Tag Archives: Pension Crisis

Jul 20 2017

Suspicions Confirmed: Murdoch Told Ailes To Tilt Coverage Toward Anyone But Trump, Even Clinton…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on July 20, 2017 by

A recent article written by Roger Ailes confidant Michael Wolff affirms one of the more transparently obvious hidden secrets in the 2015/2016 presidential race and election.

Fox News owner/mogul Rupert Murdoch was intensely against the candidacy of Donald Trump. So much so that Murdoch instructed former President of Fox News, Roger Ailes, to shape favorable coverage toward anyone other than Donald Trump, including a request to tilt toward support for Hillary Clinton.

New York – […] It was Ailes’ tacit support of Trump that, in part, made his removal from Fox all the more urgent for the Murdochs. And it was not just the liberal sons who were agitated by Ailes’ regard for Trump, but also the father, whose tabloid, the New York Post, helped create Trump, but who found him now, with great snobbery, not of “our” conservative class. (“When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?” Murdoch senior tweeted the day after Trump officially declared himself a candidate.)

Murdoch instructed Ailes to tilt to anyone but Trump, Ailes confided to me before he was fired, even Hillary. (Ailes, for his part, characterized Murdoch’s periodic efforts at interference as similar to Nixon’s instructions to bomb this or that country — best ignored.)

After the election, a confounded Murdoch had to call on his ex-wife Wendi’s friends, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, to broker a rapprochement with the disreputable Donald. Now, to Trump’s great satisfaction, a humbled Murdoch is a constant caller. (read more)

All intellectually honest media and political observers already knew this was the basic premise for Fox News in the 2015 and 2016 presidential race.   Murdoch supported Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio as the frontrunners.

The August 2015 ambush by Murdoch’s princess Megyn Kelly was merely a highly visible example of Murdoch’s aversion. Kelly was later paid $10 million by Harper Collins, another Murdoch company, as advance payment on her book deal.

After Jeb Bush dropped out, the executive in charge of Fox News debates was Bill Sammon. Sammon’s daughter, Brooke Sammon, was head of Marco Rubio’s communication team.  Murdoch was furious at Chris Christie when he took Rubio to the woodshed in the New Hampshire debate.

 

Jul 20 2017

Euro Rally


Armstrong Economics Blog/Euro €

Posted Jul 20, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

Once the Euro closed above the Weekly Bullish Reversal last week, we have rallied strongly simply on comments from Draghi that a strong Euro is good. It is hard to contemplate his reasoning since this increases the debt burden of Southern Europe and reduces German export competitiveness. His comments that changing police will come September. So we have the 99% bullish sentiment acting still in anticipation.

We have exceed the 2016 high of of 11616 intraday reaching 116574. The Quarterly Bullish Reversal stands at 11694 and this is the key area to watch. Exceeding that allows the rally to reach the Downtrend. With this middle target on our objective reached, technically we have an outside reversal to the upside which has cleaned out the stops. This is setting the stage for the Monetary Crisis that begins in 2018. The higher we move in one direction, the worse it swings in the opposite.

We times timed the Frankfurt seminar with this move as well as our meetings with institutions over the next two weeks.

Jul 20 2017

Mark Your Calendars: First Round of NAFTA Renegotiation August 16th – 20th…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Three House on July 20, 2017 by

If you alert your family not to schedule anything important on round-one NAFTA days, well, you might just be a trade and economics nerd.  LOL  Seriously, this is one of the biggest economic processes that falls almost exclusively outside of the reach of lobbyists.

And within this entire NAFTA trade construct there is little to zero downside to walking away. If Team Trump don’t get what they want from a completely reworked trilateral agreement, they can always just eliminate NAFTA and work on bilateral agreements with Mexico and Canada as individual trade partners. Team USA hold all the leverage.  

USTR is anticipating seven rounds of talks which will take place at three week intervals.

The first round is scheduled for August 16th through 20th in Washington DC.

Washington, D.C. – United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer today announced arrangements for the first round of negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The first round of the negotiations between the United States, Canada and Mexico will take place in Washington, D.C. from August 16 – 20, 2017.

The negotiations immediately follows the 90-day consultation period with Congress and the public initiated on May 18, 2017. On that day, Ambassador Lighthizer notified Congress of President Trump’s intent to renegotiate NAFTA to get a better deal for America’s workers, farmers, businesses and manufacturers.

Ambassador Lighthizer also announced that John Melle, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for the Western Hemisphere, will serve as Chief Negotiator for the NAFTA negotiations. In his role as Chief Negotiator, Melle will be responsible for the day-to-day negotiations at the staff level.

Since joining USTR in 1988, John Melle has held a number of positions covering Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and Central America. As Assistant USTR for the Western Hemisphere, he is responsible for developing, coordinating and implementing the United States’ trade policy for the region.  (read more)

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Jul 19 2017

The Unconstitutionality of the Income Tax the Supreme Court Ignores


Armstrong Economics Blog/The Hunt for Taxes

Re-Posted Jul 19, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: I read that the income tax violates the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. It seems logical on the surface, but nobody has gotten away with that that I have ever heard. Would you can to comment of how they got around this issue?

ANSWER: The way to get around such issues is to be a word smith and break it down to the absolute minutest detail. That is what the Supreme Court did back in United States v. Sullivan, 274 US 259 (1927). They essentially avoided the application by saying that there was no right against self-incrimination to simply write things on a form to thus avoid filing anything. They did not decided whether you could raise the 5th Amendment as to a specific item. Let’s say you are a drug dealer and your income is all illegal. To declare that you made money as a drug dealer would raise that issue. But it does not prevent you from filing a form in general.

“If the form of return provided called for answers that the defendant was privileged from making he could have raised the objection in the return, but could not on that account refuse to make any return at all. We are not called on to decide what, if anything, he might have withheld. Most of the items warranted no complaint. It would be an extreme if not an extravagant application of the Fifth Amendment to say that it authorized a man to refuse to state the amount of his income because it had been made in crime. But if the defendant desired to test that or any other point he should have tested it in the return so that it could be passed upon. He could not draw a conjurer’s circle around the whole matter by his own declaration that to write any word upon the government blank would bring him into danger of the law”

I personally disagree with the Supreme Court which has held it does not violate the Equal Protection Clause to charge disproportionate levels of taxation. In a recent case where some people were given tax amnesty and others paid the tax, the Supreme Court used another rule to escape the logic of a constitutional violation. They wrote in Armour v. Indianapolis (2012):

“This Court has long held that ‘a classification neither involving fundamental rights nor proceeding along suspect lines … cannot run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause if there is a rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose.’”

Class warfare is the essence of socialism/communism. There is no other discrimination throughout history that has resulted in the slaughter of more lives than class warfare. It has been responsible for killing tens of millions of people far more than race or religious discrimination. To ignore this is ethically dishonest by the Supreme Court and is clearly a ruling in favor of government because it seeks to extort money from people in violation of equal justice for all

Jul 18 2017

Multinational Corporations and The Export of American Wealth…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on July 17, 2017 by

To understand the larger objectives of the global and financial elite it is important to understand the three-decade global financial construct they seek to protect. Global financial exploitation of national markets:

♦Multinational corporations purchase controlling interests in various national elements of developed industrial western nations.
♦The Multinational Corporations making the purchases are underwritten by massive global financial institutions, multinational banks.
♦The Multinational Banks and the Multinational Corporations then utilize lobbying interests to manipulate the internal political policy of the targeted nation state(s).
♦With control over the targeted national industry or interest, the multinationals then leverage export of the national asset (exfiltration) through trade agreements structured to the benefit of lesser developed nation states – where they have previously established a proactive financial footprint.

Since initially explaining this modern import/export dynamic some have asked for specific examples in order to gain a better understanding.  There are a myriad of interests within each sector that make specific explanation very challenging.  However, here’s an attempt.

For three decades economic “globalism” has advanced, quickly.  Everyone accepts this statement, yet few actually stop to ask who and what are behind this – and why?

People with vested financial interests in the process have sold a narrative that global manufacturing, global sourcing, and global production was the inherent way of the future.  But what’s brutally missed in the discussions is the fundamental truth that advocates selling this “global” message have a vested financial and ideological interest in convincing the information consumer it’s just a natural outcome of progress.

It’s not.

It’s not natural at all.  It is a process that is entirely controlled, promoted and utilized by large conglomerates and massive financial corporations.

Again, I’ll try to retain the larger altitude without falling prey to the esoteric weeds.  I freely admit this is tough to explain and I may not be successful.

Bulletpoint #1: ♦ Multinational corporations purchase controlling interests in various national elements of developed industrial western nations.

This is perhaps the most challenging to understand.  In essence, national companies expanded their influence into multiple nations, across a myriad of industries and economic sectors (energy, agriculture, raw earth minerals, etc.).

Think of these multinational corporations as global entities now powerful enough to reach into multiple nations -simultaneously- and purchase controlling interests in a single economic commodity.

A historic reference point might be the original multinational enterprise, energy via oil production.  (Exxon, Mobil, BP, etc.)

However, in the modern global world, it’s not just oil; the procurement extends to virtually every possible commodity and industry.  From the very visible (wheat/corn) to the obscure (small minerals, and even flowers).

Bulletpoint #2 ♦ The Multinational Corporations making the purchases are underwritten by massive global financial institutions, multinational banks.

During the past several decades national companies merged.  The largest lemon producer company in Brazil, merges with the largest lemon company in Mexico, merges with the largest lemon company in Argentina, merges with the largest lemon company in the U.S., etc. etc.  National companies, formerly of one nation, become “continental” companies with control over an entire continent of nations.

…. or it could be over several continents or even the entire world market of Lemon/Widget production.  These are now multinational corporations.   They hold interests in specific segments (this example lemons) across a broad variety of individual nations.

National laws on Monopoly building are not the same in all nations.  But most are not as structured as the U.S.A or other more developed nations (with more laws).  During the acquisition phase, when encountering a highly developed nation with monopoly laws, the process of an umbrella corporation might be needed to purchase the interests within a specific nation.  The example of Monsanto applies here.

Bulletpoint #3  ♦The Multinational Banks and the Multinational Corporations then utilize lobbying interests to manipulate the internal political policy of the targeted nation state(s).

With control of the majority of actual lemons the multinational corporation now holds a different set of financial values than a local farmer or national market.  This is why commodities exchanges are essentially dead.  In the aggregate the mercantile exchange is no longer a free or supply-based market; it’s now a controlled market exploited by mega-sized multinational corporations.

Instead of the traditional ‘supply/demand’ equation determining prices, the corporations look to see what nations can afford what prices.  The supply of the controlled product is then distributed to the country according to their ability to afford the price.  This is how the corporation maximizes it’s profits.

Back to the lemons.  A corporation might hold the rights to the majority of the lemon production in Brazil, Argentina and California/Florida.   The price the U.S. consumer pays for the lemons is directed by the amount of inventory (distribution) the controlling corporation allows in the U.S.

If the U.S. harvest is abundant, they will export the product to keep the U.S. consumer spending at peak or optimal price.  A U.S. customer might pay $2 for a lemon, a Mexican customer might pay .50¢, and a Canadian $1.25.

The bottom line issue is the national supply (in this example ‘harvest/yield’) is not driving the national price because the supply is now controlled by massive multinational corporations.

The mistake people often make is calling this a “global commodity” process.  In the modern era this “global commodity” phrase is particularly BS.

A true global commodity is a process of individual nations harvesting/creating a similar product and bringing that product to a global market.   Individual nations each independently engaged in creating a similar product.

Under modern globalism this process no longer takes place. It’s a complete fraud.  Currently, massive multinational corporations control the majority of product inside each nation and therefore control the entire global product market and price.

In highly developed nations this multinational corporate process requires the corporation to purchase the domestic political process, the approval, within individual nations allowing the exploitation.  As such, their lobbyists pay hundreds of millions to politicians for changes in policies and regulations one sector or industry at a time.

EXAMPLE:  The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)

CFIUS is an inter-agency committee authorized to review transactions that could result in control of a U.S. business by a foreign person (“covered transactions”), in order to determine the effect of such transactions on the national security of the United States.

CFIUS operates pursuant to section 721 of the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended by the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007 (FINSA) (section 721) and as implemented by Executive Order 11858, as amended, and regulations at 31 C.F.R. Part 800.

The CFIUS process has been the subject of significant reforms over the past several years.  These include numerous improvements in internal CFIUS procedures, enactment of FINSA in July 2007, amendment of Executive Order 11858 in January 2008, revision of the CFIUS regulations in November 2008, and publication of guidance on CFIUS’s national security considerations in December 2008 (more)

Bulletpoint #4 ♦ With control over the targeted national industry or interest, the multinationals then leverage export of the national asset (exfiltration) through trade agreements structured to the benefit of lesser developed nation states – where they have previously established a proactive financial footprint.

The process of charging the U.S. consumer more for a product, that under normal national market conditions would cost less, is a process called exfiltration of wealth.

It is never discussed.

To control the market price some contracted product may even be secured and shipped with the intent to allow it to sit idle (or rot).   It’s all about controlling the price and maximizing the profit equation.   To gain the same $1 profit a widget multinational might have to sell 20 widgets in El-Salvador (.25¢ each), or two widgets in the U.S. ($2.50/each).

Think of the process like the historic reference of OPEC (Oil Producing Economic Countries).  Only in the modern era massive corporations are playing the role of OPEC and it’s not oil being controlled, it’s almost everything.

Individual flower growers in Florida out of business because they didn’t join the global market of flower growers (controlled market) by multinational corporate flower growers in Columbia and South America, who have an umbrella company registered in Mexico allowing virtually unrestricted access to the U.S. market under NAFTA.

Agriculturally, multinational corporate Monsanto says: ‘all your harvests are belong to us‘.  Contract with us, or you lose because we can control the market price of your end product.  Downside is that once you sign that contract, you agree to terms that are entirely created by the financial interests of the larger corporation; not your farm.

The multinational agriculture lobby is massive.  We willingly feed the world as part of the system; but you as a grocery customer pay more per unit at the grocery store because domestic supply no longer determines domestic price.

Within the agriculture community the (feed-the-world) production export factor also drives the need for labor.  Labor is a cost. The multinational corps have a vested interest in low labor costs. Ergo, open border policies.  (ie. willingly purchased republicans not supporting border wall etc.).

This corrupt economic manipulation/exploitation applies over multiple sectors, and even in the sub-sector of an industry like steel.   China/India purchases the raw material, ore, then sells the finished good back to the global market at a discount.  Or it could be rubber, or concrete, or plastic, or frozen chicken parts etc.

The ‘America First’ Trump-Trade Doctrine upsets the entire construct of this multinational export/control dynamic.  Team Trump focus exclusively on bilateral trade deals, with specific trade agreements targeted toward individual nations (not national corporations).  ‘America-First’ is also specific policy at a granular product level looking out for the national interests of the United States, U.S. workers, U.S. companies and U.S. consumers.

Under President Trump’s Trade positions, balanced and fair trade with strong regulatory control over national assets, exfiltration of U.S. national wealth is essentially stopped.

This puts many current multinational corporations, globalists who previously took a stake-hold in the U.S. economy with intention to export the wealth, in a position of holding contracted interest of an asset they can no longer exploit.

RELATED:

♦The Modern Third Dimension in American Economics – HERE

♦The “Fed” Can’t Figure out the New Economics – HERE

♦Proof “America-First” has disconnected Main Street from Wall Street – HERE

Next up: How the Stock Market is disconnected and why that matters.

Jul 18 2017

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Scraps Senate Healthcare Bill…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on July 18, 2017 by

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has announced the senate version of the ObamaCare repeal and replace bill is no longer viable due to party conflicts.

Instead the Senate will vote on the House Bill with a primary Senate amendment for a full repeal of ObamaCare with a two year delay providing time to construct the replacement.

I’m not sure what McConnell’s strategy is here because a “repeal only” amendment on the bill would need 60 votes for passage.  It is beyond doubtful that eight democrats are going to vote for a “repeal only” bill.  Correction, I just noticed McConnell’s trickery, the 2015 bill was a defunding bill, not a repeal.  McConnell is just tricking people into thinking this was going in the direction of a repeal. It’s not.

The GOP have never, ever, voted for a repeal. That would take 60 votes. They voted in 2015 to defund it using the 51 vote threshold of ‘reconciliation’.  They’ve never once had a repeal vote on Obamacare.

Therefore, if this actually goes to a vote, this appears to be constructed simply as an exercise to prove a vote was taken.  ObamaCare remains and the implosion continues.  McConnell’s political calculation here is trickery.  Nothing more. O-Care remains.

WASHINGTON DC – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday night that his chamber will vote to completely repeal President Obama’s health care program — with a two-year delay to come up with a replacement.

“Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful,” McConnell said in a statement.

McConnell wants the Senate to vote on a 2015 bill that passed both chambers and was vetoed by President Obama.  The two-year delay would “provide for a stable transition period to a patient-centered health care system,” MCConnell said.  (link)

 

Jul 18 2017

Navigating the Business Cycle = Prosperity


Armstrong Economics Blog/Banking Crisis

Re-Posted Jul 18, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

The key to the future is understanding (1) the past and (2) how everything functions. Sure there is a risk of a Dark Age after 2032. Hopefully, we can learn from the past to push things in the right direction at least for once. For whatever reason, the people who like to run government are the least qualified. They seem to be people who just like to order others around.

Since they have typically never had a job in the real world, they remain clueless about how to really deal with society no less the economy. This last crisis is the classic example. We have people in power who do not understand the past no less how things really function. As a result, someone comes up with this idea of lower interest rates to stimulate demand and NEVER even once do they review history and asked – Hey; did this every work before?

 

I find it truly amazing that I can even write about how lowering interest rates failed to stimulate the economy for almost 10 years in Europe, and yet people want to argue that somehow I am wrong. They never review the past and offer only opinion often taught in school as if that makes it absolute doctrine. Interest rates NATURALLY drop in a recession/depression because demand declines as people lose confidence in the future.

You cannot reverse a recession/depression by lowering interest rates. Until people BELIEVE they can make a profit in the future, they will never borrow as long as the horizon appears dark as dismal.

This solution from the 2007-2009 crisis of lowering interest rates has undermined the Pension funds. This has set the stage for the collapse in government as pensions being to fail first in the state/province level of government and municipalities.

I’m sorry. This is not Nobel Prize winning theories here. All you have to do is just open your eyes, shut your ears to propaganda, and look at the history. Just ask what happens and let the charts show you without political bias.

Throughout history, the solution to every crisis sets the stage for the next crisis. This is what happens when we have unqualified people running the joint.

The key to making money to secure your future is to shed all bias and just let the markets dictate the outcome.

Jul 18 2017

Trump Jr & the Russian Meeting


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics

Re-Posted Jul 18, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

A lot of people have picked up on the mention of the Magnitsky Act is Donald Trump, Jr. statement of a meeting with a Russian woman. Trump Jr., said the meeting was “the most inane nonsense I ever heard. And I was actually agitated by it.” I seriously doubt that the woman explained the full background as to what took place in that affair and it is not likely that she even fully understood what took place behind the curtain. This Magnitsky Act was passed by Congress to “punish” anyone who was involved in sending him to prison where he dies before getting a trial. This is the company that was started by Safra in which they were soliciting me to join in Russia and I declined. This was the plot to takeover Russia by blackmailing Yeltsin  to step down. When Yeltsin realize he was being set up by NY bankers to grab the natural resources of Russia, he turned to Putin for help and then handed him the Presidency.

Just as the undercover tape on CNN exposed that everybody tries to influence political elections of friends and foes, the attempt to takeover Russia by the NY Bankers was at the center of my issue and is why there could never be a trial. They did not know how much I knew and they knew I had very good contacts all the way up even in Russia. Even Maggie Thatcher had asked me what I knew about a secret underground facility Russia was constructing that satellites could not see back in the Nineties. As I said, the fundamental principle in law is you never ask a question you do not know the answer to. Who knows what will come out. That was their problem with me.

And here’s a statement by Donald Trump Jr published on 11 July 2017:

To everyone, in order to be totally transparent, I am releasing the entire email chain of my emails with Rob Goldstone about the meeting on June 9, 2016. The first email on June 3, 2016 was from Rob, who was relating a request from Emin, a person I knew from 2013 Ms. Universe Pageant near Moscow. Emin and his father have a very highly respected company in Moscow. The information they suggested they had about Hillary Clinton I thought was Political Opposition Research. I first wanted to just have phone call but when that didn’t work out, they said the woman would be in new York and asked if I would meet. I decided to take the meeting. The woman, as she has said publicly, was not a government official. And, as we have said, she had no information to provide and wanted to talk about adoption policy and the Magnitsky Act. To put this in context, this occurred before the current Russian fever was in vogue. As Rob Goldstone said just today in the press, the entire meeting was “the most inane nonsense I ever heard. And I was actually agitated by it.”

Jul 17 2017

Sunday Talks: Corey Lewandowski and Maria Bartiromo…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on July 16, 2017 by

The putrid guardians of the swamp were all out in force today doing their best swamp guardian Russia, Russia, Russia screeds writ large.   So, rather than showcase the inane, today we stick with the more substantive.

Former Trump Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski interviews with Sunday Morning Futures host Maria Bartiromo.  Additionally, it must be noted, that Ms. Bartiromo has, at times, a striking similarity to Suspicious Cat.

Jul 17 2017

Another Corporation, Reebok (Adidas), Jumps Into Politics – Against President Trump…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on July 16, 2017 by

President Trump created a stir amid his political opposition when he was reported to have told French first-lady Brigitte Macron: “you’re in such great shape“.   Apparently, according to the ever-pliable rules of the virtue signaling political left, it is “sexist” to compliment a woman on her physical appearance.

Of course it didn’t take more than a news cycle for yet another corporate entity to jump head-first into the opportunity to attach their own brand-image to anti-Trumpism.  [Adidas is the parent company of Reebok]  The hypocrisy behind this opportunistic marketing endeavor/virtue-signaling is stunning.  Here’s the tweet from Reebok:

(link)

As you can see, Adidas/Reebok have made a political decision.  Virtue signaling your superiority in defining what is/isn’t appropriate is never a good look.

You would think the loss of brand value for companies who previously did this (Macys, Starbucks etc) would be enough to stop any reasonable corporate marketing head with a fiduciary responsibility. Alas, the allure of scoring cheap political points finds another victim.

However, when contrast against the actual marketing image of Reebok, the outcome is even worse.

Reebok is specifically stating that complimenting a woman based on her appearance is “sexist” and “inappropriate”.

Sexism?

Inappropriate?

OK, well let’s check out the latest Reebok commercial (WATCH):

.

Or how about the print advertising for Reebok:

Oh, these are only the PG-13 versions. There’s full naked female imagery within the European Reebok AD campaign.

Somehow using a woman’s physical shape to create a marketing brand is ok. But pointing out a woman’s physical shape, born out the success of applying that marketing brand approach as an outcome, is… well, “inappropriate”.

Tell a man he’s in great shape and it’s no big deal; no-one would even think twice of it.

Tell a woman she’s in great shape and it’s an immediate crisis.

Yeah. Gender equity. Huh?

Anticipate a diminished brand value to Adidas and Reebok as an outcome.  Financially position yourselves accordingly…