Articles by Tyler Durden

In his first interview shortly after the White House announced that it was parting ways with Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon told the Weekly Standard on Friday afternoon that “the Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over.” After confirming his departure Bannon said that “we still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.”

In his interview with the conservative publication, Bannon predicted that in the wake of his departure, Trump’s administration would “be much more conventional” as his absence from the White House would make it “much harder” for Trump to pave a way forward on issues like “economic nationalism and immigration.” He also predicted that republicans would “moderate” Trump:

“I think they’re going to try to moderate him,” he says. “I think he’ll sign a clean debt ceiling, I think you’ll see all this stuff. His natural tendency—and I think you saw it this week on Charlottesville—his actual default position is the position of his base, the position that got him elected. I think you’re going to see a lot of constraints on that. I think it’ll be much more conventional.”

In Bannon’s view, his departure is not a defeat for him personally but for the ideology he’d urged upon the president, as reflected in Trump’s provocative inaugural address in which he spoke of self-dealing Washington politicians, and their policies that led to the shuttered factories and broken lives of what he called “American carnage.” Bannon co-authored that speech (and privately complained that it had been toned down by West Wing moderates like Ivanka and Jared).

“Now, it’s gonna be Trump,” Bannon said. “The path forward on things like economic nationalism and immigration, and his ability to kind of move freely . . . I just think his ability to get anything done—particularly the bigger things, like the wall, the bigger, broader things that we fought for, it’s just gonna be that much harder.”

He also warned that things are about to get worse for Trump as even more people depart his side, warning of a ‘jailbreak’ of moderate Republicans.

“There’s about to be a jailbreak of these moderate guys on the Hill”—a stream of Republican dissent, which could become a flood. Bannon also said that he once confidently believed in the prospect of success for that version of the Trump presidency he now says is over.

Asked what the turning point was, he says, “It’s the Republican establishment. The Republican establishment has no interest in Trump’s success on this. They’re not populists, they’re not nationalists, they had no interest in his program. Zero. It was a half-hearted attempt at Obamacare reform, it was no interest really on the infrastructure, they’ll do a very standard Republican version of taxes.

“What Trump ran on- border wall, where is the funding for the border wall, one of his central tenets, where have they been? Have they rallied around the Perdue-Cotton immigration bill? On what element of Trump’s program, besides tax cuts-which is going to be the standard marginal tax cut-where have they rallied to Trump’s cause? They haven’t.”

As for what happens next, as reported late on Friday, Bannon said that he is eager to get back to Breitbart and lead the opposition from there.

“Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons,” he said. “Someone said, ‘it’s Bannon the Barbarian.’ I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There’s no doubt. I built a f-cking machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.”

Specifically, the target of his attacks will be the ‘globalists’ and liberals he believes have taken over the White House. They include National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, advisor Gary Cohn, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

* * *

With Bannon’s departure conceding control of Trump’s inner circle to the so-called “Goldman globalists”, the question is how Trump’s message will evolve in the coming days with the “nationalist” element purged. With Trump having been granted the option of sounding like a more centrist President, will he continue with his usual rhetoric. Bloomberg is convinced that the answer is “more of the same” especially since Trump won’t risk losing his core base, although that may no longer be in his control, especially if Bannon is about to unleash a stinging attack on Trump’s inner circle.

For the clearest sign of what Trump’s post-Bannon posture – and administration – will look like, look no further than the coming debt ceiling negotiation (and/or crisis): on Friday, Goldman raised its odds of a government shutdown to 50%, a fact which also spooked the market sending the S&P to session lows at the close. If Trump is unable to build some political goodwill in the coming days on the back of the Bannon departure, those odds will steadily grow to 100% over the next few weeks.

The post Bannon: “The Trump Presidency That We Fought For Is Over” appeared first on crude-oil.news.

The post Bannon: “The Trump Presidency That We Fought For Is Over” appeared first on Forex news forex trade.

A new group of CalExit activists are hoping they can secede (see what we did there?) where two predecessor groups failed in efforts to force California’s independence from the United States of America.  Ironically, you would think that removing Ca…

The post CalExit 3.0: New Petition Calls For Cali Secession…3rd Time’s A Charm? appeared first on crude-oil.news.

The post CalExit 3.0: New Petition Calls For Cali Secession…3rd Time’s A Charm? appeared first on Forex news forex trade.

Authored by Daniel Lacalle via The Mises Institute,

It is sad to see that, facing the evidence of the failure of demand-side policies and money printing, many commentators propose some of the most outdated and failed policies in modern economic history. In the UK, Mr. Jeremy Corbyn, the new leader of the Labour Party, believes that the government spends too little. With a current 44.4% of GDP public spending, saying the government spends “too little” is an insult to taxpayers and efficient public bodies alike.

But Mr. Corbyn wants to penalize the private sector creating the largest transfer of wealth from savers and taxpayers to government ever designed… The People’s QE (quantitative easing).

In Europe, we are already used to the follies of magic solutions from populist parties. Syriza, Podemos, and others always come up with “magic” and allegedly “simple” ideas to solve large and complex economic issues, and always fail when reality kicks in, but there are few that match the monumental nonsense of the wrongly-called “People´s QE”. It is the “Government´s QE”, rather.

Why Is this People’s QE a Bad Idea?

The analysis starts from the right premise. Quantitative Easing, as we know it, does not work, and creates massive imbalances. So what do they propose? Sound money? Erasing perverse incentives of printing money and unjustifiably low rates? No. Doing exactly the same, but passing the massive perverse incentive of currency debasement to politicians who, as we all know, have no perverse incentive whatsoever to overspend (note the irony).

The UK policy of increasing money supply in the past has always been based on two premises to avoid hyperinflation and currency destruction: the independence of the central bank as a central pillar of monetary policy, and the constant sterilization of asset purchases (ie, what it buys is also sold to monitor market real demand). The balance sheet of the Bank of England has remained stable since 2012, coinciding with the highest economic growth period, and is below 25% of GDP.

Corbyn´s People´s QE means that the central bank will lose its independence altogether and become a government agency that prints currency whenever the government wants, but the increase of money supply does not become part of the transmission mechanism that reaches job creators and citizens in the real economy. All the new money is for the government, with the Bank of England forced to buy all the debt issued by a “Public Investment Bank”.

The first problem is evident. The Bank of England would create money to be used indiscriminately for white elephants, a disastrous policy as seen in many EU countries, that only leaves overcapacity and a massive debt hole. By providing the public investment bank with unlimited funding, the risk of irresponsible spending is guaranteed. In a country where citizens are aware of wasteful public infrastructure, this is not a small risk. However, the monetary imbalances created by this policy would generate a massive “crowding-out” effect and incentivise cronyism, as the private sector would suffer the consequences of inflationary and tax pressures as well as unfair competition from government and its crony sectors.

The second problem is that rising public debt, even if “monetized” (hidden in the balance sheet of the investment bank), would still cripple the economy even with perennial QE. Printing money does not reduce the risk of rising imbalances as we are seeing all over the world. And the new bank´s potential losses would be covered with more taxes.

The idea of building lots of bridges and airports all over the place to “create” jobs would be mildly amusing if it hadn’t failed time and time again and forgets the cost of running those infrastructure projects once built, apart from the debt incurred. All paid by the taxpayer, who guarantees the capital of the Public Investment Bank.

The third problem is that inflation created by these projects is paid by the usual suspects, the private sector, and citizens, who do not benefit from this spending as the laws of diminishing returns and debt saturation show.

The Socialist idea that governments artificially creating money will not cause inflation — because the supply of money will rise in tandem with supply and demand of goods and services — is simply science fiction. The government does not have a better or more accurate understanding of the needs and demand for goods and services or the productive capacity of the economy. In fact it has all the incentives to overspend and transfer its inefficiencies to everyone else. As such, like any perverse incentive under the so-called “stimulate internal demand” fallacy, the government simply creates larger monetary imbalances to disguise the fiscal deficit created by spending and lending without real economic return: Creating massive inflation, economic stagnation as productivity collapses and impoverishing everyone… except itself.

These policies lead to tax increases, a higher cost of living and, above all, destroying a large part of the British private sector as the government monopolizes the major sectors of the economy and increases taxes for the rest.

These dangerous magic-solution policies have already been implemented in the past. They are nothing more than the Argentine model of Kirchner and Kiciloff disguised in Anglo-Saxon terms, a model that has only created stagflation. It is also the Venezuela model (Mr. Corbyn was a defender of Chavez and his economic policies). To think that the government can decide how much money is created and spend it on whatever it wants without thinking of the consequences for the economy.

The myth is that they say printing money will not cause inflation because it will increase productivity and the increase in money supply will come in tandem with more goods and services:

Inflation occurs when you have more money chasing the same or less amount of goods and services. If you have money creation that increases productivity, yes you have more money but you also have more goods and services…the supply of both increases in tandem, so you don’t necessarily have to have inflation.

It’s Been Tried Before 

The problem? It is simply a myth debunked by history. Every single attempt at this socialist myth of productivity, supply and demand moving in tandem because the government says so, fails. It never happens. The government does not have better or more detailed information than the private sector of what goods and services the economy needs, and even less knowledge of how to boost productivity because it does not have the incentive of profitability and efficiency, just of maximizing budget spending.

Productivity collapses as government overspends on white elephants and politically motivated investments with no real economic return. The supply of goods and services does not increase in tandem with money supply in an open economy dependent on imports like the UK’s. Basically, the theory sounds nice, it simply never happens.

At least, when private banks “create money”, they have an incentive to lend with a real economic return and to try to recover the principal, with an interest. They might fail, and therefore my defense of a minimum cash coefficient and sound money. However, the government has no such incentive, rather the opposite. To create money to spend on politically motivated items, and pass the imbalance through inflation and currency debasement to the productive sectors.

The lesson from Japan was clear: “Individual consumption only went up by around 0.1-0.2% of GDP and failed to increase long-run consumption. Overall, the program did not ignite inflation or help Japan out of its economic rut“. And the lessons from Chile with Allende, and Argentina with Kiciloff, are scary.

Corbyn forgets that the public sector cannot exist without private sector revenues. Printing money does not create prosperity, it dilutes it. Be it through current or other QEs.

The aristocrats of public spending always think that intervening on money creation and the economy is going to solve everything.

Do they know this will not work either? Yes, but the final objective is different. To make government control all aspects of the economy, whether it is in recession or in depression. For Corbyn, the government is infallible and any mistake it makes has to be blamed on an external enemy.

If Corbyn implements this “People’s QE”, it will be “Venezuela with tea and cakes”.

The People’s QE is the same as any other quantitative easing, a massive monetary imbalance today under the promise of solving it in the future. The current QEs will likely end with a financial crisis. The People’s QE would do the same. Except that the “alleged” beneficiaries, the “people”, will likely be drowned in inflation as the mirage of money supply and goods and services growing in tandem is proven as fake as it is in today’s QE programs. But without sterilization and transmission mechanisms, the inflation that is created today in financial assets would make prices soar due to devaluation.

Monetary imbalances always create inflation. Whether it is asset price inflation or goods, it is the symptom of aa larger problem. Because all monetary imbalances end with either a financial crisis, massive inflation or massive unemployment once the small and temporary effect of the monetary placebo ends.

The artificial creation of money without any support is always behind every crisis. The People’s QE has failed every time it has been implemented. This would not be different.

The post UK Opposition Leader Calls For “People’s QE” – It’s Venezuela With Tea & Cakes appeared first on crude-oil.news.

The post UK Opposition Leader Calls For “People’s QE” – It’s Venezuela With Tea & Cakes appeared first on bestforexmoney.info.

The post UK Opposition Leader Calls For “People’s QE” – It’s Venezuela With Tea & Cakes appeared first on Forex news forex trade.

Ever wonder if that bottled mineral water you just spent several dollars on is really mineral water? According to a bombshell new lawsuit filed this week, at least in the case of one company it isn’t.

A group of bottled water drinkers has brought a class action lawsuit against Nestle, the company which owns Poland Spring, alleging that the Maine business has long deceived consumers by mislabeling common groundwater. The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday in a Connecticut federal court and accuses Nestle Waters North America Inc. of a “colossal fraud perpetrated against American consumers” the Bangor Daily News reports.

The plaintiffs claim that falsely labeling its “groundwater” product as pure spring water allowed Nestle to sell Poland Spring water at a premium; as a result the consumers who brought the legal action are seeking at least $5 million in monetary damages for a national class and several state subclasses. They requested a jury trial. The civil suit was brought by 11 people from the Northeast who collectively spent thousands of dollars on Poland Spring brand water in recent years. It seeks millions of dollars in damages for a nationwide class and hinges on whether the sources of Poland Spring water meet the Food and Drug Administration’s definition of a spring.

The 325-page lawsuit, which was filed by lawyers from four firms, claims that none of the company’s Maine water sources meets the federal definition for spring water and that the company has “politically compromised” state regulators. Rather than spring water, Nestle Waters is actually purifying and bottling groundwater, some of which comes from sites near waste and garbage dumps, the suit claims. The legal challenge comes as Nestle is looking to expand its operations in Maine.

For instance, the suit claims that the company’s wells in Poland, Maine, have never been scientifically proven to be connected to a spring and draw in surface water, which cannot legally be called spring water. It further alleges that the company has put water from some of these wells through a purification process that disqualifies it as spring water under federal regulations.

 

The suit makes similar claims about Poland Spring water sources in Hollis, Fryeburg, Denmark, Dallas Plantation, Pierce Pond Township and Kingfield.

Poland Spring has gotten away with this deception for years, the suit claims, by co-opting state regulators and interweaving its interests with those of state government. Since 1998 the company has generated millions of dollars for Maine through licensing agreements, and since 2003 it has had an executive on the governor-appointed body that oversees the state drinking-water regulation enforcement agency, the suit states.

The court complaint further says that the Maine Drinking Water Program scientist who approved many of the company’s spring water permits spent a decade working with this executive at a private engineering firm and that the agency failed to get independent proof of the springs’ existence.

In response to the lawsuit, a Nestle Waters spokesperson said that its water meets all relevant federal and state regulations on the classification and collection of spring water and that the suit is “an obvious attempt to manipulate the legal system for personal gain.”

“The claims made in the lawsuit are without merit. Poland Spring is 100 [percent] spring water.”

This is not the first time that Nestle Waters has faced such allegations. In 2003, it settled a class action lawsuit alleging that Poland Spring water doesn’t come from a spring. In that case, the company did not admit the allegation but agreed to pay about $10 million in discounts to consumers and charity contributions. In other words, pulling a page from Wall Street, it neither admitted, nor denied guilt.

The full lawsuit is below

The post “Colossal Fraud”: Lawsuit Accuses Poland Spring Of Selling Groundwater appeared first on crude-oil.news.

The post “Colossal Fraud”: Lawsuit Accuses Poland Spring Of Selling Groundwater appeared first on Forex news forex trade.

Approximately 500 Neo-Nazis and far-right extremists are marching in Berlin on Saturday to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of Hitler’s first deputy and right-hand man Rudolf Hess, German media reported. At the same time hundreds of counter-demonstrators have gathered near the parade in Berlin’s Spandau district, separated by hundreds of heavily armored police, according to AP.

Berlin police spokesman Carsten Mueller told The Associated Press that authorities gave permission to far-right extremists to hold the rally in the city, but imposed a number of restrictions on Saturday’s march to ensure it passes peacefully. Police have told organizers they can march, but they’re not allowed to glorify Hess “in word, writing or image” who died at Spandau prison, or use military music during the march. The neo-Nazis are allowed to bring banners, one for every 50 participants.

The demonstrators are also allowed to use two pieces by Beethoven and two by Wagner during the march, the court order said, as cited by Der Tagesspiegel newspaper.  Berliner Kurier newspaper released a route, which the demonstration should reportedly use.  “I regret nothing,” a banner held by demonstrators read during the neo-Nazi march.

Policewoman firmly escorts 2 young neo-Nazis away from crowd of Spandau locals shouting “Nazis out.” #b1908 pic.twitter.com/70a37InIFx

— Frank Jordans (@wirereporter) August 19, 2017

The measures are aimed at balancing free speech rights and rights of counter-demonstrators, Sven Richwin, a Berlin lawyer told AP. “Anything intimidating is ‘verboten,’ [Eng: forbidden]” Richwin added.

According to AP, such restrictions are common in Germany and rooted in the experience of the pre-war Weimar Republic, “when opposing political groups would try to forcibly interrupt their rivals’ rallies, resulting in frequent bloody street violence.”

The exact rules differ according to the circumstances, but police in Germany say they generally try to balance protesters’ rights to free speech and free assembly against the rights of counter-demonstrators and residents. As the AP adds, according to German rules, the shields, helmets and batons carried by far-right and Neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville last weekend wouldn’t be allowed in Germany.

Furthermore, openly anti-Semitic chants would prompt German police to intervene, although efforts would be made to detain specific individuals rather than to stop an entire rally, police say.

In the meantime, left-wing groups are holding a counter-protest, expected to draw some 1,000 people, in Spandau, AP reported.

Viva la Antifa…Spandau pic.twitter.com/4ntrbgJHp7

— Rebella Kurp (@rebellakurp) August 19, 2017

Friedliche Demo eines breiten Bündnisses gegen Nazi-Aufmarsch in #Spandau pic.twitter.com/NxqX9ur6tI

— Anett Seltz (@AnettSeltz) August 19, 2017

Hess, who received a life sentence at the Nuremberg trials for his role in planning World War II, died on Aug. 17, 1987. Allied authorities ruled his death a suicide, but Nazi sympathizers have long claimed that he was killed and organize annual marches in his honor. He was the deputy Führer from 1933 until he embarked on a covert mission to Britain in 1941 in an effort to secure a peace treaty between the UK and Nazi Germany.

1241 #b1908 #Berlin #Spandau Hess Marsch verhindern! #Antifa #NoNazis #ACAB pic.twitter.com/U59z5B6Zsc

— monotua (@monotua030) August 19, 2017

The marches used to take place in the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, where Hess was buried until authorities removed his remains.

Hess was transferred to Spandau Prison following the trials and spent there some 40 years until his death. He was the only Spandau inmate during his last 20 years of imprisonment. Neo-Nazi theories claim that Hess was murdered and his followers consider him a martyr.

The post Berlin Police Separate Hundreds Of Neo-Nazis, Opponents In Hess Tribute March appeared first on crude-oil.news.

The post Berlin Police Separate Hundreds Of Neo-Nazis, Opponents In Hess Tribute March appeared first on Forex news forex trade.

Boston Police are bracing for violence to break out at today’s “free speech” rally and have taken precautionary measures to prevent it from devolving into a clash between extremists and demonstrators on both sides of the ideological spectrum. To enhance public safety, police have put up road blockades and gone so far as to ban food vendors from the historic Boston Common, where the demonstration is expected to take place, as they hope to prevent a repeat of the Charlottesville attack last weekend according to Reuters.

“Some 500 police officers will be on the streets around the popular tourist destination. They are planning to close some roadways to vehicles, mindful of the car attacks that killed a woman in Charlottesville and 13 in an attack in Barcelona on Thursday.

“We all know the tragedy that happened in Barcelona. That only makes us more vigilant,” said Boston Police Commissioner William Evans, who was the department’s second-in-command during the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.”

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said the city would ban demonstrators from carrying anything that could be used as a weapon, adding that violence would not be tolerated.

“We are going to respect their right to free speech. In return, they have to respect the safety of our city,” Walsh said. “If anything gets out of hand, we are going to shut it down.”

The flash point will likely arrive when a “Fight White Supremacy” march set to begin in the historically black Roxbury neighborhood collides with the demonstrators on the Commons Saturday afternoon.

“Our job is to make sure that as the peace rally enters into Boston Common that the folks that come in there feel safe, that we don’t have an incident that happened like last week in Virginia,” Walsh said.

Organizers of the free speech event have denounced the type of violence that took place at the rally in Charlottesville.  Speakers at Saturday’s event include Kyle Chapman, a California activist who was arrested at a Berkeley rally earlier this year, and Joe Biggs, formerly of Infowars. Mayor Walsh is warning anyone who doesn’t plan on taking part in the demonstration on the Common to avoid the area, according to CBS Boston.

“They say that interacting with these groups just gives them a platform to spread their message of hate,” said Walsh. “They recommend that people should not confront these rallies. So we’re urging everyone to stay away from the Common.”

Somehow, we doubt thar “everyone” will heed the mayor’s advice.

The post “No Violence”: Boston Mayor Promises Barricades, 500 Cops At “Free Speech” Rally appeared first on crude-oil.news.

The post “No Violence”: Boston Mayor Promises Barricades, 500 Cops At “Free Speech” Rally appeared first on Forex news forex trade.

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Townhall.com,

“They had found a leader, Robert E. Lee — and what a leader! … No military leader since Napoleon has aroused such enthusiastic devotion among troops as did Lee when he reviewed them on his horse Traveller.”

So wrote Samuel Eliot Morison in his magisterial “The Oxford History of the American People” in 1965.

First in his class at West Point, hero of the Mexican War, Lee was the man to whom President Lincoln turned to lead his army. But when Virginia seceded, Lee would not lift up his sword against his own people, and chose to defend his home state rather than wage war upon her.

This veneration of Lee, wrote Richard Weaver, “appears in the saying attributed to a Confederate soldier, ‘The rest of us may have … descended from monkeys, but it took a God to make Marse Robert.'”

Growing up after World War II, this was accepted history.

Yet, on the militant left today, the name Lee evokes raw hatred and howls of “racist and traitor.” A clamor has arisen to have all statues of him and all Confederate soldiers and statesmen pulled down from their pedestals and put in museums or tossed onto trash piles.

What has changed since 1965?

It is not history. There have been no great new discoveries about Lee.

What has changed is America herself. She is not the same country. We have passed through a great social, cultural and moral revolution that has left us irretrievably divided on separate shores.

And the politicians are in panic.

Two years ago, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe called the giant statues of Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson on Richmond’s Monument Avenue “parts of our heritage.”

 

After Charlottesville, New York-born-and-bred McAuliffe, entertaining higher ambitions, went full scalawag, demanding the statues be pulled down as “flashpoints for hatred, division, and violence.”

Who hates the statues, Terry? Who’s going to cause the violence?

Answer: The Democratic left whom Terry must now appease.

McAuliffe is echoed by Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, the Democratic candidate in November to succeed McAuliffe. GOP nominee Ed Gillespie wants Monument Avenue left alone.

The election is the place to decide this, but the left will not wait.

In Durham, North Carolina, our Taliban smashed the statue of a Confederate soldier. Near the entrance of Duke University Chapel, a statue of Lee has been defaced, the nose broken off.

Wednesday at dawn, Baltimore carried out a cultural cleansing by taking down statues of Lee and Maryland Chief Justice Roger Taney who wrote the Dred Scott decision and opposed Lincoln’s suspension of the right of habeas corpus.

Like ISIS, which smashed the storied ruins of Palmyra, and the al-Qaida rebels who ravaged the fabled Saharan city of Timbuktu, the new barbarism has come to America. This is going to become a blazing issue, not only between but within the parties.

For there are 10 Confederates in Statuary Hall in the Capitol, among them Lee, Georgia’s Alexander Stephens, vice president to Jefferson Davis, and Davis himself. The Black Caucus wants them gone.

Mount Rushmore-sized carvings of Lee, Jackson and Davis are on Stone Mountain, Georgia. Are they to be blasted off?

There are countless universities, colleges and high schools like Washington & Lee named for Confederate statesmen and soldiers. Across the Potomac from D.C. are Jefferson Davis Highway and Leesburg Pike to Leesburg itself, 25 miles north. Are all highways, streets, towns and counties named for Confederates to be renamed? What about Fort Bragg?

On every Civil War battlefield, there are monuments to the Southern fallen. Gettysburg has hundreds of memorials, statues and markers. But if, as the left insists we accept, the Confederates were traitors trying to tear America apart to preserve an evil system, upon what ground do Democrats stand to resist the radical left’s demands?

What do we do with those battlefields where Confederates were victorious: Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville?

“Where does this all end?” President Trump asked.

It doesn’t.

Not until America’s histories and biographies are burned and new texts written to Nazify Lee, Jackson, Davis and all the rest, will a newly indoctrinated generation of Americans accede to this demand to tear down and destroy what their fathers cherished.

And once all the Confederates are gone, one must begin with the explorers, and then the slave owners like Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Madison, who seceded from slave-free Britain. White supremacists all.

Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay of Kentucky and John Calhoun must swiftly follow.

Then there are all those segregationists. From 1865 to 1965, virtually all of the great Southern senators were white supremacists.

In the first half of the 20th century, Woodrow Wilson and FDR carried all 11 states of a rigidly segregationist South all six times they ran, and FDR rewarded Dixie by putting a Klansman on the Supreme Court.

While easy for Republicans to wash their hands of such odious elements as Nazis in Charlottesville, will they take up the defense of the monuments and statues that have defined our history, or capitulate to the icon-smashers?

In this Second American Civil War, whose side are you on?

The post Pat Buchanan Asks “In This Second American Civil War – Whose Side Are You On?” appeared first on crude-oil.news.

The post Pat Buchanan Asks “In This Second American Civil War – Whose Side Are You On?” appeared first on Forex news forex trade.

California has a well-earned its reputation for introducing wacky legislation. Jerry Brown’s bill specifically written to regulate cow farts is a personal favorite of ours.  For those who missed it the first time around, here is a brief recap of our post entitled “Only In California – Governor Jerry Brown Signs Bill To Regulate Cow Flatulence“:

In yet another attack on California businesses, yesterday Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill (SB 1383) that requires the state to cut methane emissions from dairy cows and other animals by 40% by 2030.

 

According to a statement from Western United Dairymen CEO, Anja Raudabaugh, California’s Air Resources Board wants to regulate animal methane emissions even though it admits there is no known method for achieving the the type of reduction sought by SB 1383.

 

“The California Air Resources Board wants to regulate cow emissions, even though its Short-Lived Climate Pollutant (SLCP) reduction strategy acknowledges that there’s no known way to achieve this reduction.“

 

Among other things, compliance with the bill will likely require California dairies to install “methane digesters” that convert the organic matter in manure into methane that can then be converted to energy for on-farm or off-farm consumption.  The problem, of course, is that methane digesters are expensive and with California producing 20% of the country’s milk we suspect that means that California has just passed another massive “food tax” on the country.

But a new bill penned by Senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco, dubbed the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Long-Term Care Facility Resident’s Bill of Rights (or SB-219 if you’re into the whole brevity thing), takes wacky California legislation to a whole new level.  Among other things, the bill makes it illegal for employees of any “long-term care facility” to “willfully and repeatedly fail to use a resident’s preferred name or pronouns after being clearly informed of the preferred name or pronouns.”

This bill would enact the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Long-Term Care Facility Resident’s Bill of Rights. Among other things, the bill would make it unlawful, except as specified, for any long-term care facility to take specified actions wholly or partially on the basis of a person’s actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status, including, among others, willfully and repeatedly failing to use a resident’s preferred name or pronouns after being clearly informed of the preferred name or pronouns, or denying admission to a long-term care facility, transferring or refusing to transfer a resident within a facility or to another facility, or discharging or evicting a resident from a facility.

 

Meanwhile, here are couple of other actions that will now be considered a crime for healthcare workers in California:

(2) Deny a request by residents to share a room.

 

(3) Where rooms are assigned by gender, assigning, reassigning, or refusing to assign a room to a transgender resident other than in accordance with the transgender resident’s gender identity, unless at the transgender resident’s request.

 

(4) Prohibit a resident from using, or harass a resident who seeks to use or does use, a restroom available to other persons of the same gender identity, regardless of whether the resident is making a gender transition or appears to be gender-nonconforming. Harassment includes, but is not limited to, requiring a resident to show identity documents in order to gain entrance to a restroom available to other persons of the same gender identity.

 

(5) Willfully and repeatedly fail to use a resident’s preferred name or pronouns after being clearly informed of the preferred name or pronouns.

 

(6) Deny a resident the right to wear or be dressed in clothing, accessories, or cosmetics that are permitted for any other resident.

 

(7) Restrict a resident’s right to associate with other residents or with visitors, including the right to consensual sexual relations, unless the restriction is uniformly applied to all residents in a nondiscriminatory manner. This section does not preclude a facility from banning or restricting sexual relations, as long as the ban or restriction is applied uniformly and in a nondiscriminatory manner.

So what is the punishment for failing to observe someone’s preferred pronouns?  Oh, just a year in prison and a $1,000 fine, according to CBN…

Just to clarify, ‘choosing’ your own gender and imprisoning people for failing to observe that ‘choice’ is wholly consistent with ‘science’ but Republicans are ‘science deniers’ for having the audacity to even question inconsistencies in climate change data….got it.

 

Here is the full text of SB-219:

The post Only In Cali: New Bill Would Imprison Healthcare Workers For Using Incorrect Pronouns With Patients appeared first on crude-oil.news.

The post Only In Cali: New Bill Would Imprison Healthcare Workers For Using Incorrect Pronouns With Patients appeared first on Forex news forex trade.

Authored by Scott Adams via Dilbert blog,
History is full of examples of Mass Hysterias. They happen fairly often. The cool thing about mass hysterias is that you don’t know when you are in one. But sometimes the people who are not experiencing t…

The post Dilbert’s Scott Adams Explains “How To Know You’re In A Mass Hysteria Bubble” appeared first on crude-oil.news.

The post Dilbert’s Scott Adams Explains “How To Know You’re In A Mass Hysteria Bubble” appeared first on Forex news forex trade.

Goldman Sachs FICC-trading income was an unexpectedly ugly blemish on what was already a poor Q2 earnings report. And while the FDIC-backed hedge fund initially blamed the decline on lower trading revenues, lack of volatility and depressed client activity…

… there was more to the story. The Wall Street Journal has uncovered what really happened: A $100 million bet on regional natural-gas prices gone awry after production problems at a local pipeline sent prices soaring, decimating Goldman’s short position.

“Goldman wagered that gas prices in the Marcellus Shale in Ohio and Pennsylvania would rise with the construction of new pipelines to carry gas out of the region, said people familiar with the matter. Instead, prices there fell sharply in May and June as a key pipeline ran into problems.”

More specifically…

“Goldman’s key miscalculation last quarter was betting that natural-gas prices in the Marcellus Shale would rise relative to the national benchmark price in Louisiana known as the Henry Hub, the people familiar with the matter said.”

The quarter was the worst ever for the bank’s commodities unit, which, as WSJ notes, has been one of the firm’s most consistent profit centers, and a training ground for many of its top executives, including Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein. The trading loss “extended a broader slump at a company once known as Wall Street’s savviest gambler.”

Goldman shares fell 2.6% on the day of the report, which analysts largely attributed to the miss in trading revenues, despite a stronger-than-expected bottom-line profit.

The investment bank has held on to its commodities-trading business even as most other American banks exited following the financial crisis. It is currently the seventh-largest market maker for natural gas in North America, larger than some energy giants like Exxon Mobil. According to WSJ, trading oil, metals and other physical commodities is increasingly dominated by smaller firms like Glencore PLC and Gunvor Group Ltd. that don’t face as much government regulation.

“The loss highlights the trade-offs Goldman made in sticking with the risky commodities-trading business, even as other large banks retreated following the financial crisis. Goldman is the seventh-biggest marketer of natural gas in North America, up from 13th in 2011, according to Natural Gas Intelligence—bigger than U.S. energy giants such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chesapeake Energy Corp. It has been the only U.S. bank in the top 20 since 2013, when J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. left the business.”

WSJ explains that Goldman’s position would’ve produced a profit if a pipeline being built to carry natural gas out of the Midwest had been completed on time. Instead, it faced multiple delays after a series of fluid spills and the accidental bulldozing of a historic Ohio home.

“Essentially, it was a bet on the timely completion of pipelines under construction to ferry a glut of gas out of the region.

 

But one of those pipelines ran into trouble this spring: the 713-mile Rover, which would transport gas from the Marcellus to the Midwest and beyond.

 

Its developer, Energy Transfer Partners, in February bulldozed a historic Ohio home without notifying regulators, and scrambled to finish clearing trees before the roosting season for a protected bat species. In May, federal regulators barred Energy Transfer from drilling on some segments of the route after a series of fluid spills.

 

The first leg of the pipeline, which had been set to come online in July, isn’t expected until at least September. Energy Transfer said it has “been working efficiently and nonstop to remediate” problems and expects to have the entire pipeline operational in January.”

In all likelihood, part of Goldman’s short position was accumulated to offset the risk-management needs of the bank’s clients, WSJ reported. Goldman’s counterparties, the drillers operating in the Marcellus shale, reported strong gains in their derivatives books.

“Goldman was in part likely catering to gas producers in the region that wanted to lock in steadier revenue through swaps and other contracts. Many Marcellus drillers reported big gains in the value of their derivatives portfolios in the second quarter—meaning their trading partners lost money in that period, at least on paper.”

Of course, the bank’s executives would have you believe the loss was solely the result of Goldman fulfilling its duty to help its clients manage risk, and that the bank’s trades didn’t violate the Volcker Rule (a ban on proprietary trading that was part of Dodd-Frank). As WSJ notes, whether or not a trade violates the Volcker rule depends on who initiated it, how long the bank held the position, and myriad other factors.

But with President Trump in the White House and with future Fed Chairman Gary Cohn’s only nemesis getting the boot earlier today, soon Goldman will be empowered to take much more trading risks with the explicit blessings of 1600 Pennsylvania.

The post The Real Story Behind Goldman’s Q2 Trading Loss: How A $100M Gas Bet Went Awry appeared first on crude-oil.news.

The post The Real Story Behind Goldman’s Q2 Trading Loss: How A $100M Gas Bet Went Awry appeared first on Forex news forex trade.