Thursday, May 12, 2016

The Peanut Gallery

Statements, comments and forecasts that have no substance, but just might turn out to be relevant.

1.For years there have been rumours that China has been falsifying economic statistics.  China’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) revealed on its website Wednesday that it had found more than 300 NBS employees guilty of providing data for financial gain. The CCDI didn’t just announce that hundreds of NBS staff had taken money in return for providing official statistics. The investigation has also discovered that NBS funds were used not for data collection, but rather to rent fancy office rooms or vehicles, and that at least 19 people were given promotions within the bureau that were not deserved. COMMENT: Notable that the corruption is so rife that the CCDI published it on a government website!

2.InvestYourself.com: "Central Banks are buying equities to shore up stock markets. Nations have come forward to actually tell you to your face that they're supporting stocks. The Swiss National bank holds 97 billion worth of stocks. In Japan the Central Bank could become the #1 shareholder in about 40 of the Nikkei's companies by the end of 2017, according to Bloomberg calculations." Add to that massive purchases by the Chinese Central Bank and Denmark's Central bank, we can start referring to this as a trend. COMMENT: Folks, when this goes south, the results are not going to be pretty. Don't fool yourselves that the powers that be know what they are doing. They don't!

3.Bloomberg: China’s leading Communist Party mouthpiece acknowledged the risks of a build-up of debt that is worrying the world and said the nation needed to face up to its nonperforming loans. High leverage is the “original sin” that leads to risks in the foreign-exchange market, stocks, bonds, real estate and bank credit, the People’s Daily said in a full-page interview with an unnamed “authoritative person” starting on page one and filling the second page on Monday. COMMENT: Don't look for economic growth in China any time soon.

4.Austria’s chancellor, Werner Faymann, resigned May 9 after losing the support of his Social Democratic party, AFP and The Guardian reported. The move comes amid political turmoil following anti-immigration candidate Norbert Hofer's landslide victory in last month's first round of the presidential election. Hofer, a member of the right-wing Freedom party, is expected to win a run-off scheduled for May 22. COMMENT: The disintegration of the EU has taken another step forward.

5.Donald Trump dubs himself the "king of debt." Experts say he doesn't have a clue -- at least when it comes to U.S. government debt. Only a few weeks ago, Trump said he could eliminate federal debt in just eight years, a nearly impossible task. Trump's own tax plan would add trillions to the debt. Now he says the U.S. should just borrow more and renegotiate the terms later. "I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal," Trump said on CNBC last week.(He obviously thinks the economy is a hotel!)
"Mr. Trump doesn't have a coherent idea of what he's talking about," says Michael Strain, an economic policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "This is the bond market equivalent of 'we're going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it." COMMENT: This is turning from a reality show into a Mickey Mouse comedy.

6.Defense News: Israel — Imagine an intuitively trained special missions operative endowed with 360-degree vision who works alone or in packs to breach high-risk safe houses and bunkers, ready to shoot to kill within a second of an officer’s command. That’s exactly what General Robotics Ltd., a high-tech firm tucked away in this rural community south of Tel Aviv, has developed with its trademarked Dogo, a 12-kilogram, pistol-packing killer robot for close-quarter combat and counterterrorism operations. Read more: http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/international/mideast-africa/2016/05/08/introducing-israeli-12-kilo-killer-robot/83970684/

7.May 11 (Reuters) - Shares in Banco Popolare (italy) plunged 14 percent on Wednesday after a surprise first-quarter loss driven by loan writedowns -- the main focus of investor concerns over Italian banks. Italian banks have lost nearly 40 percent of their market value so far this year. COMMENT: This could effect the global economy. Italy is much, much larger than Greece. Red Flag waving!

8. Happy 68th birthday Israel. The more morbid statements we hear predicting that the end is near for the Jewish State, the stronger Israel gets while her enemies continue to implode. Truly a light unto the nations! Lechayim!

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.
~Henry Cate, VII~

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become
President; I'm beginning to believe it.

~Clarence Darrow~

Monday, May 9, 2016

Its Personal....

Ever since I can remember, I have had a basic dislike for loudmouthed bullies, arrogant braggarts and wannabe tough guys. In my experience they tend to be either cowards who abuse those they perceive to be easy targets  (women, kids, minorities etc) or those they understand to be perhaps smarter or more accomplished than themselves. By now an observant person might understand that I am profiling the commonplace Trump type and his  classic supporter. That is not to say that Mr Trump would not make a successful president. He might. What I am saying is that this type of individual would not darken my family doorstep. Its personal.

In 1982 during the First Lebanon War our IDF unit penetrated far into the Eastern region of Lebanon and faced off against Syrian forces in the area of Lake Qaraoun. Listening to some of the radio chatter it was astounding to hear the arrogance and confidence of some of the unit, and how they were going to rattle the Syrian cage. With a pulsating heart I remember thinking of how tough these guys were. Well to cut a long story short, The Syrians began pounding us that evening with artillery barrages and we dived for any form of cover we could find. Through the cacophony of explosions I heard one tough guy crying out for his mother. Another peed his pants and a third was wailing in fear and and babbling a prayer. Young Harry was taught a major life lesson in those chaotic moments. There is no such thing as a "tough guy", only brave guys and many loudmouthed wannabees. Significantly, the same windbags were heard later on explaining  how they had taught the enemy a lesson.

This blog is definitely not for your typical Trump supporter since the majority of these folk don't appear to be interested in the truth, facts or practicality of anything he is saying. Rather he is feeding into their "anger" and therefore they believe anything he says to be possible. To be fair, he did not create the political and economic climate of today (that belongs to Bush and Obama). Like the typical Queens con man ("I know somebody who knows somebody etc") he saw an opportunity and  jumped at it. And man....did the fish bite or what! A wild feeding frenzy by the PC commercial media intellectuals on the left and across the board to the white trailer trash in the deep south, ensued. Nobody bothered to fact check the statements coming out of this campaign. This was a reality TV revolution at its best....something most Americans are familiar with. The real world looked on in shock while the liberal media watched gleefully as the hate fest exploded onto our screens.

Anyone who believes a "successful businessman" can run a country is bordering on the delusional. The modern presidents who achieved the most — Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan — had virtually no commercial background. Some who did, George W. Bush and Herbert Hoover, fared worse in the White House.  Robert Rubin: “In business, the single, overriding purpose is to make a profit,” he wrote. “Government, on the other hand, deals with a vast number of legitimate and often potentially competing objectives — for example, energy production versus environmental protection, or safety regulations versus productivity. This complexity of goals brings a corresponding complexity of process.” He then noted that a big difference between the two realms is that no political leader, not even the president, has the kind of authority every corporate chief does. CEOs can hire and fire based on performance, pay bonuses to incentivize their subordinates, and promote capable people aggressively. 

So what will the Donald do when confronted by a hostile senate....after all he doesn't sign the cheques. Trump is using a typical "divide and conquer strategy" which in a diverse America of today is paradoxically playing right into the hands of the Dem strategists. Either way, for this "tough guy" to mutate into a viable leader he will have to unite Americans and America. Not just his own party. I wish him luck with that....but like I said at the outset, the bad taste in my mouth is personal.

“I don't trust society to protect us, I have no intention of placing my fate in the hands of men whose only qualification is that they managed to con a block of people to vote for them.” 
― Mario Puzo, The Godfather

Boxing is real easy. Life is much harder -  Floyd Mayweather, Jr.