, not just here but globally. Mario Draghi and his fellow Brussel's  monetary bedroom partners have failed. Central banks with all their Goldman Sachs connections have failed, not the system, but more important--the people.
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zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-13/italeave-looms-italian-crisis-indicator-spikes-record-high-after-trump-win

"The US election will help all those who have not had the courage to come out and say 'I will vote No'," proclaimed one of Italian PM Renzi's opponents as The FT reports the centre-left prime minister’s referendum on change is threatened by the global populist wave. Even before the US election, he faced a struggle to secure victory in the referendum, with most polls tilting in favor of voting 'No', albeit with many undecided voters, but opponents claim "many undecided voters in the polling booth will say ‘No No No’, just like Trump voters."
As The FT reports, Mr Renzi has said he will resign if his flagship changes to Italy’s political system are rejected in a referendum on December 4, making him a casualty of the populist insurgency sweeping western democracies and increasing investor concern for the eurozone’s third-largest economy.
That fear is most evident in Italian sovereign bonds which have collapsed dramatically in the last weeks (accelerating in the last few days) with 10Y BTP yields above 2.00% for the first time since July 2015 and the spread to Bunds at its highest in 2 years (despite collossal buying from the ECB)...