Replies to post #264925 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

It's clear that he could have not won anything on his own, anywhere. Just as he is losing now ... it makes you cringe,
I wish he had become President of the tombs, [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tombs ] that would have been more appropriate.

[StephanieVanbryce]

America’s Biggest Creditors Dump Treasuries in Warning to Trump

by Brian Chappatta
February 13, 2017, 3:00 AM PST

Japanese investors cull U.S. government debt by most since ’13
Currency-hedged returns were worst on record last quarter

In the age of Trump, America’s biggest foreign creditors are suddenly having second thoughts about financing the U.S. government.

In Japan, the largest holder of Treasuries, investors culled their stakes in December by the most in almost four years, the Ministry of Finance’s most recent figures show. What’s striking is the selling has persisted at a time when going abroad has rarely been so attractive. And it’s not just the Japanese. Across the world, foreigners are pulling back from U.S. debt like never before.

From Tokyo to Beijing and London, the consensus is clear: few overseas investors want to step into the $13.9 trillion U.S. Treasury market right now. Whether it’s the prospect of bigger deficits and more inflation under President Donald Trump or higher interest rates from the Federal Reserve, the world’s safest debt market seems less of a sure thing -- particularly after the upswing in yields since November. And then there is Trump’s penchant for saber rattling, which has made staying home that much easier.



“It may be more difficult than usual for Japanese to invest in Treasuries and the dollar this year because of political uncertainty,” said Kenta Inoue, chief strategist for overseas bond investments at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities in Tokyo. “Treasury yields may rise rapidly again in the near future, which will continue to discourage them from buying aggressively.”

Nobody is saying that foreigners will abandon Treasuries altogether. After all, they still hold $5.94 trillion, or roughly 43 percent of the U.S. government debt market. (Though that’s down from 56 percent in 2008.) A significant drawdown can harm major holders like Japan and China as much as it does the U.S.

And, of course, homegrown demand has of late been able to absorb the pickup in overseas selling. Since reaching 2.64 percent in mid-December, yields on benchmark 10-year notes have come back and are essentially flat this year. They were at 2.43 percent on Monday.

Nevertheless, any consistent drop-off in foreign demand could have lasting consequences on America’s ability to finance itself cheaply, particularly in light of Trump’s ambitious plans to boost infrastructure spending, cut taxes and put “America First.” The president has singled out Japan and China, the two biggest overseas creditors, as well as Germany, for devaluing their currencies to gain an unfair advantage in trade.

In December, Japanese investors reduced their investments in U.S. debt by 2.39 trillion yen ($21.3 billion) after a smaller pullback in November. While only a fraction of Japan’s $1.1 trillion of holdings, they were first the back-to-back declines since the start of 2014. China, which owns just over $1 trillion of Treasuries, has been selling since May. Its holdings are at a seven-year low.

For now, risk-averse bond buyers like Daiwa SB Investments’s Shinji Kunibe are cutting back on Treasuries, despite some clear advantages.



Like many institutional money managers that invest abroad, Kunibe, Daiwa SB’s head of fixed-income management, likes to hedge away the risk of the dollar’s ups and downs. And right now, it makes sense. After accounting for hedging costs, 10-year Treasuries yield about 0.9 percent, roughly 10 times the return offered by Japanese government bonds. Going back to the 1980s, Treasuries have rarely enjoyed such a big edge over JGBs.

However, he sees U.S. yields rising further as Trump pursues expansionary fiscal policies and takes a protectionist stance on trade.

“Yields are going to be in an uptrend,” he said.

Big Losses

And investors like Kunibe can ill-afford more losses. Last quarter, Japanese investors who hedged all their dollar exposure in Treasuries suffered a 4.7 percent loss -- the biggest in at least three decades, data from Bank of America showed. The same thing happened in Europe, where record currency-hedged losses also stung euro-based buyers.

“It was a deer in the headlights moment,” said Zoltan Pozsar, a research analyst at Credit Suisse.

Combined with the unpredictability of Trump’s tweet storms, interest-rate increases in the U.S. could further sap overseas demand. Mark Dowding, who helps oversees about $50 billion as co-head of investment-grade debt at BlueBay Asset Management in London, says the firm has already moved to insulate itself from further losses due to higher rates.



What’s more, central bankers in Japan and Europe are still experimenting with monetary policies that may benefit bond investors locally.

Right now, it’s just “much easier to stay home than go abroad,” said Shyam Rajan, Bank of America’s head of U.S. rates strategy.


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-12/america-s-biggest-creditors-dump-treasuries-in-warning-to-trump

[fuagf]

Michael Flynn Resigns as National Security Adviser

By MAGGIE HABERMAN, MATTHEW ROSENBERG, MATT APUZZO and GLENN THRUSHFEB. 13, 2017


Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser, during a news conference on Monday. Credit Stephen
Crowley/The New York Times

[...]

...his resignation came roughly seven hours after Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to the president, said on MSNBC that Mr. Trump had “full confidence” in the retired general.

[Another lie from Conway. How long will she last?]

[...]

Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California and the chairman of the House intelligence committee, was supportive of Mr. Flynn until the end. “Washington, D.C., can be a rough town for honorable people, and Flynn — who has always been a soldier, not a politician — deserves America’s gratitude and respect,” Mr. Nunes said in a statement.

[...]

One person close to the administration who was not authorized to discuss the personnel moves and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that retired Vice Admiral Robert S. Harward is the leading candidate to replace Mr. Flynn, although Mr. Kellogg and David H. Petraeus are still being discussed. It was not clear whether Mr. Petraeus is still expected to appear at the White House this week, as initially discussed by advisers to the president.

[...]

Mr. Flynn and Mr. Pence spoke twice in the past few days about the matter, but administration officials said that rather than fully apologize and accept responsibility, the national security adviser blamed his faulty memory — which irked the typically slow-to-anger Mr. Pence

The slight was compounded by an episode late last year when Mr. Pence went on television to deny that Mr. Flynn’s son, who had posted conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton on social media, had been given a security clearance by the transition team. The younger Mr. Flynn had, indeed, been given such a clearance, even though his father had told Mr. Pence’s team that he had not.

a fair amount more .. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/us/politics/donald-trump-national-security-adviser-michael-flynn.html?_r=0

.. lostsa lies in the T-team, it's obvious they see their boss as a good role model ..
and how could Petraeus ever have been in the running to replace Flynn? .. BONKERS!

How David Petraeus avoided felony charges and possible prison time


David Petraeus pleaded guilty last year to mishandling classified information; he had given his biographer, who was also his mistress, sensitive material. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

By Adam Goldman January 25, 2016

Inside a secure conference room on the sixth floor of the Justice Department in early 2014, top federal law enforcement ­officials gathered to hear what criminal charges prosecutors were contemplating against David H. Petraeus, the ­storied wartime general and former CIA director whose public career had ended about 15 months earlier over an extramarital affair.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-david-petraeus-avoided-felony-charges-and-possible-prison-time/2016/01/25/d77628dc-bfab-11e5-83d4-42e3bceea902_story.html?utm_term=.61c90db4e78a

[fuagf]

The Trump-Russia scandals: a quick visual guide

"The timeline of Trump's ties with Russia lines up with allegations of conspiracy and misconduct"

The web of connections in Trump’s Russia controversies.
Updated by Alvin Chang and Javier Zarracina Mar 2, 2017, 5:00pm EST

President Donald Trump’s Russia scandals are deeply intertwined.

As Vox’s Zack Beauchamp writes, there are three separate Trump-Russia scandals .. http://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/15/14620560/trump-flynn-russia-campaign .. that together call into question the nature of Trump’s relationship with Russia: the resignation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn; the hacking of the DNC; and the as yet mostly unproven dossier. Now it seems there could be a fourth .. http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/1/14786100/jeff-sessions-russia-trump : The Washington Post reported .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessions-spoke-twice-with-russian-ambassador-during-trumps-presidential-campaign-justice-officials-say/2017/03/01/77205eda-feac-11e6-99b4-9e613afeb09f_story.html?utm_term=.4e07ed394236 .. Wednesday night that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with Russia’s ambassador to the US twice, even though he has stated twice that he did not.

To explain how the players in these scandals are related, we made a web that highlights the important cross-connections in this Trump-Russia universe.



http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/2/14791084/trump-russia-chart

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