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I had read about the 5-10% trade tax the new folks are talking about and it seems like a start to market downturn if true....at least from history.....
off topic, i didn't ever even see those two posts that were deleted so someone must have complained to admin, or they just saw them, maybe best to keep things on finance or "stock ideas" for now.
take care.
didn't nixon try price controls that failed????? that and tarrifs takes us down i think, despite good intentions......
vix near low, consumer confidence near high, honeymoon phase imo as the debt just keeps growing,
but i have been thinking/saying that since cortex was a thing, ha.
great job gfp, it is nice to have those charts in the reprint, i still have not figured out how to do that. i remember you testing pictures a few years back. as they say, a picture, explains a thousand words, ha
holding flo now, that was great story you reposted here that talked about the lawsuit overreaction by the "pro's" and it helped me make a tidy little paper sum off it. just as they predicted it was hardly a blip on the co's profits, and mow maybe some more reasonable price can be applied to it, if things don't go all to s__t. ha
take care
===You can't lose anything by sitting in cash. ===
not so much in india......
Top Hedge Funds Predict How It All Will End
by Tyler Durden Dec 9, 2016 9:32 AM
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-09/top-hedge-funds-predict-how-it-all-will-end
In early 2009, roughly at the time when this blog was launched which coincided with the start of the greatest monetary experiment of all time, we warned that there are two ways it will end: either in hyperinflation, or a deflationary supernova, the failure of currency and, eventually, barter. Now, almost 8 years later, some of the world's top hedge funds are in agreement, and they are worried.
As the WSJ reports, these prominent hedge fund managers join an increasingly bigger and louder chorus which says central bank bond buying programs that are pumping trillions of dollars into global markets will end badly.
In yesterday's main event, the ECB said it would extend its asset purchase program to the end of next year, buying bonds at a reduced rate. As the following chart from BBG projects, at the ECB's revised rate of bond purchases, its balance sheet will soon surpass that of the Fed.
So what happens next? Prominent managers have told The Wall Street Journal in recent interviews of their doubts about the endgame for quantitative easing around the world.
“There’s no non-messy way out of this,” said Luke Ellis, chief executive of Man Group, one of the world’s biggest hedge-fund firms with $80.7 billion in assets. “There’s two versions” of how this ends, he added. Either central banks could move to so-called ‘helicopter money,’ where they buy debt from the government, which then spends the proceeds or gives it to the population to spend. This “for a few years looks golden then leads to hyperinflation,” he said. Or the speed at which money circulates within the economy could grind to a halt. “Then you effectively have a barter economy,” he said.
In a series of exclusive interviews with the Journal, hedge-fund executives overseeing around $280 billion in total highlighted a range of problems created by quantitative easing. The problems they highlight are precisely those that QE was designed to solve, and are exactly the same problems we warned about since the 2009, for which we have been repeatedly branded some variation of "fake news." Now the skepticism has become mainstream.
This is what, according to the hedge fund managers interviewed by the WSJ, will happen:
Damage to economic growth
Rather than kick-starting growth, quantitative easing may do the reverse. Some managers fear it distorts financial markets and undermines capitalism. That system relies on profit-hungry investors to differentiate between strong and weak companies—funding the strong while letting the weak die. QE, say some managers, doesn’t differentiate.
For instance, the Bank of England is buying the debt of firms it deems make “a material contribution” to the U.K. economy. That has led some investment banks and companies to create new debt especially for it to buy. The ECB has bought €48.2 billion ($51.2 billion) of corporate debt since June, but the hoped-for private-sector investment hasn’t materialized.
“What does a market do? It’s a voting mechanism,” said Michael Hintze, billionaire founder of hedge fund CQS, which runs around $12 billion in assets. “Instead you’ve got this 800-pound gorilla out there who’s hoovering up assets. “There’s a misallocation of capital and an opportunity cost to the real economy,” added Mr. Hintze, whose portfolio is up 30% this year, ranking it one of the world’s top-performing hedge funds. “It means GDP is not growing as much as it might.”
Some put it even more strongly. “It’s definitely destructive of economic growth,” said Crispin Odey, founder of Odey Asset Management, which runs $8.2 billion in assets.
“Capitalism dies a death,” said Mr. Odey, who sees government policy as the main factor influencing markets. His fund, a top performer after the credit crisis, is down sharply this year because of being too bearish. “It’s all policy. It’s the Kremlin. And I’m in the gulags.”
* * *
Damage to society
In her speech to the governing Conservative Party conference in October, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May spoke of “some bad side effects” from quantitative easing as people with assets got richer while those without them suffered. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has said low rates have robbed savers. Those side effects include “envy and distress” within society, “as people think ‘I can’t get out of where I am,’” said Andrew McCaffery, group head of solutions at Aberdeen Asset Management, who looks after $170 billion in assets.
Ultralow interest rates mean the large part of the population with few financial assets begins to despair of how to generate income to fund retirement, he said.
“People see a developing black hole,” he said. This “increases the sense of there being little to lose for many” people.
Andrew Law, chief executive of New York-based Caxton Associates LP, which runs around $7.8 billion, said quantitative easing averted economic depression after the financial crisis.
But he added: “The losers of QE are society, and democracy is also a loser, because central banks are not publicly elected officials.”
* * *
Deflation
Quantitative easing was also introduced as a way of increasing private-sector spending and raising inflation. Some investors even worried it would spark hyperinflation and rushed to buy gold. Instead, say some managers, it has led to deflation.
“It took me a long time to work it out,” said CQS’s Mr. Hintze. “It’s a very complex issue.” He said that massive amounts of liquidity mean that “liquidity’s not worth much anymore,” which leads to negative interest rates. “I do think it [QE] is a massive deflationary force. The reason is because money is worth less but the price of real assets goes up.”
Mr. Odey said quantitative easing leads to deflation because weaker competitors are kept alive by cheap debt as “zombie” companies.
* * *
Hard stop
Finally, hedge-fund managers see difficulty in ending quantitative easing.
“Central banks are sadly helping to create the ‘black hole,’ and the sucking noise and pull is getting bigger,” said Aberdeen’s Mr. McCaffery, “but you just have to keep going as your alternative options as a central banker are just too unpalatable to consider.
Using an analogy we first came up with in 2009, McCaffrey slammed the use of a drug placebo to keep the system intact: “More methadone is not going to help, a form of cold turkey [is] needed, but no central bank is going to do that,” he added. He warns governments’ debt-to-GDP levels have risen.
The punchline:
“In the long term, it implies rates can never go up, as the damage will be extraordinary in nature,” he said, as they struggle with their debt loads. For now, however, the market which moments ago hit new all time highs, is blissfully ignoring all of the above.
In Unprecedented Move, Dallas Pension System Suspends Withdrawals
by Tyler Durden Dec 8, 2016 8:08 PM
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-08/dallas-police-pension-finally-ends-run-bank-halting-withdrawals
Two days after the Mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings, filed a lawsuit against the Dallas Police and Fire Pension system to block withdrawals, which he referred to as a "run on the bank" of an "insolvent" pension system in "financial crisis, the Pension's board has finally taken steps to halt further withdrawals. Of course, this delayed action has come only after $500 million in deposits have been withdrawn since just August.
According to the Dallas Daily News, an incremental $154mm in withdrawal requests were pending at the time the decision was made earlier today.
The Dallas Police and Fire Pension System's Board of Trustees suspended lump-sum withdrawals from the pension fund Thursday, staving off a possible restraining order and stopping $154 million in withdrawal requests.
The system was set to pay out the weekly requests Friday. Pension officials said allowing the withdrawals would leave them without the liquid reserves required to sustain $2.1 billion fund.
"Our situation is currently critical, and we took action," Board chairman Sam Friar said.
Rawlings
While Dallas citizens cheered the decision, even opponents of the Mayor's admitted that the redemptions had to be halted if the city had any chance of saving the pension system from insolvency.
Rawlings on Thursday afternoon told a crowd gathered at a Dallas Regional Chamber that "the bleeding has stopped. We can turn this ship around."
The crowd responded with cheers after the mayor's announcement of the board's decision.
At the pension board meeting, the mood was more somber.
Council member Scott Griggs said he couldn't let the $154 million "go out the door" on Friday.
His council colleague, Philip Kingston, a board trustee, said the mayor "unquestionably" forced the pension board's hand. He said Thursday was "the worst day I've had in public office."
"Unfortunately, financially, this had to happen," he said.
The fund has about $729 million in liquid assets. It needs to keep about $600 million on hand, meaning the restrictions could have been coming at some point even without the mayor's actions. The withdrawal requests this week alone would have meant the fund would dip below that level.
Rawlings
Of course, not everyone was happy with the decision as at least one retired police officer threatened a lawsuit to force the fund to honor redemption requests while another declared that Mayor Rawlings had "successfully screwed over the retirees, the firefighters and the police officers."
One retired police sergeant, Pete Bailey, suggested a lawsuit could be in the offing if the system didn't pay out the requests that were made Tuesday. Friar understood that they might deal with more litigation.
"We may just have to deal with that, but that's what the board decides," Friar said. "We acted in the best interest of the pension fund today."
Retired Dallas police officer Jerry Rhodes, a pension meeting fixture, said he believed the board did what it had to do. Then he sarcastically lauded Rawlings.
"Merry Christmas, mayor," he said. "Hopefully you have a good Christmas because you have successfully screwed over the retirees, the firefighters and the police officers."
Perhaps future ponzi schemes pension systems will take note of Dallas' current situation prior to guaranteeing 8% returns on retirees' pension balances. Who could have ever guessed that a decision like that could have backfired so badly?
* * *
For those who missed it, here is what we recently posted after Mayor Rawlings sued to halt pension withdrawals.
Last week, Dallas Mayor Michael Rawlings sent a scathing letter to the Dallas Police and Fire Pension (DPFP) Board demanded that withdrawals be halted immediately until the "solvency and actuarial soundness of the Pension System is restored." That said, the Mayor's request was seemingly ignored as he has now filed a lawsuit with the Dallas District Court to force the pension board to halt withdrawals amid a "run on the bank."
Within the suit, Rawlings notes that $500 million in lump-sum withdrawals have been made from the DPFP since August 2016 with $80 million of that amount being withdrawn in the first 2 weeks of November alone. The suit continues on to allege that "this mass exodus of DROP funds amounts to a “run on the bank” and is exacerbating the financial peril of the Pension System as a whole."
In performing these ministerial duties, the Board has a duty to ensure that programs, such as the Pension System’s optional Deferred Retirement Option Plan (“DROP”), which is not a constitutionally protected benefit (or “benefit” at all), do not impair or reduce the Pension System’s core constitutionally protected benefits, e.g., service retirement benefits. The Board is willfully failing to perform these ministerial duties.
The Pension System, which the Board oversees, is in the midst of a financial crisis. In early 2016, the Board was warned by its own actuary that absent radical change,the Pension System would become insolvent within 15 years—irrevocably eradicating the constitutionally protected service retirement benefits (and other constitutionally protected benefits) of police and firefighter personnel of the City and their beneficiaries.
Critically, this 15-year projection of insolvency was based upon two overly optimistic assumptions that the Board has now known to be incorrect for several months. First, the actuary assumed that the Pension System’s $2.7 billion in assets would remain stable, even though approximately 56% of these assets were composed of optional DROP funds, which have historically been permitted to be withdrawn in lump-sums upon demand (even though this option was used infrequently before this year). Second, the actuary assumed that the Pension System would achieve its targeted 7.25% return or more on itsinvestments for the next 15 years.
Publication of this looming insolvency scenario prompted some DROP Participants to withdraw their DROP funds in lump-sum, which created a “snowball”effect, leading a staggering number of other DROP Participants to withdraw nearly $500 million in optional lump-sum DROP funds from the Pension System from August 13, 2016 to present. Over $80 million of these lump-sum DROP withdrawals have occurred within the first two weeks of November 2016 alone. Over this three-month time period, the Board has knowingly allowed DROP funds to continue to be withdrawn at record levels even though it is aware that doing so is irreparably harming the Pension System’s solvency and liquidity.
Lump-sum DROP withdrawals for 2016 are now on pace to be over 15 times higher than their historical average. This mass exodus of DROP funds amounts to a “run on the bank” and is exacerbating the financial peril of the Pension System as a whole.
The DPFP contreversy comes as hundreds of police and firefighters have poured millions into "DROP" accounts in which they were guaranteed exorbitant returns of 8% while the pension board has proposed a $1 billion bailout from the city of Dallas.
The city estimates that, as of November, 517 police and firefighters have DROP accounts containing more than $1 million. One, belonging to an unnamed first responder, has $4.3 million in it, city figures show. On average, the city estimates that the average DROP account contains nearly $600,000.
The controversy all comes at a time when the board has asked the cash-strapped city for a bailout over $1 billion. The board's position is that they legally can't stop the withdrawals, but the mayor disagrees.
Of course, this all begs the question of whether the Dallas Police and Fire Pension will be the first pension ponzi to burst?
it is so hard to pick a top, or bottom, that's why i like the dollar cost average method. with 1000 point swings in futures in a matter of hours, not sure the wait and see method is best, but safer for sure.
kind of like a bank run, those poor folks in india didn't have a second to change over their cash, it was just, poof, and those paper money demoninations, backed by the full faith and power of the indian government were worthless. read stories where hard gold is going for 2000 an oz, just to have it it in hand vs the 1200 world price.
bubbles everywhere, world debt everywhere, but they have successfully, somehow, managed to kick that can down the road yet again, but it's getting way down the road now, and janet y is out of a job anyway, maybe she will make one last, screw dt, and raise a percent, who knows, guessing they will try to make some statement, every other bo institution has.......negs way outweigh the positives imo.....not worth much, ha.
I forget, just how many more people live in india vs the usa ? ha.
that grundig you have likely has telefunken tubes in it. some of those pre amp 12ax7, 6922, type tube can go for 300 and up if testing well and old, not the remakes. folks went out and supposedly bought up the original tube making equipment from mullard, gold lion, tung sol, and other great usa and eruo tube makers of the past. but those original tubes, esps, the preamp tubes are in huge demand. anything western electric as well.
once saw pair of those, think 350's for 16k on that site by the bay. I have one, but it's got air in it, so display only, still probably bring a buck from an Asian country as they seem to really go nuts for old tubes.......western electric.
always saw mine as my retirement, ha.
hdge breaks below 9 as I continue to dollar cost average.
This Is the Purge We All Knew Was Coming: "Shutting Down Extremist Content"
by Tyler Durden Dec 7, 2016 12:28 PM
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-07/purge-we-all-knew-was-coming-shutting-down-extremist-content
Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,
There have been murmurs about it all along.
Someday, they simply wouldn’t allow certain things to remain on the Internet any longer. The potential to reach a global audience with important information, and the idea that it could be in the hands of anyone is just too big.
So it is no surprise that many corporate giants from Silicon Valley are now putting forward a unified front to silence free speech on social media.
Hashtags, keywords and flagged accounts, logged in various databases, will be shared and enforced across the web. Shutting down content identified as unacceptable will now be streamlined, and leave unpopular posters with fewer places to peddle their extremist, outside views.
According to Yahoo! News:
Web giants YouTube , Facebook , Twitter and Microsoft will step up efforts to remove extremist content from their websites by creating a common database.
The companies will share ‘hashes’ – unique digital fingerprints they automatically assign to videos or photos – of extremist content they have removed from their websites to enable their peers to identify the same content on their platforms.
“We hope this collaboration will lead to greater efficiency as we continue to enforce our policies to help curb the pressing global issue of terrorist content online,” the companies said in a statement on Tuesday.
The European Union set up an EU Internet Forum last year bringing together the internet companies, interior ministers and the EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator to find ways of removing extremist content.
Many current incidents are being used to push the idea that a new online policing – and a pulling of the weeds – is now necessary.
The “fake news” purging campaign has reached across the blogosphere and alternative media and punished websites that have dared to report on such taboo topics as Pizzagate, Wikileaks email dumps, any controversial aspects of the Syrian war and many other serious topics which these agenda-driven companies have opted to suppress.
While these platforms offer the opportunity to reach a wide audience, the centrality of ubiquitous platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter is, obviously, that they have the power to delete accounts and drive down audience response by tweaking the algorithm.
They can make you invisible.
That is the state of free speech in 2016. It can be eradicated at a moment’s notice, and perhaps for reasons you aren’t even aware of.
David Brock Wants Cash to Build ‘Breitbart of the Left’
Danny Johnston/AP AP Photo/Danny Johnston
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/12/07/ddavid-brock-wants-cash-to-build-breitbart-of-the-left/
by Ben Kew7 Dec 20164,472
Left-wing political operative and close Hillary Clinton ally David Brock once tried to destroy Breitbart News. Now he is seeking funding to develop the “Breitbart of the left,” according to a report from The Hill.
Brock, who founded and manages the left-wing super PAC American Bridge, confirmed that his organization has established an anti-Trump “war room” that will seek to hold the Trump administration accountable as it prepares its transition to power.
He claims his organization has the most extensive archive of anti-Trump resources in the Democratic Party, and that his operatives will seek to fact-check all Trump’s statements in real time, whilst undertaking investigative research that will trawl through anything from Trump’s business interests to his charity work and personal life.
Any damaging findings will be immediately passed onto mainstream media sources, with the intent of undermining Trump’s presidency.
“The Trump administration is shaping up to be one of the most corrupt since the Gilded Age,” Brock said. “American Bridge will use everything at its disposal to hold it accountable.”
Brock, who was formerly a right-wing investigative journalist, has previously founded groups such as Media Matters for America, Correct the Record, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. He was once described by The Nation as a “conservative journalistic assassin turned progressive empire-builder.”
Media Matters, a supposedly “non-partisan” charitable organization partially funded by George Soros, was ostensibly founded to correct factual errors in conservative media. But in 2012, the group was exposed as attempting the wholesale destruction of conservative media. A leaked internal document showed that Brock’s organization hoped to “bring litigation against FOX News and its feeders,” with the hope of crushing critics of President Barack Obama. The late Andrew Breitbart sparred constantly with Media Matters’ senior staff on Twitter.
Another one of Brock’s organisations, Correct the Record, also spent $1 million to hire online trolls to “correct” supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) across social media.
Brock’s new plans were revealed as Politico reported Tuesday that the far-left watchdog will be pivoting away from Fox News and towards Breitbart, which it now sees as its prime conservative enemy.
However, Brock has also said that in order to realize his own Breitbart-style mission, his project will need “significant financial investment,” which he suggested could come from prominent Clinton donors eager to undermine the President-elect.
Brock has reportedly invited 400 potential donors to an event in Palm Beach during Trump’s inauguration to solicit donations in order to fund his plan.
Speaking to reporters, Brock also appeared to blame Hillary Clinton’s loss partially on so-called “fake news” across social media, which much of the left believes influenced the election in Trump’s favor.
“A lot of garbage came spewing out of Facebook, and these companies need to adopt new standards and clean their own house. We’ll be involved in a campaign to push them to do that,” he said.
Sheriff Clarke: ‘Fake News’ Started With ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ Lie
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/12/08/sheriff-clarke-fake-news-started-hands-dont-shoot-lie/
by Jeff Poor8 Dec 2016784
Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Milwaukee County, WI Sheriff David Clarke said the entire phenomenon of so-called “fake news” began in 2014 with the “hands up, don’t shoot” claim of the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO.
Clarke called it a “lie” and said it had been propagated by many mainstream media outlets.
“It’s the anniversary of that fateful summer night in August of 2014 that started with the ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ lie that was propagated by every mainstream liberal media across this country,” Clarke said. “The New York Times, The Washington Post, the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, CNN, MSNBC all propagated that ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ lie. It was from that time forward that this concept of fake news was talked about.”
Washington Post Appends "Russian Propaganda Fake News" Story, Admits It May Be Fake
by Tyler Durden Dec 8, 2016 8:59 AM
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-07/washington-post-apends-russian-propaganda-story-admits-it-may-be-fake
In the latest example why the "mainstream media" is facing a historic crisis of confidence among its readership, facing unprecedented blowback following Craig Timberg November 24 Washington Post story "Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say", on Wednesday a lengthy editor's note appeared on top of the original article in which the editor not only distances the WaPo from the "experts" quoted in the original article whose "work" served as the basis for the entire article (and which became the most read WaPo story the day it was published) but also admits the Post could not "vouch for the validity of PropOrNot's finding regarding any individual media outlet", in effect admitting the entire story may have been, drumroll "fake news" and conceding the Bezos-owned publication may have engaged in defamation by smearing numerous websites - Zero Hedge included - with patently false and unsubstantiated allegations.
It was the closest the Washington Post would come to formally retracting the story, which has now been thoroughly discredited not only by outside commentators, but by its own editor.
The apended note in question:
Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.
As The Washingtonian notes, the implicit concession follows intense and rising criticism of the article over the past two weeks. It was “rife with obviously reckless and unproven allegations,” Intercept reporters Glenn Greenwald and Ben Norton wrote, noting that PropOrNot, one of the groups whose research was cited in Timberg’s piece, “anonymous cowards.” One of the sites PropOrNot cited as Russian-influenced was the Drudge Report.
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The piece’s description of some sharers of bogus news as “useful idiots” could “theoretically include anyone on any social-media platform who shares news based on a click-bait headline,” Mathew Ingram wrote for Fortune.
But the biggest issue was PropOrNot itself. As Adrian Chen wrote for the New Yorker, its methods were themselves suspect, hinting at counter-Russian propaganda - ostensibly with Ukrainian origins - and verification of its work was nearly impossible. Chen wrote “the prospect of legitimate dissenting voices being labelled fake news or Russian propaganda by mysterious groups of ex-government employees, with the help of a national newspaper, is even scarier.”
Criticism culminated this week when the "Naked capitalism" blog threatened to sue the Washington Post, demanding a retraction.
Now, at least, the "national newspaper" has taken some responsibility, however the key question remains: by admitting it never vetted its primary source, whose biased and conflicted "work" smeared hundreds of websites, this one included, just how is the Washington Post any different from the "fake news" it has been deriding on a daily basis ever since its endorsed presidential candidate lost the elections?
India Confiscates Gold, Even Jewelry, In Raids On Hidden Money
by Tyler Durden Dec 8, 2016 2:25 AM
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-07/
Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
Global financial repression picks up steam, led by India. After declaring large denomination notes illegal, India now targets gold.
It’s not just gold bars or bullion. The government has raided houses, no questions asked, confiscating jewelry.
For background to this article, please see my November 27 article Cash Chaos in India, 86% of Money in Circulation Withdrawn; Cash Still King in Japan.
Large denomination means 500-rupee ($7.30) and 1,000-rupee notes ($14.60), which account for more than 85 percent of the money supply. They are no longer legal tender, effective immediately.
As one might imagine, chaos ensued. And it continues.
India Confiscates Gold
india-gold
ADVERTISING
Picking up where we left off, please consider Message to Modi: Do No More Harm by Mihir Sharma.
The chaos accompanying “demonetization” hasn’t eased up noticeably. It seems likely the disruption to the economy, especially in cash-centric rural India, will hit growth sharply for at least a few quarters. It’s tough to say for how long and by how much; we are in uncharted territory here and guesses have varied widely. But many analysts agree with former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who’s predicting the new policy will knock 2 percentage points off that world-beating GDP growth rate.
Demonetization was originally sold as a “surgical strike on black money” — the illicit piles of cash many rich Indians have accumulated out of sight of the taxman. It’s now clear the policy has been anything but surgical. Worse, uncomfortable questions are being asked about whether the complicated rules and exemptions that have accompanied demonetization have allowed black-money holders to launder most of their cash. Of late, Modi’s chosen to focus instead on demonetization as means of advancing a cashless economy.
Yet the idea of a war on unaccounted-for wealth remains central to demonetization’s popular appeal, which means Modi will have to find other ways to keep that narrative going. So the government has now begun to push income-tax officials to conduct raids on those who might be concealing assets in forms other than cash, such as gold.
There’s already enough fear of such raids becoming common again that the government felt the need to step in to quell some of the anxiety. That didn’t help much. The government “clarified,” among other things, the rules governing when tax officials could seize gold: Nothing would happen “if the holding is limited to 500 grams per married woman, 250 grams per unmarried woman and 100 grams per male.” It also said that there would be no limits on jewelry “provided it is acquired… from inheritance.” Also, the “officer conducting [the] search has discretion to not seize [an] even higher quantity of gold jewelry.”
What this means, unfortunately, is that India’s income tax officers have just won the lottery. During a raid, they can, on the spot, decide whether or not to confiscate a family’s gold holdings. And remember, India has an enormous amount of gold — 20,000 metric tons, much of it inherited. (The rules governing simple searches are different, but few know that.) Rather than cleaning up tax administration, the government has handed tax officials more power than they’ve had for decades. The rich will pay what they need to escape harassment; the rest will suffer.
Rich Escape, Poor and Middle Class Suffer
The last line in the preceding article says all you need to know about what’s happening: “The rich will pay what they need to escape harassment; the rest will suffer.”
Evidence suggests the politically connected, and their friends, knew about the ban on cash and acted in advance. Everyone else is stuck.
India’s raid on gold reinforces its ban on cash. Short term aside, these kinds of actions will increase demand for gold.
What’s Next?
I keep wondering: what’s next? People pretend they know, I admit I do not. However, I am quite sure a currency crisis is coming. Where it strikes first is unknown, but the list of likely candidates increases every year.
My spotlight has been on Japan, China, and the EU. India caught me off guard, but it adheres to my general theory this pot will eventually boil over in a cascade from an unexpected place, outside the US.
US actions may cause a currency crisis, but I believe a crisis will hit elsewhere first. If I am correct, gold will be the safe haven, regardless of currency, but especially where the crisis hits.
thanks goodness people have the capacity to change, those that say otherwise are liars, or uninformed, inexperienced, idiots.
where we have come in this country, with our armies of "reporters" that are looking for that gotcha moment to propel their jobs, are we get no risk, low reward, nerds, running for office, who haven't tried anything in their narrow little, safe, lives.
smear jobs, disgruntled workers, change over in parties, paid stories, list goes on.
we have had a bunch of "do gooder," stay on message, robots in office for long enough, i'd like to see 12 years in senate and 8 years on the house as i believe they were never meant to set up kindoms once their squeaky clean reps were enough to fool the people over the other, perhaps much more qualified, candidate.
exagerated war records, list goes on, heaven help you if you ever grew and changed a position as you gained new insight into an issue.
probably should be on your the donald page, but what the heck.
repub are babes when it comes to "getting the narative" straight before speaking, then sending out their dozens, or more, minions, to float or sell new positions.
knewt was out saying how media does not know how to say thank you for 1100 jobs kept here while bo did nothing close in 8 years, while the alaska ex gov is attacking them for it at same time.....they will learn, or they will keep democracy not semetrical, as it was meant to be, messy, imo.
80% of media heads are exploding.
trump sued in mi saying that recount laws were never meant to give low level 1% of vote getter, out of the running, candidates, the right to commander the recount process as they have NO CHANCE of winning. reb aj supported so looks like going to mi supream court this weekend, trumps people also said hand recount could not possibly be done by dec 13th, the cut off date.
funny, depending on which party controlled the recount process the estimates of the cost:
wi = 3.9 million (3.5 was charged incorrectly)
pa = < 1 million
mi = 5 million
just a little different, much more than stein ever raised during run, i agree that recount laws were not intended for candidates that can't win, 1-2% of vote, or why not rich guy who wrote his own name in, just to get some pub, and were meant for close races, by whoever came in second, or a close third.
so, did you read how the ceo of reddit, i assume is a little like twitter maybe, logged into his personal, secret account over thanksgiving holiday, to CHANGE TRUMP POSTERS POSTS TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE THEY WERE ATTACKING TRUMP rather than, i assume, the dems. (never been member of either site)
f'ing manipulated their posts, barely admitted to "making mistake" and now is just deleting, or getting rid of trump accounts, to silence those thoughts that might not agree with his. talk about missing the boat, f'ing elitist thinking nothing wrong with their thinking, as long as you agree with it.
hope ag opens freedom of speech on public sites, even if they are privately held, not sure if reddit is private, public, or bernie type only supported. bo would find a lawsuit and retraining in there somewhere if what was something he didn't believe in....
ugg..
hit pause pedal last week, i think, and i am dollar cost averaging slowly, small buys, as in growing interest rate environment, the 4% will become less attractive. thanks for the updates. no rush on this one, just slow accumulation.
think i owned that cerplast for a bit, wondered what happened to them.....good story company.....but like parks and rec 720, they need profits...ha.
repeat EOM
not sure how reliable the source was as i think it was yahoo, about 12x in the tank for dems, but 19 yo, wtf?????
===and Trump is clearly going to need the help.=====
as would anyone who never held public office, unreal it starts at the top, must have been a complete, non likable, person he beat.
can't read most of media, still coming unglued he won, latest 19 year old elector for washington state not voting in line with electorial college. how did a 19 yo get that kind of responsibility??????
she said she is joining hamilton's xxxxxxxx(something)
count now at 7 turncoats, as of yesterday's read.
with recounts going on, the mainstream media is 10x to 1 in coverage of anything negative he's doing to positive with him, dec 19th can't get here fast enough imo.
what i am wondering is how the incoming heads of departments, like state, irs, defense, national security, ect., how do they clear the dems out that are entrenched as i thought it was nearly impossible to get rid of a fed employee once hired......demoted maybe???
they even have gem/rock shows on the weather channel now. shows folks in the rockies, i think the rockies, foraging for "pocket" of gems, that bring prices that blow my mind, 250,000 for weird looking clusters, dug out for free.
i read the "gold rush" reality show now has folks in new england panning for gold, so likely any patch of gournd will so be dug up for gems.....actually i think arkansas still has an active diamond field park that allows a person to keep what they find.....
glad it's still there, back then, you would go into a shop, they would try and charm you, then hand a list to a runner, who, we presumed, would go to a central location to get "loaned" some stones to show customers. this happened in about every shop we went into, even saw our salesperson hand a person a note, that person took off out the side door, nothing happened, then that person came back, and magically we were then waited on again to be shown a few stones. each shop had a bunch on hand, but once they narrowed down what you where looking for, then out went the runner. pretty efficient.
do you still have a diamond district there? near independence hall? about 3 blocks maybe.?
on the flip side, i asked my better half to marry me on a carriage ride that slowed to a crawl in front of independence hall for the moment. he could not stop entirely or a bunch of guys with ar-15's would swarm the street and tell him to keep moving, and he said he could lose his license.
we stayed in five star hotel with view of independence hall and about midnight guys started working on a roof on the building next door, hammering, yelling orders, ect. so i called the front desk, and they sent up a key to a deluxe suite for us to stay in, as long as we were out by 11am, no charge and apologies all around.
i had promised my dad that if it ever got that far with me, i would go to the philly diamond district to shop for a ring, and we had a ball doing it. safest i ever felt in philly as heavily armed police walked the streets. got diamond from some 70 year old family business, and they made us feel like family. spent entire day looking at 5 or 6 shops, lots of stories and characters, like the one shop's saleswomen with the adams apple. anyway, fun memories, much better than when i lived there and worked 10-16 hour days, on salary.
we married on a plantation where one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had lived, middleton place, and had carriage rides at the wedding to keep with theme.
overall not real "emotional" type person, but independence hall was pretty special......cradle of modern democracy.
wasn't philly our first capital for a while??????
i need to retake civics class, if they even teach it anymore.....ha
take care.
looked like the markets were a little off today, don't like uncertain times.....and likely don't trust recounts.....my guess is it will be holding its breath for a while....
Trump wins Michigan's 16 electoral votes, state board says
Published November 28, 2016 Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/28/trump-wins-michigans-16-electoral-votes-state-board-says.html
President-elect Donald Trump has won Michigan's 16 electoral votes.
The Board of State Canvassers certified Trump's 10,704-vote victory on Monday, nearly three weeks after the election. The two-tenths of a percentage point margin out of nearly 4.8 million votes is the closest presidential race in Michigan in more than 75 years.
Trump's win in Michigan gives the Republican 306 electoral votes to Democrat Hillary Clinton's 232.
Trump is the first Republican presidential nominee to win Michigan since 1988.
Green Party candidate Jill Stein is expected to ask for a recount. She has until Wednesday. Trump would have seven days to file objections to her request.
i thought dt had done a pretty good job of backing off the hrc jail issue, by distancing himself from the "i'd have you tossed in jail" comment. since he can't actually do that anyway with actual processcuting power, and that it would have to be session's, if passed, he could just say, i am not going to stand in the way of our aj like my predessor, thereby looking like taking the high road, all the while never intending, i hope, to let a rico slam dunk, go unpunished.
now it looks like it's possible to be much more serious that a mere rico, it might turn into outright election fraud by the talented, admittedly so, left dark hats.
God help us as a country if that happens, really for all real democracy, not the 110% voted for me, fixed, democracy, we see so much of these days.
and what the heck is wrong with paper ballots anyway? never figured it out, other than easier to fix electronic maybe.......
soro's is 85, so maybe nature will take its course there soon enough.
now you are getting the idea!!! ha
actually i have a couple that look pretty similar to a couple of those, but with metal pins instead of a glass stand. some old western electric looking big bulb tubes in there. those, and rca, used to run almost all of our nations movie theaters. now collectors spend nearly anything to try and recreate them. i have plastic fishing cases full of new/old western electric caps, made with real heavy gold ends. seen folks go nuts over just two of them a few years back.
i lot of folks now days are using tubes for art called steampunk, putting them on necklaces, whatever.
it's kind of the old 80-20 rule.
80% pretty near worthless
20% some pretty valuable
can even get tube cd player at wal mart now, at least one tube glows through a plastic door, not sure if it is in sound circuit.
once saw "the first computer" in the london museam, but think they now have found old shipping star finding computer dated centuries earier...
and so it goes, nature will wash over us eventually, and we may come back, or not......
i thought he had 270 without mich??? mich still undeclared, unless they did this am.
they have to declare by today, he was up 13k, now 11k last i knew.
so mich would put him at 306 in my head
???????????????????
yea, 600k, right after he drops out????EOM
i thought the knock on this recount was that the "stat" guys that said it looks fishy said that in the urban area, where hand ballots were used had much higher count for hrc than the rual areas, where there were more voting machines. must be the russian's. ugg
not connected to the internet
nate silver, very smart guy, countered this with, hey, but almost all urban areas tended to go dem and almost all rural areas went rep,, so to him it looked just like it should have.
of course there are lies
damn lies
and statistics,
i think i actually do that last part in my head 24x7, calulation and recalculating the odds of something happening......easy to manipulate results for sure.
with the dems on unbroken, streaming, video, saying how they have fixed elections for 50 years and they were not about to stop before this one, and one of those two guys signed into the white house 350+ times these past 8 years, i would put ted cruz's ground team out there to match them head to head. if she takes it from trump i actually kind of fear for our future and what might happen to all those safe space babies dealing with real people who feel we are becoming cuba, or argentina......
vix at 12.73, what could go wrong? EOM
gfp, just knowing your interest in some of the more interesting times in our collective history....I had never heard that jfk may not have been the intended target theory till I read this, in the never ending speculation that has launched industries and small businesses for decades:
Op-Ed Lee Harvey Oswald’s little green book shows JFK wasn't the real target
By James Reston Jr.
November 22, 2016, 5:00 AM
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-reston-jfk-assassination-target-20161122-story.html
In the hours after the Kennedy assassination, after Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit and was identified as the president’s assassin, a Secret Service officer named Mike Howard was dispatched to Oswald’s apartment. Howard found a little green address book, and on its 17th page under the heading “I WILL KILL” Oswald listed four men: an FBI agent named James Hosty; a right-wing general, Edwin Walker; and Vice President Richard Nixon. At the top of the list was the governor of Texas, John Connally. Through Connally’s name, Oswald had drawn a dagger, with blood drops dripping downward.
Special Agent Howard turned the address book over to the FBI and, ultimately, to the Warren Commission. Only some time later did he learn that the list with its hugely important insight into the killer’s motive had been torn out of the book.
I didn’t hear about Howard until after I published my book “The Accidental Victim” three years ago on the 50th anniversary of the assassination. In it I argue a circumstantial case that it was Connally, not John F. Kennedy, who was Oswald’s target in Dallas. It is the story of a smoldering grudge in which Oswald came to associate Connally with all the setbacks in his disastrous, hopeless life.
“In her testimony to the Warren Commission, Oswald’s wife, Marina, definitively named Connally and not Kennedy as her husband’s target.
f
This grudge got started in January 1962. Oswald was in the Soviet Union, where he’d gone after being honorably discharged from the Marine Corps. When the Marines learned he wanted to defect, Oswald’s discharge was summarily downgraded to undesirable. (The defection was never consummated.) Oswald was angry and for good reason; his actions after his discharge had nothing to do with his three years as a Marine.
By early 1962, Oswald was disenchanted with Soviet life and wanted to return home. He was now saddled with a wife, Marina, and a child, and he knew that someone with a ninth-grade education, who had spent time in Russia and had an undesirable discharge on his record, would have few prospects in America.
Oswald wrote a heartfelt plea to Connally, a fellow Texan and the head of the Navy Department, the civilian overseer of the Marines. In poignant terms Oswald asked Connally to redress what was a transparent miscarriage of justice. What he got back a month later, in February 1962, was a classic bureaucratic brushoff. The dismissive letter arrived in an envelope with Connally’s smiling face on the front, bursting from a Texas star and announcing his bid for the Texas governorship.
In the months after Oswald’s return to America, his worst fears were realized. He did, indeed, have serious trouble finding and holding jobs in Texas. According to the testimony of Russian emigres in Dallas who knew him during this period, every time his discharge came up in a job interview, Oswald froze, and his blame of Connally deepened.
In her testimony to the Warren Commission, Oswald’s wife, Marina, definitively named Connally and not Kennedy as her husband’s target. She repeated this belief in testimony to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. Dallas emigres also testified to Oswald’s obsession with Connally. Moreover, there was ample testimony that Oswald bore no animus toward Kennedy. Indeed, he admired JFK’s important initiatives like the president’s efforts at detente with Russia.
Why was this evidence on motive ignored and buried in the official investigations? More pointedly, why is Oswald’s little green book – which I’ve examined in the National Archives – missing that pivotal page? For many years, in a community college class he teaches, retired Special Agent Howard has put forward his view of the assassination: Connally, not Kennedy, was Oswald’s target.
To the question of the missing address book page, Howard suggests two possibilities. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, would not have wanted his agency, through agent Hosty, to be implicated in Oswald’s murderous rage. As it turns out, Hosty had vigorously interviewed Marina Oswald over her immigration status just weeks before the assassination. An infuriated Oswald left a written threat at the Dallas FBI office in early November 1963. Hosty testified to Congress that on orders from higher-ups he deep-sixed the threat after the assassination. President Lyndon Johnson might have had an even stronger motivation: He would not have wanted Connally, his closest friend, to be identified as the catalyst for the crime.
For 53 years, a cottage industry has developed over the motive for the Kennedy assassination. It had to be connected to the Mafia or the Russians or the Cubans or Oswald’s Marxist beliefs or Jack Ruby’s petty crimes in the Dallas underworld. The public has embraced the notion that the greatest crime of the 20th century must have been the product of an equally grandiose conspiracy.
But none of these conspiracy theories hold up when the events of the six months before Nov. 22, 1963, are carefully studied. Oswald was no coldhearted professional assassin under orders. The real answer to the reasons he took aim are to be found in his frustrations and obsessions. And the real tragedy of Dallas lies in the accidental death of a president who just happened to be in the line of fire.
James Reston Jr. is the author of, among other books, “The Accidental Victim: JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Real Target in Dallas” and “The Lone Star: The Life of John Connally.” He is a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
yikes, nice move on that one, maybe trip to vegas, ha.\\
thanks for sharing.....
got a little more flo, the boring baker, at 15.85 just a little while ago, other than that just watching, but paying more attention to your observations for fun money for sure.
take care.
tried to get more flo yesterday and today, no execution, not much, but steadily trying to increase/dollar cost average position.
16 to 26, if it were to get there, paying 4+% in the process. slow and steady, boring, everybody needs to eat.
feel good about it, ha, look out.
also had gdxj orders not go through, but they were pretty far out of range as that one moves so violently.....
even had more hdge not go through last couple days, close, within pennies, but no dice, no hurry, have plenty just dollar cost averaging.
even 30k shares of old faithful on a whim last couple days, no execution, likely that one goes to zero, but they still have special access path granted if i remember right, thought of it like betting on long shot horse in the derby, ha.
take care.
I'm with you, patty herst, weather underground, unibomer types, panthers, angles, Louis f., yoko, Cambodia, secret wars, no thank you
they must be doing good job as this is most divided since the 60's that i remember, ha, and ugg.
=== most americans can tell when they are being fleeced===
let me explain, trump won 49 of the states by an estimated 2.2 MILLION votes, but when you add in out of touch, left wing, we know better than you do, ivory tower, california's, in the mix, then hrc did win pop vote, because of them. exactly why we have electorial college, so EACH state gets a voice, and not just a few to swing nation. it will take 2/3 of BOTH houses, and then 38 STATE leg. to give away their power to change it, good luck with all that.
moving on....take care