CapitalistHQ: May 2017

Wednesday 31 May 2017

Sean Hannity Invites Julian Assange to Host His Radio Show

Wednesday, after Julian Assange suggested he would be starting a “weekly radio broadcast/podcast”, Sean Hannity invited him to host his show.

Assange tweeted on Tuesday:

“Several US networks suggest I start a weekly radio broadcast/podcast from within the embassy siege. A good idea? Ideas for format, title?”

Several US networks suggest I start a weekly radio broadcast/podcast from within the embassy siege. A good idea? Ideas for format, title?

— Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) May 30, 2017

Hannity quoted the tweet and replied:

[email protected] If you would like to fill in for me one day I am on over 550 stations and 14 plus million listeners.”

@JulianAssange If you would like to fill in for me one day I am on over 550 stations and 14 plus million listeners. https://t.co/qXUQAup7Of

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 31, 2017

Assange replied to Hannity:

“Great! Now if only MSNBC et al had the same courage to have people host they don’t always agree with!”

Great! Now if only MSNBC et al had the same courage to have people host they don’t always agree with!

— Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) May 31, 2017

We’ll have to wait and see where this leads . . .

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Sorry Siri – You’re The Dumbest “Smart” Assistant Out There

Many industry experts predict that our interactions with computing devices will move away from text-based input towards voice-based input in the future. Smartphones, voice-enabled speakers and other devices already come with so-called smart assistants such as Siri, Cortana or Google Assistant. As Statista's Felix Richter notes, these virtual assistants can help you organize your day, control smart home devices and answer general questions. Or can they?

According to research conducted by digital agency Stone Temple "smart assistants" may not be quite as smart as they are made out to be.

You will find more statistics at Statista

Take Amazon's Alexa for example: the assistant powering the company’s popular line of voice-enabled speakers was able to answer just 20.7 percent of the 5,000 questions fired at it as part of the experiment. Notably, Google Assistant and Microsoft's Cortana were much more knowledgeable when it came to these factual questions while Apple's Siri performed similar to Alexa… but as the chart above shows, Siri was the worst-performer in terms of 100% correct responses.

source http://capitalisthq.com/sorry-siri-youre-the-dumbest-smart-assistant-out-there/

Bitter Hillary Clinton Blames ‘Bankrupt’ DNC For Crushing Election Loss (VIDEO)

Bitter Hillary Clinton slammed the DNC and blamed them for her crushing election loss while speaking at a Recode conference on Wednesday.

It was the Russians! It was Comey! Now it’s the bankrupt DNC’s fault that Hillary Clinton got shellacked in the 2016 election!

Hillary: “Let me just do a comparison for you. So, I set up my campaign and we have our own data operation. I get the nomination (or she stole it from Bernie Sanders), so now I’m the nominee of the Democratic party. I inherit NOTHING from the Democratic party. I mean it was bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, non-existent, wrong. I had to inject money into it–the DNC to keep it going.”

Hillary Clinton went on, slamming President Trump, saying he practically did nothing and walked into the RNC being a well-oiled machine:

Hillary: “Donald Trump who did nothing about really setting up any kind of data operation, inherits an RNC data foundation that after the Republicans lost in 2012…they raised close to $100 million, they brought in their main vendors…”

Hillary continued blaming everyone else except herself. The reality is, Hillary Clinton was a candidate with decades of corruption behind her. Hillary called half the people in this country ‘deplorable’ and was running against the ‘change’ candidate in a ‘change election’. Hillary Clinton lost because the American people have had enough of the Clinton’s. That’s it.

VIDEO Via Chuck Ross YouTube:

H/T The Daily Caller

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source http://capitalisthq.com/bitter-hillary-clinton-blames-bankrupt-dnc-for-crushing-election-loss-video/

“I Was The Victim”: Hillary Blames Loss On “Russian Agents,” High Expectations, Comey, The Media And WikiLeaks

Earlier today Hillary Clinton offered up what some have described as one of the most delusional interviews of all time at Recode’s CodeCon conference, in which she blamed everything and everyone, including but certainly not limited to: FBI Director Comey, “1,000s of Russian agents”, right-wing media outlets, Russia, sexism, WikiLeaks, Russia, a funding deficit at the DNC, the New York Times (yes, the NYT) …oh, and Russia, for her 2016 election loss. And while she certainly “takes responsibility” for every decision she made, Hillary desperately wants you to understand that’s not why she lost…because, you know, Russia.

“I take responsibility for every decision I made, but that’s not why I lost.”

Of course, in all of her rambling, Hillary never offered up a viable conclusion on why “Russian hackers” were only able to sway voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania but not in places like Virginia, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, states where anti-Russian tinfoil must be impervious.

The following tweet pretty much sums up the interview.

So Trump, who the left thinks is a moron, according to Hillary organized Macedonian websites, Russian agents, algorithms, & cyber hackings

— GreekFire23 (@GreekFire23) May 31, 2017

Here are some of the details:

Starting with the Russia narrative, Hillary would like for you to know that Putin’s primary goal is to topple the U.S.

Moreover, it’s almost certain that he colluded directly with Trump in this effort, because how else could Russian agents possibly know that American’s might like to better understand Hillary’s efforts to collude with the DNC to undermine the campaign of her competitor or how she used TV personalities to steal debate questions in advance… please, that kind of insight could only come from Trump himself.

“It’s important that Americans…understand that Putin wants to bring us down. He was an old KGB agent.”

“We saw evidence of [Russian involvement] and we could track it. But they were shooed away.”

“The Russians are increasingly..launching cyber attacks. A lot of the information they’ve stolen they use for internal purposes. So this was different because they went public.”

“That was the conclusion. I think it’s fair to ask how did that actually influence the campaign and how did they know what messages to deliver. Who told them? Who were they coordinating with or colluding
with? I’m leaning Trump.“

“Within one hour of the Access Hollywood tapes being leaked, the Russians or say Wikileaks — same thing — dumped the John Podesta emails.”

“The Russians in my opinion could not have known how best to weaponize that information unless they had been guided by Americans.”

Ironically, even though ‘Russia’ somehow used her emails to undermine her entire campaign, the content of her emails “was the biggest nothing burger ever.”

“My email account was turned into the biggest scandal since Lord knows when. And, you know, in the book I’m just using everything that anybody else said about it besides me to basically say this was the biggest nothing-burger ever. It was a mistake. I’ve said it was a mistake, and obviously if I could turn the clock back I wouldn’t have done it in the first place. But the way that it was used was very damaging.”

Hillary

Moreover, even though most of the stories that we and other media outlets covered came directly from the DNC’s and John Podesta’s own emails, Hillary would like for you to know that it was all “fake news”… just like it was “fake news” when Donna Brazile told everyone that she didn’t share debate questions with Hillary.

“They were run of the mill emails. Stuff that were so common. Within one hour they dumped them and then began to weaponize them. They had their allies like Infowars say the most outlandish, absurd lies you could imagine. They had to be ready for that.”

“That really influenced the information people were relying on. If you look at Facebook the vast majority of the news items posted were fake. They were connected to, as we now know, the 1000 Russian agents… They were connected to the bots. It was such a new experience. I understand why people on Facebook would think ‘oh Hillary Clinton did that. I did not know that.'”

“Fake news…lies that’s a good word too. The other side was using content that was just flat out false and delivering it in a very personalized way. Above the radar screen and below.”

Meanwhile, Hillary seems to still believe CNN’s report that Comey was duped into re-opening her email investigation on October 28th by a “classic piece of Russian disinformation,” a report that CNN has already retracted and we proved was pure “fake news” at it’s finest (see “‘Secret’ Russian Doc Influenced Comey’s Hillary Probe Even Though He Knew It Was Fake: CNN“).

“We know it hurt us, as I explain in my book, the Comey letter which was now we know partly based on a false memo from the Russians. It was a classic piece of Russian disinformation. So for whatever reason, he dumps that on me on October 28 and I immediately start falling.”

Moreover, despite what you may remember from that original Comey press conference last summer, Hillary wants you to know that she was “very responsible and not at all careless” when it came to the handling of her State Department emails…

“Well if you went all the way back, doing things that others have done before was no longer acceptable. I didn’t break any rule nobody said don’t do this. I was very responsible and not at all careless. You end up with a situation that was exploited.”

Which we believe is somewhat contradictory to the FBI’s finding…but it’s hard to tell..you be the judge:

Meanwhile, despite pretty much every major media outlet, with the exception of Fox News, dedicating their networks to cheerleading for the Hillary Clinton campaign, Hillary was also convinced that she lost because CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NYT, Washington Post, etc, etc, etc are not as “effective” as the “media forces on the Republican side”… or Russian propaganda for that matter: apparently RT’s YouTube channel has greater reach and more influence than virtually every paper of record in the US.

“Here’s a really telling statistic that has been validated. I had this old fashioned idea that it would matter what I would do as president. We had a great tech program and a really good set of policies. In 2008 which as the last time you had a contested election, the policies put forth by President Obama, Senator McCain got 222 minutes of airtime. In 2016 despite my best efforts, we got 32 minutes, total, over 18 months.”

“Media forces on the Republican side are entrenched and very effective. They’re beginning to call the shots on those local stations. Local TV is still incredibly powerful.”

Again, this twitter user summarized Hillary’s media delusions well:

Hillary sounds like the media treated her like Trump

— GreekFire23 (@GreekFire23) May 31, 2017

Oh, and she also lost because of sexism…

“I have been on many speaking platforms with many men who are in office or running for office. And the crowd gets you going and I watch my male counterparts and they beat the podium and they yell and the crowd loves it. I have tried that and it’s been less than successful.”

…and because she got pizzaid for some Goldman speeches

“Men got paid for the speeches they made…I got paid for the speeches I made.”

“I have to say, Walt I never thought someone would throw out my entire career…because I made a couple of speeches.”

But, if there was one silver lining in today’s interview, perhaps it came when Hillary confirmed that she’s not running for President ever again. With the CodeCon scapegoatravaganza all but assuring that Hillary will go for the trifecta in 2020, that was the only real “fake news” today.

source http://capitalisthq.com/i-was-the-victim-hillary-blames-loss-on-russian-agents-high-expectations-comey-the-media-and-wikileaks/

Trump Quietly Continues Obama’s ‘Catch and Release’ at Border

President Donald J. Trump is allowing former President Barack Obama’s “catch and release” of illegal immigrants to continue deep into his administration’s term with no end in sight to the controversial open borders protocol. Border Patrol agents are once again sounding the alarm and alerting the public about the separation between DC’s rhetoric and the realities on the U.S.-Mexico border — a practice that the agents hoped would become unnecessary under the Trump Administration.

Though Trump’s interior enforcement of U.S. immigration laws has resulted in far fewer illegal crossings at the border, agents say that low numbers will not be sustained because the Trump Administration has not actually made substantial changes within border security as a whole.

Border Patrol Agent Brandon Judd, President of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), spoke with Breitbart Texas on Trump’s quiet continuation of Obama’s catch and release. He stated, “Obama’s catch and release is definitely continuing and our government is releasing illegal aliens into U.S. communities. The steps taken for such releases have slightly changed and the numbers are not as high, but it is still occurring. Under Trump, ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is holding more illegal aliens than what they did under Obama, but make no mistake, ICE is still releasing a good number of illegal aliens into U.S. communities. Americans need to know this.”

Though Trump ordered catch-and-release to end and despite claims from the Justice Department that the protocol is now over, the data show that it simply has not ended. One news site touted the program as over yet further reading in the same article shows it was simply reduced a bit.

Border Patrol Agent Judd cautioned against media spin on the issue. He stated, “Again, Americans need to know the facts here. They need to know that a decrease in the numbers of illegal aliens released does not mean the program is over. Outlets or leaders making such claims only serve to reduce the accurate information that Americans need to make decisions.” Agent Judd continued, “Illegal aliens are being released into U.S. communities just as they were under President Obama.”

Brandon Darby is managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.

(Disclosure: Breitbart Texas sponsored the Green Line podcast for the NBPC in an effort to provide a platform for agents to inform the public about the realities on the border and what Border Patrol agents face. Director Brandon Darby received an award from the Laredo chapter of the NBPC for his work in helping to defend and bring a voice to Border Patrol agents. Breitbart News assisted in covering funeral costs for a slain Border Patrol agent previously.)

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source http://capitalisthq.com/trump-quietly-continues-obamas-catch-and-release-at-border/

Don’t read too much into the dollar’s decline

If the back half of 2016 was the mirror image of its first half, then 2017 is shaping up to be something in-between. Equity and credit markets continue to grind higher but the composition of the rally has changed. Value and small caps are lagging while growth and yield-generating stocks are back in vogue. Outside of equities, things also look different. Long-dated bond yields have reversed lower, while the U.S. dollar has given up all of its post-election gains. See the chart below.

As the dollar has retreated, both of the traditional major FX alternatives—the euro and the Japanese yen—and less traditional currencies are gaining. Gold is up 12% from its December low and more exotic dollar alternatives are surging. Last week bitcoin hit a high of $ 2,800, making it twice as expensive as an ounce of gold. Other cryptocurrencies are also surging. This has some investors wondering whether this is the start of a long-term dollar decline. We are skeptical. Instead, we believe something more mundane is happening: a reevaluation of the post-election narrative.

Reversal of the “Trump Trade”

Not all but much of the post-election rally was predicated on a particular narrative: The new administration would provide an economic boost in the form of tax cuts and fiscal stimulus. Given the visible struggles in passing healthcare reform and the ongoing investigations, investors are reevaluating the extent to which the administration can deliver. Tax cuts and stimulus may arrive late, in a smaller package, or not at all. This is causing investors to recalibrate their growth and rate expectations, in turn impacting the dollar.

Declining expectations for U.S. growth

The post-election narrative was not just about Trump. There was also a growing view that the U.S. was finally shaking off its post-crisis malaise. Recent evidence has been mixed. The U.S. Citigroup Economic Surprise Index fell into negative territory earlier this spring. Other indicators, such as the Atlanta Fed GDP Tracker called GDPNow, suggest a robust rebound in the second quarter, but it is not clear the economy is shifting into a higher growth regime. At the same time most measures of inflation are decelerating, not accelerating.

The rest of the world is catching up

After leading for most of the post-crisis period, other parts of the world are starting to stage their own rebounds. Real U.S. GDP was 1.2% in the first quarter; in the eurozone it was 1.7%. While U.S. growth expectations for 2017 have fallen 0.15% since March, expectations for European growth are rising.

None of this is particularly bad news for the United States. Growth is still respectable and a weaker dollar is a de facto monetary easing. The reversal in the dollar has also aided and abetted the rebound in emerging markets, many of which struggled during the post-election dollar rally. It simply means that the U.S. does not look quite so strong, or the rest of the world as weak as some had assumed late last year.

Russ Koesterich, CFA, is Portfolio Manager for BlackRock’s Global Allocation team and is a regular contributor to The Blog.

Investing involves risks, including possible loss of principal. This material is not intended to be relied upon as a forecast, research or investment advice, and is not a recommendation, offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or to adopt any investment strategy. The opinions expressed are as of May 2017 and may change as subsequent conditions vary. The information and opinions contained in this post are derived from proprietary and nonproprietary sources deemed by BlackRock to be reliable, are not necessarily all-inclusive and are not guaranteed as to accuracy. As such, no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given and no responsibility arising in any other way for errors and omissions (including responsibility to any person by reason of negligence) is accepted by BlackRock, its officers, employees or agents. This post may contain “forward-looking” information that is not purely historical in nature. Such information may include, among other things, projections and forecasts. There is no guarantee that any forecasts made will come to pass. Reliance upon information in this post is at the sole discretion of the reader. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. ©2017 BlackRock, Inc. All rights reserved. BLACKROCK is a registered trademark of BlackRock, Inc., or its subsidiaries in the United States and elsewhere. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. RO-167470
BlackRock Blog

source http://capitalisthq.com/dont-read-too-much-into-the-dollars-decline/

AAN spends $250K pushing tax reform with new digital ads

White Prof at Evergreen State College Speaks Out: “Whites were asked to leave for a ‘Day of Absence.’ I objected. Then 50 yelling students crashed my class.”

Racially charged, anarchic protests have engulfed Evergreen State College, a small, public liberal-arts institution where I have taught since 2003. In a widely disseminated video of the first recent protest on May 23, an angry mob of about 50 students disrupted my class, called me a racist, and demanded that I resign. My “racist” offense? I had challenged coercive segregation by race. Specifically, I had objected to a planned “Day of Absence” in which white people were asked to leave campus on April 12.

Day of Absence is a tradition at Evergreen. In previous years students and faculty of color organized a day on which they met off campus—a symbolic act based on the Douglas Turner Ward play in which all the black residents of a Southern town fail to show up one morning. This year, however, the formula was reversed. “White students, staff and faculty will be invited to leave the campus for the day’s activities,” the student newspaper reported, adding that the decision was reached after people of color “voiced concern over feeling as if they are unwelcome on campus, following the 2016 election.”

In March I objected in an email to all staff and faculty. “There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles . . . and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away,” I wrote. “On a college campus, one’s right to speak—or to be—must never be based on skin color.”

My email was published by the student newspaper, and Day of Absence came and went almost without incident. The protest of my class emerged seemingly out of the blue more than a month later. Evergreen has slipped into madness. You don’t need the news to tell you that—the protesters’ own videos will do. But those clips reveal neither the path that led to this psychosis, nor the cautionary nature of the tale for other campuses.

Evergreen is arguably the most radical college in the country—and while it does lean far to the left in a political sense, it is the school’s pedagogical structure to which I refer. Rather than placing students in many separate classes, most of our curriculum is integrated into full-time programs that may run the entire academic year. This structure allows students and professors to come to know each other very well, such that Evergreen can deliver a deep, personally tailored education that would be impossible elsewhere. When it works well, it is unlike anything else. Last week’s breakdown of institutional order is far from an indictment of our founder’s wisdom.

Rather, the protests resulted from a tension that has existed throughout the entire American academy for decades: The button-down empirical and deductive fields, including all the hard sciences, have lived side by side with “critical theory,” postmodernism and its perception-based relatives. Since the creation in 1960s and ’70s of novel, justice-oriented fields, these incompatible worldviews have repelled one another. The faculty from these opposing perspectives, like blue and red voters, rarely mix in any context where reality might have to be discussed. For decades, the uneasy separation held, with the factions enduring an unhappy marriage for the good of the (college) kids.

Things began to change at Evergreen in 2015, when the school hired a new president, George Bridges. His vision as an administrator involved reducing professorial autonomy, increasing the size of his administration, and breaking apart Evergreen’s full-time programs. But the faculty, which plays a central role in the college’s governance, would never have agreed to these changes. So Mr. Bridges tampered with the delicate balance between the sciences and humanities by, in effect, arming the postmoderns.

The particular mechanism was arcane, but it involved an Equity Council established in 2016. The council advanced a plan that few seem to have read, even now—but that faculty were nonetheless told we must accept without discussion. It would shift the college “from a diversity agenda” to an “equity agenda” by, among other things, requiring an “equity justification” for every faculty hire.

The plan and the way it is being forced on the college are both deeply authoritarian, and the attempt to mandate equality of outcome is unwise in the extreme. Equality of outcome is a discredited concept, failing on both logical and historical grounds, as anyone knows who has studied the misery of the 20th century. It wouldn’t have withstood 20 minutes of reasoned discussion.

This presented traditional independent academic minds with a choice: Accept the plan and let the intellectual descendants of Critical Race Theory dictate the bounds of permissible thought to the sciences and the rest of the college, or insist on discussing the plan’s shortcomings and be branded as racists. Most of my colleagues chose the former, and the protesters are in the process of articulating the terms. I dissented and ended up teaching in the park.

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Snyder Rages “It’s Time To Flush The Toilet”

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

Is it fair to compare Congress to a toilet? If there is one institution that embodies the corruption that permeates Washington D.C., it is the United States Congress.

Dominated by extremely selfish career politicians that are primarily interested in raising enough money to win the next election, Congress has become a cesspool of filth, fraud and malfeasance. The American people are absolutely sick of this, and that is why approval ratings for Congress are consistently much lower than for any other political institution. In fact, at this moment Congress has an average approval rating of just 18.3 percent according to Real Clear Politics. Donald Trump captured the imagination of tens of millions of American voters when he pledged to “drain the swamp” during the last election, but I say that it is time to “flush the toilet” because the only way that we will ever be able to turn the federal government in a positive direction is by clearing out as many of these Congress critters as possible.

Getting Donald Trump into the White House was the biggest political miracle in American history, but now his agenda is almost completely stalled and it is Congress that is to blame.

For example, Trump repeatedly pledged that he was going to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the southern border to combat illegal immigration, but at this point funding for that wall is being completely blocked.

What is the problem?

Congress.

Trump also pledged that Obamacare would be repealed very rapidly once he became president, but that obviously has not happened.

What is the problem?

Congress.

In fact, it is looking quite doubtful that a bill to repeal Obamacare will ever get through the U.S. Senate…

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is tempering expectations that the Senate will pass an overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system, promising his colleagues a vote but not success.

McConnell in his public comments and private conversations about the ObamaCare repeal and replace bill is painting a more sober picture than Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who in March guaranteed passage through the House.

McConnell is stopping well short of any grand pronouncement.

Trump also promised all of us that our taxes would be going way down, but even though the Republicans control both houses of Congress this also seems to be going nowhere fast. The following comes from the Wall Street Journal…

The GOP’s dreams have collided with interest-group lobbying and the tax system’s reality. Politicians all profess to hate the tax code, but they don’t agree on exactly what they hate. Voters gripe about complexity but are wary of losing cherished breaks that are woven into the economy.

“Eventually you run out of ways to pay for your promises,” said Alan Cole, an economist at the Tax Foundation, which favors a simpler code with lower rates. “There aren’t any free obvious sources of money where you can just do the thing and nobody gets mad.”

I could bring up a whole bunch of other issues such as the national debt, trade with China, unconstitutional government surveillance, etc. but I think that you get the point.

Trump’s presidency is going to be mostly wasted if we do not get him some help. And I am not just talking about clearing out more Democrats. Right now the Republicans control the Senate and the House, but the problem is that most of them are “establishment Republicans”. Career politicians from both parties have sold their souls to the special interests and big donors that fund their campaigns, and this is why such a dramatic political revolution is necessary.

Sadly, most Americans don’t realize just how deep the corruption goes in Washington these days. To illustrate this, I would like to share just a few quotes from “The Confessions of Congressman X”. It claims to have been written by an anonymous Democratic member of the House of Representatives, and the following quotes very much ring true to those of us that understand how things in D.C. really work in our day and age…

-“Most of my colleagues are dishonest career politicians who revel in the power and special-interest money that’s lavished upon them.”

-“My main job is to keep my job, to get reelected. It takes precedence over everything.”

-“Voters are incredibly ignorant and know little about our form of government and how it works.”

-“It’s far easier than you think to manipulate a nation of naive, self-absorbed sheep who crave instant gratification.”

-“Fundraising is so time consuming I seldom read any bills I vote on. Like many of my colleagues, I don’t know how the legislation will be implemented, or what it’ll cost.”

-“We spend money we don’t have and blithely mortgage the future with a wink and a nod. Screw the next generation. It’s about getting credit now, lookin’ good for the upcoming election.”

And it isn’t just political corruption that is the problem. When you start peeling back the onion, you find some of the most disturbing things imaginable in political circles. For example, just consider what police just uncovered in New York City…

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is hiring! There’s a vacancy in his administration for a computer programmer analyst, in the Department of Design and Construction. That’s because Jacob Schwartz, 29, a DNC staffer and former analyst, has been arrested and charged with being in possession of “kiddie porn” involving children as young as 6 months old.

Schwartz is also the president of the Manhattan Young Democrats and the downstate region vice president of the New York State Young Democrats. In other words, he was a “made” Democrat, part of the inner circle of budding influential NYC politicians, who was even friends with Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Robbie Mook.

Schwartz was caught with 3,000 child pornography images and 89 videos on his laptop after he downloaded them from the Internet. He surrendered his laptop to police, signed a release granting them permission to do a search of his hard drive, and was subsequently arrested. He has since posted $ 7,500 bail.

Of course stories such as this are just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more out there, but we aren’t really supposed to talk about those things.

So what can be done?

Well, we can sit back and keep on complaining as our country deteriorates right in front of our eyes, or we can do something about it.

On Memorial Day back in 1982, President Ronald Reagan delivered a stirring address at Arlington National Cemetery. The following is an excerpt from that address…

I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them.

Yet, we must try to honor them—not for their sakes alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.

Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we—in a less final, less heroic way—be willing to give of ourselves.

There is no war for us to fight, but let there be no doubt that we are in the midst of a great battle for the soul of our nation.

If this generation of Americans does not stand up and defend liberty and freedom, the forces that seek to destroy our country will win by default.

For years, many of us have been trying to persuade our leaders to do the right things, but by now it has become exceedingly clear that they simply are not listening.

So if we want the direction of our country to change, we have got to vote them out and replace them with others that will listen to the will of the people.

I am under no illusion that this will be easy. The special interests and the big donors have a tremendous amount of money, and the mainstream media is very closely allied with the establishment.

But the election of Donald Trump showed us that anything is possible, and I choose to believe that it is possible for us to take our government back.

We just have to be willing to try.

source http://capitalisthq.com/snyder-rages-its-time-to-flush-the-toilet/

Losing Her Head

Kathy Griffin lost her head and went too far. Maybe it was due to the waning popularity the liberal comedienne had been enduring. It may have helped summon the idea for her attention-getting beheading stunt. She got that attention, but her ‘joke’ was spectacularly unfunny.

It has become too commonplace on the left to threaten violence against those with whom they disagree when they should be offering debate. This is especially typical of the ‘Antifa’ mentality. They hurl bike locks first and ask no questions later. If the left continues to promote and encouraging violence, they may get it. We all know the nation is more divided than ever. Despite her apology, Kathy Griffin helped widen that divide.

—Ben Garrison

Order the MAGA PACK now!

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Artificial Intelligence for Investing

The Darren Aronofsky film Pi features a mathematician with the uncanny ability to perform complex arithmetic in his head. Notwithstanding his talent, he uses a computer to make stock predictions. In one scene, after recognizing a predictive pattern in a 216-digit output, the character becomes so overwhelmed that he passes out.

This scenario is science fiction, but computers have long had greater processing power than humans. When used to build artificial intelligence (AI), as its datasets grow, so does a computer’s advantage.

Rules-Based Systems

Rules-based investing can be traced back to the industry’s formative literature. Books written by Benjamin Graham and other legendary investors explain investment rules that practitioners have tested and implemented over the years. This early reasoning provides the foundation for many of the rules-based processes used to make active investment decisions today.

Explicit rules remove emotion from investment decisions and limit human error in execution. Systematic approaches often use the same information that discretionary investors do — market data inputs with buy or sell decision outputs. The rules driving these decisions are designed by humans, but computers maintain an important advantage: they can apply the directives to more markets and instruments than any individual could possibly analyze.

Rules-based systems represent AI in its basic form as a series of “if-then” statements used to make decisions in the place of a human. These systems let investors take the logic in their heads and codify it to process information more efficiently and consistently.

Machines Acquiring Knowledge

A static rules-based system is intelligent, but limited because it cannot learn on its own. Machine learning occurs when a system processes data to assess its predictive power and then, using the information it has learned, improves its process for the next iteration.

Dassori_Rules-Based_1

One way systematic investment strategies acquire knowledge is by borrowing logic from genetics. In evolutionary computation, investment rules evolve through selection using parent and offspring decision trees. Successful rules survive, much like genes in reproduction, and when computers can combine each strategy’s best characteristics, it does not take a lifetime.

AI is also applied to investing via an extension of machine learning known as deep learning. Deep learning seeks to recognize patterns in financial markets through a process similar to facial and speech recognition. It uses neural networks to process information, effectively connecting virtual neurons by mimicking the design of the human brain.

Dassori_Pattern_Recognition

While still in its early stages, this form of pattern recognition is positioned to disrupt traditional forms of technical analysis. Advances in processing power have made it possible to identify patterns through filters with more depth than a simple chart of prices.

Deep Learning and Big Data

The volume of financial market data is enormous and growing daily. Deciphering signal from noise in this environment represents an opportunity of equal magnitude. In this context, applying deep learning to the universe of big data offers the greatest investment potential for AI.

While the performance of most algorithms decreases with increasing amounts of data, deep learning is less affected by this influence. As a result, the intersection of deep learning and big data is where most research is currently focused. Ultimately a combination of these disciplines will be available in the future.

Investing has traditionally been a cyclical business, and the technology being developed today is a departure from this. Being able to analyze more information with greater intelligence than what is humanly possible is a structural change in an industry well equipped for innovation. Investors naturally focus on where they can have an edge, and combining their strengths with those of AI will increase the value they create with each investment.

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All posts are the opinion of the author. As such, they should not be construed as investment advice, nor do the opinions expressed necessarily reflect the views of CFA Institute or the author’s employer.

Image credit: ©Getty Images/JIRAROJ PRADITCHAROENKUL

Andrew Dassori

Andrew Dassori is the Chief Investment Officer of Wavelength Capital Management, an independent alternative investment firm based in New York. Prior to founding Wavelength, Dassori was a portfolio manager at Credit Suisse focused on global macro investment strategies. While there he was also a member of the firm’s Global Citizens Program through which he worked at Equity Bank in Nairobi where he was responsible for a team building default risk models for microfinance loans, and represented the bank in meetings with the IMF, World Bank and other economic policy institutions. Dassori received a BSc from the London School of Economics.

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Terrorists are engaged in a war against civilization- it is up to all who value …

Terrorists are engaged in a war against civilization- it is up to all who value life to confront & defeat this evil➡️https://t.co/haeuvCIF6I

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2017

Source by Donald J. Trump

source http://capitalisthq.com/terrorists-are-engaged-in-a-war-against-civilization-it-is-up-to-all-who-value/

5 ways to thrive in a fiduciary landscape

Trust is key to your excelling in a fee-based environment. Establish your role as a trustworthy partner using our five best practices.
Vanguard Blog for Advisors

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KATHY GRIFFIN TRAUMATIZES 11 Year-Old Barron Trump Who Thought Disgusting Image Was His Dad!

HOW AWFUL IS THE AMERICAN LEFT?
This awful—

11 year-old Barron Trump was reportedly traumatized after seeing Kathy Griffin’s picture holding a beheaded Donald Trump on television.
He thought something had happened to his father!

TMZ reported:

Barron Trump was watching television Tuesday at home with Melania when Kathy Griffin’s photo appeared on the screen, and his initial reaction was that something terrible happened to his father.

Trump family sources tell us Barron was in front of the TV watching a show when the news came on and he saw the bloody, beheaded image. We’re told he panicked and screamed, “Mommy, Mommy!”
As it was put to us, “He’s 11. He doesn’t know who Kathy Griffin is and the head she was holding resembled his dad.”

Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself. My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2017

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Inflation indicator breaks support, continues to fall

compass for kimble charting solutions post

The economy continues to do well, along with the stock market, prompting many to be concerned about inflationary pressures picking up speed. Below looks at the TIP/TLT ratio and the message it is sending about inflationary pressures, or lack of.

CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE

Since 2011, this inflationary indicator has continued to create a series of lower highs, inside of the red shaded channel above. As mentioned in the chart, the indicator actually hit a low last July and started pushing higher. At the time of the low in this indicator at (1), nearly 90% of bond investors were bullish bonds and few thought the Fed would raise rates. That was a crowded trade that did not go well for bond bulls, as bonds fell hard and rates pushed sharply higher.

Turning the page forward 10-months, the majority feel like the Fed will raise rates. Does the indicator agree with the crowd at this time? The TIP/TLT ratio hit 6-year falling channel resistance at (2) in March of this year and the ratio has continued to slip lower. The weakness the past 6-weeks has the ratio breaking below rising support at (3).

Was the rally in this ratio at (1) a signal that inflation is back or was the rally nothing more than a counter trend rally, in a continuing downtrend? If inflation is really back, one would need to see this ratio reflecting strength and breaking out of its 6-year falling channel

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No Diss, And An Upbeat FMSR Sends Kiwi Higher!

Good day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Whew! I had a much better night of sleep last night! I still don’t know what the problem was on Monday night, but I certainly was glad it did not return last night! Not much going on in the currencies or metals as I fire up my laptops, and check out what went on in the overnight markets… Another loss for my beloved Cardinals. The offense has simply dropped off a cliff, and dolt me, I stayed up to watch most of that debacle last night! The Band Yes, greets me this morning with their song: Roundabout… The Big Boss, Frank Trotter, sent me a link to an article on what the song Roundabout is all about, the last time I mentioned this song…

Well, as I said in the opening, not much going on in the currencies and metals.. Although we did have one strong move overnight from kiwi, which got a clean bill of health from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s (RBNZ) Financial Monetary Stability Report for May. I’m waiting for the data of the day which will come from the Eurozone, where their May CPI (consumer inflation) will print. Here’s the skinny, Eurozone CPI bumped higher in March and April (up to 1.7%) and Eurozone President, Mario Draghi, shrugged it off saying that it was “short-term” and wouldn’t continue to go higher. The experts have this May CPI report as confirmation of what Draghi was saying, and they think CPI could slip back toward the 1% level that was prevalent in the Eurozone before the last two months… So, in the end this morning, the euro will be tied to “how much CPI falls in May”… Like I said, we’re waiting for the data to print as I write…

I mentioned the RBNZ’s Financial Monetary Stability Report (FMSR) above… The report was upbeat and confirmed what I kept saying, which was that the New Zealand financial system is sound, and the risks facing the system have reduced in the past 6 months… The “risks” that the RBNZ is talking about is the Housing Bubble in Auckland. You may recall me telling you a few months ago, that the RBNZ had tightened the LVR (loan to value ratio) and that has done a lot of the heavy lifting toward reducing the risks… However, RBNZ Gov. Wheeler was quick to point out that, “As sharp reversal in risk sentiment could lead to higher funding costs for N.Z. Banks and an increase in domestic borrowing costs.” Wheeler also pointed out that “the outlook for the global economy has been improving but global political and policy uncertainty remains elevated and debt burdens are high in a number of countries”…

Thanks to my friendship with the former Gov. of the RBNZ, Don Brash, who set me up to receive Reserve Bank notices a long time ago… These notices give me RBNZ insight , which is helpful, like the info on the FMSR… I have to say that I was shocked that RBNZ Gov. Wheeler, didn’t diss kiwi in the press conference following the issuance of the FMSR! And so, with RBNZ Gov. Wheeler not dissing kiwi like he usually does, and the FMSR having an upbeat tone to it, kiwi took off and gained over 1/2-cent to a 71-cent handle this morning… Remember a couple of weeks ago, when kiwi got the stuffing knocked out of it, and fell back to a 68-cent handle? I like looking at 68-cents in the rear view mirror!

Well, the risk meter should be ratcheting higher this morning on the news overnight that a bomb exploded in Kabul near the opening of the Green Zone which houses U.S. military headquarters and embassy… I was watching Gold not reacting at all to the news of the suicide bomb explosion. So, maybe I’m making more of this information than needs to be made of…

The euro has bumped up 20 ticks from where it was when I first turned on the currency screen this morning. Maybe the CPI data has printed and I’m just not seeing it yet… I’ll keep an eye out for that!

Pound sterling got whacked again last night after another poll, this time it was the YouGov poll, which showed a further narrowing of the lead for Conservatives, and the YouGov pollsters decided to make a call afterward, saying that they believe that Conservatives could lose their majority in this election… Wait! What? OK, calm down and read on… It appears that the YouGov Poll is not a broad poll and therefore they have a wide plus- minus adjustment on their numbers… So, let’s take this report with a grain of salt and move on, eh?

In China last night, their May PMI (manufacturing index) printed better than expected at 51.2 and expectations at 51… The April PMI was also 51.2, so no gain or loss for the Chinese in May, with regards to manufacturing. The Chinese renminbi was allowed to appreciate a small bit on the PMI print outcome. Stabilizing data is important to China right now… They need all the stabilizing they can get!

Well, looky there! The euro has just jumped above the 1.12 handle, I’m still not seeing any data printing, but… Even a quick check of my Eurozone economic calendar didn’t show me what I was looking for to confirm that a better than expected CPI report is responsible for the move in the euro this morning. I did see most of the CPI reports for the individual countries of the Eurozone, and most of them were reporting better than expected CPI for May, except Germany, and with Germany being the largest economy of the Eurozone, it throws a larger than the average bear, spanner in the works, so I guess I’ll have to wait-to-see the Eurozone CPI report… In the meantime, the euro has bumped higher…

The Bank of Brazil (BOB) meets today, and will announce a rate cut… At least that’s how I see it… I see the BOB cutting their Selic Rate (internal rate) 100 Basis Points today! That would bring their Selic Rate to 10.25%, and that won’t be the last of the rate cuts from Brazil going forward… Just to prove the BOB is totally removed from any influence of politics, they will cut the Selic Rate by 100 Basis Points even though the real has been getting sold like funnel cakes at a State Fair, because of Political risks in Brazil..

Earlier this month, I said something about the former President Dilma Rousseff who was impeached earlier this year. I said that current, interim President Temer, had charges brought toward him on the news that he knew about the illegal funds that went to Rousseff… Someone close to the Brazilian news sent me this when I made that error… “Rousseff has never been charged with taking bribes. She was accused of knowing about them, but there was no evidence. Edward Cunha took bribes and now we know VP Michael Temer was also involved with the bribes. Rousseff was officially impeached for providing false data about the state of the Brazilian budget just before an election. As Wikipedia puts it “finding Rousseff guilty of breaking budget laws and removing her from office.”

There has never been a claim that she took money.”

Chuck again.. that’s what I get for getting into “politics” especially in a foreign country!

It is Month-end, and there could very well be position squaring for the month-end numbers, but with May not being a (quarter-end) the position squaring probably isn’t going to mount too much, but as I said we could very well see some today. If we see any it would probably benefit the currencies with some yield differential to the dollar…

The reason I say that is that these currencies with some yield differential to the dollar had been see the most shorting, due to the rate outlook of the U.S. (higher), which would mean a narrowing of the yield differentials, and thus potentially weaken the higher yielding currencies… But that’s just for today, folks… once we turn the page on June 1, the shorts can go back on, literally and physically! It’s unofficially, summer, the kids are out of school, so it’s time to get those sharts (as our Little Christine pronounces SHORTS) out and wear them!

The price of Oil continued to slide downward in the past 24 hours… After the OPEC meeting, Oil slipped, then recovered going into the weekend, then has gone back to slipping downward again.. not a lot of stability here, and certainly not on terra firma! The Petrol Currencies have been going back and forth alongside Oil, but at least the Norwegian krone has the euro strength on one side to keep it from getting sold too much.

The U.S. Data Cupboard got things going yesterday morning with a print of Personal Income and Spending… Once again, everyone is wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’ for Consumer Spending to pick up… And it did… Here’s the skinny… Both Personal Income and Spending grew at a 0.4% clip in April… I would like to think that this is good for the economy… But I’ll have to see more of this, because March’s report wasn’t exactly stellar, even with an upward revision! This data also has a PCE component to it. (Personal Consumption Expenditures) which is the Fed’s preferred inflation report, and this component rose 0.2% putting the year on year rise at 1.7%… Still not 2%… Still not reaching the Fed’s target… And that’s just fine with me!

The Case/Shiller Home Price Index for March was unchanged at a 5.9% increase…. And Consumer Confidence which has been running at all-time highs, saw a little slippage in May from April’s 119.4 sliding down to May’s 117.9.. Still quite high… and still no call to Chuck to see how confident he is!

Today’s Data Cupboard only has Pending Home Sales for April… That’s not exactly going to move any markets… We will get the privilege to hear what two Fed members have to say today… Robert Kaplan and John Williams will speak today, and I expect both of them to walk the straight line to a Fed Rate hike… And we could get more talk about the Great Unwind…

Gold had a down day yesterday, but the close was much better than the trading during the day, which saw the price of Gold slip by $ 11 and change at one point in the day. But Gold closed down just $ 3.80 at $ 1,262.80… The shiny metal is up a buck or two this morning, no big shakes… You know, I tell you all the time about the Gold accumulation that Russia and China continue to hoard… Well, if you do the math (don’t worry someone else has for you!) these two countries are basically taking on the entire global production of physical Gold, which leaves nothing for you and me, and jewelers and so on… An asset can only hold its current price when a scenario like this comes along, for so long… And then it historically breaks out to the top side, because of the lack of supply and the strong demand… That’s why I told some folks on the Butler Patio that I see Gold moving to $ 1,300 by summer’s end… of course I told them that was just my opinion and I could be wrong!

To recap… Not much movement from the currencies & metals so far today… The euro has bumped higher on what Chuck believes is a better than expected May CPI in the Eurozone. Kiwi has jumped to a 71-cent handle on an upbeat Financial Monetary Stability Report and no dissing of the currency by RBNZ Gov. Wheeler last night. Gold lost $ 3.80 yesterday, and is up a buck or two this morning. Chuck is somewhat inquisitive about why Gold is not reacting to the news that a suicide bomb exploded in Kabul Afghanistan? The U.S. Data Cupboard told us yesterday that Personal Income & Spending both increased by 0.4% in May, that the PCE was at 1.7% year on year, and that Consumer Confidence slipped a bit in May, but is still very high…

For What It’s Worth… You know how I keep saying the U.S. economy is going nowhere? Well, this writer from MarketWatch is pointing that out.. The article can be found here: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-economy-seems-frozen-in-time-but-underneath-the-ice-the-water-is-warming-2017-05-28?siteid=nwtam

Or, here’s your snippet: “A new pro-business president, record stock-market prices and the highest level of consumer confidence in years shows a lot has changed for the U.S. economy in 2017. But one thing hasn’t: Headline growth appears frozen in time.

Even a pickup in gross domestic product in the spring to 3% from 1.2% in the first quarter — helped by another strong month of employment gains in May — won’t alter the bigger picture.

Read: Economy wasn’t as bad as it looked in first quarter, GDP shows

The U.S. is still expanding at a roughly 2% annual pace that’s prevailed since a recovery took hold almost eight years ago, well below its historic 3.3% average. President Trump has vowed to restore the “good old days” but so far progress is scant.

“We are still on the same track,” said Sam Bullard, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, N.C.”

Chuck again.. The article goes on to say that the writer believes we are better off this year, than last year with the economy… Well, Let’s see… The economy went nowhere last year, and so this year we’re going nowhere faster!

Currencies today 5/31/17… American Style: A$ .7458, kiwi .7110, C$ .7430, euro 1.1216, sterling 1.2842, Swiss $ .9713, … European Style: rand 13.0789, krone 8.4301, SEK 8.7028, forint 273.76, zloty 3.7187, koruna 23.5597, RUB 56.51, yen 110.83, sing 1.3824, HKD 7.7911, INR 64.45, China 6.8554, peso 18.73, BRL 3.2579, Dollar Index 97.12, Oil $ 48.60, 10yr 2.22%, Silver $ 17.30, Platinum $ 944.10, Palladium $ 808.90, Gold $ 1,266.30, and SGE Gold.. .$ 1,266.85

That’s it for today… The end of May… Pretty amazing to me that the year is flying by again! Tomorrow we welcome the month of June… I have NO Doctor’s appointments this week, nor do I have an infusion! It’s like I got a “get out of jail free” card! YAHOO! That could mean that I’m making a call to the Pizza Man Pizza every night! But I don’t see that happening… I just haven’t been that hungry at night recently… Tomorrow evening I’m going out! We’re having a retirement party for my good friend, Frank Trotter… I’ve been asked to say a few words, since I’ve known him longer than anyone else at the bank… And that’s what I’ll be working on today… I have to say the exact right things, I get no Mulligans, and I have to attempt to not be too sappy, in fears that I would get emotional and tear up! I used to tell people at presentations that Frank and I did together, that Frank & Chuck have worked together so long, that when we started the Dead Sea wasn’t even sick! HA! The Black Crowes take us to the finish line today with their song: Hard To Handle, which was originally done by the great Otis Redding. I prefer his version, but the Black Crowes did an excellent job on this song too! And with that, I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday! Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler
Managing Director
EverBank Global Markets
Creator / Editor of: A Pfennig For Your Thoughts
1-800-926-4922

http://www.everbank.com

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