‘We’re preparing for that possibility,’ Reince Priebus says
Getty Images
Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally Saturday in Fountain Hills, Arizona.
The head of the Republican National Committee braced the party
faithful Sunday for what could be the first contested nominating
convention in generations, suggesting increasing odds of a showdown this
summer over Donald Trump’s candidacy.
While Trump has a big lead
in convention delegates, many party elders and strategists, alarmed
over his ascent, are redoubling efforts to deny him the nomination. At
the least, they are seeking to force a battle at the July convention in
Cleveland. In multiple television interviews Sunday, Reince Priebus,
chairman of the RNC, raised the prospect of a protracted convention
fight with multiple rounds of voting needed to determine the winner.
“We’re
preparing for that possibility,” Priebus said on ABC. That marks a
shift from earlier this month, when Priebus told a gathering of
conservatives that a contested convention was “highly, highly unlikely.”
Trump’s Delegates Could Betray Him on Convention Floor
If Donald Trump fails to reach 1,237 delegates, and has
to fight for the nomination at a contested convention, he might have a
problem: some of his own delegates may be at risk of fleeing and tilting
the election. WSJ’s Jason Bellini reports. Photo: Getty
The GOP chairman
acknowledged a convention fight could lead to the selection of a nominee
who fell well short in the primary voting, but he stressed there is
“nothing nefarious” about that. Trump has warned against efforts to deny
him the nomination.
Priebus’ efforts to tamp down unease over a
convention fight come as the campaign moves into a much slower and more
grueling phase. Voters will weigh in Tuesday in Arizona and Utah, and on
April 5 in Wisconsin, but then the campaign will wait two weeks until
the New York primary. An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
Why more bedrooms are almost always better than bigger ones
Think twice before turning your garage into a living space.
Thinking of getting rid of a bedroom to expand another? Make your choice carefully.
Removing
a bedroom is one of those home-improvement blunders that can ding a
home’s worth, even if it creates a larger bedroom — or other living
space — in its place.
The reasoning is simple: The more bedrooms a home has, the higher the price it can usually command.
Listing
prices are set by looking at what comparable homes are selling for in
the same market, and the number of bedrooms is an important
characteristic used to compare two properties. “When you start
eliminating bedroom space, you’ve completely changed the comparable
value of your home in the neighborhood,” said David Pekel, president of
Pekel Construction and Remodeling, in Wauwatosa, Wis.
Reducing
the number of bedrooms also means fewer potential buyers interested in
your home. “There are people who won’t look at two-bedroom or
three-bedroom [homes],” said Brendon DeSimone, a real-estate agent in
New York and author of the book “Next Generation Real Estate.” The
typical home purchased over the last year was a single-family home with
three bedrooms and two baths, and a total of 1,870 square feet,
according to the National Association of Realtors’ annual Profile of
Home Buyers and Sellers.
There’s a good chance that not even a sprawling master will get them to change their minds.
Big
master bedrooms that resemble luxury hotel suites were once a popular
home feature, Pekel said. And while there are certainly some buyers who
will be wowed by that, the trend is waning, he said. Homeowners with
these big bedrooms often find that the extra furniture are places for
clothes to collect and they have no desire to work at their bedroom
desks, he said. (The exception: families that take in a relative who
wants their own private space, removed from the rest of the home.)
Pekel
has come into contact with more homeowners who want to break a big
bedroom up into two rooms instead of the other way around, he said.
If
you’re lucky enough to have a master bedroom on the first floor without
having to deal with stairs, you’ll most likely want to keep it intact,
said Michele Silverman Bedell, chief executive of Silversons, a
residential agency based in Westchester, N.Y. Baby boomers, foreseeing a
day when they can’t get up and down stairs as easily, will pay a
premium for this feature, Bedell said. She sold a home in White Plains
this summer with a first-floor master that was listed for $1.385 million
and sold for $1.5 million after 19 days on the market and multiple
bids.
All that said, the impact of removing a bedroom will differ
depending on how many bedrooms you start out with. If you have a five-
or six-bedroom home, you might have a bedroom to spare without too much
of a financial impact, Bedell said. If you have several bedrooms but
they’re small (say, less than 8 feet by 10 feet), you also might justify
combining two, she added. But keep in mind that a lot of buyers
typically want separate rooms for their children, along with a guest
room, she said.
Of course, if resale value isn’t a concern, none
of this matters at all. “Everything is relative to what the homeowner’s
long-range intent is,” Pekel said. Those who plan on staying in the
house until they die — and there are a growing number of people who
intend on aging in place — might not care at all about what the next
buyer will want, he added. But if you’re at all concerned about your
home’s value, you’ll probably want to discuss the potential financial
impact of a renovation with your remodeler or real-estate agent first.
Other improvements that can have a detrimental effect on a home’s value:
Removing closets
Several
years ago, Bedell had a client who took the closet out of the master
bedroom and made a huge master bath. Big mistake. This change made the
home much harder to sell. “People need closets,” she said. “They’ll walk
in and count the number of closets per room.”
Turning the garage into living space
Most
people have cars they’d like to put a roof over, DeSimone said, so
getting rid of a garage makes a home less appealing to a lot of people.
This renovation also will remove valuable storage space for many
homeowners. While the importance of a garage may vary by location, 74%
of recent buyers said that having a garage is extremely or very
important, according to a recent survey of 7,500 people throughout the
country by Crescent Communities, a real-estate investment and operating
firm. Bedell’s advice: If you’re going to turn a garage into a family
room, office or extra bedroom, leave the garage doors on the outside.
When you go to sell, a buyer can easily turn the space back into a
garage without too much trouble.
An overabundance of wallpaper
Yes,
wallpaper can be removed, but it can be a difficult endeavor —
especially if there’s a lot of it throughout the home, Bedell said. And
this goes for overdoing just about any finish. She recalled a home that
had an entrance hall covered with mirrors; it would have cost thousands
of dollars just to remove them, she said.
All of this isn’t to
say you shouldn’t take on any of these improvements. But if you do, if
possible, “do it in a way that you can put it back when you go to sell,”
DeSimone said.
The Fed believes temporary factors are goosing the inflation rate
Bloomberg
Inflation hawks think Janet Yellen is behind the curve and needs to raise interest rates to keep inflation from boiling over.
The U.S. economy, by all indications, is near full employment, and,
according to the inflation hawks, that means inflation rates should
start rising again.
In fact, the hawks say, inflation is already
bubbling, and, if Janet Yellen doesn’t cool things fast, inflation will
be at a full boil. Very soon, the hawks say, the inflation rate will
exceed 2%, which is the Federal Reserve’s target rate.
Inflation
has been below 2% for four years, which is one reason the Fed is keeping
money so easy. Most Fed officials don’t think inflation will get back
to 2% on a sustainable basis for two more years.
But
the data are troubling. Six months ago, inflation barely had a pulse,
rising at just 0.2% year-over-year. But now the personal consumption
expenditure price index (the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation) is at
1.25%, even as energy prices continue to drop.
Inflation is now rising at a 1.25% rate in the past 12 months.
What’s behind this recent
uptick in inflation? One theory is that we have too many jobs. That is,
economic theory suggests that when the unemployment rate gets very low,
workers gain bargaining power and are able to command higher wages
because the demand for labor is higher than the supply. Bosses must
raise wages to keep good workers, and then they must raise their selling
prices in order to pay those wages.
This relationship is known
as the Philips Curve, and it’s been the main theory behind the Fed’s
monetary policy for more than 50 years: The Fed tries to keep the
unemployment rate just above the level that would fuel inflation. That
level is known as the nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment, or
NAIRU.
There’s only one problem. Although the theory seems quite
reasonable on a chalkboard, the empirical evidence shows that it
doesn’t work in the real world. NAIRU seems to change over time.
Sometimes it seems that NAIRU is above 6%. But right now, NAIRU seems to
be below 5%. It could be below 3%. Recent research cited by the Council of Economic Advisers suggests NAIRU could be zero. No one really knows. And no one has a better theory to explain inflation.
So
far, Fed officials are doing what seems most practical: They are
letting the economy run. Before they feel obligated to slam on the
brakes, they’ll want actual evidence of higher prices and higher wages.
They’ll cautiously raise rates away from zero but maintain accommodative
policy for a while longer, especially with risks of global contagion
rising.
But what about the spike in the PCE price index in the past few months? Surely that indicates that NAIRU has been breached! Isn’t it time to get serious about raising rates?
Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen was asked about that at her latest press conference on Wednesday and she said she wasn’t convinced.
“Given
that the economy is now close to our maximum employment objective,
hopefully inflation is moving up,” Yellen said, before switching to the
other hand. “As you mention, recent readings on inflation have moved up.
There may be some, you know, I want to warn that there may be some
transitory factors that are influencing that.”
Jewelry and watch prices have surged in the past two months.
In other words, just as
transitory declines in oil prices and the one-time strengthening of the
dollar have pushed the PCE price index far below the Fed’s target,
transitory increases in other prices are now pushing the index higher.
But Yellen doesn’t think it’ll last, in either case. Oil prices and the
dollar will stabilize, and the transitory price increases seen over the
past few months will also fade away.
Now, this may seem like
cherry picking the data: Yellen picks which prices matter to her, and
disregards the rest. But there is a method to her madness.
Remember,
inflation is a general and sustained increase in prices, not just
temporary increases or decreases for a few goods and services. What the
Fed cares about, what we care about, is the pace of underlying
inflation. Transitory spikes or dips aren’t generalized inflation;
that’s just the markets working out the ebbs and flows of supply and
demand.
Economists have a lot of tools to help them figure out
whether the underlying rate of inflation has changed or whether it’s
just temporary factors. One method is to use core inflation measures,
which automatically ignore volatile food and energy prices. Core
inflation does a pretty good job of predicting future inflation rates,
but it offends people who think food and energy prices matter in the
real world.
Another method has been devised by the Dallas Fed. Its trimmed mean PCE index strips
out whatever prices are rising or falling most in a given month,
ignoring the outliers on the theory that the biggest price changes are
reactions to shocks in individual markets, not part of a general trend.
Researchers
at the Dallas Fed point out that the recent spike in the PCE index has
been driven by unusually large price increases for goods such as
apparel, jewelry, motor vehicles, and drugs, and for services such as
air fares, school lunches, tickets for spectator sports and banking
fees.
Apparel prices, for instance, are up at a 14% annual rate
in the first two months of the year, compared with a 0.9% decrease in
2015. Jewelry and watch prices are up at a 62% annual rate, compared
with a 0.7% drop in 2015. Motor vehicle prices are up at a 3.2% rate,
compared with a 0.2% rise last year. Drug prices are up at an 11.5%
rate, compared with a 1.7% increase last year.
Most likely, the
recent spike in the PCE index is due to temporary shocks, not to an
acceleration in underlying inflation. There’s no urgency to raise rates
on account of hyperinflation lurking right around the corner. In
reality, the Fed would be ecstatic if it could get inflation back to 2%
any time soon.
Crude oil prices fell on Monday, extending a decline seen late last
week after the first in the number of number of active U.S. oil-drilling
rigs in 13 weeks.
West Texas Intermediate crude futures for April delivery
CLJ6, -1.88%
fell 64 cents, or 1.6%, to
$38.80 a barrel. The contract, which expires at Monday’s settlement,
closed down 1.9% on Friday at $39.44 a barrel, after pushing above $41
during that session. May crude
CLK6, -1.58%
dropped 53 cents, or 1.3%, to
$40.78 a barrel. Oil still managed a fifth weekly rise last week.
May Brent crude
LCOK6, -1.31%
, the global benchmark, dropped 41 cents, or 1%, to $40.79 a barrel.
On Friday, Baker Hughes
BHI, +1.35%
reported that the number of active U.S. oil-drilling rigs increased
by 1 to 387 — the first in 13 weeks — though total active domestic oil
rigs fell by 4 to 476. After that rig data was announced, WTI crude, which had touched lows under $40 ahead of the release, added to losses.
Oil still managed a fifth weekly rise last week, spurred by ongoing hopes that an April 17 meeting in Doha, Qatar between major oil producers could lead to higher prices.
Speculation is flourishing about a tacit “Shanghai Accord”
Reuters/Aly Song
Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen talks with
U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and the U.K.'s finance minister George
Osborne at the G-20 meeting.
The dollar has taken a surprisingly big stumble in recent weeks,
prompting traders to ask: What’s really driving the selloff? The answer
some are coming up with smacks of conspiracy theory.
Rumors are
flourishing that global policy makers made a secret deal at the G-20
meeting in Shanghai late last month. This “Shanghai Accord” to weaken
the greenback was aimed at calming the financial markets, which had
gotten off to an awful start to the new year, according to the chatter.
No
foreign-exchange pact was announced at the February meeting of central
bankers and policy makers from the 20 largest economies. That hasn’t
stopped speculation that a plan of action was whipped up behind closed
doors, as its supposed effects are beginning to emerge now: The
greenback
DXY, +0.20%
has shaved off more than 3%
since the gathering, sparking a rally in stocks, emerging markets assets
and commodities.
US:DXY
949698100
“To any conspiracy
theorists, it’s all become quite clear,” said Chris Weston, chief market
strategist at IG, in a note Friday. “There is a global coordinated
central bank effort to weaken the [dollar] in play, which in turn has
led to a massive de-risking in equity and credit markets.”
“A weaker [dollar] has been a key reason why we have seen a 54% rally in U.S. crude
CLJ6, -1.95%
and 40% rally in Brent
LCOK6, -1.48%
” he noted.
The
theorists argue a strong dollar would be bad for the global economy and
could spark market volatility — ringing alarm bells with policy makers
after the greenback’s strong 2015 rally.
The dollar index jumped
almost 10% last year. In December, it reached its highest level in more
than a decade on expectations the Federal Reserve would start to
increase interest rates.
This 2015 run-up sent ripple effects
through financial markets, with emerging markets and U.S. exporters
suffering in particular. Oil prices were also hit, although the
substantial decline in crude futures was largely due to a persistent
supply glut.
Unexpected moves
Another argument is that central bankers have made some unexpected moves recently, taking markets by surprise.
“Since
the G20 meeting in Shanghai there have been many red flags,” noted
Weston. “Whether it’s the [People’s Bank of China] easing the Reserve
Ratio Requirements (RRR) by 50 basis points, the [Reserve Bank of New
Zealand] cutting its cash rate by 25 basis points (very much out of
consensus), or the ECB moving to a focus on credit markets and going
significantly above and beyond expectations.” Read:A weaker euro isn’t a top priority for Draghi’s ECB
This
week the Fed struck a surprisingly dovish tone and hinted it would
significantly slow the pace of rate hikes year. The comments sparked a
selloff in the dollar, with some market observers seeing it as another
evidence of the secret “Shanghai Accord”.
Read:Fed gives gold bulls a reason to cheer, for now
Plus,
there is something of a precedent: The Plaza Accord. In 1985, the
finance ministers from the U.S., France, West Germany, Japan and the
U.K. made a deal to jointly guide the dollar lower against the yen and
the German mark.
The action was meant to help jump-start the U.S. economy by reversing an extended run-up by the greenback. Read:To stave off currency war, is it time for a coordinated response to the Chinese yuan?
Joachim
Fels, global economic adviser at bond-trading firm PIMCO, told
Bloomberg he also suspects central bankers have coordinated their
actions to prevent the dollar from growing stronger.
“There seems
to be some kind of tacit Shanghai Accord in place,” he told the news
outlet. “The agreement is to roughly stabilize the dollar versus the
major currencies through appropriate monetary policy action, not through
intervention.”
However, not everyone agrees something is afoot.
Esty Dwek, global strategist at Loomis, Sayles & Co., said she’d be
surprised by a secret deal and that she hasn’t heard anything about it.
Instead the recent dollar weakness comes down to two other factors, she said.
“First
of all, the dollar has had a huge rally over a number of years,” she
said. “And second, historically, what we see often is that the dollar
actually stops rallying once the Fed starts hiking. It rallies before
[rate increases].”
(INTELLIHUB)
— The New World Order is no longer a conspiracy theory. It’s a fact.
It’s real. And it’s here. As a result we the people are subject to a
tyrannous government which has been bought and now
owned by those that collectively make up the NWO. Those that do not see
this are either in denial or brain dead. For those of us that do
understand what is going on then we know we are in the midst of a
crisis. So what can we do about it? We can sit around and complain and
whine. We can post things on Face Book. We can write our congressman. We
can go vote for a Republican and a Democrat. We can do what the Bundy’s
did in Nevada. We can join a militia and scream armed revolution. How
well are any of those tactics working? They’re not.
When doing a business plan we have to ask three questions: Where were we? Where are we now? Where are we going?
We know where we’ve been. We had a constitution and a republic with
unalienable rights and economic freedoms. If nothing is done then we’re
heading to a one world government where those of us that are not card
carrying members of the NWO are in for a lot of misery and grief; maybe
extermination. For those that laugh at me go read about Stalin, Hitler
and Mao. Or read about the FEMA camps, the PATRIOT Act, the constitution
free zone, the NSA surveillance. If you aren’t alarmed then you are
brain dead and you should go cower under your bed and let us people who
do know take control of this.
The question of where we are is of utmost importance. Let’s look at
our citizens. We have those that are members of the democrat and
republican parties who profit off of the current system. We have imports
like the Pakistanis and Indians who think that no matter how corrupt
things are it’s better than where they came from. We have the brain dead
who don’t have a clue. We have those with no backbones who are afraid
to do anything. We have those that are lazy who say good luck in
changing things and are for it as long as they can lie on their couch
and watch television. These people will not march on Washington, take to
the streets or join a rebellion to thwart what is coming our way. What
then will these people do? They’ll vote. Vote for what? A new
government. How? Read on.
Back in the colonial days the people elected a continental congress.
The Continental Congress was a convention of delegates called together
from the Thirteen Colonies which became the governing body of the United
States during the American Revolution. It worked then. It will work
now. In a nutshell we get people who will represent every congressional
district in the country. We then have a political party which has the
capacity to occupy every seat in congress. All we have to do is get them
elected. Why would the people vote for us?
In business the first rule of marketing is give the customer what
they want. That’s precisely what we’ll do. We’ll hit every hot button
they have. If the people vote us in we’ll have control of the
legislative and administrative branches of the government. We will
promise the people and deliver on the first day in office to do the
following:
We will make it so that their representatives will never be bought
off again by making lobbying illegal. We will tighten up all the loop
holes like giving money to a spouse or relative of an elected official.
This law will be so tight that there is no way money can be given to a
representative. It’s the biggest hot button with the people and we will
exploit it to not only get elected but to rid ourselves of our
government being bought off. It’s a slam dunk.
We will make government corruption the same as treason. Anyone
involved in any government whether it be city, state, county or federal
who is found guilty of corruption or the above law will be sentenced to
life in prison without parole. Slam dunk number two.
This idea can be debated but I would propose that every congressman
will have a computerized tally board. A proposed law or decision of the
government will be put to the people over a website. Those that are
legal citizens of this country will be able to read the proposal and
will be able to vote by phone or computer. The congressman will see the
results of the vote and then be mandated to vote as the people wish.
This would truly be a government of the people, by the people and for
the people. We could put the following questions to the people. Should
we repeal the PATRIOT Act? Should we withdraw our military from here or
there? Should we put tariffs on goods manufactured over seas? Should we
repeal the trade agreements? And so on and so forth. This way our
representatives cannot make any bad decisions or go against the people’s
will. This too I think would be a slam dunk.
In conclusion we’ll be creating a political party that will be a new
government the way the founders envisioned it; a nation ruled by the
constitution that serves the people. This is doable within a few years
in time for the next elections. Once we have the people in place and the
word spreads we’ll be able to get the money needed to finance this. I
think this is the only way to win over the people. In parting here is an
idea that may warm your cockles. Maybe before we repeal the PATRIOT
Act we use it against those that have corrupted our government and
economic system. As the act gives us the right to take their assets we
can take all of their ill gotten gains and use it to make Social
Security solvent. Think of that.
Consumer confidence tumbles to 5 month lows. More retail stores
reporting declining sales.Caterpillar sales decline and the companies
revenue declines at the same time. Fear indicator surges to record
highs. The economy is collapsing and investor are nervous. US rebound in
manufacturing is an illusion, the economy is not improving. Baltic Dry
Index is around 395. Bernanke says the economy is fine and tells
everyone to stop worrying about negative rates. The free trade agreement
do not add jobs to the economy.
You reap what you sow. The Republican Party – pushed along
by large segments of the “Third Way” Democrats – crafted policies that
allowed the American rich to go on tax strike, that allowed them to
deindustrialize the United States and that allowed their banks to
control the destiny of people from the redwood forest to the gulf stream
waters.
This land is their land. Democracy is the mask of the 1 percent.
The
detritus of those policies created under-employment and endemic social
crises. Between the prison industrial complex and the opioid crisis lies
the fault line of race: otherwise these are identical. Wages plummeted,
but debt-fueled consumption allowed the American Dream to remain alive.
The Great Recession of 2007 awoke sections of the country from its
credit card somnolence. For the first time in decades, the American
Dream seemed unrealistic. The lives of American children would most
certainly be economically more fragile than those of their parents.
Race
stayed the hand of unity. The Tea Party movement covered itself in the
old rags of racism to blame migrants and minorities for the degradation
of their country. Egged on by the Republican elites, this movement took
the hatred of government and of outsiders to the limit. Out of it came
Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, with fire against Washington as their
ammunition. It is fitting that the old Gadsden flag was taken up by the
Tea Party – with its rattlesnake above the sign, “Don’t Tread on Me.”
To associate oneself with the rattlesnake is a curious gesture. This is venom incarnate.
The
Great Recession hit black and Latino families hardest, but there was no
room for them in the Tea Party consensus. It was Obama’s presidential
campaign that became their ark. That Obama did little to constrain the
banks and force the rich to pay tax was disappointing, but not
sufficient for disillusionment. What choice has there been? It was
organizations such as Stand Up United, Black Lives Matter, Dream
Defenders, Defend the Dream, Stand Up/Don’t Shoot and Black Youth
Project that drew in the more critical segments – spurred on by
Ferguson.
They are the antithesis of the Tea Party, although
survivors of a similar dynamic set in motion by the American rich’s tax
strike.
Many of these young people have now taken refuge in the
Sanders’ campaign. Hillary Clinton was part of the “Third Way” Democrats
that allowed Wall Street its excesses. She does not have the compass to
bring in this segment. It is fitting that the wife of Eric Garner
(killed by the New York police department) supports Clinton, while their
daughter – Erica Garner – who is an activist in these movements
supports Sanders.
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are the end-points of
Republican policy. They are what emerge when the rich don’t pay their
fair share of taxes and the working poor cannot any longer dream of a
better life. But they are particularly the salvation of the white
working poor. Theirs is a populism narrowed by racism and misogyny.
Stop
Trump, goes the slogan. But replace him with what? Ted Cruz, who is not
only as bellicose as Trump (bomb the desert to “make it glow”), but is
also a zealot? These men are mirror reflections of each other. They are
Crump.
Both Trump and Sanders attract the white workers who had
been battered by the trade agreements of the 1 percent. Trump’s rhetoric
is familiar to the American right, which heard it from Pat Buchanan in
an earlier era. Sanders comes from a long line of Democratic
barnstormers who opposed these recent trade deals – whether Tom Harkin
or Sherrod Brown and most recently the Sanders’ supporter Keith Ellison.
These are Mid-western politicians who know how the trade deals
eviscerated the working class of their heartland.
In this
skepticism of the 1 percent’s trade deals there is the potential of
great unity, but again race is the obstacle. Buchanan’s fulminations on
the “end of White America” are far from Harkin’s 1992 objections to
NAFTA on the grounds that the U.S. protects “everything that deals with
capital and property but we cannot deal with protecting basic human
rights.”
Exit from this current nightmare is not evident. Until
the American Rich give up their tax strike, there is little hope for
necessary social investments. Unity is impossible as long as the
toxicity of racism diminishes social life. Trump and Cruz offer bluster,
empty slogans that reduce the potential of people. Clinton and Rubio
have little to offer beyond the prattle of the Beltway, which is
continued adherence to Wall Street’s failed dogmas and belief in the
Security establishment’s failed imagination for the world.
The Republican elite wants to sow fear of Trump in order to sneak in Cruz. Under both shells sit rotten peas.
It is better to pick neither.
Vijay Prashad is professor
of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
He is the author of 18 books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press, 2012), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (Verso, 2013) and the forthcoming The Death of a Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016). His columns appear at AlterNet every Wednesday.
This story came out about a year ago and
I'm not sure how I missed it, as I was certainly looking for new
developments in the Sandy Hook story.
In
early December 2014, filmmaker and author William Brandon Shanley
launched several lawsuits against Big Media totaling over $1 Trillion
over their "coverage" of the Sandy Hook "Massacre".
In his statement, Shanley says:
“After
exhaustive research, the good news is that overwhelming evidence
reveals that no children or teachers died at Sandy Hook two years ago.
For relief, I have filed lawsuits against the media in US District Court
in New Haven for Fraud and Terrorism.
Part
of his abundant evidence includes "Exhibit D": The Connecticut State
Police dash cams record no evacuation of children from the school at
critical moments, which he calls "Smoking Gun evidence no children died
at Sandy Hook.”
Shanley’s Complaint continues:
"Defendants
entered in a multi-year conspiracy, meeting in groups separately and
together, to commit fraud and terrorism, i.e., to brainwash the public
into thinking a lone gunman drill, known as the “Sandy Hook Massacre”
was real, when in fact it was a staged FEMA National Level Exercise
Event that redirected government resources to terrorize the public.
These crimes were undertaken with the intent of subverting the US
Constitution and to affect national, state and local laws.
"This
fraud involved lying to the public, faking news, publishing one-sided
news reports, censoring reality, suppressing facts, and deliberately
skewing the news to shift public perceptions.
"The
true costs of this breach of integrity and trust to society are
unfathomable. Instead of fulfilling their Constitutional Role as the
People’s Surrogates and being honest brokers of information, the
Plaintiff will show how the men and women who dominate the TV news
industry in the United States broke laws, besmirched the First
Amendment, their Constitutional role as government watchdogs, and
forfeited the right to report the news, and thereby profit from news
production and distribution.
"The sine qua non
of journalism is the search for truth. Our Fourth Estate chose a
different path. Punitive damages of one year’s annual revenue from each
Defendant are being sought to establish a News Trust, that will free
journalism and restore trust and integrity to our communications
sources. A democracy cannot survive this tyranny over human
consciousness.
In a
separate Complaint, The New York Times, the Associated Press, the
Hartford Courant, and the Newtown Bee are being sued for 10 billion USD
in punitive damages. Both cases were filed pro se, without an attorney. Here are the details of the two cases filed, for those able to obtain login credentials:
Case Name:Shanley v. Smith et al. Case Number: 3:14-cv-01881-JAM Filer: William Brandon Shanley
Case Name: Shanley v. O’Prey et al. Case Number:3:14-cv-01929-JAM Filer: William Brandon Shanley
On December 17, 2014 the US District Court of Connecticut dismissed the latter case, according to this site,
which is dedicated to defending the truth of the official Sandy Hook
story and to destroying th reputations of anyone who dares question it.
On
December 30, 2014, scrawny, 64-year-old Shanley got himself assaulted
by two police officers and somehow ended up drugged with Haldol and
hospitalized, then jailed for 43 days. Let that be a lesson to anyone who wants to get "cute" about Sandy Hook.
Intelligent and sometimes humorous speculation about the whole affair can be found on this Reddit subdomain.
I’d say looking at SEC filings and other corporate data is more useful.
I was recently looking at
official corporate data from China and my reaction was “My God, are we
already so down the rabbit hole?”.
COFCO is a giant Chinese State-owned corporation which mostly focuses on
food products, from cooking oil to sweets. It present debt to EBITDA
ratio is a headache inducing 52x. It means for every yuan it earns
(before inflation, ammortization etc) it has 52 yuan in debt.
I find it telling the central planners in Beijing saw no need to embellish COFCO’s balance sheets despite the power to do so.
But one can always say “COFCO is State-owned, it has no need to be careful with money because Beijing will always bail it out”.
So let’s look at Fosun, a privately owned Shanghai-based conglomerate
which reminds me more and more of the Korean chaebol in the Park era.
Fosun has a debt to EBITDA ratio of 55x, worse than COFCO. It’s literally an empire built upon a mountain of debt.
I find these statistics telling and a perfect explanation of the
reason why so many people feel the 2008 depression has never ended
despite rosey government statistics: savers, who invariably belong to
the so called Main Street, are being punished to reward big spenders,
who invariably reside in the local equivalent of Wall Street.
Without the stealth taxation of savings, there’d be no way even China could sustain those debt to EBITDA ratios.
No savings mean no capital accumulation, meaning the small guy will have to work twice as hard just to stay in the same place.
Of course we are daily told there’s no need for savings because,
thanks to the “heroic” monetary policies implemented by the ECB, the BOJ
and the PBOC credit will flow like a river. Each time the ECB cut rates
(and trust me on this: we haven’t seen anything yet), the propaganda
machine gets into high gear and hammers home banks will open the spigots
and bring about a new age of prosperity.
They’ve been doing this for seven years and counting and the only thing
they managed to is reversing the household deleveraging trends we had
across Europe after 2008, with that new debt going in just two sectors:
cars and housing. Neither are capital assets and neither can generate
wealth. In fact cars can be considered consumer goods, as their value
plummets the instant a registration plate is riveted onto them or the
new model hits the market.
In short that freshly printed money which trickles down into Main Street
goes into buying non-productive assets whose value is completely at the
mercy of a million factors (houses) and rapidly depreciating consumer
goods (cars).
TOPICS IN THIS INTERVIEW: 02:00 Gold/Silver Price Manipulation Currently 05:25 Long-Term Cycle Ending 07:25 Massive Gold/Silver Manipulation by Banks 09:20 China Covertly Hoarding Gold 12:45 Invevitable Massive World Crash from Fiat Currency 16:20 Hyperinflation Coming 18:20 Will there be New Gold/Silver Price Lows? How will Mining Companies Fair 21:10 Will More Investors Jump into Mining Company Shares?
Soros represents pure evil, one of the world’s most infamous figures.
He’s a notorious international con man, known for profiting from
human misery, supporting color revolutions and wars to serve his
interests.
Moscow’s Prosecutor General calls his Open Society Institute and Open
Society Institute Assistance Foundations “threat(s) to Russian national
security and constitutional order.”
His groups are subversive, undermining fundamental freedoms, listed
as undesirable foreign organizations in Russia for good reason. They’re
prohibited from supporting political parties, free to engage in other
activities.
Soros menaces democratic freedoms worldwide. He supports war goddess,
Wall Street favorite Hillary Clinton for president, pouring millions of
dollars into her campaign.
At the same time, he’s militantly anti-Trump. His ruffians disrupted
his March 11 Chicago rally, stoking violence, causing it to be cancelled
for security reasons.
They’ve been disruptive at other Trump events, using dirty tactics to
turn voters against him - not for his racist and other extremist views,
for concern about power brokers not being able to control him.
Soros plans days of anti-Trump protests in April. His anti-democratic “Democracy Spring” campaign is scheduled from April 2 -18.
He claims it’s about saving US democracy he deplores, actively
working against its values worldwide. They conflict with his predatory
interests.
He aims for “the largest civil disobedience actions in a generation
(on the phony pretext of) saving our democracy.” It’s in “crisis,” he
says - “dominated by billionaires and big money interests who can spend
unlimited sums of money on political campaigns to protect their special
interests at the general expense.”
As of mid-March 2016, Forbes estimates his net worth at $24.9
billion, Trump at $4.5 billion, largely self-funding his campaign,
spending relatively little compared to Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and the
failed campaigns of other high-profile Republican aspirants.
Soros spends billions of dollars for disruptive activities serving
his interests worldwide. His April scheme intends mobilizing thousands
of anti-Trump hooligans, training them to be disruptive, intending mob
actions.
Beginning at Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell, he plans marches storming
Washington’s Capitol Hill - supported by Soros financed MoveOn.org,
corrupt labor bosses and other dubious elements.
He wants democracy subverted, not saved - Hillary Clinton and other candidates he controls elected to high office.
His agenda is pure evil. He once said “(w)e need a global sherif.” Perhaps he has himself in mind.
"The economic sanctions against Russia and the Russian countermeasures are a disaster for the French economy"
Lectures Françaises, March 17, 2016 Translated from French by Tom Winter March 18, 2016 What
the experts were saying has actually happened: The economic sanctions
against Russia, followed by Russian countermeasures -- that Jean-Pierre Chevènement characterized as a "spiral of insanity" -- are a disaster for the French economy. The
numbers are out: for 2014 the figures for franco-russian commerce
dropped 17.6%. For 2015, they are down more than 45%. The investments we
were expecting, the economic projects -- down the drain. The
results have been observed by all of our fellow citizens, what with the
drastic drop in French exports to Russia, especially in the case of
agricultural products. Hence
the recent demonstrations of French farm folk, progressively more and
more desperate. We have all seen the banners giving vent to farm
exasperation, neglected, even scorned by our Ministers. They've all
called for the lifting of the sanctions and the renewal of exporting
farm products to Russia. But
it's all too plain that Russia will not forget the snubs it has endured
of our backing out of the Mistrals, nor the diplomatic alignment of our
country backing the United States. As Guillaume Faye explained it in Polemia (12/1/2016) the russophobia of certain French political figures does not arise from their hostility to "Tsar" Putin (they always been most courteous with
the Castro brothers and other communist regimes. They scramble to
vacation in Cuba or Viet Nam, exemplary democracies that they are), nor
does it stem from any Russian "menace," which doesn't actually exist. Their current hostility to Russia is ideological. They
cannot endure a regime that, in fact, is putting in place a
"conservative revolution." By encouraging birth, patriotism, defense of
religious tradition, historic tradition, the pride of independence, the
efforts to equip itself with a modern army... The danger for the
western socio-liberal alignments is that these principles that they
denounce as populist might just take hold in Europe [!] It
is by no means sure that vague promises of lifting the sanctions in the
summer will be enough to redress the situation of the farm people, or
to calm down the repeated uproars from farm and small-scale businessmen.
Two-thirds of those who have found employment under President Obama
are immigrants, both legal and illegal, according to an analysis that
suggests immigration has soaked up a large portion of what little job
growth there has been over the past three years.
THE FURNACE
Shock report: All new jobs going to immigrants, not U.S.-born workers
As depressing as the statistic sounds, the jobless rate was a lot higher in the 1970s.
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is not predicated on the candidate’s mastery of or allegiance to facts.
His views on things like immigration or international trade are just
not supported by any relevant statistics. So when The Donald called into
CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday and claimed that Americans are living in
a “false economy,” where the unemployment rate is actually 40% rather
than the 5.1% as reported by the Labor Department, you’d be forgiven for
believing this was just another Trumpian whopper. But actually, this view can be supported by actual
statistics. If you use the broadest definition of unemployment, the
ratio of people over the age of 16 with jobs to the overall 16-and-over
population, the Labor Department says that 40.6% of the population is
unemployed.
Hillary Clinton faces challenge: Black voters in Rust Belt
MILWAUKEE (AP) — This month has brought a new challenge
for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign: Black voters in Rust Belt
states aren’t as solidly behind her as they’ve been in the South.
It led to the Democratic front-runner’s surprise loss in Michigan,
where about a third of black voters supported Bernie Sanders, and it
nearly cost her Missouri, where African-Americans voted more like their
counterparts across the Midwest than in the South. Now it could
foreshadow vulnerability for Clinton in Wisconsin, the next Northern
battleground primary.
What’s behind the trend? Exit polls conducted for The Associated
Press and television networks by Edison Research reveal a possible
answer:
Black voters up North have appeared more likely than black voters
down South to say race relations in the U.S. have recently gotten worse.
And while large majorities of African-Americans in both regions trust
Clinton to handle the issue, those in the Midwest have been much more
likely to say they trust Sanders.
Rust Belt blacks live closer to some of the major racial conflicts of
recent years — the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Missouri; the police shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in
Cleveland, Ohio; and the tainted water crisis in heavily black Flint,
Michigan. And they are well positioned to turn out and express their
dismay at the polls.
Getty Images
Bloomberg
Getty
".