Monthly Archives: March 2017

Mar 26 2017

‘Wiretapping’ Likely True


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by Tyler Durden
Re-Posted From ZERO HEDGE Mar 26, 2017 2:20 PM

The “political appointees” in the intelligence community knew exactly what they were surveilling for, former CIA officer Col. Tony Shaffer told Fox News, adding that the case is “much worse than Watergate by an order of magnitude.”

 

While Trump was not physically wiretapped, with a wire into his phone, Shaffer said the “basic fundamental idea and claim is true.”

“Clearly they were after gossip because it was political,” Shaffer said, maintaining that the alleged wiretap had nothing to do with Russia.

Due to the simplicity required to “mask” an American’s name during an incidental wiretap, Shaffer said that the leak of Gen. Michael Flynn’s name was “accidental on purpose.”

Even if the surveillance was done legally, Shaffer exclaimed that whoever is responsible for the “unmasking” of Americans’ names and the leaking of the information are felons.

With Comey and Rogers facing “closed sessions”, and Trump looking for a win, we can’t help but think something substantial looms for the leakers just ahead. Of course, the biggest dilemma for exposing the leakers is the confirmation of what we already know to an even wider audience of deniers – that Snowden, Binney, et al. are 100% correct and the surveillance state’s all-seeing eye is everywhere and far beyond government control. (just remember it’s for your own good).

Mar 26 2017

The Evidence That Russia Hacked The DNC Is Collapsing


Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Re-Posted From ZERO HEDGE Mar 26, 2017 2:41 PM

Authored by Justin Raimondo via TheAntiMedia.org,

The allegation – now accepted as incontrovertible fact by the “mainstream” media – that the Russian intelligence services hacked the Democratic National Committee (and John Podesta’s emails) in an effort to help Donald Trump get elected recently suffered a blow from which it may not recover.

Crowdstrike is the cybersecurity company hired by the DNC to determine who hacked their accounts: it took them a single day to determine the identity of the culprits – it was, they said, two groups of hackers which they named “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear,” affiliated respectively with the GRU, which is Russian military intelligence, and the FSB, the Russian security service.

How did they know this?

These alleged “hacker groups” are not associated with any known individuals in any way connected to Russian intelligence: instead, they are identified by the tools they use, the times they do their dirty work, the nature of the targets, and other characteristics based on the history of past intrusions.

Yet as Jeffrey Carr and other cyberwarfare experts have pointed out, this methodology is fatally flawed. “It’s important to know that the process of attributing an attack by a cybersecurity company has nothing to do with the scientific method,” writes Carr:

“Claims of attribution aren’t testable or repeatable because the hypothesis is never proven right or wrong. Neither are claims of attribution admissible in any criminal case, so those who make the claim don’t have to abide by any rules of evidence (i.e., hearsay, relevance, admissibility).”

Likening attribution claims of hacking incidents by cybersecurity companies to intelligence assessments, Carr notes that, unlike government agencies such the CIA, these companies are never held to account for their misses:

“When it comes to cybersecurity estimates of attribution, no one holds the company that makes the claim accountable because there’s no way to prove whether the assignment of attribution is true or false unless (1) there is a criminal conviction, (2) the hacker is caught in the act, or (3) a government employee leaked the evidence.”

This lack of accountability may be changing, however, because Crowdstrike’s case for attributing the hacking of the DNC to the Russians is falling apart at the seams like a cheap sweater.

To begin with, Crowdstrike initially gauged its certainty as to the identity of the hackers with “medium confidence.” However, a later development, announced in late December and touted by the Washington Post, boosted this to “high confidence.” The reason for this newfound near-certainty was their discovery that “Fancy Bear” had also infected an application used by the Ukrainian military to target separatist artillery in the Ukrainian civil war. As the Post reported:

“While CrowdStrike, which was hired by the DNC to investigate the intrusions and whose findings are described in a new report, had always suspected that one of the two hacker groups that struck the DNC was the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, it had only medium confidence.

“Now, said CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch, ‘we have high confidence’ it was a unit of the GRU. CrowdStrike had dubbed that unit ‘Fancy Bear.’”

Crowdstrike published an analysis that claimed a malware program supposedly unique to Fancy Bear, X-Agent, had infected a Ukrainian targeting application and, using GPS to geo-locate Ukrainian positions, had turned the application against the Ukrainians, resulting in huge losses:

“Between July and August 2014, Russian-backed forces launched some of the most-decisive attacks against Ukrainian forces, resulting in significant loss of life, weaponry and territory.

“Ukrainian artillery forces have lost over 50% of their weapons in the two years of conflict and over 80% of D-30 howitzers, the highest percentage of loss of any other artillery pieces in Ukraine’s arsenal.”

Alperovitch told the PBS News Hour that “Ukraine’s artillery men were targeted by the same hackers, that we call Fancy Bear, that targeted DNC, but this time they were targeting cell phones to try to understand their location so that the Russian artillery forces can actually target them in the open battle. It was the same variant of the same malicious code that we had seen at the DNC.”

He told NBC News that this proved the DNC hacker “wasn’t a 400-pound guy in his bed,” as Trump had opined during the first presidential debate – it was the Russians.

The only problem with this analysis is that is isn’t true. It turns out that Crowdstrike’s estimate of Ukrainian losses was based on a blog post by a pro-Russian blogger eager to tout Ukrainian losses: the Ukrainians denied it. Furthermore, the hacking attribution was based on the hackers’ use of a malware program called X-Agent, supposedly unique to Fancy Bear. Since the target was the Ukrainian military, Crowdstrike extrapolated from this that the hackers were working for the Russians.

All somewhat plausible, except for two things: To begin with, as Jeffrey Carr pointed out in December, and now others are beginning to realize, X-Agent isn’t unique to Fancy Bear. Citing the findings of ESET, another cybersecurity company, he wrote:

“Unlike Crowdstrike, ESET doesn’t assign APT28/Fancy Bear/Sednit to a Russian Intelligence Service or anyone else for a very simple reason. Once malware is deployed, it is no longer under the control of the hacker who deployed it or the developer who created it. It can be reverse-engineered, copied, modified, shared and redeployed again and again by anyone. In other words? – ?malware deployed is malware enjoyed!

“In fact, the source code for X-Agent, which was used in the DNC, Bundestag, and TV5Monde attacks, was obtained by ESET as part of their investigation!

“During our investigations, we were able to retrieve the complete Xagent source code for the Linux operating system….”

“If ESET could do it, so can others. It is both foolish and baseless to claim, as Crowdstrike does, that X-Agent is used solely by the Russian government when the source code is there for anyone to find and use at will.”

Secondly, the estimate Crowdstrike used to verify the Ukrainian losses was supposedly based on data from the respected International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). But now IISS is disavowing and debunking their claims:

“[T]he International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) told [Voice of America] that CrowdStrike erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion. IISS disavowed any connection to the CrowdStrike report. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has claimed combat losses and hacking never happened….

“’The CrowdStrike report uses our data, but the inferences and analysis drawn from that data belong solely to the report’s authors,” the IISS said. “The inference they make that reductions in Ukrainian D-30 artillery holdings between 2013 and 2016 were primarily the result of combat losses is not a conclusion that we have ever suggested ourselves, nor one we believe to be accurate.’

“One of the IISS researchers who produced the data said that while the think tank had dramatically lowered its estimates of Ukrainian artillery assets and howitzers in 2013, it did so as part of a ‘reassessment” and reallocation of units to airborne forces.’

“’No, we have never attributed this reduction to combat losses,” the IISS researcher said, explaining that most of the reallocation occurred prior to the two-year period that CrowdStrike cites in its report.

“’The vast majority of the reduction actually occurs … before Crimea/Donbass,’ he added, referring to the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

The definitive “evidence” cited by Alperovitch is now effectively debunked: indeed, it was debunked by Carr late last year, but that was ignored in the media’s rush to “prove” the Russians hacked the DNC in order to further Trump’s presidential ambitions. The exposure by the Voice of America of Crowdstrike’s falsification of Ukrainian battlefield losses – the supposedly solid “proof” of attributing the hack to the GRU – is the final nail in Crowdstrike’s coffin. They didn’t bother to verify their analysis of IISS’s data with IISS – they simply took as gospel the allegations of a pro-Russian blogger. They didn’t contact the Ukrainian military, either: instead, their confirmation bias dictated that they shaped the “facts” to fit their predetermined conclusion.

Now why do you suppose that is? Why were they married so early – after a single day – to the conclusion that it was the Russians who were behind the hacking of the DNC?

Crowdstrike founder Alperovitch is a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, and head honcho of its “Cyber Statecraft Initiative” – of which his role in promoting the “Putin did it” scenario is a Exhibit A. James Carden, writing in The Nation, makes the trenchant point that “The connection between Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council has gone largely unremarked upon, but it is relevant given that the Atlantic Council – which is funded in part by the US State Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk – has been among the loudest voices calling for a new Cold War with Russia.” Adam Johnson, writing on the FAIR blog, adds to our knowledge by noting that the Council’s budget is also supplemented by “a consortium of Western corporations (Qualcomm, Coca-Cola, The Blackstone Group), including weapons manufacturers (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman) and oil companies (ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP).”

Johnson also notes that CrowdStrike currently has a $150,000 / year, no-bid contract with the FBI for “systems analysis.”

Nice work if you can get it.

This last little tidbit gives us some insight into what is perhaps the most curious aspect of the Russian-hackers-campaign-for-Trump story: the FBI’s complete dependence on Crowdstrike’s analysis. Amazingly, the FBI did no independent forensic work on the DNC servers before Crowdstrike got its hot little hands on them: indeed, the DNC denied the FBI access to the servers, and, as far as anyone knows, the FBI never examined them. BuzzFeed quotes an anonymous “intelligence official” as saying “Crowdstrike is pretty good. There’s no reason to believe that anything they have concluded is not accurate.”

There is now.

Alperovitch is scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, and one wonders if our clueless – and technically challenged – Republican members of Congress will question him about the debunking of Crowdstrike’s rush to judgment. I tend to doubt it, since the Russia-did-it meme is now the Accepted Narrative and no dissent is permitted – to challenge it would make them “Putin apologists”! (Although maybe Trey Gowdy, the only GOPer on that panel who seems to have any brains, may surprise me.)

As I’ve been saying for months, there is no evidence that the Russians hacked the DNC: none, zilch, nada. Yet this false narrative is the entire basis of a campaign launched by the Democrats, hailed by the Trump-hating media, and fully endorsed by the FBI and the CIA, the purpose of which is to “prove” that Trump is “Putin’s puppet,” as Hillary Clinton put it. Now the investigative powers of the federal government are being deployed to confirm that the Trump campaign “colluded” with the Kremlin in an act the evidence for which is collapsing.

This whole affair is a vicious fraud. If there is any justice in this world – and there may not be – the perpetrators should be charged, tried, and jailed.

Mar 26 2017

This Is The Nightmare Scenario For The GOP: A $2 Trillion Funding “Hole”


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by Tyler Durden
Mar 26, 2017 3:49 PM

When one strips away the partisan rhetoric and posturing, the practical impact of Friday’s GOP failure to repeal Obamacare has a specific monetary impact: approximately $1 trillion.

Since the ObamaCare repeal bill would have eliminated most of the 2010 health law’s taxes, this would have lowered by a similar amount the revenue baseline for tax reform. Essentially, with the ObamaCare taxes gone, it would have been easier to pay for lowering tax rates. Now, if Republicans want to eliminate the ObamaCare taxes as part of tax reform and ensure the bill does not add to the deficit – which they need to do to assure Trump’s reform process continues under Reconciliation, avoiding the need for 60 votes in the Senate – they will have to raise almost $1 trillion in revenue.

In other words that – all else equal – is how much less tax cuts Trumps and the republicans will be able to pursue unless of course they somehow find a source of $1 trillion in tax revenue (or otherwise simply add to the budget deficit) to offset the Obamacare overhang.

Considering Paul Ryan’s statement on Friday, it appears that at least for the time being, Republicans would leave the ObamaCare taxes in place.  “That just means the ObamaCare taxes stay with ObamaCare,” he said. “We’re going to go fix the rest of the tax code.”

Ryan also pushed back on the idea that the setback on healthcare previews difficulties with other items on the legislative agenda  “I don’t think this is prologue to other future things, because members realize there are other parts of our agenda that people have even more agreement on what to achieve,” he said. “We have even more agreement on the need and the nature of tax reform, on funding the government, on rebuilding the military, on securing the border.”

While the failure to pass the healthcare bill makes tax reform harder, “it does not in any way make it impossible,” Ryan said. “We will proceed with tax reform, we will continue with tax reform.” Earlier in the week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the administration has been working on tax reform for two months and plans to release a plan in the near future. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady added in a statement that Republicans on his panel “are moving full speed ahead with President Trump on the first pro-growth tax reform in a generation.”

Still, quick action on legislation is unlikely; in fact while the market narrative changed on a dime last Friday, with traders now convincing themselves the delay of Obamacare means tax reform passes quicker, this is not the case. As Larry Lindsey, a former economic adviser for George W. Bush, told CNBC’s “Power Lunch” last Friday, one of the “silliest” things he’s heard from people is that the health-care proposal not passing will be good for Trump’s tax reform. “Absolutely not,” he added.

A replacement for Obamacare “was necessary for budgetary reasons, for tax reform, because it was a revenue gainer,” said Lindsey. Trump’s goals for economic growth should also be questioned now, he warned.

“They might move on to [tax reform] next, but when you have a president who can’t deliver his own caucus, then the president’s position will be weakened on all issues,” Lindsey said. “If you’re in Congress and you don’t like something, you now have an example of how you can ‘roll’ the president.”

* * *

But wait, there’s more.

While the GOP will be hard pressed to find $1 trilion in offsetting savings or revenues, their headaches could be doubled if the proposed border adjustment tax fails to pass next. As a reminder, BAT is expected to generate as much as $1.18 trillion in offsetting revenues; should BAT no be DOA, that’s another $1.2 trillion in potential government revenues that is gone.

According to James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute of Economic Policy, the fact that the Republicans failed to pass a health-care reform bill makes the odds that they will pass a border adjustment provision much smaller, and “the odds of getting a bigger stimulus plan will drop, too”, he told CNBC on Friday. Investors “won’t get to see cuts to a 15 to 20 percent tax rate” in corporate and marginal tax rates such as those Trump has proposed, Pethokoukis added. Instead, it will likely be closer to what Obama worked toward — something closer to a 30 percent tax rate, he said. It raised the specter of more discontent among Trump’s longtime supporters, considering he campaigned on that specific promise.

Echoing this sentiment, Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said in an interview that tax reform and the health-care proposal were “intimately connected for precise reasons. Trump once suggested achieving growth of 2 to 4 percent, but this might look more like 1 to 2 percent now because of budgetary constraints, he added. Now, the government has less money available to hit “high revenue targets,” Bernstein said.

Summarizing the above, as a result of Friday’s failure, the tax revenue “hole” Republicans have to fill now is at least $1 trillion bigger, and perhaps as large as $2.2 trillion.

* * *

But wait, there’s even more.

As the WSJ writes overnight, in theory rewriting the tax code could be easier than revamping the whole health-care industry. Republicans pride themselves on ideological unity in favor of lower tax rates. And the stakes appear lower for Americans — paperwork and money are far different than matters of life and death. “Tax reform is less visceral,” said Rep. David Schweikert (R., Ariz.) “I can pull up a calculator and say ‘it’s this or this’…it’s hard legislating to anecdotes and stories.”

But scratch deeper, and the GOP quest for a full overhaul of the tax code is fraught with squabbles, procedural hurdles and difficult trade-offs. The party’s failure on health care – after having seven years to prepare – shows how hard it is for Republicans to write complex legislation that attracts support from their moderate and conservative wings. “It’s just a reminder of how incredibly hard transformational legislation is,” said John Gimigliano, a former GOP congressional tax aide now at KPMG LLP.

As the WSJ adds, to succeed, Republicans need to bridge at least three big gaps.

  • First, they need to balance competing desires to cut tax rates sharply and to slow the rise of national debt. Republican leaders in Congress say they want a revenue-neutral plan – one that brings in about as much money as today’s tax system. Faster economic growth might help, but it doesn’t fully bridge the divide. To accomplish revenue neutrality while sharply lowering rates, they will attempt to whack popular tax breaks, such as business deductions of interest on debt and individual state and local tax deductions. They will meet resistance from groups that want to protect those breaks.
  • Second, they have to reconcile alternate visions of what they are setting out to accomplish and who will benefit. Mr. Trump has said his priority is middle-class tax cuts for individuals. “Not the top 1%,” said Mr. Mnuchin. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) and Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R., Texas) want an overhaul primarily focused on promoting economic growth, even if that means tax cuts that favor the very top of the income scale.
  • The plans they all campaigned on are tilted to the top, according to independent analyses. Third, the party is at odds over the Ryan-Brady plan for border adjustment – taxing imports and exempting exports. The Trump administration has been ambivalent and sometimes critical of the idea. Senate Republicans are outright cold to it. Messrs. Ryan and Brady say it’s crucial because it provides about $1 trillion to offset corporate-tax-rate cuts and it discourages companies from shifting profits abroad.

None of those divisions inside the GOP have been resolved yet, and dozens more are lurking, including debates over tax breaks for renewable energy, credits that aid low-income households, and the treatment of carried interest income for private-equity managers.

“The notion that tax is easier than health is not borne out by the facts, ” a Senate GOP aide told the WSJ. “Having discussed health care for seven years, Republicans were 75% in agreement on the policy. On tax, none of the foundational questions have been answered.”

In short, the market is about to be significantly – perhaps “tremendously” – disappointed once again, and quite soon.

Mar 26 2017

“If They Want To Blow It Up, They Can” – How Republicans Can Hobble Healthcare Without Repeal


Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Re-Posted From ZERO HEDGE Mar 26, 2017 3:15 PM

Following President Trump’s clarifying tweet yesterday that “Obamacare will explode” on its own…

It is becoming increasingly clear that, even without the ‘repeal’, the Trump administration has already begun using its regulatory authority to water down less prominent aspects of Obamacare.

The Republicans’ failure to repeal Obamacare, at least for now, means it remains federal law. But as Reuters reports, newly confirmed Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s power resides in how to interpret that law, and which programs to emphasize and fund. Earlier this week, Price stalled the rollout of mandatory Medicare payment reform programs for heart attack treatment, bypass surgery and joint replacements finalized by the Obama administration in December.

Hospitals and physician groups have been counting on support from Medicare – the federal insurance program for the elderly and disabled – to continue driving payment reform policies built into Obamacare that reward doctors and hospitals for providing high quality care at a lower cost. The Obama Administration had committed to shifting half of all Medicare payments to these alternative payment models by 2018. Although he has voiced general support for innovative payment programs, Price has been a loud critic of mandatory federal programs that dictate how doctors should deliver healthcare.

Without the backing of Medicare, the biggest payer in the U.S. healthcare system which Price now oversees, the nascent payment reform movement could lose momentum, sidelining a transformation many experts believe is vital to reining in runaway U.S. healthcare spending. Price “can’t change the legislation, but of course he’s supposed to implement it. He could impact it,” said John Rother, chief executive of the National Coalition on Health Care, a broad alliance of healthcare stakeholders that has been lobbying the new administration for support of value-based care.

The move Friday to pull the Republican bill only reinforces the risk to the existing law.

“It seems that the Trump Administration now faces a choice whether to actively undermine the ACA or reshape it administratively,” Larry Levitt, senior vice president at Kaiser Family Foundation, wrote on Twitter.

As a painful reminder, the United States spends $3 trillion a year on healthcare – more by far than 10 other wealthy countries – yet has the lowest life expectancy and the highest infant mortality rate, according to a 2013 Commonwealth Fund report.

Health costs have soared thanks in part to the traditional way doctors and hospitals get paid, namely by receiving a fee for each service they provide. So the more advanced imaging tests a doctor orders or pricey procedures they perform, the more money he or she makes, regardless of whether the patient’s health improves.

“We have a completely broken economy in healthcare,” said Blair Childs, senior vice president at hospital purchasing group Premier Inc. “Literally, all of the incentives in fee-for-service are for higher cost.”

As Reuters concludes, President Trump has already signed an executive order directing the HHS to begin unraveling Obamacare. In the early hours of his presidency, Trump directed government agencies to freeze regulations and take steps to weaken the healthcare law. The order directed departments to “waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation” of provisions that imposed fiscal burdens on states, companies or individuals. These moves were meant to minimize the costs and regulatory burdens imposed on states, private entities and individuals.

David Cutler, the Harvard health economist who helped the Obama Administration shape the ACA, said Price could do all sorts of things to undermine the law.

Mar 26 2017

Obamacare Survives thanks to Corruption as Usual


Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption

Re-Posted Mar 26, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

Obamacare

COMMENT: With all the talk of the failed healthcare bill, doesn’t people realize the medical and pharma are the biggest lobbyist to Washington? That’s why Ryan didn’t pass the bill.

N

REPLY: The media will never expose reality. I believe the only way to fix all this mess is to repeal Obamcare in its entirety. Mandate that all insurance must go back to where it was. I know mine would drop by 50%. Then anyone who cannot get coverage goes to Medicaid. Obama just tried to convert healthcare to a TAX which is why the Supreme Court sustained it. It was a tax plain and simple. Any attempt to keep Obamacare and tinker with it will fail. It is 7 feet tall. Here is the original Social Security Act of 1935. (Social Security Act 1935)

Whenever a politician labels and act to pretend it is the greatest thing since sliced bread, you better look closer. The “Afforable Care Act” did not make health insurance affordable for anyone other than those who could not get it and belonged on government systems. The rest of us paid more, not less. Healthcare is a total mess and it has risen to such a high consumption level within the entire GDP, it reduces disposable income of the average household and that acts simply as an economic depressant.

We will simply have to  be pushed to the total point of collapse as healthcare keeps growing faster than anything else in the economy except government. U.S. health care spending grew 5.8% in 2015, reaching $3.2 trillion or $9,990 per person. The per capita income for the overall population in 2008 was $26,964. As a share of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.8%. Healthcare is bankrupting the entire economy.

In FY 2017, total US government spending, federal, state, and local, is “guesstimated” to be $7.04 trillion. The annualy GDP is estimated at $18.855 trillion. Therefore the total cost of government is 37.3% of GDP. Adding healthcare, this means that non-productive forces have now reached 55.1% of the economy which produces NOTHING but simply consumes. When this crossed 60%, it appears we are in for the collapse of an empire in a true Byzantine manner.

Mar 26 2017

KOMMONSENTSJANE – CHAFFETZ LEADS OVERSIGHT HEARING INTO DEFENSE DEPT WASTE UNDER OBAMA


Too many Generals and Admirals and not enough grunts and sailors; plus the needed equipment.

kommonsentsjane's avatarkommonsentsjane

Chaffetz Leads Oversight Hearing Into Defense Dept. Waste Under Obama

March 25, 2017 134
(Quin Hillyer, Liberty Headlines) Almost lost in all the hoopla over health-care bills and wiretapping allegations, the House Oversight Committee this week analyzed a topic of what could be major budgetary impact – namely, a reported $125 billion in possible, but unachieved, savings from the Department of Defense.

The DoD’s fumbling first was reported more than three months ago by the Washington Post, which said the Pentagon had “buried” the evidence (or at least tried to) of its own inefficiencies. The Pentagon’s own report had been completed way back in January of 2015, but, according to the Post’s Bob Woodward and Craig Whitlock, “after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.”
The Post story went on to say that the plan…

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Mar 26 2017

Scientists Warn That The Coming California Megaquake Could Plunge Large Portions Of The State Into The Ocean


I’m just glad I don’t live in LA.

Mar 26 2017

KOMMONSENTSJANE – INVESTIGATIONS WITHOUT ANY RESULTS.


The answer is simple “1984” is almost here!

kommonsentsjane's avatarkommonsentsjane

john

GOOGLE WILL LET TERRORISTS PUT VIDEOS ON THEIR SITE BUT WILL HARASS  AMERICAN CITIZENS..

In fact Johnson and Johnson and AT&T pulled all of their ads from Google sites.

GOOGLE IS INTERFERING WITH MY BLOG AND HARASSING ME – A WOMAN

THIS IS FOR DOCUMENTATION.

AND NOW FOR MY BLOG:  THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE TO GO THRU:

We continue to read about all of the investigations that are being held  by Congress; but, it seems there are never any indictments and never any results.

There are 17 different investigating  groups –  this has to stop.It is time to have only the FBI AND CIA.

Look back at the Obama time in office and all of the scandals – Benghazi and the gun-running  operation – no one was put in jail or held accountable- why not?

kommonsentsjane

.

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Mar 26 2017

Trump “Endorses” Jeanine Pirro’s Call For Paul Ryan To Step Down


Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Re-Posted From ZERO HEDGE Mar 26, 2017 7:28 AM

Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro, whose show President Trump urged his followers on Twitter to watch earlier in the day, opened her program at 9pm on Saturday by calling for Speaker Paul Ryan’s resignation.

“Ryan needs to step down as Speaker of the House. The reason, he failed to deliver the votes on his healthcare bill, the one trumpeted to repeal and replace ObamaCare, the one that he had 7 years to work on; the one he hid under lock and key in the basement of Congress; the one that had to be pulled to prevent the embarrassment of not having enough votes to pass.” Pirro said in her opening statement.

“Speaker Ryan, you come in with all your swagger and experience and sell them a bill of goods which ends up a complete and total failure and you allow our president, in his first 100 days, to come out of the box like that, based on what?” Pirro said.

What made Pirro’s fiery comments about Ryan especially notable is that they came hours after Trump tweeted to encourage his followers to watch “Justice with Judge Jeanine.”

While Trump has urged people to watch TV shows in the past, typically it was when the president himself was appearing on them. However in a twist, Pirro suggested that she had not coordinated her statement with Trump in advance.

“I have not spoken with the president about any of this,” Pirro said of her call for Ryan to step down on her show, where president’s counter-terrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka also appeared on Saturday evening.

On Friday Trump told Ryan to pull the Republican healthcare bill, upon learning there were not enough votes in support among House Republicans. The move marked Trump’s first legislative defeat as president and followed seven years of rhetoric from Republicans who campaigned on a pledge to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law.

In the initial round of fingerpointing, Trump blamed Democrats for not backing the GOP healthcare bill, warning that Obamacare would “explode” on its own, and signaled that he would move on to other priorities such as tax reform. On Saturday, the NYT reported that the blame among Trump’s closest circles had fallen on Reince Priebus and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, while Ryan was spared Trump’s anger. Trump and White House press secretary Sean Spicer also indicated that they appreciated Ryan’s effort to get the bill passed, amid criticism from some Trump allies over the failed effort.

Following the Pirro statement, the blame now appears to have shifted back to Ryan, as Bloomberg originally reported on Friday.

Pirro insisted in her first segment that the failure was on Ryan and not on Trump. “Folks, I want to be clear. This is not on President Trump,” she said. “No one expected a businessman to completely understand the nuances, the complicated ins and outs of Washington and its legislative process. How would he know on what individuals he could rely?”

“Ryan has hurt you going forward, and he’s got to go,” Pirro said

Mar 26 2017

OPEC, Non-OPEC Oil Producers Recommend Extending Production Cuts By Six Months


Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Re-Posted From ZERO HEDGE Mar 26, 2017 8:05 AM

Having failed to “rebalance” the oil market in the first six months following the implementation of the Vienna production cut agreement, with crude inventories in the US hitting all time highs in the interim…

… OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers found themselves in the unpleasant position of scrambling for solutions at this weekend’s Kuwait meeting – in which Saudi Arabia was conspicuously missing – where just two things were discussed: deal compliance, which OPEC paradoxically claims is more than satisfactory despite the relentless climb in inventories, and whether to extend the production cuts by another six month.

And as the Kuwait meeting in which OPEC and rival N-OPEC producing countries met to review progress with their pact to cut supplies drew to a close, a joint committee of ministers from OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers recommended extending by six months the global deal to reduce oil output by 1.8 million barrels, a draft press release from their meeting on Sunday showed.

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The oil ministerial committee “expressed its satisfaction with the progress made toward full conformity with the voluntary production adjustments and encouraged all participating countries to press on toward 100 percent conformity,” said the draft, seen by Reuters.

The December accord, aimed at supporting the oil market, has lifted crude LCOc1 to more than $50 a barrel. But the price gain has encouraged U.S. shale oil producers, which are not part of the pact, to boost output.

In its statement, the committee said that “certain factors, such as low seasonal demand, refinery maintenance, and rising non-OPEC supply, have led to a further increase in crude oil stocks. At the same time, the liquidation of positions by financial players in the market was also observed.”  In other words, the committee blamed everything, including “evil selling speculators” except non-compliance with the deal, of course as that would crush what little credibility OPEC had.

Oil inventories are high because of low U.S. demand and higher supply, and the market should re-balance in the second half of the year, OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo told reporters in Kuwait. Inventories in countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development are currently 282 million barrels higher than their five-year average, he said at the meeting on Sunday.

It also left on a positive note: “However, the end of the refinery maintenance season and noticeable slowdown in U.S. stock build as well as the reduction in floating storage will support the positive efforts undertaken to achieve stability in the market,” it said.

“Oddly”, there was no mention of US shale production, which has soared in recent months, happy to grab market share from OPEC which has allegedly cut production by nearly 2 million barrels daily, and whose output continues to ramp higher in line with the resurgence in US oil rigs.

Before the meeting, Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar Ali al-Luaibi told reporters there were some encouraging elements that suggested the oil market was improving, and that if all OPEC members agreed measures to help price stability, Iraq would support such steps. “Any decisions taken unanimously by members of OPEC … Iraq will be part of the decision and will not be deviating from this,” Luaibi said quoted by Reuters.

Iraq’s oil production is running at 4.312 million bpd this month, Luaibi said, adding that his country had cut its oil exports by 187,000 bpd so far and would reach 210,000 bpd in a few days. Compliance with the supply-cut deal was 94 percent in February among OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers combined, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said.

Russia is committed to cuts of 300,000 bpd by the end of April, Novak said, adding that a deal extension could be discussed on Sunday. “For today, obviously, this is within the sphere of our questions,” Novak said and added that he expects global oil stockpiles to decrease in the second quarter of this year. “The dynamics are positive here, I believe,” Novak said, adding that inventories in the United States and other industrialized countries had risen by less than in the past.

OPEC’s compliance rate was 106% in February, and non-OPEC nations, including Russia, have reached compliance of 64 percent, Kuwait’s Almarzooq said Sunday. The combined compliance rate of both was 94 percent, he said.

Kuwaiti Oil Minister Essam al-Marzouq said the oil market may return to balance by the third quarter of this year if producers comply fully with their production targets.

“More has to be done. We need to see conformity across the board. We assured ourselves and the world that we would reach our adjustment to 100 percent conformity,” Marzouq said.

The biggest question, however, how OPEC plans to deal with the rising shale threat, which as Goldman noted last week has become the global oil price setter, was unanswered.

This is how Goldman explained the dramatic change in the global oil cost curve over the past three years:

Shale’s short time to market and ongoing productivity improvements have provided an efficient answer to the industry’s decade-long search for incremental hydrocarbon resources in technically challenging, high cost areas and has kicked off a competition amongst oil producing countries to offer attractive enough contracts and tax terms to attract incremental capital. This is instigating a structural deflationary change in the oil cost curve, as shown in Exhibit 2. This shift has driven low cost OPEC producers to respond by focusing on market share, ramping up production where possible, using their own domestic resources or incentivizing higher activity from the international oil companies through more attractive contract structures and tax regimes. In the rest of the world, projects and countries have to compete for capital, trying to drive costs down to become competitive through deflation, FX and potentially lower tax rates.

The implications of this curve shift are major, all of which are very adverse to the Saudis, who have been relegated from the post of long-term price setter to inventory manager, and thus the loss of leverage. Here are some further thoughts from Goldman:

  • OPEC role: from price setter to inventory manager In the New Oil Order, we believe OPEC’s role has structurally changed from long-term price setter to inventory manager. In the past, large-scale developments required seven years+ from FID to peak production, giving OPEC long-term control over oil prices. US shale oil currently offers large-scale development opportunities with 6-9 months to peak production. This short-cycle opportunity has structurally changed the cost dynamics, eliminating the need for high cost frontier developments and instigating a competition for capital amongst oil producing countries that is lowering and flattening the cost curve through improved contract terms and taxes.
  • OPEC’s November decision had unintended consequences: OPEC’s decision to cut production was rational and fit into the inventory management role. Inventory builds led to an extreme contango in the Brent forward curve, with 2-year fwd Brent trading at a US$5.5/bl (11%) premium to spot. As OPEC countries sell spot, but US E&Ps sell 30%+ of their production forward, this was giving the E&Ps a competitive advantage. Within one month of the OPEC announcement, the contango declined to US$1.1/bl (2%), achieving the cartel’s purpose. However, the unintended consequence was to underwrite shale activity through the credit market.
  • Stability and credit fuel overconfidence and strong activity: A period of stability (1% Brent Coefficient of Variation ytd vs. 6% 3-year average) has allowed E&Ps to hedge (35% of 2017 oil production vs. 21% in November) and access the credit market, with high yield reopen after a 10- month closure (largest issuance in 4Q16 since 3Q14). Successful cost repositioning and abundant funding are boosting a short-cycle revival, with c.85% of oil companies under our coverage increasing capex in 2017.

Finally, with Saudi Arabia absent, the Kuwait meeting was largely moot. Khalid Al-Falih, the Saudi energy minister said in a Bloomberg Television interview on March 17 that the deal will be maintained if oil stockpiles are still above their five-year average.

In summary: It’s too early to decide on an extension of the output cuts, and OPEC will take up the issue in May, Barkindo said at Sunday’s meeting, during which ministers will monitor compliance with the targeted reductions.

* * *

For those curious, here is the full blast of Bloomberg overnight headlines covering the Kuwait meeting

KUWAIT OIL MINISTER OPEC COMPLIANCE IN FEB BETTER THAN JAN
KUWAIT: WE ARE ASKING COUNTRIES TO INCREASE COMPLIANCE
KUWAIT: WE SHOULD SEE MARKET REBALANCE END OF YEAR
KUWAIT: WE SHOULD SEE OIL STOCKS DRAWDOWN IN 3Q
KUWAIT OIL MINISTER: INDUSTRY NEEDS TO ADDRESS CHALLENGES
KUWAIT: SAUDI ARABIA, ANGOLA EXCEEDED COMMITMENTS TO CUT OUTPUT
KUWAIT: OIL MARKET WILL BE IN BALANCE IN 3Q IF COMPLIANCE 100%
KUWAIT: OIL COMMITEE REPORTS HIGH LEVEL OF CONFORMITY
KUWAIT: OPEC IS STUDYING EXTENSION OF CUTS DEAL FOR SIX MONTHS
KUWAIT MINISTER: OPEC, NON-OPEC COMPLIANCE WITH CUTS IS AT 94%
KUWAIT: COMMITTEE CALLS FOR OPEC TO MAKE RECOMMENDATION ON CUTS

RUSSIA’S ENERGY MINISTER: MINISTERS DISCUSS EXTENDING CUTS DEAL
RUSSIA’S NOVAK: OPEC/NON OPEC COMPLIANCE 94% AS OF END OF FEB
RUSSIA’S NOVAK: OPEC, NON-OPEC DISCUSS EXTENDING OIL-CUTS DEAL
RUSSIA: OPEC, NON-OPEC COOPERATING AT `VERY HIGH LEVEL’

IRAQ TO SUPPORT EXTENDING OIL CUTS IF OTHERS IN OPEC AGREE
IRAQ PRODUCED 4.312M B/D OF OIL IN MARCH: MINISTER
IRAQ’S MARCH OIL EXPORTS IN AGREED RANGE: MINISTER
IRAQ CUT OIL OUTPUT BY 187M B/D UNDER OPEC DEAL: LUAIBI
IRAQ TO CUT 210K B/D OF OIL OUTPUT IN FEW DAYS: LUAIBI

OPEC CHIEF SEES MARKET REBALANCE IN SECOND HALF OF 2017
OPEC: PRODUCERS REACHED HIGH LEVEL OF COMPLIANCE WITH CUTS
OPEC HOPES FOR HIGHER LEVEL OF COMPLIANCE WITH OUTPUT CUTS
OPEC CHIEF: TOO EARLY TO DECIDE ON EXTENSION OF OIL CUTS DEAL
OPEC CHIEF: OIL MARKET OPTIMISM IMPROVED ON OUTPUT CUTS
OPEC: OIL STOCKS ARE HIGH ON LOW U.S. DEMAND, RISING SUPPLY
OPEC: OIL STOCKS TO DECREASE IN SECOND HALF OF THIS YEAR

OMAN OIL MINISTER SAYS MAKES SENSE TO EXTEND OUTPUT CUTS 6 MOS
OMAN SUPPORTS OIL OUTPUT CUTS UNTIL END OF YEAR: MINISTER

VENEZUELA OIL MIN: WE ARE READY TO BACK EXTENDING OUPTUT CUTS

OPEC, NON-OPEC COMMITTEE SAID TO RECOMMEND OIL-CUTS EXTENSION
BARKINDO: OPEC TO DECIDE ON EXTENSION OF OIL CUTS DEAL IN MAY