A group of ethics watchdogs is filing a federal lawsuit Monday that claims President Donald Trump is violating the Constitution by accepting payments from foreign governments through his business empire. …read more
Source: Lawsuit to claim Trump is in violation of Constitution
By ZeroPointNow
File this under Justice Porn…
A miserable seething bitch and her browbeaten husband are the stars of a new video making it’s way around the internet after the woman, a horrible human being, decided to berate a Trump supporter on an airplane. First, here’s what happened from the guy it happened to:
The first flight attendant to deal with his bigot isn’t having any of her shit:
Attendant #1: “Is there going to be a problem?”
Woman: “There will be, I would like for him to change seats with somebody who did not put us all in harm’s way”
Attendant #1: “Well, you don’t have that right!”
[mic drop, goes to get other flight attendant]
When the second flight attendant breaks the news of her impending ejection, this ivory tower liberal starts throwing her dead mother in law out to try and gain some sympathy:
Woman: “I’m going home now. My mother in law, his mother in law, died. And we had to be here. I’m going home now, there is no way I’m getting off this plane.”
Attendant #2: “I’m terribly sorry for that, but that does not give you the right to treat people the way you’ve been treating them.
[indignancy intensifies]
Husband: “What if we trade seats and she quiets down? How would that be?”
Attendant #2: “Unfortunately the captain has already made the call…”
DENIED
Enjoy the show:
And a potato quality recording of her actually getting tossed:
Note the applause…
Source: Watch: Bigoted Turtleneck-Wearing Liberal Gets Tossed Off Plane For Harassing Trump Supporter!
By The_Real_Fly
As some of you might recall, in December of 2015, I went long treasuries, due to my belief that negative interest rates would wreak havoc across the investment landscape — bring with it a deflationary vortex that would consume all whole — especially equity holders. For the better part of 2016, this was the single best trade to be in — and I had it before anyone deemed it to be fashionable.
 
Then the elections came and a gigantic Trump induced squeeze commenced — helping rout bonds and buoy equities in record fashion. Looking back on that rally, it was a fucking month — literally nothing in the big scheme of things. Should bonds rally again, recapturing some of its former glory, no one will remember the faux inflation days of November-January — post Hillary annihilation.
 
Looking at the bond trade, it’s ripe for a reversion from the mean. After all, the most reprehensible people around, pavement apes and the like, are short bonds. These are the ‘Fast Money’ people — the same lads who bought mortgage bonds in 2007 and dot com hand grenades in the spring of 2000.
 
Via CFTC:
The amount of speculators’ bearish, or short, positions in
10-year Treasury futures exceeded bullish, or long, positions by
394,689 contracts on Jan. 10, according to the CFTC’s latest
Commitments of Traders data.
 
A week earlier, speculators held 344,931 net short positions
in 10-year T-note futures.
 
Net shorts in five-year T-note futures and Eurodollar
futures among speculators also climbed to record highs in the
latest week, while speculative T-bond net shorts rose to their
highest level since March 2012, according to CFTC data.
 
Net shorts in federal funds futures among speculators rose
to their highest since August 2015.
 
The rise in net shorts among these futures contracts
suggested this group of market participants believes bond prices
will resume their fall despite their rebound since mid-December.
 
Juxtaposing short data with actual yield action, proves, in fact, that the shorts are literally pavement apes — idiots devoid of reason — slaves to the base instincts that require zero thinking.
 
 
 
Yields on the 5 year treasury have doubled since our glorious leader, Donald J. Trump seized power, to 1.94%. Short contracts now outstrip longs by a record 1.1 million — making this Tower of Pisa trade indelibly lopsided.
In the end, “real money always wins,” said Tom di Galoma, the managing director of government trading and strategy at Seaport Global Holdings. “Speculators tend to get taken out. We’ve seen this occur several times in the last 10 to 15 years, where everybody thinks rates are too low.”
 
A shift back into Treasuries may already be starting. Fixed-income managers who oversee a combined $225 billion held 24.7 percent of their assets in U.S. government debt in the week through Jan. 17, according to Stone & McCarthy Research Associates client survey. That’s higher than the average of 24.2 percent in 2016.
 <br …read more
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Kellyanne Conway’s use of a strange phrase, “alternative facts,” was reflective of something real — a new administration which feels, on day three, that it is already under siege from unfair reporters. …read more
Source: Why Team Trump is ‘planting a flag’ in war on media
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,
I have been in Washington DC for the last three days. The ostensible reason was to participate in a board meeting of a public company, Ashford Inc. (AINC). We manage hotel REITs that own three hotels here in DC, and the group decided to move our board meeting up a few weeks and hold it in DC during the inauguration. That gave me the opportunity to set up a few meetings to try to gain some insight into what the first 100 days, the first six months, and the first year of the Trump administration might look like.
This is going to be a short letter summarizing my impressions from the last few days. I think it might be easiest to present them in the form of a list.
1. If you listen to the media you might have the impression that the Trump transition team is in complete disarray. Talking with leaders of the transition team certainly didn’t leave me with that impression. They have broken the transition process down into over 30 departments and have created a “landing document” for each department. The analogy they are using is that this process is like planning an invasion, and they are going to hand the landing document off to the “beachhead teams” who will then execute the plans.
I was briefly allowed to look at (without actually being able to read) the plan for one cabinet-level department. It appeared to be about 100 pages plus of serious detail as to exactly what executive orders would need to be removed and added, what personnel would have to be replaced (both appointees and regular staff), what policies would need to be changed, and so forth.
I was told that this level of planning was being done for every department. My impression is that there are a lot of people from various think tanks and others with experience in the presidential transition process who are involved in directing the plan for each department. That level of detailed planning doesn’t happen in less than two months. My guess is that some of that thinking has been going on for years, and now it can be implemented.
That being said, we know that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy; and it was instructive to sit with Bill Bennett, who talked about his experience in trying to reform the Department of Education under Reagan. They were still dealing with personnel and policy issues a year later, and this was when the department was much smaller than it is today. And that is just one department.
When I asked a key person how much of the overall plan would likely come to fruition, I got a rueful smile and a shrug. “If we even get half of this done in the first few years, that will be major reform.”
2. There seem to be two general types of agency plans.
First, there are those where the culture of the department has to be …read more
Source: "10 Things Learned From 3 Days In Washington D.C."
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By Tyler Durden
In a CNBC clip, which slipped between the cracks last week, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who has been busy trying to get into Donald Trump’s “circle of trust”, spoke in Davos and blamed the problems of the United States on the United States itself, as a country which has spent trillions of dollars to wage war, instead of investing in infrastructure and its own people.
Asked by Andrew Ross Sorkin about Trump’s decision to impose new tariffs on Chinese imports to protect domestic American manufacturers, Ma said blaming China for any economic issues in the U.S. is misguided. If America is looking to blame anyone, Ma said, it should blame itself.
“It’s not that other countries steal jobs from you guys,” Ma said. “It’s your strategy. Distribute the money and things in a proper way.”
According to Ma, the US wasted over $14 trillion in fighting wars over the past 30 years rather than investing in infrastructure at home. Ma named this as the main reason that the US economy is weakening.
Ma was not the only critic of the costly U.S. policies of waging war against terrorism and other enemies outside the homeland, however, the Alibaba founder said this was the reason America’s economic growth had weakened, not China’s supposed theft of jobs. In fact, Ma called outsourcing a “wonderful” and “perfect” strategy.
“The American multinational companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalization,” Ma said. “The past 30 years, IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, they’ve made tens of millions — the profits they’ve made are much more than the four Chinese banks put together. … But where did the money go?”
One answer: a couple of offshore bank accounts, or – now that Rothschild is managing Nevada tax havens – onshore.
He added that the U.S. is not distributing or investing its money properly, and that’s why many people in the country feel wracked with economic anxiety. Ma added that too much money flows to Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Instead, the country should be helping the Midwest, and Americans “not good in schooling,” too.
At least in theory, much of this forms the basis of Trump’s policies.
“You’re supposed to spend money on your own people,” Ma said. “Not everybody can pass Harvard, like me.” In a previous interview, CNBC said that Ma said he had been rejected by Harvard 10 times. Along those lines, Ma stressed that globalization is a good thing, but it, too, “should be inclusive,” with the spoils not just going to the wealthy few.
“The world needs new leadership, but the new leadership is about working together,” Ma said. “As a business person, I want the world to share the prosperity together.”
By Tyler Durden
Earlier we reported that according to Goldman, virtually all of its investing clients are “anxious” and/or unsettled” due to rising confusion over Trump policies. As Goldman explained, “‘Unsettled’ is our best description of fund managers’ mindset as the new administration takes office. During an extensive series of client meetings in the US, Europe and Asia, it became apparent that investors are confused about how to best position portfolios under a Trump presidency… Policy uncertainty was a topic of concern raised in every client meeting. While we expect corporate tax reform legislation will be enacted in 2017, the magnitude of cuts and offsetting revenue proposals are unknown.”
Now, we can confirm that based on transcripts from companies reporting Q4 earnings, confusion – and hope – over Trump and his policies has spread to corporate America.
As FactSet analyst John Butters points out, while the majority of S&P 500 companies will report earnings results for Q4 2016 over the next few weeks, approximately 8% of the companies in the index (42 companies) have already reported earnings results for the fourth quarter (through Wednesday).
He then asks if “companies in the S&P 500 been commenting on government policies that may change under the Trump administration during their earnings conference calls for the fourth quarter?” To answer this question, FactSet searched for the terms “Trump” and “administration” in the conference call transcripts of the 42 S&P 500 companies that have conducted fourth quarter earnings conference calls through January 18 to see how many companies discussed these terms. FactSet then looked to see if the company cited or discussed a policy topic in conjunction with the citation of “Trump” or “administration.” The results are shown below.
Of the 42 S&P 500 companies, 27 cited the term “Trump” or “administration” during their Q4 earnings calls. The term “administration” was only counted if it was used to reference the Trump administration.
In terms of government policies in conjunction with the new administration, tax policy was cited or discussed by the highest number of S&P 500 companies at 11. Six of these 11 companies stated that if taxes were lowered, it would benefit their clients or themselves. Companies that cited or discussed a potential border tariff or tax were counted under “Trade Policy” and not “Tax Policy” in the chart. Numbers do not total to 27 as some companies discussed multiples policy topics, while others did not discuss any specific policy topics.
Here is a selection of Q4 call excerpts courtesy of FactSet:
“I think when you say indirect and direct, you mean direct, obviously, we’ve been a relatively high taxpayer. And so to the extent to which tax rates come down, we’re a beneficiary. But obviously, changes in tax policy can be a huge catalyst for how all of our clients think about deploying their capital, strategic decisions.” –Goldman Sachs (Jan. 18)
“Well, I just want to echo what you just said that we are starting to have conversations with clients that are indicating they are more optimistic …read more
Source: Earnings Season So Far: 27 Of 42 Reporting Companies Cite "Trump" Or "Administration"
By Tyler Durden
“The Trump Wars of the past 18 months do not now go away. Now it becomes the Trump Civil War, every day, with Democrats trying to get rid of him and half the country pushing back. To reduce it to the essentials: As long as Mr. Trump’s party holds the House, it will be a standoff. If the Democrats take the House, they will move to oust him.
Because we are divided. We are two nations, maybe more.”
Definitely more, Peggy. Definitely more.
And that is why war is on the horizon that no longer feels quite as distant as it once did. But at least one nation, the American nation, has a leader worth his salt.
Normally a new president has someone backing him up, someone publicly behind him.
Mr. Obama had the mainstream media – the big broadcast networks, big newspapers, activists and intellectuals, pundits and columnists of the left—the whole shebang. He had a unified, passionate party.
Mr. Trump in comparison has almost nothing. The mainstream legacy media oppose him, even hate him, and will not let up. The columnists, thinkers and magazines of the right were mostly NeverTrump; some came reluctantly to support him. His party is split or splitting. The new president has gradations of sympathy, respect or support from exactly one cable news channel, and some websites.
He really has no one but those who voted for him.
Do they understand what a lift daily governance is going to be, and how long the odds are, with so much arrayed against him, and them?
The USA now contains considerably more than two nations. That's why it is no longer any more viable than the European Union. It's been held together by force, easy credit money, and sleight of hand for a long time, but not for much longer.
The inaugural address was utterly and uncompromisingly Trumpian. The man who ran is the man who’ll reign.
It was plain, unfancy and blunt to the point of blistering. A little humility would have gone a long way, but that’s not the path he took. Nor did he attempt to reassure. It was pow, right in the face. Most important, he did not in any way align himself with the proud Democrats and Republicans arrayed around him. He looked out at the crowd and said he was allied with them.
For all his strength of will and civic nationalism, Trump cannot save the political entity, but he can put the American nation in a much better, much stronger position before the growing rifts become borders. He should take those who say he is not their president at their word, because they are neither the Posterity of the Founders nor We the People…
By EconMatters
By EconMatters
The OPEC and Non-OPEC Oil Production cuts are actually a joke in the bigger scheme of things, the oil markets have been over supplied for a decade. The Market`s self serving definition of a balanced oil market is complete nonsense on a larger macro view of the market.
There is a reason the 5-year averages for oil stocks have been rising every year I have been trading the oil market. It isn`t a coincidental indicator that more oil storage facilities are being built or expanded every year for the last 15 years of the modern electronic oil markets.
There is so much oil and derivative oil products in storage on a global calculus, that it is a joke if OPEC thinks they have cut enough to actually long term balance the oil markets.
In addition they are delusional if they think a little six month seasonal pullback in production is going to do anything other than artificially set the oil market up for the next leg back down in the second half of 2017.
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Source: The Oil Production Cuts Are Purely Symbolic Marketing Trickery (Video)
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