Here They Go

We told you this is on their horizon.

 Kiss your cash, gold and your kids, if you have any, at night because after cash and gold your children just might be next.

China tries to limit capital flight. They are not alone. Earlier this year when certain American companies were intent on moving their head offices to Europe to get a better tax break on their overseas cash holdings, the politicians rolled out the epithets. These are dangerous control freak bureaucrats. If you sleep you will end up paying for it with more than your money.
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And now, as Reuters reports, it appears last Monday's attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, where 12 people were killed as a truck ploughed into a crowd, has given The European Commission just the excuse to tighten capital controls - specifically cash and precious metals - into and out of Europe.

It is part of an EU "action plan against terrorist financing" unveiled after the bombings and shootings in Paris in November 2015.

Under the new proposals, customs officials in European Union states can step up checks on cash and prepaid payment cards sent by post or in freight shipments.

Authorities will also be able to seize cash or precious metals carried by suspect individuals entering the EU.

People carrying more than 10,000 euros (8,413.56 pounds) in cash already have to declare this at customs when entering the EU. The new rules would allow authorities to seize money below that threshold "where there are suspicions of criminal activity," the EU executive commission said in a note.

EU officials said some of the recent attacks in Europe were carried out with limited funds, sometimes sent from outside the EU by criminal networks.

The Commission is also considering whether to set up an EU-focussed "terrorist finance tracking programme" along the lines of the U.S.-EU TFTP, which has long been opposed by EU lawmakers and privacy campaigners because it allows widespread checks on consumers' bank transfers.

The plan complements Commission proposals after the Paris attacks to tighten controls on virtual currencies such as bitcoin, and prepaid cards, which French authorities said were used to fund the bombings.

EU states backed these proposals on Tuesday. Under the deal, which still needs European Parliament approval, holders of prepaid cards would have to show some form of identity when they make payments of 150 euros or more.

But it gets better...

The Commission is also proposing common rules for the 28 EU countries on freezing "terrorists' financial resources" and on confiscating assets even from those thought to be connected to criminals.

So - cash, bitcoin, precious metals, and prepaid cards over $150 are all instruments of the "terrorists" and are now open to confiscation if you are a suspicious person... which, by their rhetoric, you are if you actually hold any of these assets.
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There answer is always the same, more tracking of the many to catch the few. Once it was $10,000. Now it's $150.

blacklistednews.com/Europe_Proposes_Confiscating_Gold_In_Crackdown_On Terrorist_Financing.

Quite Dead

Most people understand the term oxymoron.

If you look it up in Webster's you get definitions like silent thunder and inexpensive Beverly Hills attorneys. But the real meaning pops up when you couple politicians with the word urgency. Here's a quote from a well known international politician who's up for re-election next year.

Responding to rising criticism of her immigration policies after another terrorist killed innocent people, German Chancellor Angela Merkel noted:

"The Amiri case raises a series of questions, not just about the deed itself, but also about the time since he came to Germany. We will now examine with urgency to what degree state practices must be changed."

For those innocents and their loved ones it was a catastrophic event. No other definition need apply. Despite the well-plotted attempts by elites and MSM to defang so-called populism, it should be pushed even harder. Local control is just one of the appropriate answers. And that begins with it your abode and your personal being and safety. Not to mention your right to both.

Politicians usually travel with a wealth of security. But even that isn't guaranteed as in the case of the Russian ambassador to Turkey. Was that just owing to a lax of security or a purposeful lax of security? It's getting less hard to get your mind around the idea that your government would sacrifice innocents to push a policy. Understand that and you'll understand why populism is such a threat. You will also understand the absence of those WMDs.

In a feeble attempt to sooth frayed nerves, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, unwittingly or no, gave a vote of confidence for the death penalty when he said: "I am very relieved that there is no more danger stemming from this perpetrator." The more this tragedy unfolds the more it becomes clear. Merkel is just another inept politician trying to cover up her ineptitude. But ineptitude and political hemlock are the same. Both can get you quite dead.

In America it's the neocons and the stalwarts of these two archaic, impotent political parties.

Not So Deftly Over Regulated

It's not as if investors couldn't see this coming.

The U.S. dollar's been on the rise for a while now, recently hitting a 14-year high after the recent not-my-president's selection crybaby losers including apparently those members of New York's dancing Rockettes. Maybe the unemployment rate there will jump?

Supposedly, higher interest rates and the arrival of that elusive critter, inflation, that the Janet Yellen's data-driven Fed searched so long and so fervently for lend to a stronger currency. Supposedly too both are fillips for better times. In trite, shopworn Keynesian vernacular that translated into one of the longest, phoniest economic memes, consumers will do their part and create more debt by pushing up retail sales and the economy will magically re-right itself. Those damn intractable consumers. Most of them probably reside in flyover territory.

If cheaper prices are reportedly good for loony shoppers why are they not good at least in part for domestic manufacturers who use imported stuff to make their products? Are they loony, too? So the caterwauling over a rising buck has cranked up, much of it directed at the president elect's expected programs. The man hasn't even take his oath of office yet and you have one of the worst occupants of the White House in this nation's relatively young existence hopefully riding into historical oblivion in a fortnight or so and the hand wringing is already over the top.

Trump and his outlook has been called delusional, among some other well-plotted epithets. But the current resident White House golfer thinks he would have scored a third term if election laws were different. Some elected officials apparently continue to do drugs while in office. Some election laws need to be changed, but the College of Electoral votes isn't one of them. Banning any and all prospective presidential candidates from playing golf while in office, however, is one sorely needed.

The number one deterrent to homegrown manufacturing jobs is over regulation not a strong dollar. Now for those economic geniuses from Ivy League Land who love to recite their favorite con--"It's oversimplified, too small or simple to be significant."--we will repeat that point. The real bogeyman is over regulation not a strong currency. These are people who mostly in their careers never wrote a simple, straight forward declarative sentence like: "Billy hit a home run. He deftly touched all the bases on his way home." The next time an econometric-model trained economist does anything deftly will be the first time.

Color consumer confidence among the signs that things are looking up. As the Wall Street Journal  today reports: "Americans grew more optimistic about the economy in December, a sign that the postelection bump in confidence continues. The Conference Board said Tuesday its index of consumer confidence rose to 113.7 in December up from a revised 109.4 in November. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected the index to rise to 109.8 in December. The December reading was the highest since August 2001."

So as the New Year and a new president looms things are getting muddier and muddier. Make that your investment theme for 2017 and you should do just fine.

Overnight

The dollar gained back some ground overnight despite many markets Monday were closed for the season holiday.

A weaker yen lifted theNikkei 225 0.3% while the Shanghai Conmposite fell 0.2%, the Hang Send dropped 0.3% and the MSCI index of Asian-Pacific shares exclusive Japan remained flat. Markets in Hong Kong,Australia and New Zealand were closed. The Kospi was up 0.18%.

Gold, according to the Wall Street Journal, edged slightly higher. 0301 

Spot gold prices are slightly higher in Asia hours, with trading choppy and lacking conviction amid no clear drivers in the holiday season. Gold likely will trade in a narrow band this week, barring no major unexpected international developments. “Definitely when people come back, they will reposition themselves,” says Helen Lau of Argonaut. Ms. Lau expects returning traders considering gold bets will look at such factors as U.S. dollar strength and macroeconomic data signaling the health of the U.S. economy, terrorism, and tensions between China and the U.S. Spot gold prices are last up US$2.95, trading at $1,136.12/oz.

Overnight

The Nikkei benchmark is up 2% this year, but trading  was thin Monday around Asia as the Nikkei 225 fell 0.2% to 19,395.99 in early trading after the market in Japan was closed on Friday as thin trading around the Christmas holiday held sway with some markets in the regions still closed.

Japanese stocks are expected to close out the year in positive territory for 2016 even as volume remains thin,some analysts have noted.In other markets the Shanghai Composite index was off 1%; the Kospi up[ 0.01%; and Taiwan's market was higher by 0.2%. The Wall Street Journal reported: Asian shares were a mixed bag on Monday as trading volumes were thin because of the Christmas holidays, with some major markets in the region still closed.. Markets in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong were closed.

As attention shifts to the U.S. with its new administration set to takeover in early January and the threat of a rising dollar,inflation and rising interest rates investor confidence has picked up in recent weeks. Reurers noted such overnight,saying: Japanese equity markets have surged in the four years since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office, with the Nikkei hitting an almost two-decade high in June 2015, on hopes his Abenomics policies of monetary stimulus, fiscal expansion and structural reforms would end decades of deflation and stagnation. Japanese equities have been underpinned by the yen's weakness against the dollar on expectations that the incoming administration would boost economic growth and inflation via increased infrastructure spending, tax cuts and reduced regulation.

After a long year of expected interest rates hikes the Fed has delivered just one as it has repeatedly overestimated the strength of the U.S. economy in the eyes of many. Fed Chair Janet Yellen at her last public economic powwow noted that three rate hikes are in store for 2017. Given that we now know most of the jobs the Obama administration created were part-timers with few or no benefits that might be a stretch, to say the least. Art for art's sake is one thing, but normalizing the economy just to be normalizing it is another. Yellen also has lame duck written all over her, so geopolitics might prove surprising in the new year. And so might the prices of gold and oil.

Hello Hypocrisy

 
 How quickly hypocrisy shows up.

It seems there are others who might want to protect themselves from what could be an oppressive government not to mention just common thieves, hoodlums and possible terrorists. It is also interesting who gets to define hate crimes. Even more interesting is that the previous administration with its political correctness were viewed as being inconceivable of hating anyone like anyone who differed with them. Seems there were 55 or so million who voted in those so-called fly-over states felt someone in the administration seriously disliked them.

And that excludes those in the blue states who voted against more of the same. Or those in the DNC who were seen on national television claiming they hated stupid white people or anyone else who voted red.
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When it looked all but certain that Hillary Clinton was going to win the presidency, nervous gun rights advocates reported stockpiling guns and ammunition they feared would no longer be available if the Democrat won the White House.

The threat of Clinton presidency, along with several recent mass shootings, had led to 18 straight months of records in the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check system for people seeking a permit to buy a firearm. Many were concerned the government would enact regulations restricting their access to guns.

But since Republican Donald Trump, who was endorsed by the National Rifle Association and supports gun rights, won the White House in November, gun shops anticipated sales would taper off. Shares in major gun companies fell, anticipating a slowdown.Yet that doesn’t seem to be the case: On Black Friday this year, NICB processed a record 185,713 background checks — the most ever on a single day in the 20 years the system has existed. And some of those gun buyers are what the industry calls “non-traditional.” Namely, minorities, gay people and self-described liberals.

“In the more conservative gun world, there is definitely a feeling that liberals hate guns,” Liberal Gun Club spokesperson Lara Smith told the BBC. She said there as been a spike in inquiries to her organization after Trump’s election and that paid membership has increased 10 percent. People have expressed concern that an increase in hate crimes since Trump’s election could escalate into something more violent, Smith said, and they want to be prepared.

“Yes, there are liberals who dislike guns, but the vast majority of them have never been around guns and don’t know much about them other than what they are told,” Smith wrote on her organization’s website.

Smith said she has been working with other non-traditional gun groups like Black Guns Matter and Pink Pistols. Pink Pistols promotes “legal, safe, and responsible use of firearms for self-defense of the sexual-minority community.” The group, which has 45 chapters nationwide, calls itself a shooting group that “honors diversity” and “teaches queers to shoot.” Although it has worked in conjunction with the NRA, the Pink Pistols considers itself non-partisan.

mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article.

Don't Lose Focus

Yea, it's the season for celebrating the holidays. And we hope everyone does. But it's not a time to lose focus.

We've been saying for the longest time that the two-party monopoly is broken. That the industrial-military, pharmaceutical, Wall Street, elitist, wealthy, Hollywood, MSM, agricultural and educational strangle holds need to be broken and buried if this nation is really going to move forward. And make no mistake about it, PC is the exact antithesis of moving forward. You can legislate hate but never love.

PC with its zero tolerance is about hate, the absence of any latitude or mitigating circumstances. It's a one-way cattle chute headed to some cattle cars headed to Treblinka. It's one of the most dangerous elements with government sanctions afoot today and it will if not stopped tear this nation apart. The real enemy of the masses is the two-party system, funded for the most part by elites, corporations and Wall Street. That must stop.

Here is an interesting read by someone who apparently gets it. We don't know and have never met this person. As we've said enjoy your holiday. But come January 2 the rubber will again start meeting the road. So if you can take a few minutes of your holiday time to read the article.

#5 Eliminate All Taxes Less the Fractional Tax on All Transactions. The tax code is a how Congress extorts money from banks and corporations seeking exemptions and special treatment. Simplifying it is not going to increase your revenue and is not going to change the fact that we are not taxing 80% of the transactions including stock and currency transactions. Kill the entire tax code and eliminate the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). You can double government revenue by imposing a tiny fractional transaction tax on all transactions. Edgar Feige, the University of Wisconsin professor who has documented the simplicity and the utility of this approach, is available to brief you personally. Note: this is probably the one thing that your Goldman Sachs nominees have been ordered to sabotage – this is their loyalty test. 
 
#6 You are surrounded by traitors – financial, ideological, and religious. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a theatrical agency. It has not been allowed to go after traitors within the USG (I estimate 500 not now being investigated) or across our nation-wide commercial, industrial, and our scientific & technical networks (I estimate 5,000 not now being investigated). It is not possible for you to be effective in devising strategy, making policy, and managing the budget if you are undermined from within. Within the FBI itself there are secret societies including the original pedophile protective association started by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, himself a rampant pedophile and cross-dresser – each generation hand-picks and promotes the next generation of “protectors.” Other secret societies within the FBI respond to the Vatican, to Israel, and to Wall Street. Within NSA and CIA there are numerous traitors who consider it their primary duty to spy on US politicians including the President, and who use blackmail to protect their budgets and their ability to run drugs, guns, money, and children, often leveraging military assets conscripted for “sensitive” programs. Sensitive, indeed. The FBI needs to be scrubbed, and then unleashed, with its budget tripled, toward the below priorities.

themindunleashed.com/2016/12/former-cia-spy-surprising-christmas-message-trump.

Sound Right To You?

 
It's that time of year again. Roll out the old and roll in the new.

George Wallace, the former Alabama governor who underwent a change in his views, once noted about the two political parties: "There's not a dimes' worth of difference between the two."

Wallace was more than correct, but that was a long time ago and there's been much debasing of the currency since then as dimes, as are nearly all coins today, no longer in the monetary vernacular of most folks. Today it's probably the soon to be absent $100 bill of difference. But Wallace's assertion is no less true today than it was then.

Donald Trump is an anomaly. That's just one reason why he's been so despised. Anomalies are unknown, unpredictable. And until they become predictable that's really scary, especially for the entrenched. Most likely Trump will become predictable and as the old saying goes the more things change the more they remain unchanged. Another danger with anomalies is if they know where all the skeletons are interred and how the game gets played.

So it's more than highly unlikely the huge global debt that's been piled up over the last generation or so will ever be repaid. If you're an investor that poses a problem. If you're just a commoner, to use a old term, it poses much more. It was the commoners who took the brunt of the zero and negative interest rate blows. That too is an old game. Stick it to the commoners, kick the debt can down the road and celebrate your elitism.

Here's a quote for today's Financial times about interest rates and their effects on commoners.
Chris Hitchen, chief executive of the UK railway pension fund RPMI Railpen, says: “It is much harder to get returns today because yields are low. It takes decent returns as well as decent contributions to make decent pensions. This involves some risk. 

“We have risk systems in place to try to ensure we do not get into a position where we are forced sellers. In the event of falling markets, we want to be in a position where we have enough liquid assets to pay our pensions and firepower to invest at lower prices.”
RPMI has investments in quoted shares, real estate, infrastructure, private equity and hedge funds, all considered riskier than government bond
Who owns pension and retirement funds via their employers, commoners.

If inflation returns in any meaningful way--and it will--the commoners will take the hit again. It's a bit discouraging, to say the least, when one gets it coming and going. Of course, the naysayers and deniers will be out there pushing their political pablum about how much they care about you. You won't need a program to recognize them. You can easily do that by noting their all members of these two jejune political establishments that want nothing more from you than your vote and your money if you have any. And most of you don't.

Banks in the pockets of politicians make this happen. You put your money in banks and then they dictate how much and essentially how often you can take it out. It's your money. You sign up for a credit card that is connected to a specific bank and then that bank shares your data with whomever it wants and tells you why you have no control of your private information and the next thng you know you're being inundated by other commercial pests wanting you to buy their products. All because you chose to finance one purchase with one vendor not the whole damn commercial  world.

Sound right to you?  So spend your money carefully this holiday season and know that you have no moral or ethical responsibility to bail out an economy that Keynesians, bankers and politicians screwed up. One of the biggest Keynesians reportedly just went to all cash. That's why they call it semi-free markets.

Happy Holidays.

Watch Out

As we move into the holiday season further toward celebrating the New Year, Barron's featured an article, "Everything's Going to Go Right," by recalling former Wall Street technician and guru Bob Farrell line about: "When all forecasters and experts agree, something lest is going to happen."

After two huge shocks--one could even say three, with the negative opening of market at the beginning of 2016 caught quite a few off guard--in the election areas, projection for 2017's market sit in a fairly narrow range. Given the market's reaction to the Trump surprise--it was really only a surprise to those who had their craniums buried somewhere the sun never shines--stocks, bond yields and the greenback are all up.

Now the gurus have their 2017 outlook set on the real so-called new normal, investors and things will behave rationally. Sounds to us like a bunch of Harvard-trained econometric model slaves who have predicted seven of the last three predictions. Almost guaranteed to be incorrect. A Republican- controlled Congress will carry out to the letter of Trumpenomics, volatility will remain docile and the inflation that the current set of pathetically incompetent bureaucrats at the Fed searched for but could never find will arrive front, center and still breathing.

The recent interest rate hike will sooth the souls of investors remains to be seen, just as how all the Smoot-Hawley fears will play out. Our reaction is the reaction about protectionism and its potential ugly head rising up is way overdone. Technology often is the excuse given for jobs disappearing as if its all good when it isn't. That technology often brings higher costs not lower prices, fewer choices and actually way poorer services. Save your Luddite comparisons for your converts. Just call up one of your favorite corporations and see if those robot answered menus haven't gotten longer and longer and how their so-called call volume has increased not just during a holiday period or tax season but all year around.

Meanwhile, China faces a capital flight and fake news problems as other markets face similar disturbances and U.S. consumers will be showered with more opportunity to buy and store more imported junk in their garages if they've been able to afford owing one, and the neocons still lurk behind their favorite bushes. Given that and a host of of problems around the globe too numerous and perhaps too boring to mention here, one could say the fix is in. If you like to be hated, try this when  it comes to sectors. Among the Wall Street 2017 forecasters Barron's recently wrote about, nine of  the 10 gurus suggested avoiding consumer staples.

Former President Eisenhower noted probably long before Bob Farrell ever said it: "When everyone is thinking the same thing, nobody is thinking." So the ducks floating on Serenity Lake all seem to be lined up per the guru crowd, a quite amazing result and turn around given the furor that lashed away for nearly the full of  2016 at Trump's coattails. The moral of the story if there is one, if you own a hard hat liner or helmet, it might be prudent to keep it handy, hanging near the favorite door you use to egress and ingress your abode or office.

Chest-To-Chest

Another arrogant elected official who thinks he knows what's best for everyone. And a leftist columnist who has a better sense of truth.

This is a left winger who has some sense of what's happening and the dangers of PC run amok. This is hardly to commend him. The intolerance on the left is beyond the pale and it is why this nation is headed for huge trouble.

We're not Christians, but the hatred for that group from the left is palpable and the irony is a large portion of African-Americans are members of that faith. And unless we are mistaken, quite a few are Hispanics.Then you get this from an elected official, urging people to vote against an election he himself claims was won fairly. Just one more Harvard elitist.

We are saying this and we are not backing off. This man is a disgrace to his office, to the people of his state and to the nation. Though his state didn't vote for Trump there were decent citizens and voters there who most likely did. So Mr. Congressman, you are a disgrace and we will gladly tell you this chest-to-chest anywhere on the globe. Just pick a spot. This is not a threat, just a promise. This is precisely why the article below has some understanding what's at risk in this nation with the PC BS.

So pick up the gauntlet, sir. Let's get this party out in the open. You don't get to define unhinged for the rest of us, sir. That's one of the basic issues here. Your party lost. I don't care if you're in DC or  Brussels. As long as I stay out of your state--The Constitution State, what a joke--you don't get to tell me anything, sir. We can discuss that issue chest-to-chest, too, sir.
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A Democratic lawmaker is desperately lobbying the Electoral College to shun Donald Trump, and vote for Hillary Clinton — even though he conceded Monday that the Republican won the election “fair and square.”

The plea from Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) comes a week before the Dec. 19 vote, which is expected to affirm the results of the Nov. 8 election, in which Trump beat Clinton with 306 Electoral College votes.

“We’re 5 wks from Inauguration & the President Elect is completely unhinged. The electoral college must do what it was designed for,” Himes wrote Sunday night on Twitter in response to Trump’s gripe that NBC “Nightly News” is “biased, inaccurate and bad, point after point.

In an interview Monday on CNN’s “New Day,” Himes said that Trump’s refusal to say that the Russians hacked Democrats during the election was what prompted his plea to the Electoral College.
“What finally pushed me over the edge was when the president-elect of the United States criticized the CIA and the intelligence community. Can you imagine what the leaders in Beijing and Moscow and Tehran are thinking as they watch the next president of the United States delegitimize and criticize his own intelligence community and stand up for the defense of Russia, one of our prime adversaries,” said Himes.
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After Donald Trump’s election, some universities echoed with primal howls. Faculty members canceled classes for weeping, terrified students who asked: How could this possibly be happening?

I share apprehensions about President-elect Trump, but I also fear the reaction was evidence of how insular universities have become. When students inhabit liberal bubbles, they’re not learning much about their own country. To be fully educated, students should encounter not only Plato, but also Republicans.

We liberals are adept at pointing out the hypocrisies of Trump, but we should also address our own hypocrisy in terrain we govern, such as most universities: Too often, we embrace diversity of all kinds except for ideological. Repeated studies have found that about 10 percent of professors in the social sciences or the humanities are Republicans.

We champion tolerance, except for conservatives and evangelical Christians. We want to be inclusive of people who don’t look like us — so long as they think like us. I fear that liberal outrage at Trump’s presidency will exacerbate the problem of liberal echo chambers, by creating a more hostile environment for conservatives and evangelicals. Already, the lack of ideological diversity on campuses is a disservice to the students and to liberalism itself, with liberalism collapsing on some campuses into self-parody.

At Oberlin College soon after the election, students erupted in protests after a local bakery was accused of racial profiling of a black student in a shoplifting case. The student senate endorsed a boycott of the bakery, and demonstrators carried signs calling the owner a racist.

But allegations of a pattern of racist behavior were undermined by police records showing the overwhelming share of people detained for shoplifting at the bakery were white. This may actually have been a case of liberal hysteria.

Some of you are saying that it’s O.K. to be intolerant of intolerance, to discriminate against bigots who acquiesce in Trump’s record of racism and misogyny. By all means, stand up to the bigots. But do we really want to caricature half of Americans, some of whom voted for President Obama twice, as racist bigots? Maybe if we knew more Trump voters we’d be less inclined to stereotype them.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-12/new-york-times-slams-liberal-bubble-safe-spaces-across-americas-college-campuses

nypost.com/2016/12/12/congressman-begs-electoral-college-voters-to-block-trump