Tag Archives: ATP 3-39.33

Dec 16 2016

Frontrunning: December 16


Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge Dec 16, 2016 7:29 AM
  • The narrative continues this time from Reuters: Putin turned election hacks in Trump’s favor: officials (Reuters)
  • Russian Special Forces Key to Aleppo Victory (WSJ)
  • Dollar Hits Speed Bump in Fed-Driven Rally; Bonds Stem Declines (BBG)
  • Battered euro and yen recover after dollar surge (Reuters)
  • Wall Street’s 2017 Forecasts Are Doomed If Trump Doesn’t Follow Through On Campaign Promises (BBG)
  • Yahoo’s Password Move May Put Verizon Deal at Risk (WSJ)
  • China’s Wanxiang gets approval to produce Karma electric cars (Reuters)
  • RNC Security Foiled Russian Hackers (WSJ)
  • China Plans Prudent, Neutral Monetary Policy for Next Year (BBG)
  • China holds first live-fire drills with aircraft carrier, warships (Reuters)
  • Valeant’s 2016 Has Been All Pain, No Gain (BBG)
  • Buffett’s Era of 8.5% Dow Dividends Is Coming to an End (BBG)
  • Japan Dethrones China as Top U.S. Foreign Creditor (WSJ)
  • Breakthrough in Japan, Russia islands row eludes PM Abe, Putin (Reuters)
  • Sanofi Said to Be in Advanced Talks to Acquire Actelion (BBG)
  • Chesapeake Energy Drills Deeper for Profit (WSJ)
  • ‘Trump trade’ drives ninth biggest weekly rush to stocks: BAML (Reuters)

 

Overnight Media Digest

WSJ

– Russian hackers tried to penetrate the computer networks of the Republican National Committee, using the same techniques that allowed them to infiltrate its Democratic counterpart, according to U.S. officials briefed on the matter. http://on.wsj.com/2hBTGNq

– Facebook is inching closer to fact-checking the news on its platform, a role that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg shunned a month ago, by rolling out steps to weed out “the worst of the worst”, the social media platform said on Thursday. http://on.wsj.com/2hBPXzB

– Yahoo Inc’s move to force some users to reset their passwords following a newly disclosed security breach could disrupt the planned sale of its core assets to Verizon , security experts say. http://on.wsj.com/2hBM3XB

– Natural-gas giant Chesapeake Energy is drilling ‘supersize’ wells that run for miles underground, hoping to produce more fossil fuels for less cost and turn its fortunes around in an era of low oil prices. http://on.wsj.com/2hBRaHl

– The evacuation of thousands of civilians and rebels from the last opposition-held pocket in Aleppo began, forcing residents who pleaded to escape the violence to accept they might never return home. http://on.wsj.com/2hBRc1V

– Dow Chemical finally gained the right to convert $4 billion of preferred stock into common shares, ridding the company of an expensive burden and depriving Warren Buffett of another lucrative crisis-era investment. http://on.wsj.com/2hBOdXi

 

FT

– French nuclear group Aveva received a 500 million euro offer for a 10 percent stake in a in a new nuclear fuel company that will be split off from its parent. The company named is preparing to split off its uranium mining and nuclear fuel activities into NewCo.

– Gilead Sciences was ordered by a jury to pay a subsidiary of Merck & Co $2.54 billion in damages in a patent-infringement trial over two of Gilead’s Hepatitis C drugs.

– Facebook is setting up a partnership with fact-checking organisations and will try out new ways to report and flag fake news this week to try to address the “worst of the worst” hoaxes spread by spammers.

– Italy’ largest bank by market capitalisation Intesa Sanpaolo has been fined $235 million by U.S. regulators for violating anti-money laundering and bank secrecy laws.

 

NYT

– Facebook Inc said on Thursday that it had begun a series of experiments to limit misinformation on its site. The tests include making it easier for its 1.8 billion members to report fake news, and creating partnerships with external fact-checking organizations to help it indicate when articles are false. The company is also changing some advertising practices to stop purveyors of fake news from profiting from it. http://nyti.ms/2gPxMaJ

– A security researcher said hackers are offering records of more than 1 billion Yahoo Inc users on Dark Web, after the company disclosed the largest known data breach in history. http://nyti.ms/2h6Ug4Z

– The prosecutor in the trial against Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, raised the possibility that she would be acquitted of criminal charges linked to the misuse of public funds, after he called the case “very weak” on Thursday. http://nyti.ms/2gHDWqb

– A wide-ranging investigation into generic drug prices took its most significant turn yet on Thursday, as state attorneys general accused two industry leaders, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Mylan NV, and four smaller companies of engaging in brazen price-fixing schemes – and promised that more charges were coming. http://nyti.ms/2hDjisZ

– California’s state energy agency voted unanimously Wednesday to approve new regulations for energy efficiency in desktop computers and monitors. The rules passed by the state’s energy agency represent another step in California’s efforts to drastically lower its greenhouse gas emissions. http://nyti.ms/2hqOPkb

 

Britain

The Times

* Online food delivery group Just Eat Plc has announced plans to buy its rivals Hungryhouse in Britain and SkipTheDishes in Canada, for a total of about 300 million pounds ($372.54 million). (http://bit.ly/2hM3rMb)

* Lloyd’s of London said it had begun finalising plans to set up a new EU-based subsidiary and was looking at five European cities as homes, with Dublin, Frankfurt and Paris understood to be on its shortlist. (http://bit.ly/2hM5pw8)

The Guardian

* The Dutch company Heineken NV and the investment firm Patron Capital have won a 400 million pounds ($496.72 million) battle to take over Punch Taverns Plc, which has more than 3,000 pubs across UK. (http://bit.ly/2hLTSN4)

* British Communications Workers Union said the Post Office had rejected its offer to suspend strike next week after talks over jobs, pay and pensions broke down on Thursday. (http://bit.ly/2hM2kft)

The Telegraph

* Britain will be presented with a 50 billion pounds ($62.09 billion) “exit bill” by the European Union as soon as Theresa May triggers Article 50, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier is warning. (http://bit.ly/2hLURgq)

* Tesco Plc’s former commercial boss Kevin Grace has been told that he will not face charges from the Serious Fraud Office over the 326 million pounds ($404.83 million) accounting scandal that threw the supermarket into crisis and cost him his job. (http://bit.ly/2hM0yej)

Sky News

* Retailer JD Sports Fashion Plc is to launch an investigation following claims aired in a documentary that conditions are “worse than a prison”. (http://bit.ly/2hLTBK1)

* Rentokil Initial Plc, the support services group, has agreed a deal to combine parts of its workwear and hygiene units with Haniel, a privately owned German company. (http://bit.ly/2hLYQtx)

The Independent

* European pay-TV firm Sky Plc has agreed to a takeover bid from Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox for 11.7 billion pounds ($14.53 billion)in a deal that could create one of the most powerful media groups in the UK. (http://ind.pn/2hLPf5E)

* The Bank of England has kept interest rates on hold at 0.25 percent – but the minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee’s latest meeting also state that the recent strengthening of sterling is likely to help contain inflation. (http://ind.pn/2hLW86X) ($1 = 0.8053 pounds)

 

Dec 16 2016

The Truth About Russia Hacking The Election For Donald Trump


Dec 16 2016

Trump Nixes PDB! Another Smart Move!


December 15, 2016 Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, MD, PhD
Trump Nixes PDB! Another Smart Move!

Donald Nixes P.D.B! Smart Move!

The NYTimes article entitled “What Is the President’s Daily Brief?” by Charlie Savage [Dec.12, 2016] correctly points out that POTUS Trump will not read/listen to his President’s Daily Brief [PDB].

Trump claims the following:

“You know, I’m like a smart person.” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t have to be told the same thing and the same words every single day for the next eight years. It could be eight years—but eight years. I don’t need that. But I do say if something should change let us know.”
 Right on!
Once again, Trump has broken with an antiquated intelligence tradition where the WH occupants and their toadies receive a daily assessment of the status of world events as the intelligence community assesses it. Yet, Trump knows all too well that this PDB is nothing more than the CIA trying to suck up to every POTUS since Harry Truman.

CIA is being marginalized by Lt.Gen. Mike Flynn because he knows, like myself and many other intelligence practitioners, that the CIA is highly politicized and ineffective. The agency will provide a view point of the world that reaffirms its own sense of importance. The PDB is really not worth the money nor the time required to produce it on a daily basis.

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The fifteen different military intelligence agencies which do not directly prepare the PDB are far more relevant to the WH situation room and combatants in the kinetic field of battle than anything that the CIA can ever produce. For the most part, the PDB is quite boring to read. Like most civilian intelligence, it suffers from being static, repetitive, and inconsistent.

As Andrew Liepman, a former CIA official, who prepared the PDB said:
“I think that over time, the intelligence community has overcorrected and become almost boring and robotic in language,” he said. “The community takes great pride in that predictability and consistency.”
What is missing in the narrative about Trump’s nixing of the PDB is the simple fact that Donald can rely on a variety of seasoned military generals who are far more conversant with counter-terrorism, China, and the Middle East than anybody in the CIA.

For the most part, the CIA has been its own instrument of self-destruction. It has engaged an obscene numbers of covert activities overseas that have led to the creation of the following problems:  Al Qaeda, ISIS, Benghazi tragedy, Afghanistan war, Sunni vs Shi’ite wars, Iraq dissolution, Syria civil war, et.al.

With four US military generals in key positions of the USG, they should be the only ones to determine when and if American taxpayers will foot the bill for another unnecessary war. I have always assumed a basic truth about the military. No general wants to create a war which he/she cannot not win.

It’s time that we reorganize the 16 different branches of the bloated intelligence community and rid ourselves of redundancy, laggard analyses, and the artificial divide between a covert operative and analysts.Those are antiquated concepts that came out of a Cold War era that in which we prevailed despite a faltering CIA that could not/would not think out-of-the-box.

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Trump is breath of fresh air. He will blow away the engorged bureaucracies streaming out of our over-inflated military-industrial complex. Example:
The F-35 fighter jet may be good for the IDF. Yet for Americans, those planes are totally useless when we have all the kill power required in our nuclear subs, cyber-command, and Electronic Warfare capabilities. We have wasted $400 billion on these useless fighter jets when the internet binary numbers cost us almost nothing and can devastate a society in fractions of a second.

Former POTUS Gerald Ford said the following:

“I’ve had a lot of experience with people smarter than I am.”

Dec 16 2016

Coulter: Throwing the Baby Out With the Bongwater


Right on … Babies aren’t people anyway so what difference does it make. Remember that abortion is OK all the way to birth so obviously the baby can be scarified to some bizarre theory of self esteem.

Dec 15 2016

KOMMONSENTSJANE – IS THE FOLLOWING A FAKE NEWS STORY – NBC HAS BEEN LYING TO US FOR EIGHT YEARS – WHY BELIEVE THEM NOW? THEY ARE TIED TO OBAMA’S HIP.


(There is no way in hell I would believe the following story.  Why should I?  NBC is part of the Obama team who have lied to us for eight years. ) (Go fly a kite.) Why Didn’t Obama Do More Ab…

Source: KOMMONSENTSJANE – IS THE FOLLOWING A FAKE NEWS STORY – NBC HAS BEEN LYING TO US FOR EIGHT YEARS – WHY BELIEVE THEM NOW? THEY ARE TIED TO OBAMA’S HIP.

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Dec 15 2016

KOMMONSENTSJANE – LARRY KUDLOW: TRUMP TO END OBAMA’S ‘WAR AGAINST BUSINESS’


Veteran financial guru Larry Kudlow, who served as the Donald Trump campaign’s senior economic adviser, predicts to Newsmax TV that President-elect Donald Trump is assembling the type of cabi…

Source: KOMMONSENTSJANE – LARRY KUDLOW: TRUMP TO END OBAMA’S ‘WAR AGAINST BUSINESS’

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Dec 15 2016

A Can Of Worms Has Been Opened Up For The Democrats Because Of The Recounts That Were Requested By Green Party Candidate Jill Stein And It Proves The Fix Was In For Hillary Clinton — Arlin Report


Originally posted on John A Pappas: My friends it can not be shown any better from the recount in Michigan that the fix was in for Hillary Clinton to win the presidential election. This is what hap…

Source: A Can Of Worms Has Been Opened Up For The Democrats Because Of The Recounts That Were Requested By Green Party Candidate Jill Stein And It Proves The Fix Was In For Hillary Clinton — Arlin Report

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Dec 15 2016

USA: ‘You’ve failed repeatedly’ – reporter grills State Dept. spokesperson on Syria


Everything Obama did was a failure — so one wonders was he that incompetent or was it intentional?

Dec 15 2016

Yahoo hit by biggest hack ever (again), 1 billion accounts affected


Get use to it they will all be hacked at some point and the NSA has everything to email any way and they will get hacked at some point as well.

Dec 15 2016

Congressman Gets 10 Years in Prison for Corruption


Armstrong Economics Blog

Re-Posted Dec 15, 2016 by Martin Armstrong

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Former U.S. Congressman Chaka Fattah was sentenced to 10 years in prison for misspending government grants and charity money to fund his campaign and personal expenses. It is amazing how the standards are so different for anyone other than the Clintons. U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle called the Philadelphia Democrat’s crimes “astonishing,” especially since he and his wife Renee Chenault-Fattah, who was an NBC TV anchor, had a $500,000 annual income that put them in the “top 1 percent.”

Fattah spent two decades in Congress before losing the primary this year. He went to trial earlier this year and the jury found that Fattah took an illegal $1 million loan from a wealthy friend to prop up his failed 2007 campaign for Philadelphia mayor. He then repaid some of it with federal grant money from NASA that he had steered to an education nonprofit run by loyal former staffers. Like Hillary, he used $23,000 in nonprofit funds to repay his son’s college loans and took an $18,000 bribe to try to help a friend become an ambassador. He even lobbied President Barack Obama on the friend’s behalf, but to no avail. Fattah and his wife used the $18,000 for a down payment on a Poconos vacation home. Fattah made up the excuse to authorities that the $18,000 covered the friend’s purchase of a Porsche owned by his TV star wife, but the Porsche never left their garage.

The Judge said, “For someone so interested in advancing education for the disadvantaged, you had the temerity to steal from the Educational Advancement Alliance, a nonprofit supported by government funds.”

The judge continued saying it was really “astonishing” that he would steal money to cover his son’s debts, pay taxes, and buy a family vacation home.

His son is serving a five-year prison term in an overlapping fraud case that went to trial last year. His son was convicted of using fraudulently obtained business loans to fund his jet-setter lifestyle. His wife resigned from TV when she was named in the indictment as a participant in the bribery scheme. She was never charged and has denied wrongdoing. But the two political consultants for her husband also pleaded guilty in the case and testified against him. There were four others convicted at trial including former Philadelphia Deputy Mayor Herbert Vederman who had sought the ambassadorship.