Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Turkey: The Business Of Refugee Smuggling & Sex Trafficking
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Uzay Bulut via The Gatestone Institute,
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Professional criminals convince parents that their daughters are going to a better life in Turkey. The parents are given 2000-5000 Turkish liras ($700-$1700) as a “bride price” — an enormous sum for a poor Syrian family.
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“Girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen are referred to as pistachios, those between seventeen and twenty are called cherries, twenty to twenty-two are apples, and anyone older is a watermelon.” — From a report on Turkey, by End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT).
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Many Muslims have difficulty with, or even an aversion to, assimilating into the Western culture. Many seem to have the aim of importing to Europe the culture of intimidation, rape and abuse from which they fled.
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Although the desperate victims are their Muslim sisters and brothers, wealthy Arab states do not take in refugees. The people in this area know too well that asylum seekers would bring with them problems, both social and economic. For many Muslim men such as wealthy, aging Saudis, it is easier to buy Syrian children from Turkey, Syria or Jordan as cheap sex slaves.
On International Women's Day, March 8, Turkish news outlets covered the tragic life and early death of a Syrian child bride.
Last August, in Aleppo, Mafe Zafur, 15, married her cousin Ibrahim Zafur in an Islamic marriage. The couple moved to Turkey, but the marriage ended after six months, when her husband abruptly threw out of their home. With nowhere to sleep, Mafe found shelter with her brother, 19, and another cousin, 14, in an abandoned truck.
On 8 March, Mafe killed herself, reportedly with a shotgun. Her only possession, found in her pocket, was her handwritten marriage certificate.
Mafe Zafur is only one of many young Syrians who have been victims of child marriage. Human rights groups report even greater abuse that gangs are perpetrating against the approximately three million Syrians who have fled to Turkey.
A detailed report on Syrian women refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants in Turkey, issued as far back as 2014 by the Association for Human Rights and Solidarity with the Oppressed (known in Turkish as Mazlumder), tells of early and forced marriages, polygamy, sexual harassment, human trafficking, prostitution, and rape that criminals inflicted upon Syrians in Turkey.
According to the Mazlumder report, Syrians are sexually exploited by those who take advantage of their destitution. Children, especially girls, suffer most.
Evidence, both witnessed and forensic, indicates that in every city where Syrian refugees have settled, prostitution has drastically increased. Young women between the ages of 15 and 20 are most commonly prostituted, but girls as young as thirteen are also exploited.
Secil Erpolat, a lawyer with the Women's Rights Commission of the Bar Association in the Turkish province of Batman, said that many young Syrian girls are offered between 20 and 50 Turkish …read more
Source: Turkey: The Business Of Refugee Smuggling & Sex Trafficking
CNBC’s Steve Liesman Makes A "Discovery": Americans Are Increasingly Angry And They Want Trump
By Tyler Durden
Earlier today, CNBC’s Steve Liesman
The second discovery is that angry Americans largely support Trump over Hillary, something we have discussed since last summer.
As Liesman puts it, nearly three-fourths of the public is angry or dissatisfied with the political system in Washington, compared with 56 percent who are angry or dissatisfied about the economy. This group favors Trump on the economy over Clinton 28 percent to 21 percent.
Of those dissatisfied or angry with the economic system, Trump leads on the economy 27 percent to 19 percent for Clinton.
All of these “surprises” should have been obvious. But then the survey revealed several findings which surprised even us.
First, and rather curiously, income isn’t correlated with anger, with angry respondents found both among the rich and the poor. 55% of people who earn $100,000 or more are dissatisfied or angry with the economic system, the same percentage as those who earn $30,000 or less.
Also surprising: the wealthiest Americans are more likely to be angry or dissatisfied with the political system than the lowest income Americans.
Another surprise: while conventional wisdom is that Clinton has more of a lock on the Democratic nomination than Trump has on the GOP nod, the CNBC survey shows that on key economic issues, Bernie Sanders is more of a challenge to Clinton than Kasich and Cruz are to Trump. For example, Sanders is virtually tied with Trump 25 percent to 26 percent on which candidate is judged to have the best policy for regulating Wall Street and the big banks. Clinton has the support of only 16 percent of the public on the issue. Clinton leads with support of 25 percent of the public on who has the best policies for the middle class, followed by 21 percent for Sanders and 16 percent for Trump.
And finally, since this is CNBC, the channel reported that Trump is seen as best for the stock market by a wide margin. Fully 31 percent say his policies would be best for the stock market’s performance, compared with just 17 percent for Clinton. As many Democrats as Republican’s think Trump would be best for stocks.
Which begs this question: since those who have the most invested in the stock market “run the system”, as they say, and ultimately decide who the next president is, why wouldn’t they “pick” Trump? And just how much of the most theatrical presidential election in history is, well, just theater?
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Liesman’s full interview below:
Source: CNBC’s Steve Liesman Makes A "Discovery": Americans Are Increasingly Angry And They Want Trump
19 Facts That Prove Things In America Are Worse Than They Were Six Months Ago
Has the U.S. economy gotten better over the past six months or has it gotten worse? In this article, you will find solid proof that the U.S. economy has continued to get worse over the past six months. Unfortunately, most people seem to think that since the stock market has rebounded significantly in recent weeks that everything must be okay, but of course that is not true at all. If you look at a chart of the Dow, a very ominous head and shoulders pattern is forming, and all of the economic fundamentals are screaming that big trouble is ahead. When Donald Trump told the Washington Post that we are heading for a “very massive recession“, he wasn’t just making stuff up. We are already seeing lots of things happen that never take place outside of a recession, and the U.S. economy has already been sliding downhill fairly rapidly over the past several months. With all that being said, the following are 19 facts that prove things in America are worse than they were six months ago…
#1 U.S. factory orders have now declined on a year over year basis for 16 months in a row. As Zero Hedge has noted, in the post-World War II era this has never happened outside of a recession…
In 60 years, the US economy has not suffered a 16-month continuous YoY drop in Factory orders without being in recession. Moments ago the Department of Commerce confirmed that this is precisely what the US economy did, when factory orders not only dropped for the 16th consecutive month Y/Y, after declining 1.7% from last month
#2 Factory orders have now reached the lowest level that we have seen since the summer of 2011.
#3 It is being projected that corporate earnings will be down 8.5 percent for the first quarter of 2016 compared to one year ago. This will be the fourth quarter in a row that we have seen year over year declines, and the last time that happened was during the last recession.
#4 Total business sales have fallen 5 percent since the peak in mid-2014.
#5 S&P 500 earnings have now fallen a total of 18.5 percent from their peak in late 2014.
#6 Corporate debt defaults have soared to the highest level that we have seen since 2009.
#7 The average rating on U.S. corporate debt has fallen to “BB”, which is lower than it has been at any point since the last financial crisis.
#8 The U.S. oil rig count just hit a 41 year low.
#9 51 oil and gas drillers in North America have filed for bankruptcy since the beginning of last year, and according to CNN we could be on the verge of seeing the biggest one yet…
Shale oil driller SandRidge Energy (SD) warned there was “substantial doubt” it would survive the oil downturn. The Oklahoma City company said this week it is exploring a potential Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.
Based on its $3.6 billion of debt, SandRidge …read more
Source: 19 Facts That Prove Things In America Are Worse Than They Were Six Months Ago
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Fed Sees Labor Market Worst Since 2009
By Tyler Durden
Cast your mind back to Friday – when payrolls confirmed everything for everyone and enabled more crowing from an establishment clinging to smoke and mirrors. It appears The Fed disagrees with the 'awesome' jobs market that BLS proposes as today's Labor Market Conditions Index continues to push to its weakest since 2009, drastically divergent from the seemingly all-impotrant non-farm payrolls data.
The 19-factor labor market conditions index developed by The Fed is not singing from the same Koombaya “everything is awesome” hymn-sheet that The White House would prefer…
This kind of divergence has not been seen before in the lifetime of this data series… so what exactly is going on?
It appears the market is starting to agree…
Source: Fed Sees Labor Market Worst Since 2009
A Quarter Century Of Monetary Voodoo
By Tyler Durden
A coo-coo for the stock market…
“Cautious Yellen drives global stocks near 2016 peak,” reported a Reuters headline. The story itself was a remarkable tribute to the whole jackass money system.
At first glance, “cautious Yellen” would seem incongruous with stocks rising to “near 2016 peak.” Caution normally means playing it cool, not encouraging speculation.
But it wasn’t so much what Ms. Yellen said that sent stocks racing ahead. It was what she hasn’t done. And she hasn’t done exactly what we thought she wouldn’t do. That is, so far this year, she has not taken a single step in the direction of a “normal” monetary policy; our guess is that she never will.
Why not? Is it because she is a witless tool of Deep State cronies? Is it because her economic theory is silly, superficial, and simpleminded? Or is it because she and her predecessor, Ben Bernanke, have done so much damage to the normal world that there is nothing to go back to?
US monetary base and the effective federal funds rate – the “new normal”. It’s the new normal, because any serious change toward a normal state of affairs as it used to be understood will implode the credit and asset bubble – click to enlarge.
They have burned our bridges… our factories… our savings… and everything else behind them. Now, it is better just to pack up, move out… and keep on going. That is more or less what Charlie Munger sees coming.
Prepare for the Worst
Asked whether the Fed would reduce its balance sheet to pre-Great Recession levels (by selling back to the private sector the $4 trillion worth of bonds it bought over the last eight years), Warren Buffett’s long-time business partner had this to say:
I remember coffee for 5 cents and brand new automobiles for $600. The value of money will continue to go down. Over the past 50 years, we lived through the best time of human history. It is likely to get worse. I recommend you prepare for worse because pleasant surprises are easy to handle.
The “normal” financial world is no longer habitable. Ms. Yellen went on to say that these soupçons of recklessness – her hints about not returning to normal – provided an “automatic stabilizer,” to the global financial system. That’s right (and here is where we begin to laugh uncontrollably).
Not only does outrageously easy credit help “stabilize” the system, so does the anticipation of more of it! Maybe giving out the news that she will NOT even try to get back to normal helps to settle investors’ nerves. Maybe normal wasn’t all that great anyway.
Either way, speculators can continue whatever perverted hustles they have going… free from the fear that “normal” will walk around the corner and catch them in the act.
But what’s this? A complicating factor, the “outlook for inflation,” is “uncertain,” says Ms. Yellen. The …read more
Source: A Quarter Century Of Monetary Voodoo
Allergan Implodes: Pfizer Deal In Jeopardy After Treasury Announces "Action To Curb Inversions, Earnings Stripping"
By Tyler Durden
As if a million M&A arbs suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
Moments ago the stock of Allergan imploded, crashing by 20%, plunging to $225 or the lowest level since late 2014, in the process blowing up countless M&A arb deals which were hoping the recently blowing out spread, which as of Friday hit a post announcement wide of $61, is attractive enough to take the risk of a Treasury crackdown on tax inversion deal.
Alternatively, maybe someone knew something.
Something, such as what the Treasury announced 5pm this afternoon in a release titled “Treasury Announces Additional Action to Curb Inversions, Address Earnings Stripping“
As the title implies, the Treasury has just made it quite clear that any and all tax inversions, of which the Pfizer-Allergan deal is most notable, are no longer welcome. This is what it said.
Treasury Announces Additional Action to Curb Inversions, Address Earnings Stripping
Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued temporary and proposed regulations to further reduce the benefits of and limit the number of corporate tax inversions, including by addressing earnings stripping. By undertaking an inversion transaction, companies move their tax residence overseas to avoid U.S. taxes without making significant changes in their business operations. After an inversion, many of these companies continue to take advantage of the benefits of being based in the United States, while shifting a greater tax burden to other businesses and American families.
“Treasury has taken action twice to make it harder for companies to invert. These actions took away some of the economic benefits of inverting and helped slow the pace of these transactions, but we know companies will continue to seek new and creative ways to relocate their tax residence to avoid paying taxes here at home,” said Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew. “Today, we are announcing additional actions to further rein in inversions and reduce the ability of companies to avoid taxes through earnings stripping. This will have an important effect, but we cannot stop these transactions without new legislation. I urge Congress to move forward with anti-inversion legislation this year. Ultimately, the best way to address inversions is to reform our business tax system, which is why Treasury is releasing an updated framework on business tax reform, outlining the administration’s proposals to date as a guide for future reform. While that work goes on, Congress should not wait to act as inversions continue to erode our tax base.”
Genuine cross-border mergers make the U.S. economy stronger by enabling U.S. companies to invest overseas and encouraging foreign investment to flow into the United States. But these transactions should be driven by genuine business strategies and economic efficiencies, not a desire to shift the tax residence of a parent entity to a low-tax jurisdiction simply to avoid U.S. taxes.
Today, Treasury is taking …read more
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Disney’s No. 2 exec leaving company
Disney COO Thomas Staggs, who was expected to succeed CEO Bob Iger, is leaving company.
Source: Disney’s No. 2 exec leaving company
Keystone pipeline springs leak in South Dakota
TransCanada announced on Monday it’s shut down part of the Keystone pipeline due to an oil spill in South Dakota.
Source: Keystone pipeline springs leak in South Dakota
Trump’s latest wild claim: He’ll fix the debt in 8 years
Donald Trump claims America is on the verge of a ‘very massive recession,’ but he says he can save the economy and make the $19 trillion debt go away.
Source: Trump’s latest wild claim: He’ll fix the debt in 8 years
