‘Game of Thrones’ finale sets stage for march to finish
The ‘Game of Thrones’ season finale was hardly a low-key exercise. …read more
Source: ‘Game of Thrones’ finale sets stage for march to finish
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
How The Pentagon Is Preparing For A Tank War With Russia
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Patriuck Tucker via DefenseOne.com,
Reactive armor and cross-domain fire capabilities are just some of the items on the Army’s must-have list.
When Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster briefs, it’s like Gen. Patton giving a TED talk — a domineering physical presence with bristling intellectual intensity.
These days, the charismatic director of the Army’s Capabilities Integration Center is knee-deep in a project called The Russia New Generation Warfare study, an analysis of how Russia is re-inventing land warfare in the mud of Eastern Ukraine. Speaking recently at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., McMaster said that the two-year-old conflict had revealed that the Russians have superior artillery firepower, better combat vehicles, and have learned sophisticated use of UAVs for tactical effect. Should U.S. forces find themselves in a land war with Russia, he said, they would be in for a rude, cold awakening.
“We spend a long time talking about winning long-range missile duels,” said McMaster. But long-range missiles only get you through the front door. The question then becomes what will you do when you get there.
“Look at the enemy countermeasures,” he said, noting Russia’s use of nominally semi-professional forces who are capable of “dispersion, concealment, intermingling with civilian populations…the ability to disrupt our network strike capability, precision navigation and timing capabilities.” All of that means “you’re probably going to have a close fight… Increasingly, close combat overmatch is an area we’ve neglected, because we’ve taken it for granted.”
So how do you restore overmatch? The recipe that’s emerging from the battlefield of Ukraine, says McMaster, is more artillery and better artillery, a mix of old and new.
Cross-Domain Fires
“We’re out-ranged by a lot of these systems and they employ improved conventional munitions, which we are going away from. There will be a 40- to 60-percent reduction in lethality in the systems that we have,” he said. “Remember that we already have fewer artillery systems. Now those fewer artillery systems will be less effective relative to the enemy. So we need to do something on that now.”
To remedy that, McMaster is looking into a new area called “cross domain fires,” which would outfit ground units to hit a much wider array of targets. “When an Army fires unit arrives somewhere, it should be able to do surface-to-air, surface-to-surface, and shore-to-ship capabilities. We are developing that now and there are some really promising capabilities,” he said.
While the full report has not been made public, “a lot of this is available open source” said McMaster, “in the work that Phil Karber has done, for example.”
Karber, the president of the Potomac Foundation, went on a fact-finding mission to Ukraine last year, and returned with the conclusion that the United States had long overemphasized precision artillery on the battlefield at the expense of mass fires. Since the 1980s, he said last October, at an Association for the United States Army event, the U.S. has given up its qualitative edge, mostly by getting rid of cluster munitions.
Munitions have …read more
Source: How The Pentagon Is Preparing For A Tank War With Russia
‘Cost-Burdened-Renters’ Surge To Historic Highs As Hillbama-nomics Fails For Low-Income Faithful
By Tyler Durden
As we have discussed many times in the past, for the Average American, owning a home is increasingly unaffordable. This has led to a dramatic surge in rents, and ultimately to a significant squeeze on the cash flow of renters across the nation.
Recall, here is RealtyTrac's Q1 2016 Home Affordability Index, which showed that 9% of the US county housing markets were less affordable than their historical levels.
The unaffordability of owning a home of course has led to a plummeting national home ownership rate, as shown by Harvard's recent State of the Nation's Housing report.
Not surprisingly, as millennials are making less and drowning in debt, home ownership rates for younger age groups has completely fallen off a cliff. As a reminder, more millennials live at home with their parents now than at any other time since the great depression. However, as the chart below shows, home ownership has fallen across the board.
The result of all of the above, is that rental prices for everyone have surged, and is putting more and more renters in a position of being significantly cost burdened as more income needs to be directed toward paying the rent. The number of cost-burdened households rose by 3.6 million from 2008 to 2014 to a stunning 21.3 million households. Even more concerning is that the number of households with severe burdens (ie: paying more than 50% of income for housing) jumped by 2.1 million to a record 11.4 million households. As the report states, cost-burdened renters are at historic highs.
From the report
The divergence between the rental and owner-occupied markets is evident in the number of cost-burdened households in each segment. On the owner side, the number of households facing cost burdens (paying more than 30 percent of income for housing) has fallen steadily as high foreclosure rates have pushed out many financially strained owners, low interest rates have allowed remaining owners to reduce their housing costs, and fewer young households have moved into homeownership. As of 2014, the number of cost-burdened owners stood at 18.5 million, down 4.4 million since 2008.
The decline has occurred across all age groups, but especially among younger homeowners. Homeowners age 75 and over, however, are among the most cost-burdened groups, with their share at 29 percent compared with 24 percent for households under age 45. With the aging baby boomers swelling the ranks of older homeowners and larger shares of households carrying mortgage debt into retirement, the problem of housing cost burdens among the elderly is likely to grow.
On the renter side, the number of cost-burdened households rose by 3.6 million from 2008 to 2014, to 21.3 million. Even more troubling, the number with severe burdens (paying more than 50 percent of income for housing) jumped by 2.1 million to a record 11.4 million. The severely burdened share among the nation’s 9.6 million lowest-income renters (earning less than $15,000) is particularly high at 72 percent. In all but …read more
Source: ‘Cost-Burdened-Renters’ Surge To Historic Highs As Hillbama-nomics Fails For Low-Income Faithful
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Is The US Locking Up Its Available Male Labor Force?
By Tyler Durden
A few years ago we noted an extremely disturbing trend, namely that there was never a lower percentage of white men over 20 working in America. The decline in labor force participation rate for males ages 25-54 has accelerated sharply since 1980, and we may have an answer as to why.
Here is the labor force participation rate for men ages 25-54. Although the downward trend is clear since it topped out out 97.9% in 1954, a notable accelerated decline takes place since 1980, which as of May 1, 2016 put the rate at 88.4%.
As the WSJ points out, there is a sharp divergence in participation rates by educational attainment.
Which one could argue is evidence of the declining middle class in America, as blue-collar jobs are disappearing.
There is one more critical chart that the WSJ provides that is notable however, and is something to consider. As the decline in labor force participation for working age males has accelerated its decline since 1980, male prisoners who have been incarcerated has accelerated in the complete opposite direction.
* * *
Is the male labor force collapsing because more and more are being sent to prison? The data certainly shows that is a possibility.
Here is a look at how the US imprisonment rate has grown since 1880 – look at the pop since 1980.
And just because it has been an insane weekend, we'll add to it by reminding readers that despite all of the above, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) is actively advocating that the US has an “under-incarceration problem.” Perhaps Cotton wishes to lock up the entire male labor force instead of just most of it.
Source: Is The US Locking Up Its Available Male Labor Force?
Another Sexual Assault Gets Refugees Banned From Pools In Austria
By Tyler Durden
Earlier this year we reported that a town in Germany had banned adult male asylum seekers from the public pool after receiving complaints that some women were sexually harassed. As a result, Germany created a leaflet that it handed out to “sexually frustrated” immigrants at local swimming pools to teach them proper poolside etiquette.
The leaflet shows that among other things, it is not acceptable to do the following: touch the behind of an unsuspecting female swimmer (#12), drown others (#4), push women into the pool (#3), or jump onto a screaming blonde (#7).
A similar flyer was created by Switzerland which detailed acceptable behaviors in order to prevent refugee sex attacks. The flyer was a modified version of one that was created in Austria during the initial influx of refugees.
For those that chuckle at the effort, there does appear to be a real problem with sexual assaults, and it is widespread. In the latest sexual assault case, a “dark-skinned” man assaulted a 13 year old girl at a pool in the town of Mistelbach, Austria on Wednesday. As RT reports, the man followed the girl into the women's changing room and tried to force the girl to perform oral sex. Thankfully the attacker fled after the girl began shouting.
More from RT
Authorities in the Austrian town of Mistelbach issued a temporary pool ban for refugees following a sexual assault by a “dark-skinned’ man on a 13-year-old girl.
“This news was a shock,” said the town’s mayor, Alfred Pohl, as quoted by the Heute media outlet.
According to Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung, the attack happened on Wednesday afternoon.
The girl was first followed by a young man into the women’s changing room. Once there, he forced her to perform oral sex. The girl however fiercely resisted and started shouting, forcing the attacker to flee.
Police are now investigating the incident and are searching for the suspect.
According to eyewitnesses and the victim herself the man was a “foreigner.”
There are currently eight facilities housing refugees around Mistelbach. Police are now checking the camps, Heute news outlet reports. There is however no confirmation on whether an asylum seeker is behind the attack.
Following the incident the mayor temporarily banned all refugees from attending the swimming pool. The authorities put a poster next the pool entrance reading “Today no entry for refugees,” and two guards were hired to patrol the premises.
“This decision was not easy, and I take responsibility for it,” the mayor said. “The ban on asylum seekers from the swimming pool is temporary, until the security is in place,” he added.
* * *
These types of occurrences are what makes the immigration issue in Europe an extremely difficult one for the politicians who have to answer for these types of things. The violence and sexual assaults are what has given rise to Germany's anti-immigrant AfD party as of late, and sadly this trend does not look like it is going to cease any time soon, despite …read more
Source: Another Sexual Assault Gets Refugees Banned From Pools In Austria
A Tale Of Two Asset Classes: Gold Miners Soar, Banks Crash
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,
The following tables illustrate one of the dilemmas of mainstream money management:
The vast majority of financial advisers and portfolio managers are big fans of bank stocks because finance is, in their minds, a crucial if not the crucial form of wealth-creating activity in the modern world. So the big names in the field — Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, etc. — are generally seen as safe places to put client capital.
Gold and silver, in contrast are fringe, primitive, atavistic concepts that are, at best, “insurance” against some kind of 100-year flood that can’t be predicted and probably won’t happen.
But some clients still like such things so what the hell, we’ll allocate 1% of the idiots’ money to it to shut them up. (1% is literally the proportion of global capital invested in precious metals.)
Unfortunately, that’s credit bubble thinking. Banks are dominant forces in an economy only when that economy is creating an unhealthy amount of credit. When the process exhausts itself the banks tank, and terrified capital flows back into “primitive” safe havens. Like Friday:
Gold is extending its rally in early trading – now the biggest 2-day surge since March 2009…
Source: A Tale Of Two Asset Classes: Gold Miners Soar, Banks Crash
Will The Market Break? Keep An Eye On This For the Answer
By Tyler Durden
While markets partially bounced back from the shock lows of the London morning, Citi's Matt King is not convinced this is appropriate.
- A rising tide of populism – The most obvious concern is that the vote fuels secessionist and protectionist tendencies outside the UK. This indeed seems quite likely – if nevertheless the sort of tail risk markets find it hard to price in advance.
- Beware the message from rates – More troubling and imminent is the rally in rates. This looks to us the most durable of today’s moves. Now that it is inflation breakevens falling – and not just a rally in real yields – it sends a much more negative signal for risk assets.
- Banks as the catalyst – The rates rally is wreaking havoc on bank equities in particular: SX7E is making new lows. Against this and given the negative convexity associated with potential bail-in, the relative strength in sub CDS and AT1 looks misplaced.
Is this move a temporary shock, or out for the count?
Beyond the important issue of just how messily the path to Brexit is now handled, we think the global fallout rests on two questions.
- First, to what extent does the UK result presage or encourage the rise to power of a wave of populist and secessionist movements elsewhere?
- And second, to what extent do today’s moves help to tip what was already a precarious balance in markets away from a reach for yield and back in the direction of risk-off?
On both counts, we think current market levels fail to fully reflect the risks; bank sub debt, in particular, seems vulnerable.
The rise and rise of populism
While the referendum result has a great many disturbing implications, perhaps the most troubling is the sheer extent of the gulf between what markets and most market participants deem to be desirable, and what it now turns out the majority of the public actually wants. The willingness to vote against the near-unanimous advice of experts must reflect either a gross underestimation of the economic consequences, or – worse – a public saying they simply don’t care.
But such polarization is far from unique to the UK. While the referendum result in itself seems unlikely to provide a significant direct boost to Donald Trump or perhaps even Marine Le Pen, and we are not unduly concerned about a strong Podemos showing in the Spanish elections on Sunday, it nevertheless is already showing signs of sparking a chain of events with negative economic consequences – and not only for the UK.
Most obvious are the calls for referenda in Scotland, France and the Netherlands. While the European political establishment will doubtless do all it can to suppress the tendencies towards secession, our political analysts argue that a further Scottish referendum is almost a given, and that others will follow. Even if the economic consequences of Brexit are seen in time to be very negative, it is not obvious that this will prove much of a deterrent. The UK campaign has demonstrated how easily economic statistics …read more
Source: Will The Market Break? Keep An Eye On This For the Answer
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Brexit Panic-Monger Osborne To Make Statement "To Calm Markets"
By Tyler Durden
Oh the irony!!! Just days after spreading fear and panic over the outcome of a Brexit vote, propangandizing that The Uk will sufffer “years of recession,” UK Chancellor George Osborne will issue a statement early on Monday morning in a bid to calm markets after the surprise Brexit vote triggered turmoil on Friday.
A week ago, IBTimes reports, up to 800,000 jobs across the UK could be axed if Britain broke away from the EU, George Osborne has warned. The chancellor, speaking at home improvement store B&Q, claimed a 'Leave' vote at the 23 June referendum would almost immediately trigger a year-long “DIY recession”.
“It's only been eight years since Britain entered the deepest recession since our country had seen since the Second World War,” Osborne said.
“Every part of country suffered and the British people have worked so hard to get our country back on track. Do we want to throw it all away? Can we knowingly vote for a recession? Does Britain really want this DIY recession?”
The chancellor's speech coincided with the release of the Treasury's analysis into the immediate economic impact of a split from Brussels. The department looked at two scenarios – a 'shock' outcome and 'severe shock' outcome.
Osborne was joined by David Cameron at the 23 May event, with exactly a month to go before the historic ballot. “I believe leaving the EU would put our security at huge risk. That it would be the wrong track for Britain,” the prime minister declared.
“Why? Because as we know, and as even leave campaigners now freely admit, we would lose full access to the European single market. We would be abandoning the largest market place in the world, half a billion people.”
The official Brexit campaign, Vote Leave, hit back by claiming the real risk to the UK would be to vote 'Remain' and pay the bill for the euro's failures.
“Instead of talking about forecasts and woolly predictions, we should instead talk about what is happening now. It is a fact that – every week – we send millions to Brussels. That is what is happening right now,” a spokesperson for Vote Leave said. “The same old scare stories simply don't wash. The real risk to the economy is to stay tied to the failing single currency with an obligation to pay its bills. That's why the safer choice is to take back control of our economy by voting to leave the EU on 23 June.”
But now that it is done, Osborne is coming out to calm markets (and we assume explain that Brexit is not the armageddon he explained it was)… (via The BBC)
The Chancellor has not spoken publicly since the Leave campaign won Thursday's referendum.
He will reveal how the Government intended to “protect the national interest” after its referendum defeat.
Mr Osborne will speak before European markets open at 08:00 and endeavour to avert another stock market sell-off.
A Treasury spokesman said: “The Chancellor will make a statement to provide reassurance about …read more
Source: Brexit Panic-Monger Osborne To Make Statement "To Calm Markets"
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UBS CIO Warns "The Status Quo Is Over… Get Used To It"
By Tyler Durden
From the desk of Mark Haefele, CIO UBS Wealth Management,
Brexit – Navigating The Aftermath
In short
The effects of the UK's vote to leave the European Union have been felt around the world. Markets have re-priced to reflect heightened political uncertainty, the threat of lower growth in Europe, and the potential for deeper contagion to the global economy and financial system.
What's moved?
Equity markets initially traded down sharply but have recovered some ground during the day: the S&P 500 is currently -2.4%, European banks closed -13%, the Nikkei -8%, and the FTSE 250 -7%.
Meanwhile, the dash for safe havens led the Japanese yen to rally by more than 6% at one point, 10-year gilt prices are +2.7%, Treasuries +1.7%, and Bunds +1.5%. The Swiss franc did not rally materially against the euro, but only due to intervention from the Swiss National Bank to limit currency strength.
It is important to remember that although the equity market moves have been significant, they come in the context of a sharp rally in recent weeks, as markets had moved to largely price out the risk of Brexit. Betting markets had moved from pricing the risk of Brexit at around 40% last Friday to as little as 15% yesterday. While expectations clearly needed to readjust, markets are now, in general, back to levels of last week, and above the lows of last month. As such, today's moves should not be considered a major change in momentum at this stage. Even the British pound is overall down by only 2% in the past 10 days.
This kind of volatility goes to show that core investment principles like rebalancing, diversification across asset classes, and geographies are key, particularly as nations move further into unchartered political and economic territory.
What we're watching
Looking forward, global market outcomes will be shaped by the progression of central bank intervention, global risk appetite, political risk, and economic contagion.
Central banks have already moved quickly to stabilize market conditions. The Bank of England has made an additional GBP 250bn of liquidity available, and confirmed open currency swap lines if banks need them. The European Central Bank (ECB) also said it stood ready to provide additional liquidity if required. Both the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Japan intervened to mitigate the appreciation of their currencies. The US Federal Reserve highlighted Brexit as a key risk for financial markets in its last statement. We now believe it highly unlikely that US interest rates will rise at the Fed's July meeting, and we now only expect one interest rate hike in 2016.
So far, global central banks have continued their recent form by acting with determination to maintain financial stability, while supporting growth and inflation. We expect them to remain on the alert to any indications of tightening financial conditions, and respond promptly if they arise. But signs of central bank indecision or unwillingness to act could be considered a negative signal for risk markets.
Global risk appetite: Ahead of a series of political events, including the Spanish election, Greek debt negotiations, …read more
Source: UBS CIO Warns "The Status Quo Is Over… Get Used To It"
Currency Carnage Continues: Cable, USDJPY Tumble As FX Markets Open
By Tyler Durden
The calm is over. FX marksts are open and Cable is currently down another 170 pips, testing 1.3500 once again. USDJPY is also sliding back below 102.00 as the world awaits China’s reaction with its official peg as offshore Yuan plunged on Friday…
Source: Currency Carnage Continues: Cable, USDJPY Tumble As FX Markets Open
