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By Tyler Durden

Excerpted from Dilbert Creator Scott Adams' blog,

For months I have been saying mostly good things in this blog about Trump’s powers of persuasion, and mostly bad things about how the Clinton campaign does persuasion. And yet Clinton has a solid lead in the polls, assuming the polls are accurate. How can that be?

The quick answer is that Clinton’s side is totally winning the persuasion battle.

Confused?

Clinton’s side includes more than her campaign team. It also includes pundits, supporters on social media, and the liberal-leaning parts of the mainstream media. While the Clinton campaign itself has been notably weak with its persuasion game, the folks on her side have been viciously effective at branding Trump a crazy racist.

Nothing else in this election matters.

…

The persuasion kill shot against Trump is the accusation that Trump is a crazy racist. When you combine crazy and racist, you have a lethal persuasion cocktail. And that’s what the Clinton side has done.

The folks on social media tested lots of accusations against Trump until they found traction with the “crazy racist” theme in all its forms. And Clinton’s campaign team wisely amplified it.

Remember when social media was saying Trump wasn’t serious about running, or that he was a clown, or he was doing it for the money? Those accusations didn’t get traction, and Trump swept them away with his continued success.

But the accusations kept coming, one after another, until the combo of crazy and racist bubbled to the top, as measured by social media virality. The Clinton campaign recognized the crazy racist theme as the best approach and started hammering on it through a variety of “fear Trump” message. Fear works when facts do not. And “crazy racist” is totally scary. And totally working. You can test it for yourself by asking any anti-Trumper to list the top three reasons for disliking Trump. Some form of “crazy racist” will normally come out on top. Persuasion-wise, every other reason is just noise.

…

The facts don’t matter. Facts never matter. What matters is that the “crazy racist” label picked up enough confirmation bias to stick like tar. The Clinton team won the month of June. And unless something changes, Clinton will saunter to an easy victory in November.

But remember also that Trump always makes aggressive first offers before negotiating to the middle. I predicted a softening of Trump’s immigration proposals and you see that happening now, right on schedule. Those changes in his proposals won’t be enough to change the election results because facts and policies are meaningless for persuasion. Trump would have to do far more to shake off the crazy racist label.

I now update my prediction of a Trump landslide to say that if he doesn’t give a speech on the topic of racism – to neutralize the crazy racist label – he loses. There is nothing he can do with policy tweaks, debate performances, advertising, interviews, or anything else that would remove the tarring he received from the Clinton side. But a persuasive speech could do it.

How?

Trump …read more

Source: Killing Trump’s "Elephant In The Room"

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By Tyler Durden

Betwen BofA, Citi, JPMorgan, and now Goldman, (and excluding MS for now), announced buybacks totalling over $24 billion have sent US equity futures spiking after hours.

• Bank of America Authorizes $5b Buyback; Boosts Div to 7.5c-Share
• Citigroup Plans $8.6b Buyback; Lifts Qtr Div to 16c From 5c
• JPMorgan Chase Plans $10.6b Buyback, Maintains qtr Div at 48c/shr
• Goldman Sachs plans buybacks of stock, boosts quarterly dividend

Futures are up across the board… no matter what exposure to financials they have…

As The S&P spikes…

Some context…

…read more

Source: Futures Spike After Banks Unveil Tens Of Billions In Buybacks

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By Tyler Durden

Record low bond yields, Brexit uncertainty, and the biggest crash in home sales in 6 years… BTFD you idiot!!

But “we're halfway there…”

Since the Brexit vote, UK's FTSE 100 is now positive and by far the world's best performing major stock market since Thursday's close…

China outperformed UK but of the 90-plus major equity indices in Bloomberg's screen, all the Bottom 10 are European…

Volume has been non-existent during the bounce…

US equities have retraced almost two-thirds of their losses (near Fib61.8% retrace in Dow and S&P…notice that both are now perfectly back to the Brexit bounce highs from Monday

Leaving Trannies and Small Caps worst since pre-Brexit still but bouncing back…

With futures showing better the bounce to some supportive levels…

And US equities completely decoupled from bonds, bullion, and cable…

Amid a massive short squeeze…biggest since 2011

VIX has collapsed in the last 3 days – holding support around the 50- and 100-day moving averages…

With the VIX hedge unwinds driving the fear index below its pre-Brexit lows…

Just in case you were not conmpletely convinved of what fucking farce this market is – here is NKE, which had a dismal report last night just had its best day in 4 months – swinging from down over 6% to up almost 3% (as index buyers lifted The Dow member)…

But while bank stocks have bounced ahead of CCAR, they remain down notably post-Brexit…

Treasury yields were mixed today… as 2Y continued to underperform the rest of the curve… but note that the longer-end underperformed late on today as chatter of rate-locks hitting the market ahead of a heavy calendar expected…

Driving 2s30s to its flattest since Jan 2008 (recession) but bank stocks didn't care…

But 10Y and 30Y neared record low closes…before bouncing late on (with 10Y >1.50%)

The USD Index slipped lower again…

As the post-Brexit Cable bounce continues…Despite being down hard from the 1.50 pre-Brexit level – the bounce has been imporessive off the 1.31 lows…seems like 1.40 brexit bounce may be target but today seemed to run out of steam quickly..

Against the weaker USD, commodities all rose on the day with PMs doing well early and then crude melting up later on…

Silver topped Brexit …read more

Source: From Brexit Wounds To Buying Panic (In Bonds & Stocks)

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By Tyler Durden

Just days ago we reported that the Federal Reserve trumpeted the fact that all 33 participating banks passed the latest stress test. Banks also spent a lot of money on consultants in preparation for the stress tests as well.

After failing the Federal Reserve's annual stress tests in March 2014, the WSJ reports that Citigroup hired multiple consulting firms, and spent about $180 million on stress tests during the second half of 2014 in order to address regulator's concerns. It turns out that banks are spending tens of billions in order to prepare for stress tests, creating quite a lucrative business for consultants.

Globally, banks spent about $29 billion on consultants in 2015, much of that expense went for stress tests in the United States and elsewhere according to ALM Intelligence. The $29 billion is a 77% increase from the $16.35 billion that banks spent in 2007, growing significantly each year since the financial crisis. While banks continue to dramatically cut costs in other areas of the business, consulting fees is not an area that is taking a hit.

The industry has blossomed because if banks fail stress tests, the ability to raise dividends and buy back shares are limited – and how else can that EPS be maintained and lower revenue if shares can't be purchased? Accounting firms and consulting firms have all built specific practices around stress test consulting, and even BlackRock sold forecasting help to about two-thirds of the banks taking the tests. Not surprisingly, there are even consultants offering advice on how to use other stress-test consultants: “Kick out the consultants” Novantas advertised recently, telling banks it can help them cut back.

Stress tests require the banks to quantify precisely how much money would be lost under different scenarios, which is a difficult task for some banks with large global footprints. Being that banks generally under invested in the ability to perform such an analysis before the financial crisis, money is now being spent in order to catch up.

JPMorgan last year had about 550 people working solely on the Fed Stress tests, with more than 2,000 employees contributing indirectly the WSJ notes. “It's like a whole new department at the bank” said Joe Sullivan, president of International Market Recruiters, who helps banks fill stress-testing jobs.

The test submissions include a “narrative” document the size of a thick paperback, describing what the firm has done, accompanied by thousands of pages of documentation. Some banks employ professional writers to write the narratives so the Fed will have fewer questions later on. According to the WSJ, building a stress-test program can cost banks $150 million to $250 million a piece.

Financial firms globally will spend $4 billion on stress-test IT this year according to Chartist Research, which is up from $3 billion in 2014 and is expected to incresae 15% in 2017. Forecasting models alone generally range from $100,000 to $1 million depending on complexity – “We offer customized and off-the-shelf models to help you calculate the stressed probability of defaults” …read more

Source: Banks Are Spending Billions On Stress Test Preparation

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By Tyler Durden

Submitted by Claire Bernish via TheAntiMedia.org,

Preparations by various cogs of the national security complex, including FEMA, indicate a coming worldwide food shortage – and a resulting crisis marked by extreme civil unrest around the globe.

As Motherboard noted of two reports published previously by CNA Corporation, but which largely escaped attention, the world’s food supply could be insufficient to maintain even current populations much further into the future. And the crisis — which several factors indicate may already be underway — may begin to worsen considerably as early as 2020.

Employing a desktop game simulation of the conditions of a global food shortage, titled “Food Chain Reaction,” CNA’s Institute for Public Research brought together “65 officials from the US, Europe, Africa, India, Brazil, and key multilateral and intergovernmental institutions,” Motherboard explained. And the Institute, which oversaw the simulation, “primarily provides scientific research services for the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA].”

According to the website for Food Chain Reaction: A Global Food Security Game — no commentary on Orwellian overtones needed — the “simulation and exercise intended to improve understanding of how governments, institutions, and private sector interests might interact to address a crisis in the global food system,” and took place in early November 2015.

“The scenario,” the description continues, “is set five years from today in a world where population growth, rapid urbanization, extreme weather and political crises combine to threaten global food security. The game’s players — high-level decision makers representing nations, international institutions, and the private sector — will collaborate, negotiate, make decisions, and confront tradeoffs while dealing with a chain reaction of consequences resulting from their actions.”

Participants received the briefing for the game through a mock TV newscast, which “challenged players to imagine a global food system under stress due to extreme weather and other environmental factors, urbanization and other demographic pressures, rising global food prices, and falling food stock levels.”

After receiving information specific to each participant’s national and regional geography and climate, players were also permitted to employ solutions to the game’s burgeoning food crisis scenario on “national, bilateral, and/or broadly cooperative” levels.

Divided into four rounds, the simulation found spikes in food prices up to a whopping 395 percent, driven by extended crop failures in key regions, resultant from the confused reactions by international officials, drastic changes in the environment, and skyrocketing oil prices — many similar factors, the report notes, that drove a global food crisis spanning 2007 to 2008.

Though, at the height of the simulation’s worst repercussions, the food crisis affected virtually every societal and governmental aspect — such as mass civil unrest and widespread crop failures in the planet’s ‘breadbasket’ regions — the Institute ultimately painted a rosy picture of economic and agricultural recovery.

But for as detailed and reactive as the scope of the game sought to be, several glaring omissions likely skewed both results and proposed solutions — and despite backing from the U.S. government, the simulation’s corporate …read more

Source: FEMA Contractor: Unrest After 395% Food Price Spike Coming Soon

    

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