NO STRINGS ATTACHED NEWS THAT MAINSTREAM JUST WON'T COVER.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is vowing to tackle uncertain work schedules if she makes it into the Oval Office, unveiling a big government plan to require companies employing 15 people or more of posting schedules two weeks in advance as part of her effort to champion workers under her “Fair Workweek” proposal.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/PaGREP-FtOc/
Bernie Rescinds Endorsement Of Dem Candidate After "Legalize Bestiality" Video Resurfaces
Popular progressive political commentator Cenk Uygur is running for Democratic California Rep. Katie Hill’s seat, who resigned amid scandal in October after allegations she slept with a congressional staffer and a campaign staffer, and nude photographs of her surfaced.
But "The Young Turks" star founder is already finding himself at the center of bizarre controversy involving past statements he made over bestiality during a live program, causing Sen. Bernie Sanders to retract his highly sought after endorsement a mere day after announcing it.
In a Young Turks segment from 2013, he talks about how “hot” women from the Dominican are in somewhat typical remarks of his over the years that fellow progressives have lambasted him as sexist for. But then the segment took an insane turn. “Here comes the controversial part I shouldn’t say,” Uygur said, according to the resurfaced video. “I believe that if I were the benevolent dictator of the world, I would legalize bestiality where you are giving, you are pleasuring the animal.”
VIDEO: Young Turks host and California congressional candidate Cenk Uygur endorses sex with animals. pic.twitter.com/bD8ywsSXG9
— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) December 13, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsSanders had endorsed Uygur on Thursday, calling him "a voice that we desperately need in Congress" — but a mere 24 hours later had this to say:
“As I said yesterday, Cenk has been a longtime fighter against the corrupt forces in our politics,” Sanders said in a statement. “However, our movement is bigger than any one person. I hear my grassroots supporters who were frustrated and understand their concerns. Cenk today said he is rejecting all endorsements for his campaign, and I retract my endorsement.”
Uygur blamed “corporations, lobbyists, and special interest groups” for the avalanche of push back Sanders faced over his endorsement. “That’s why I have decided that I will not be accepting any endorsements… The only endorsements I'll be accepting going forward is that of the voters,” he said in a statement.
The popular left wing media host had long been source of controversy over statements made about women, the Huffpost previously reported.
In 2013 #Cenk2020 discusses what "score" a woman has to be if she asks to "suck your d*ck." Cenk says 99% of men would let a woman who is "hot" or a "9." But a "2" or "3"? Meh. Maybe 50%. Didn't Harvard men's soccer get in trouble for lewd rankings of women like this? #CA25 pic.twitter.com/AWhpSgm7Jf
— M. Mendoza Ferrer (@m_mendozaferrer) November 26, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsIn 2017 he was fired from progressive political action committee the Justice Democrats over past blog posts and columns degrading to women, some of which were as follows:
“Obviously, the genes of women are flawed,” Uygur wrote in a 1999 post lamenting the inadequate amount of sex he was having while living in Miami, Florida. “They are poorly designed creatures who do not want to have sex nearly as often as needed for the human race to get along peaceably and fruitfully.”
In a 2002 entry in which Uygur described the “rules of dating,” he specified that “there must be orgasm by the fifth date.” And in a 2003 column, he described drunken revelry at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he “kissed over 23 different women, saw and felt countless breasts.”
In addition, a 2004 post by Koller described teenage girls that he and Uygur met near a gas station in Pennsylvania as “whores in training, literally looking for boys to pick them up.”
During the newly resurfaced bestiality segment, his female co-host was clearly uncomfortable with his exploring "legalizing" sex with animals because it would be "pleasuring the animal". She vocalizes here extreme discomfort with the subject multiple times.
Audible gasps and cries of "What!?" are heard coming from his own producers, but that didn't dissuade him from continuing the bizarre discussion. "It's the dumbest thing I said?" Cenk questions. His co-host replies, visibly shocked and wanting to move on: "It really is the dumbest thing you've said."
He actually continues to explore the topic in lurid detail over whether a horse would appreciate such an 'encounter' or not. "Who got harmed?" Cenk asks in a moment of seriously attempting to persuade his listeners of his argument, implying that the horse was just fine.
Tyler Durden Sat, 12/14/2019 - 16:00Anti-Impeachment Democrat Jeff Van Drew Defects To GOP
Anti-impeachment Democratic Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New York has confirmed that he will switch parties and become a Republican, following a lengthy meeting with President Trump, according to Politico.
Van Drew is one of two Democrats who voted 'no' on opening the impeachment inquiry in the first place, and has been a vocal opponent of the effort, according to the report.
Nancy Pelosi isn't just hemorrhaging votes for her impeachment gambit, she's now facing wholesale defections from the Democrat party because of its impeachment hysteria. https://t.co/iWkH1bcous
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) December 14, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsOn Saturday, Van Drew's congressional and campaign staff were notified of the expected switch, Democratic sources tell Politico. The only question which remains is when he will make the move official given next week's House impeachment vote expected for Wednesday.
"It was supposed to be bipartisan, it was supposed to be incontrovertible. It was supposed to be something that was always on the rarest of circumstances," Van Drew told reporters days ago. "Well it’s not bipartisan."
Multiple senior Democrats tried to reach out to the New Jersey freshman on Saturday but were unsuccessful. Van Drew did not respond to calls and texts from POLITICO seeking comment.
Rumors had swirled around Capitol Hill this week that Van Drew was considering leaving the Democratic Party but he strongly denied those claims on multiple occasions. -Politico
Van Drew was elected in a heavily GOP district in southern New Jersey, flipping it blue. His win helped Democrats flip the House majority in the last election in a district that voted for Trump in 2016.
Tyler Durden Sat, 12/14/2019 - 15:46 Tags PoliticsLiquidity Matters - Retail Investors Are About To Learn A Valuable Lesson The Hard Way
Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,
One of the great challenges of financial markets is that certain important events only happen infrequently – which makes it all the easier to overlook them during intervening periods. One of those important situations is when it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to sell an investment because too few people are both willing and able to buy it.
Through the course of a cycle the phenomenon of illiquidity occurs periodically but is normally contained to very specific situations and does not affect broader markets. Increasingly, however, there are signs that liquidity could be a problem in the foreseeable future, so it is a good time to review the risks.
To start with, there is nothing inherently wrong with illiquid investments. In fact, illiquid investments can produce higher returns for investors who don’t need immediate liquidity. As a result, they can make great sense for long term investors like pension funds and endowments. Indeed, David Swensen has made famously good use of this characteristic with the endowment at Yale.
Of course, many other investors who might need the liquidity are also attracted to those incremental returns, and especially so in an environment of exceptionally low yields. As a result, many investors have succumbed to the temptation by plowing into private equity, venture capital, real estate, structured credit, fixed income ETFs and all kinds of other investments for which liquidity can be a problem.
As investors pursue this course of action, however, a couple of things happen along the way. One is that the prices of illiquid investments get bid up and therefore the prospective returns come down. Another is that as progressively more money flows into investment vehicles that can be difficult to exit, systemic risk increases. I described these phenomena in “A formula for losing money“.
As the risk of systemic illiquidity increases it can challenge, and overtake, the risk of slowing economic growth as a key risk factor. This change manifests itself in a subtle way. Unlike in 2017 when markets rose in a climate remarkably devoid of volatility, this year there are a number of rumblings underneath the calm veneer of market index performance. The Financial Times reports:
“Yet, through all of this, the sanctity around the market price has remained. Most don’t question whether basic formation of market prices is faulty. What if market gyrations are less to do with shifts in expectations on the economy or company performance, and more to do with participants coming to terms with a less well-functioning market?”
“It is now time to add another worry to the list: the unravelling of the market liquidity illusion.“
The “unraveling of the market liquidity illusion” is both a worthy consideration, and increasingly, a timely one. Further, there is a growing body of evidence to support the hypothesis. As the FT spells out, increasing bond market volatility is a signal:
“’It’s impossible to know the catalyst, and this market is good at shrugging off bad news. [But] bond market volatility is a good sign of the fragility,’ Mr Croce said. ‘We’ve seen steadily rising bond volatility this autumn, and that will eventually have an impact on asset prices’.”
Auctions in fixed income markets have also been highlighted by Zerohedge:
“The number of high yield credits trading at spreads over a thousand basis points over treasuries has been rising all year long. Also, you’re seeing a lot more volatility in the leveraged lending space. Credit Investors increasingly are firing first, and ask questions later.”
Russell Clarke provided similar foreshadowing in a Realvision interview dated September 18, 2019:
“Like I said, the weird classic macro indicators are diverging radically from what equities are doing. That does happen sometimes. Usually, the macro indicators are right.”
In addition, another signal can come from broader market factors. Since the relationship of supply to demand for securities is relative, whenever sellers overwhelm prospective buyers, deficiencies in liquidity can arise. This phenomenon often occurs when investors chase a common theme, as the FT describes:
“But Marko Kolanovic, head of quantitative strategy at JPMorgan, says there is still ‘extreme crowding’ in the more defensive, bond-like parts of the stock market, as well as in stocks enjoying positive momentum. He said this was evidence of the ‘prence of groupthink … across investment strategies’.”
With several signs all pointing in the same direction, the chances of some kind of liquidity event appear to be increasing. Importantly, many of the warning signs are virtually invisible to investors and advisors who rely primarily on market indexes for information content.
Lest investors forget what happens when liquidity dries up, Russell Clarke provides a useful refresher:
Speaking of the Lehman bankruptcy in 2008, Clarke described: “Then suddenly, and it was very weird, didn’t make a lot of sense. Then suddenly, it broke in way. That’s typically how markets work. They force everyone into an asset at exactly the wrong time and then liquidity just disappears, and you are stuck in it.”
The notion of suddenly being “stuck in it” was also crystallized by the FT in a recent report. The UK Mexican restaurant chain Chilango issued mini-bonds and intentionally lured investors with an attractive yield: “Free food for four years! Plus 8 per cent APR!”
The only problem was, just months after its last mini-bond offering, the company’s solvency came into question and it was forced to hire restructuring advisers. While Chilango is reminiscent of WeWork’s bond offering to sophisticated investors, there was one major difference:
“While red-faced hedge fund managers can sell their WeWork bonds at a loss and move on, Chilango’s bonds are explicitly non-transferable. The doors are locked.”
“Unfortunately, retail investors are learning another lesson from institutional debt markets the hard way: liquidity matters.“
In simple terms, there is no way for investors to get their money out of Chilango’s mini-bonds. They are stuck. This is exactly what can happen when liquidity vanishes for whatever reason. Although there may be some recovery down the road, there will be no access to those funds for the indefinite future.
This leads to a few important lessons regarding liquidity risk. One is that it is an insidious risk. It gathers gradually, over time, without revealing at what point it might strike. Indeed, markets can be most alluring at the most dangerous times. As Clarke notes, “They [markets] force everyone into an asset at exactly the wrong time.”
Liquidity is also nonlinear – and this is very hard for many investors to fully appreciate. It is easily available for long periods of time and then suddenly vanishes. When investors start running for the proverbial exits, many end up getting trapped inside. While it is true that this happens only infrequently, it is also true that there are no do-overs – the damage can be permanent.
Finally, when liquidity shuts down, it can be contagious. When it becomes impossible to exit illiquid investments, investors have only one choice if they need cash – and that is to sell what they can – and that is usually more liquid assets. As a result, problems in a relatively small niche of illiquid investments can easily infect a much broader realm of assets. This was an important dynamic in the financial crisis of 2008 when problems with subprime mortgages started surfacing. It is a lesson that still applies today.
An important takeaway is that investors should not be unduly focused on a market crash as the worst possible outcome. Crashes happen but can be recovered from. However, if investors urgently need liquidity and cannot access it, they can suffer permanent harm. Indeed, insufficient access to cash, not a market crash itself, many be the greater risk for many investors.
The risk of losing liquidity is a real one for investors, but it is often underappreciated. B.B. King illustrates the same basic point in his classic song, “Ain’t nobody home”, in a way that is both personal and memorable.
He describes how he once fawned over a girl and followed her “wherever you’d [she’d] lead me” and in the process, endured some “pain and misery”. After he finally decides he’s had enough, she begs him to come back. By then, he is no longer in a forgiving mood and lets her know, “Ain’t nobody home.”
In a similar way, liquidity can seem so ample and forthcoming at times that it is easy to take for granted. When the tables turn, however, investors had better beware. Just when they need it most, there might not be anyone home.
Tyler Durden Sat, 12/14/2019 - 15:30 Tags Business FinanceCalifornia Schools Sued Over Use Of "Culturally-Biased" Standardized Testing For Admissions
America was once a nation of meritocracy, that shamed the lazy and encouraged hard work; but now, as Millennials increasingly support a "we are all equal" socialist state with leftist politicians villifying the successful, a new wave of anti-meritocratic policies are sweeping across much of academia.
The latest incarnation of this is a much-anticipated lawsuit, filed by a group of students and community organizations, against the University of California, alleging that the university system discriminates against low-income students, racial minorities and others by requiring SAT or ACT admissions tests.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the suit was filed Tuesday in California state court on behalf of a high-school sophomore, two seniors, and a first-year student at Pasadena City College (several California social-justice nonprofits are also plaintiffs in the suit), all of whom it says would be strong candidates for more selective UC campuses except for their test scores.
Aside from this sounding like the standard parent unable to admit their child is not the next Einstein, the plaintiffs seek to bar the UC system from requiring applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores, and from using scores in admission decisions.
“These discriminatory tests irreparably taint UC’s ostensibly ‘holistic’ admissions process,” the lawsuit says, adding that the tests “act as a proxy for wealth and race and thus concentrate privilege on UC campuses.”
Earlier this year, under relentless pressure from the racial-preferences lobby, the Board caved to the anti-meritocratic ideology of “diversity.” Colleges, it was suggested, could use this adversity index to boost the admissions ranking of allegedly disadvantaged students who otherwise would score too poorly to be considered for admission.
But, as we reported previously, this gap has persisted for decades. It is not explained by socioeconomic disparities.
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reported in 1998 that white students from households with incomes of $10,000 or less score better on the SAT than black students from households with incomes of $80,000 to $100,000. In 2015, students with family incomes of $20,000 or less (a category that includes all racial groups) scored higher on average on the math SAT than the average math score of black students from all income levels. The University of California has calculated that race predicts SAT scores better than class.
Those who rail against “white privilege” as a determinant of academic achievement have a nagging problem: Asians.
Asian students outscore white students on the SAT by 100 points; they outscore blacks by 277 points. It is not Asian families’ economic capital that vaults them to the top of the academic totem pole; it is their emphasis on scholarly effort and self-discipline. Every year in New York City, Asian elementary school students vastly outperform every other racial and ethnic group on the admissions test for the city’s competitive public high schools, even though a disproportionate number of them come from poor immigrant families.
The 'adversity score' idea was eventually dismissed after significant backlash as defenders of the tests maintain that students with high scores tend to fare well in college and beyond. The standardized tests have been considered by many as an equalizer, allowing colleges to identify talent from high schools with which they are not familiar.
“The notion that the SAT is discriminatory is false,” said a spokesman for the College Board.
“Any objective measure of student achievement will shine a light on inequalities in our education system. Our focus, with our members and partners, is combating these longstanding inequalities.”
Furthermore, many on the left argue that the tests are elitist because 'only the wealthy can afford test preparation' but this is entirely false as there are many test-prep aids that are entirely free on the web, such as Khan Academy.
Quite frankly, given our own experience of seeing two young women through the SAT/ACT prep and admissions debacle that California schools now undertake - and having seen so many of their friends succeed by working hard - we would like to see a comprehensive analysis of average hours studied by each group, perhaps as a 'great equalizer' of this racist, elitists bias that supposedly exists.
"It’s important to acknowledge that yes, SAT results reflect inequalities in race and social class. Black and Hispanic students and poor students do not perform as well on these tests as their white and affluent counterparts."
But, he continued, “this reflects a symptom of larger inequality, not a biased test.”
DeBoer acknowledged the argument that affluent parents can invest in special training and can hire coaches to raise their children’s scores. But he pointed to a major 2013 study that showed that the “effect of coaching on a 1600 point scale was about 20 points.”
Furthermore, turning to high school grades instead of test results for college admission decisions poses similar problems, deBoer writes, as grade inflation has resulted in a huge increase in the number of applicants with perfect, 4.0, averages.
Specifically, for the last several years, we have been covering the grade-changing scandal in Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS). Administrators, teachers, and parents continue to come forward about the widespread fraud that allows children to graduate, even though they've missed school or failed classes.
"If they can't read and you're not giving them a type of trade or skill, and you're pushing them through the system, where will that leave them at once they graduate or get the certificate from the school, in life? Like how will they survive?"
"The diploma is getting dued," said the teacher who claims to have witnessed grades being changed. "So, the diploma value is not worth a lot."
We give the final word to DeBoer, who, while admitting that the SAT and ACT aren't perfect:
"But much of the folk wisdom about them and their deficiencies is wrong, and though critics mean well, they actually risk deepening inequality by attacking these tests."
“Students who labor under racial and economic disadvantage have very few ways to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack,” deBoer continues.
“A stellar SAT score is potentially one of the most powerful. We should take care not to rob them of that tool in a misguided push for equality.”
All this constant confusion of correlation with causation (or results spun to fit a progressive narrative) is perhaps why Chinese students are 4 grade levels of US students in math.
As Michael Snyder raged recently, we were once a great light to the rest of the world, but today a large chunk of our population can barely read, write, speak or function in society. Just consider the following numbers…
#1 One recent survey found that 74 percent of Americans don’t even know how many amendments are in the Bill of Rights.
#2 An earlier survey discovered that 37 percent of Americans cannot name a single right protected by the First Amendment.
#3 Shockingly, only 26 percent of Americans can name all three branches of government.
#4 During the 2016 election, more than 40 percent of Americans did not know who was running for vice-president from either of the major parties.
#5 North Carolina is considering passing a law which would “mean only scores lower than 39 percent would qualify for an F grade” in North Carolina public schools.
#6 30 years ago, the United States awarded more high school diplomas than anyone in the world. Today, we have fallen to 36th place.
#7 According to the Pentagon, 71 percent of our young adults are ineligible to serve in the U.S. military because they are either too dumb, too fat or have a criminal background.
#8 For the very first time, Americans are more likely to die from an opioid overdose than they are in a car accident.
#9 One study discovered that one-third of all American teenagers haven’t read a single book in the past year.
#10 A recent survey found that 45 percent of U.S. teenagers are online “almost constantly”.
#11 Today, the average American spends 86 hours a month using a smartphone.
#12 Overall, the average U.S. adult “logs 6 hours, 43 minutes of total screen time daily”.
#13 In more than half of all U.S. states, the highest paid public employee in the state is a football coach.
#14 During one seven day period last summer, a total of 16,000 official complaints about human feces were submitted to the city of San Francisco. And apparently the problem is very real because one investigation found 300 piles of human feces on the streets of downtown San Francisco.
#15 Every 24 hours, more than a third of all Americans eat fast food.
#16 Less than half of all Americans know which country used atomic bombs at the end of World War II.
#17 Even though we fought a war in Iraq for eight long years, 6 out of 10 young adults cannot find Iraq on a map of the Middle East. And that same survey found that 75 percent of our young adults cannot locate Israel.
#18 Today, the average college freshman in the United States reads at a 7th grade level.
Educating our children properly is one of the most basic things that needs to be addressed, but unfortunately the left has total control of our public schools now, and that means that there is no hope of a major turnaround any time soon. However, of course, all of this will be dismissed as racist (or elitist) by the leftists as excuse after excuse is made for poor performance.
Tyler Durden Sat, 12/14/2019 - 15:00 Tags Education Social IssuesThe US Economy Is Being Japanified - Thanks To The Fed
Authored by Andrew Moran via LibertyNation.com,
Japan has not recovered fully from the lost decade of the 1990s. The Asian financial crisis was exacerbated by the dot-com crash and then a few years later the global economic collapse. Tokyo has tried everything to combat anemic growth and deflation, and resolve the zombification of the Japanese economy through an immense buildup of government debt and a dramatic loosening of monetary policy, including subzero interest rates. This has become known as Japanification. In recent years, Europe has seen its own Japanification, and now it looks like the United States could mirror it, too.
This past summer, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell rejected unsound advice from some of the world’s top economists when he dismissed a proposal to raise the inflation target rate from the current 2 percent to 4 percent. Proponents of this policy say it would allow the central bank to cut interest rates before they slide to zero (which would create a whole new set of problems for the central bank and the overall economy). Powell conceded that it was not “a practical alternative” and wondered “how credible that would be.”
It looks like some Fed minds found a compromise: temporarily boosting the inflation target rate.
Since it listed 2 percent as the key rate to hit in 2012, the Fed has had a difficult time meeting that objective. Policymakers are getting fed up with the Fed’s inability to get inflation to reach their target, despite the unemployment rate hitting a fifty-year low.
As part of its annual review of monetary policy tools, the Fed is contemplating increasing its aim to grapple with its lackluster inflation, the Financial Times reported. Citing current and former Fed policymakers, the newspaper suggests that the Fed is thinking about temporarily raising its goal when it misses its inflation target. This would allow the Fed to make up for lost inflation and prevent prolonged low US price growth.
How are current and former Fed officials reacting?
ReactionsEx-Fed Chair Janet Yellen thinks it is “a worthwhile thing” to discuss, positing that it would be similar to its forward guidance used in the early post-recession days. At the time, the central bank informed markets that it planned to keep short-term rates low for a significant period. Before finishing her tenure at the Fed, she admitted that she was open to the possibility of raising the 2 percent range.
Former Fed Vice Chair Stanley Fischer conceded that he opposes a 4 percent target rate, because unions would want to tie their wages to inflation.
Lael Brainard, a member of the Fed Board of Governors, stated that she prefers something a bit more flexible, recommending that the range increase from 2 to 2.5 percent after several misses. As long as you are communicating to the public — financial markets, households, and businesses — about what you are doing, the rules could work effectively, she noted. But Brainard also believes that the subject is presently too complex to share with the public.
Fed Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren says that it is important to let markets know that you cannot have readings only below 2 percent to meet the target inflation rate. He also believes that this formulaic approach would concern financial markets.
“This is why I prefer something that is a little bit more flexible, maybe not as constraining, but makes it a little clearer that we should be having over 2 percent,” Rosengren told the Times.
Are Negative Rates Next?Everything about the way governments and central banks report inflation is egregious. They usually underreport, so price inflation is likely higher than what is being touted. For the sake of analyzing what the Fed is doing, let us suppose that the inflation rate is what the establishment says it is.
A key argument against raising the inflation target rate is that the fed funds rate is already at historic lows. In the next recession, monetary policy would largely be ineffective unless it torches long-term sustainability by introducing subzero interest rates to spur growth. This would be the death knell of the world’s largest economy, since negative rates signify that the Fed has exhausted all tools at its disposal.
Others make the argument that inflation expectations would be lower under this scheme. Could the United States experience its own Japanification? Despite a myriad of monetary stimulus measures to reverse these trends, nearly everything employed has failed — it appears that negative rates will not stave off Japan’s upcoming recession. Instead, these efforts have sent bond yields lower, created bad bank loans, and increased debt levels.
Is the tank empty? As with the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of Japan (BoJ), everything the Fed does will largely be ineffective during the next recession. During the boom phase of the business cycle, the central bank has cut rates, expanded the money supply, and relaunched quantitative easing (QE) by scooping up billions in treasuries and injecting credit markets with cash. What else can the Fed do? Negative rates seem the next logical step. What is clear is that the Fed is making up strategies as it goes along, sacrificing long-term gains for immediate survival and instant gratification.
Tyler Durden Sat, 12/14/2019 - 14:30 Tags Business Finance
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