THE STORY OF CHRISTMAS
THAT SHOULD BE TOLD
Saturday, December 24, 2016
Quartet sings Just a Little Talk with Jesus
Just a Little Talk with Jesus
Funny! Enjoy!
Bass Singers Quartet
Liberty U planning first ever on-campus shooting range
- Liberty University has announced plans to open a NRA-compliant shooting range on campus by next fall, the first of its kind in the country.
- Every other college that participates in competitive shooting sports either rents range time or owns a facility away from campus.
Liberty University has announced plans to open a NRA-compliant shooting range on campus by next fall.
“The proposed project is a shooting sports center, as [sic] state-of-the-art facility for training, competition events, and education.” A proposal to the Campbell County's Planning Commission said. “The facility will be NRA certified and will provide marksmanship program for Liberty University, for law enforcement, and for citizens.”
[RELATED: Liberty University prof derides 'pretend gun-free zones' on campuses]
According to The Christian Post, the new range will be the first of its kind on an American college campus, because every other university-owned shooting facility is located away from campus.
“The university has operated a small gun range off campus for a number of years, at least since 2010. I have used it several times,” Daniel Howell, a biology professor at Liberty University told Campus Reform. “However… this NEW range is going to be on campus and over-the-top excellent (which is the Liberty Way these days!).”
Howell even suggested that Liberty could go even further by orchestrating on-campus active shooter drills.
“The University should consider a mock classroom with hallways so students and faculty can practice an active shooter scenario in a live-round environment, but I’ve not heard of any such plans,” he said. “I am not at all afraid of a good guy with a gun. I am happy for any student who is 21 years old and obtains a valid concealed carry permit to be armed in my classroom. In fact, I feel safer for it.”
[RELATED: Liberal academics resist NRA, NSSF grants for shooting clubs]
Howell also believes that more people should carry guns, arguing that “In 21st century America, enough bad people carry concealed guns,” and that therefore, “more good people need to do it” because “I believe the more good people that know how to store, handle, and carry lethal weapons responsibly, the safer we all are.”
He did acknowledge that some students feel threatened on campus by possible intruders, but suggested that the potential benefits far outweigh the risks.
“I think most of us at Liberty University assume we are a bigger-than-usual target for terrorists because of our conservative Christian beliefs,” he pointed out. “Certainly any would-be terrorist on our campus will have to think twice about how ‘successful’ they might be knowing they are surrounded by good guys (and gals) with guns, trained in how to use them.”
[RELATED: Private college faces backlash for hiring shooting club coach]
Students are excited about the proposed range as well.
“I'm ecstatic to hear of the university's plans for a range,” Jordan Stein, a senior at Liberty University and founder of Students at Liberty for Gun Rights told Campus Reform. “From my experience, Liberty students have a strong passion for the Second Amendment and firearms. This range will certainly continue that tradition and teach responsible firearms handling for the surrounding communities."
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @kassydillon
“The proposed project is a shooting sports center, as [sic] state-of-the-art facility for training, competition events, and education.” A proposal to the Campbell County's Planning Commission said. “The facility will be NRA certified and will provide marksmanship program for Liberty University, for law enforcement, and for citizens.”
“I am not at all afraid of a good guy with a gun...In fact, I feel safer for it.” Tweet This
[RELATED: Liberty University prof derides 'pretend gun-free zones' on campuses]
According to The Christian Post, the new range will be the first of its kind on an American college campus, because every other university-owned shooting facility is located away from campus.
“The university has operated a small gun range off campus for a number of years, at least since 2010. I have used it several times,” Daniel Howell, a biology professor at Liberty University told Campus Reform. “However… this NEW range is going to be on campus and over-the-top excellent (which is the Liberty Way these days!).”
Howell even suggested that Liberty could go even further by orchestrating on-campus active shooter drills.
“The University should consider a mock classroom with hallways so students and faculty can practice an active shooter scenario in a live-round environment, but I’ve not heard of any such plans,” he said. “I am not at all afraid of a good guy with a gun. I am happy for any student who is 21 years old and obtains a valid concealed carry permit to be armed in my classroom. In fact, I feel safer for it.”
[RELATED: Liberal academics resist NRA, NSSF grants for shooting clubs]
Howell also believes that more people should carry guns, arguing that “In 21st century America, enough bad people carry concealed guns,” and that therefore, “more good people need to do it” because “I believe the more good people that know how to store, handle, and carry lethal weapons responsibly, the safer we all are.”
He did acknowledge that some students feel threatened on campus by possible intruders, but suggested that the potential benefits far outweigh the risks.
“I think most of us at Liberty University assume we are a bigger-than-usual target for terrorists because of our conservative Christian beliefs,” he pointed out. “Certainly any would-be terrorist on our campus will have to think twice about how ‘successful’ they might be knowing they are surrounded by good guys (and gals) with guns, trained in how to use them.”
[RELATED: Private college faces backlash for hiring shooting club coach]
Students are excited about the proposed range as well.
“I'm ecstatic to hear of the university's plans for a range,” Jordan Stein, a senior at Liberty University and founder of Students at Liberty for Gun Rights told Campus Reform. “From my experience, Liberty students have a strong passion for the Second Amendment and firearms. This range will certainly continue that tradition and teach responsible firearms handling for the surrounding communities."
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @kassydillon
Albuquerque Police Department to start manufacturing crack cocaine so they can arrest the people they sell it to
Wait a sec… Crack cocaine is an illegal substance, right? So now the police are going to possess it, manufacture it, sell it and then arrest citizens who buy it from them?
Yep. That’s how some police tell themselves they are the “good guys” when they manufacture crack cocaine to sell to the “bad guys” who were making the crack cocaine before the police started making it.
In other words, the Albuquerque Police Department will now be engaged in the manufacture and distribution of Schedule I Controlled Substances, meaning it is no longer deniable that “the cops are the drug dealers.”
It’s now right out in the open.
See the documents obtained by BurqueMedia
The story first broke on BurqueMedia.com, which explains, “An affidavit obtained by Burque Media from a confidential source spells out plans by the Albuquerque Police Department to go after low-level drug users in a reverse buy-bust operation. In a reverse buy-bust, undercover agents sell drugs to citizens, and then arrest them for possession. Part of that operation involves APD manufacturing crack cocaine from powdered cocaine.”Just as I was writing this story for Natural News, the “Affidavit and Motion to Release Evidence” document was removed from Scribd. But we have screen shots below, grabbed before the document was memory holed.
It says:
…the State of New Mexico, through its Assistant District Attorney and Affiant Detective Marc Clingenpeel, and hereby request this Court’s order to allow detectives to obtain heroin, methamphetamines, cocaine base (commonly referred to as crack), and/or cocaine from the Alburquerque Police Department’s Evidence Unit for the purpose of an undercover operation as set below in quantities listed in order
…powered cocaine may be taken into APD’s Criminalistics Unit to be made into crack cocaine.
…The Alburquerque Police Department’s Narcotics Unit will use the heroin, methamphetamine, crack cocaine and/or cocaine… to sell to individuals who are seeking to purchase drugs within the City of Alburquerque.
Article continues below these documents (scroll down to keep reading):
“Nodding” or “shrugging the shoulders” to ensnare citizens and charge them with felony drug possession
As part of the APD’s manufacture and distribution of crack cocaine, they’re planning on ensnaring citizens by using what they call “gestures that are commonly used in the area to make contact with someone for the purpose of purchasing drugs.” These gestures include nodding and shrugging the shoulders, meaning if you simply nod at one of these undercover APD crack dealers, you could be just moments away from being arrested and charged with attempting to purchase crack.After a nod or shoulder shrug, “the person will be escorted to a discreet location,” says the document. “The detectives will sell the person the requested amount of drugs,” it explains, after which the person will be “arrested and charged with felony Possession of a Controlled Substance.”
You mean the same substance the police just manufactured and sold them?
Gosh, and during what part of this elaborate operation do the detectives just pocket the cash and let a few buyers walk? Oops! Looks like a few kilos of crack never made it back to the evidence locker… strange how that happens.
When cops become drug manufacturers and street dealers, something has gone terribly wrong with the failed “War on Drugs”
Now, you see, the police are making the drugs, dealing the drugs and potentially profiting from the drugs. It won’t be long before the APD finds it needs to plug a “revenue shortfall” with some extra cash. And what do you know… hundreds of citizens are lining up just to hand them cash for their self-manufactured crack cocaine!The temptation for abuse in this racket is too juicy to ignore. When a detective can make more untraceable cash profit in a single week than they might pull in an entire year on the city’s payroll, it’s not difficult to imagine some of these cops going “freelance.”
And if you have a police-run operation that can manufacture crack cocaine, sell it to people on the street, then arrest those people for buying the very same “illegal substance” the police department is manufacturing, just how long will it be before fringe police departments start running sex slave rings in order to “sell” slaves to buyers who are promptly arrested? (Hint: This is already going on. The cover-up is intense because the “customers” of such activities often tend to be among the political elite.)
What can you do about all this? For starters, don’t buy crack cocaine. More importantly, if you live in Albuquerque, don’t nod or shrug at anybody on the street, or you may find yourself dragged into a dark alley by undercover cops who claim you “signaled” them with an intent to purchase illegal drugs. If they persist, just tell them you aren’t interested in cocaine… you were actually hoping to buy a good time and you thought the undercover cops were transgender prostitutes. That should work amazingly well. Try it yourself and see!
Irrational Exuberance in US Stock Market Grasps at 20K for Dow
Since
Trump’s election, the US stock market has climbed unstoppably
along a remarkably steep path to round off at a teetering height.
Is this the irrational exuberance that typically marks the last
push before a perilous plunge, or is the market reaching escape
velocity from the relentless gravity of the Great Recession?
This burst of enthusiasm in response to Trump’s victory, flew in the face of almost everyone’s predictions. That it lifted the market from seven months of languor certainly makes 20K on the Dow look like the elevation marker of a breathtaking summit.
While breaking 20k, if it happens, may be as meaningless as one more mile on the odometer when all the numbers roll over, it is psychologically potent for many. Breaking through it, could cause fear as eyes turn down and see how far below the earth now is, or the rarified air up here may bring euphoria that lifts the market to even greater levels on a rising current of hot air.
Investors have been buying and selling with as much frenzy as Christmas shoppers. Now there will be much eating and drinking to celebrate this record-setting Santa-Clause rally, even if it doesn’t top 20, before Christmas, as investors take a brief rest to enjoy their surprise gains, fat and happy in belief that 2017 will be a prosperous new year.
There is almost no evidence of fear amongst all the cheer. According to Gallop, economic confidence has never been higher in the general population. Some are calling it Trumphoria as people seem to be relieved that eight years of Obamanomics are ending, and business is seizing the reins of government, guided by one of the world’s richest and most dazzling developers.
A similar CNBC survey indicates this is the greatest breath of fresh air for consumer confidence since Obama was elected in 2008, and it is not just stocks that are soaring. The US dollar has reached its highest peak in fourteen years. TechonoMetrica also says consumer confidence has just hit its highest level since 2006 (just in time for Christmas shopping).
Many analysts believe the push through a major milestone, if it happens, confirms a strong new market trend; but what does history say about breaking past such major psychological resistance barriers? When the Dow first broke past the 100 level in 1916, it tumbled below the line immediately and then sputtered along that ceiling for almost ten years. It didn’t break through with any continuance again until the mid 20s! When the Dow flirted with the 1,000 mark for the first time in 1966, it tumbled down and again stumbled along near that ceiling for seven years. When it finally passed it at the end of 1972, it did continue a tiny ways higher; but in less than three months the market fell for the next two years, eventually plumbing a depth 44% lower, while the nation sank into recession. The Dow didn’t permanently break through 1,000 again until 1982! And, after the Dow broke major, major milestone of 10,000 in 1999, it made it about 10% above that and then fell about 30% from 2001 to 2003 in what became known as the dot-com crash.
What if we look at what history has to say about irrational exuberance by using other measures than the Dow? The ratio of stock prices against corporate earnings is one of the most common ways of assessing the relative height of a market peak. Here again, there are only a few times in history that the S&P 500 has climbed to prices that are 27.9 times more than corporate earnings of the last ten years, which is where the S&P stands now. Once was in 1929 just before the Great Depression, then again in an ill-fated boom of the 60’s, and only one other time in 2002.
The altimeter I’m using here to assess our present peak is called the CAPE (the Cyclically Adjusted Price-Earnings ratio that won Yale’s Robert Schiller his Nobel Prize). In market terms, our present mark on the gauge means we’re entering the stratosphere! Even in 2007, the market was not this overpriced by the CAPE’s measure, and irrational exuberance has always accompanied this level: (Some will argue otherwise, but hang with me a minute.)
Not everyone thinks passing this mark on the CAPE matters. In fact, apparently many don’t, or the stock market wouldn’t have kept climbing into the CAPE’s red zone this month, but according to Valentin Dimitrov of Rutgers University and Prem Jain of Georgetown, the measure has been applied too simplistically by those who disregard it:
It is, however, not just the height of this peak, but the rate of rise that evidences irrational exuberance. This month, the US stock roller coaster ratcheted its way relentlessly up its highest hill one clanky link at a time. If the Dow closes above 20,000 this week, it will be the fastest 1,000-point rise in market history! The previous record rate of rise came in 1999 in the run-up to the dot-com bubble crash. Of course, the higher the market is, the less meaningful a thousand-point rise is.
Sometimes a visual says more than words:
Notice that it is not just prices that have shot up. Sometimes prices soar while trading volume treads flatly. In other words, there are very few traders, but those that are buying are willing to pay more. This time, trading volume has gone astronomical (lower part of graph) as money floods into stocks. That means it’s a flurry of high-stakes trading. The last time we saw this kind of trading volume was …
Yes, the last time trading volume (lower graph) reached this frenzy was in 2008 and 2009 when we experienced the greatest stock market crash since the Great Depression. And look how long and steep the post-Trump rally (right end of upper graph) looks compared to any other climb during the past decade, including the run-up to the Great Recession. It’s almost a straight-up wall!
Forget about measures for a moment, let’s look at forecasts by the revered experts in the industry because if everyone is running with glee in the same direction …
Clearly, Doll sees no top to the hill in sight. Apparently neither do others: in spite of our present nose-bleed heights, Wall Street’s gauge of investor fear, the CBOE Volatility Index VIX, rests comfortably at a 16-month low. Seems almost no one sees any reason for concern at all.
Lance Roberts writes,
Barron’s panel of ten experts (from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Citi, Morgan Stanley, BofA, Blackrock and others) were unanimous in their cheer that the US stock market will ascend well beyond its present record heights.
But, if everything is so rosy, Wolf Richter asks, why are bank insiders and big industrials selling their own company’s stocks faster than ever: (Someone has to be selling for all that buying to happen.)
Have market insiders just lost their appetite for dizzying heights, or do they have reason to believe they are selling into the stock market’s last hurrah? Are their banks, perhaps, getting clobbered by the bond crisis that is now developing on the other side of all this trading?
Even the Wall Street Journal, notes Richter, saw this high-volume trading as a bullish sign. They couldn’t, however, say why it was bullish, but only that it might be profit-taking. Well, why take profits now if you’re confident your bank has room to run? Is WSJ’s bullish note just more irrational exuberance from all market experts who can smell nothing but roses since Trump’s victory?
One old adage says that bond traders are the smart money. Money is now fleeing bonds at a record rate of fall that matches the record rate of rise we are seeing in the stock market. Bond money has to go somewhere; so, it could easily be that stocks are going up less because of Trumphoria and more because of bond phobia, triggered by Trump. Fear of what could easily turn into the biggest bond-bubble crash in the history of the world makes stocks look like the safest haven.
The global realization that central banks are not so enthusiastic about additional stimulus anymore, has bond investor’s realizing that the longest bull market in bond history may finally be waning. At the same time Trump’s plan of spending somewhere between half a trillion and one trillion dollars on infrastructure investments (financed on national credit) means interest rates will have to rise in order to attract enough creditors, which they are already doing in anticipation. In many nations, investors’ money is trapped in bonds near zero-percent interest. Knowing higher interest on new bonds is almost inevitable now, these investors want to get their money out of current bonds. Even in the US, who wants to be stuck in bonds at 2.5% for ten years when two to three years from now, interest may be at 5%?
The prevalent thinking is that Trump’s credit-card spending spree will heat the economy with numerous new jobs, and those new jobs will raise wages in order to attract enough workers. The increased demand for great amounts of materials will also drive up the cost of materials for everyone. The combination of many more workers flush with new cash and rising demand for materials means inflation will rise significantly; and inflation eats away at the value of money stored in bonds. So, one more reason to exit bonds. Goldman Sachs believes the main effect from fiscal stimulus this late in the employment recovery curve will be to drive up interest and inflation.
In my view, all of that means the Fed’s statement that it will be raising interest more often next year is now irrelevant. I said that before the Fed’s last meeting, and I think we see it is true in the stock market’s relative indifference to what the Fed said. Interest rates are already rising everywhere in the US economy, regardless of the Fed’s target. So, the Fed is clearly failing to accomplish anything with its stated target rate because the market is finally taking over and driving interest. That is why it was easy for the Fed to say it will increase its number of rate increases. I suspect its stated target will play catchup all year in 2017 to what the market is already doing with interest rates.
So the bond bull is breaking; but that break can cause major bond funds to wind up in liquidity traps where they cannot pay off investors who want out fast enough because the more they sell bonds that people don’t want anyway to raise cash and pay out investors, the more they have to lower the price to make a sale, driving down the value of the bonds they continue to hold, causing more investors to want out. The breaking of the longest and highest bond bull market in history could become a financial vortex, and bond values have already been falling at their fastest rate in history.
David Gundlach, the bond king who manages the DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund, sees trouble if bonds get about half a percent higher than they are today:
If bond funds go bust, they will likely take banks and retirement funds and ultimately the whole economy down with them, since almost everyone has been parking large amounts of money in bond funds because they are typically viewed as safe havens in uncertain times. If all of that goes down, the stock market likely does, too. It’s hard to see how it wouldn’t. It’s always been hard for me to see which would go first in the next big drop back into the Great Recession because both look so dangerous, and it is still hard to say. Will the insolvency of bond funds wipe out some banks and hedge fund managers, taking their stocks down to nothing, or will irrational exuberance in the stock market give way to panic? Right now, it appears to me that bonds will lead the crash.
Of course, I predicted the Epocalypse of 2016, so you might not want to listen to me. (Though I did say it might not happen until after the election when the Fed gives up and lets Trump take the fall.) I also predicted a second plunge in the price of oil in 2016, and that didn’t happen either. My predictions for 2016 were apparently badly off (at least in timing) for the first time in almost a decade. I started writing regularly on eonomics after predicting the crash of the housing market nearly to the month back in 2007, which I said would quickly become an enduring global catastrophe, the likes of which few people alive had ever seen.
That said, I anticipate the remainder of this December will go something like last year’s transition into the new year where the market crashed in the manner I said it would by going up first (due to euphoria that the Fed’s interest rate increase didn’t bring down the house), then rounds off and then falls off a cliff; but we’ll see. I’m not certain of that this year, as I was last year, and the fall off the cliff last year was not as severe as I thought it would be … though it was the worst January in the history of the stock market. This year, the euphoria is MUCH higher, so the fall could be much greater and be the kind that I anticipated for 2016.
It could be. Consider that the entire marketplace began shifting overnight out of bonds and into stocks when Trump won, and it’s still shifting like a huge landslide. What if it repositions to this large degree, and then Trump changes his positions … again? As a matter of fact, he’s already started to backpedal from his infrastructure pledge just as he has been doing from almost all of his stated campaign pledges since being elected:
Seriously? Wow! How could he not know this, given that Republicans have resisted doing any infrastructure stimulus plans for eight years? He is either scarily out of touch if he didn’t realize he’d have a fight from the Republican congress, or this statement is proof that Trump was a Trojan horse from the beginning. This is a remarkably rapid turn from the New-Big-Deal plan that Steve Bannon advocated as being the economy’s salvation, given that Trump is not even in office yet.
We could have one wild roller coaster ride in 2017 since the market is entirely repositioning itself toward Trump’s infrastructure pledge if that plan takes a few years to come about or doesn’t make it through congress at all … or maybe doesn’t even get presented. It certainly never had a chance of making it through congress unless Trump pushed hard and leveraged his campaign victory toward that end, and the above statements don’t sound like Trump has any push left!
Zero Hedge recently reported on growing Republican resistance to Trump’s tax and infrastructure plans:
Rapidly rising interest rates already mean the infrastructure program will become much harder to finance. If Trump waits three years to get seriously started, interest rates could make the plan nearly impossible, plus he will likely have expended all his political capital that comes from a surprise election victory, which will be ancient news by then. He will need that capital to get the plan through a reluctant congress.
Rising interest rates already mean the mammoth national debt that came about as the result of the Great Recession will become much harder to finance over the next few years, even without taking out another trillion for new infrastructure. So, that will be a new and serious burden on the economy unless so much money flees Europe to bond and stock safety in the US that we’re saved by dumb luck … as once again being the best horse in the glue factory.
So, is the stock market irrational in its exuberance for shifting so much just because of Trump’s pledges, which are far, far from becoming reality? I think so. I haven’t even talked about Democrat resistance to Trump’s plans, and he’s already got resistance from the Republican leader of the senate. He is already fading back on his own push for the plan … before he is even in office. He has faded back on almost everything he has promised.
So, I think it is extremely irrational for the market to completely reposition from bonds to stocks — especially banking stocks — when Trump is hedging his words on all of his pledges … backpedaling hard on immigration enforcement and on putting Hillary in jail and now even on infrastructure spending.
David Rosenberg, chief investment strategist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc., agrees:
That doesn’t mean the market won’t keep going up. Who knows what the maximum height or duration of irrational exuberance is (because who knows how crazy people can get); but I am certain of this much: the higher stock market rockets upward on such irrationality, the harder it falls into the chasm of ever-growing debt from which it has been constructed. NO significant economic reforms have happened since the start of the Great Recession. There has been no significant improvement in corporate earnings, just a lot of expanded debt to buy back shares in order to improve Price-Earning ratios, which still look terrible. The entire market is but a poof of speculative hot air.
But, for the time being, Merry Christmas. If you’re not heavily invested in stocks or bonds, raise a glass of cheer and party on because you have less to fear. There is nothing you’re going to do that can stop the markets (in stocks and bonds) from having their hangover when the bubbly stuff is over and irrational exuberance suddenly looks like delirium. Our greatest economic crashes have always happened when least expected.
—David Haggith
This burst of enthusiasm in response to Trump’s victory, flew in the face of almost everyone’s predictions. That it lifted the market from seven months of languor certainly makes 20K on the Dow look like the elevation marker of a breathtaking summit.
While breaking 20k, if it happens, may be as meaningless as one more mile on the odometer when all the numbers roll over, it is psychologically potent for many. Breaking through it, could cause fear as eyes turn down and see how far below the earth now is, or the rarified air up here may bring euphoria that lifts the market to even greater levels on a rising current of hot air.
Investors have been buying and selling with as much frenzy as Christmas shoppers. Now there will be much eating and drinking to celebrate this record-setting Santa-Clause rally, even if it doesn’t top 20, before Christmas, as investors take a brief rest to enjoy their surprise gains, fat and happy in belief that 2017 will be a prosperous new year.
There is almost no evidence of fear amongst all the cheer. According to Gallop, economic confidence has never been higher in the general population. Some are calling it Trumphoria as people seem to be relieved that eight years of Obamanomics are ending, and business is seizing the reins of government, guided by one of the world’s richest and most dazzling developers.
The first positive double-digit index score since the inception of Gallup Daily tracking in 2008 reflects a stark change in Americans’ confidence in the U.S. economy from the negative views they expressed in most weeks over the past nine years.
A similar CNBC survey indicates this is the greatest breath of fresh air for consumer confidence since Obama was elected in 2008, and it is not just stocks that are soaring. The US dollar has reached its highest peak in fourteen years. TechonoMetrica also says consumer confidence has just hit its highest level since 2006 (just in time for Christmas shopping).
The surge in consumer confidence is primarily due to a collective sense of relief among Americans over the conclusion of the contentious 2016 presidential election season, as well as a feeling of hope regarding the prospect of a new administration taking office…. Consumers are ecstatic that the election is finally over.
Will this exuberant ride continue in 2017?
Many analysts believe the push through a major milestone, if it happens, confirms a strong new market trend; but what does history say about breaking past such major psychological resistance barriers? When the Dow first broke past the 100 level in 1916, it tumbled below the line immediately and then sputtered along that ceiling for almost ten years. It didn’t break through with any continuance again until the mid 20s! When the Dow flirted with the 1,000 mark for the first time in 1966, it tumbled down and again stumbled along near that ceiling for seven years. When it finally passed it at the end of 1972, it did continue a tiny ways higher; but in less than three months the market fell for the next two years, eventually plumbing a depth 44% lower, while the nation sank into recession. The Dow didn’t permanently break through 1,000 again until 1982! And, after the Dow broke major, major milestone of 10,000 in 1999, it made it about 10% above that and then fell about 30% from 2001 to 2003 in what became known as the dot-com crash.
What if we look at what history has to say about irrational exuberance by using other measures than the Dow? The ratio of stock prices against corporate earnings is one of the most common ways of assessing the relative height of a market peak. Here again, there are only a few times in history that the S&P 500 has climbed to prices that are 27.9 times more than corporate earnings of the last ten years, which is where the S&P stands now. Once was in 1929 just before the Great Depression, then again in an ill-fated boom of the 60’s, and only one other time in 2002.
The altimeter I’m using here to assess our present peak is called the CAPE (the Cyclically Adjusted Price-Earnings ratio that won Yale’s Robert Schiller his Nobel Prize). In market terms, our present mark on the gauge means we’re entering the stratosphere! Even in 2007, the market was not this overpriced by the CAPE’s measure, and irrational exuberance has always accompanied this level: (Some will argue otherwise, but hang with me a minute.)
Early 1929 was actually a fantastic time to get into the US stock market — so long as you didn’t stick around. So were the late 1990s. Someone who sold their stocks in late 1996, when the CAPE hit 28, missed out on the biggest free-money bubble bonanza in recorded history…. Nonetheless … over the past 150 years, it has generally been an extremely poor move to invest in U.S. stocks with the CAPE at these levels. (Market watch)
Not everyone thinks passing this mark on the CAPE matters. In fact, apparently many don’t, or the stock market wouldn’t have kept climbing into the CAPE’s red zone this month, but according to Valentin Dimitrov of Rutgers University and Prem Jain of Georgetown, the measure has been applied too simplistically by those who disregard it:
In a nutshell: Investors shouldn’t flee stocks simply because the Shiller PE is above average. They shouldn’t flee stocks even when the Shiller PE is way above average. But history has said they should flee stocks when the Shiller PE is at extreme levels — like now. Only when the CAPE is “higher than 27.6”, they conclude, has the stock market proven to be a really bad investment. (Marketwatch)
It is, however, not just the height of this peak, but the rate of rise that evidences irrational exuberance. This month, the US stock roller coaster ratcheted its way relentlessly up its highest hill one clanky link at a time. If the Dow closes above 20,000 this week, it will be the fastest 1,000-point rise in market history! The previous record rate of rise came in 1999 in the run-up to the dot-com bubble crash. Of course, the higher the market is, the less meaningful a thousand-point rise is.
Do these graphs look like irrational exuberance?
Sometimes a visual says more than words:
Fastest, longest rise of the Dow in the past two years. Irrational exuberance?
Notice that it is not just prices that have shot up. Sometimes prices soar while trading volume treads flatly. In other words, there are very few traders, but those that are buying are willing to pay more. This time, trading volume has gone astronomical (lower part of graph) as money floods into stocks. That means it’s a flurry of high-stakes trading. The last time we saw this kind of trading volume was …
Is the steepest climb in a decade irrational
exuberance, particularly when accompanied by the highest trading volume
since the Great Recession began?
Yes, the last time trading volume (lower graph) reached this frenzy was in 2008 and 2009 when we experienced the greatest stock market crash since the Great Depression. And look how long and steep the post-Trump rally (right end of upper graph) looks compared to any other climb during the past decade, including the run-up to the Great Recession. It’s almost a straight-up wall!
How irrationally exuberant are investors right now?
Forget about measures for a moment, let’s look at forecasts by the revered experts in the industry because if everyone is running with glee in the same direction …
Some market experts are espousing an unequivocally bullish outlook for equities. That level of enthusiasm was on full display after Robert Doll, Nuveen Asset Management’s chief equity strategist, on Wednesday said he was “fully invested” in the market. Asked by one CNBC reporter if he recommended keeping any cash holdings … Doll had this to say: Hold cash? “What for? Market’s going up!” (Marketwatch)
Clearly, Doll sees no top to the hill in sight. Apparently neither do others: in spite of our present nose-bleed heights, Wall Street’s gauge of investor fear, the CBOE Volatility Index VIX, rests comfortably at a 16-month low. Seems almost no one sees any reason for concern at all.
Lance Roberts writes,
Over this past weekend, Barron’s Magazine published its big story the “2017 Market Outlook….” After 8-years of a bull market advance not one of the forecasters had a “bearish” outlook. In fact, as the article concludes: “If all goes smoothly, our experts’ forecasts might even prove too tepid. The old bull isn’t ready to call it quits yet….” Of course, since it is rising asset prices which drives their business – being “bullish” is good for business…. However … it is extremes in both “psychology” and “behaviors” that tend to give us the best indications as to future outcomes. The legendary Bob Farrell had two rules specifically relating to today’s topic. The first was … “When all the experts and forecasts agree – something else is going to happen.”
Barron’s panel of ten experts (from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Citi, Morgan Stanley, BofA, Blackrock and others) were unanimous in their cheer that the US stock market will ascend well beyond its present record heights.
But, if everything is so rosy, Wolf Richter asks, why are bank insiders and big industrials selling their own company’s stocks faster than ever: (Someone has to be selling for all that buying to happen.)
Why are insiders at banks and industrial companies selling their shares as if there were no tomorrow? Banks had a blistering run. The shares of Wells Fargo, the most hated bank in America these days, soared 28% over the past 30 days, Citigroup 25%, JP Morgan 26%, Goldman Sachs, which is successfully placing its people inside the Trump administration, 37%. It has surged 50% since the end of October…. But high-ranking insiders have been dumping their shares faster than at any time in the data going back to 2003. These executives are considered the “smart money.”
Have market insiders just lost their appetite for dizzying heights, or do they have reason to believe they are selling into the stock market’s last hurrah? Are their banks, perhaps, getting clobbered by the bond crisis that is now developing on the other side of all this trading?
Even the Wall Street Journal, notes Richter, saw this high-volume trading as a bullish sign. They couldn’t, however, say why it was bullish, but only that it might be profit-taking. Well, why take profits now if you’re confident your bank has room to run? Is WSJ’s bullish note just more irrational exuberance from all market experts who can smell nothing but roses since Trump’s victory?
This is how BofA’s Michael Hartnett explains it: Wall St. is bullish: expectations of “above trend” growth at five-year highs … global inflation expectations at second highest % since Jun 2004 … global bank stock positioning has hit record highs. (Zero Hedge)
Bonds are smarter … and far from exuberant
One old adage says that bond traders are the smart money. Money is now fleeing bonds at a record rate of fall that matches the record rate of rise we are seeing in the stock market. Bond money has to go somewhere; so, it could easily be that stocks are going up less because of Trumphoria and more because of bond phobia, triggered by Trump. Fear of what could easily turn into the biggest bond-bubble crash in the history of the world makes stocks look like the safest haven.
The global realization that central banks are not so enthusiastic about additional stimulus anymore, has bond investor’s realizing that the longest bull market in bond history may finally be waning. At the same time Trump’s plan of spending somewhere between half a trillion and one trillion dollars on infrastructure investments (financed on national credit) means interest rates will have to rise in order to attract enough creditors, which they are already doing in anticipation. In many nations, investors’ money is trapped in bonds near zero-percent interest. Knowing higher interest on new bonds is almost inevitable now, these investors want to get their money out of current bonds. Even in the US, who wants to be stuck in bonds at 2.5% for ten years when two to three years from now, interest may be at 5%?
The prevalent thinking is that Trump’s credit-card spending spree will heat the economy with numerous new jobs, and those new jobs will raise wages in order to attract enough workers. The increased demand for great amounts of materials will also drive up the cost of materials for everyone. The combination of many more workers flush with new cash and rising demand for materials means inflation will rise significantly; and inflation eats away at the value of money stored in bonds. So, one more reason to exit bonds. Goldman Sachs believes the main effect from fiscal stimulus this late in the employment recovery curve will be to drive up interest and inflation.
In my view, all of that means the Fed’s statement that it will be raising interest more often next year is now irrelevant. I said that before the Fed’s last meeting, and I think we see it is true in the stock market’s relative indifference to what the Fed said. Interest rates are already rising everywhere in the US economy, regardless of the Fed’s target. So, the Fed is clearly failing to accomplish anything with its stated target rate because the market is finally taking over and driving interest. That is why it was easy for the Fed to say it will increase its number of rate increases. I suspect its stated target will play catchup all year in 2017 to what the market is already doing with interest rates.
So the bond bull is breaking; but that break can cause major bond funds to wind up in liquidity traps where they cannot pay off investors who want out fast enough because the more they sell bonds that people don’t want anyway to raise cash and pay out investors, the more they have to lower the price to make a sale, driving down the value of the bonds they continue to hold, causing more investors to want out. The breaking of the longest and highest bond bull market in history could become a financial vortex, and bond values have already been falling at their fastest rate in history.
David Gundlach, the bond king who manages the DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund, sees trouble if bonds get about half a percent higher than they are today:
We’re getting to the point where further rises in Treasurys, certainly above 3 percent, would start to have a real impact on market liquidity in corporate bonds and junk bonds…. Also, a 10-year Treasury above 3 percent in my view starts to bring into question some of the aspects of the stock market and of the housing market in particular. (Newsmax)
If bond funds go bust, they will likely take banks and retirement funds and ultimately the whole economy down with them, since almost everyone has been parking large amounts of money in bond funds because they are typically viewed as safe havens in uncertain times. If all of that goes down, the stock market likely does, too. It’s hard to see how it wouldn’t. It’s always been hard for me to see which would go first in the next big drop back into the Great Recession because both look so dangerous, and it is still hard to say. Will the insolvency of bond funds wipe out some banks and hedge fund managers, taking their stocks down to nothing, or will irrational exuberance in the stock market give way to panic? Right now, it appears to me that bonds will lead the crash.
Of course, I predicted the Epocalypse of 2016, so you might not want to listen to me. (Though I did say it might not happen until after the election when the Fed gives up and lets Trump take the fall.) I also predicted a second plunge in the price of oil in 2016, and that didn’t happen either. My predictions for 2016 were apparently badly off (at least in timing) for the first time in almost a decade. I started writing regularly on eonomics after predicting the crash of the housing market nearly to the month back in 2007, which I said would quickly become an enduring global catastrophe, the likes of which few people alive had ever seen.
That said, I anticipate the remainder of this December will go something like last year’s transition into the new year where the market crashed in the manner I said it would by going up first (due to euphoria that the Fed’s interest rate increase didn’t bring down the house), then rounds off and then falls off a cliff; but we’ll see. I’m not certain of that this year, as I was last year, and the fall off the cliff last year was not as severe as I thought it would be … though it was the worst January in the history of the stock market. This year, the euphoria is MUCH higher, so the fall could be much greater and be the kind that I anticipated for 2016.
Is it irrational for stocks to rise due to betting on the Trump card?
It could be. Consider that the entire marketplace began shifting overnight out of bonds and into stocks when Trump won, and it’s still shifting like a huge landslide. What if it repositions to this large degree, and then Trump changes his positions … again? As a matter of fact, he’s already started to backpedal from his infrastructure pledge just as he has been doing from almost all of his stated campaign pledges since being elected:
Trump made rebuilding the nation’s aging roads, bridges and airports very much part of his job-creation strategy in the presidential race. But lately lobbyists have begun to fear that there won’t be an infrastructure proposal at all, or at least not the grand plan they’d been led to expect…. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to tamp down expectations last week, telling reporters he wants to avoid “a $1 trillion stimulus.” And Reince Priebus, who will be Trump’s chief of staff, said in a radio interview that the new administration will focus in its first nine months with other issues… He sidestepped questions about the infrastructure plan. In a post-election interview with The New York Times, Trump himself seemed to back away, saying infrastructure won’t be a “core” part of the first few years of his administration…. He acknowledged that he didn’t realize during the campaign that New Deal-style proposals to put people to work building infrastructure might conflict with his party’s small-government philosophy. “That’s not a very Republican thing — I didn’t even know that, frankly,” he said. (Newsmax)
Seriously? Wow! How could he not know this, given that Republicans have resisted doing any infrastructure stimulus plans for eight years? He is either scarily out of touch if he didn’t realize he’d have a fight from the Republican congress, or this statement is proof that Trump was a Trojan horse from the beginning. This is a remarkably rapid turn from the New-Big-Deal plan that Steve Bannon advocated as being the economy’s salvation, given that Trump is not even in office yet.
We could have one wild roller coaster ride in 2017 since the market is entirely repositioning itself toward Trump’s infrastructure pledge if that plan takes a few years to come about or doesn’t make it through congress at all … or maybe doesn’t even get presented. It certainly never had a chance of making it through congress unless Trump pushed hard and leveraged his campaign victory toward that end, and the above statements don’t sound like Trump has any push left!
Zero Hedge recently reported on growing Republican resistance to Trump’s tax and infrastructure plans:
[In an article titled] “A “Big Problem” Emerges For Trump’s Economic Plan” … we reported that while the market may (still) be blissfully unaware about the emerging conflict between Trump’s debt-fueled vision for the future, Republican politicians had started to notice…. Republican lawmakers warned “that there could be a major obstacle to enacting President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda: the national debt.” “I was disappointed that it wasn’t brought up in the campaign,…” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said of deficits and debt. “So I’m very concerned about it. It’s going to be tough to address if there’s no push from outside of the Congress,” he added. “I’m very concerned about it. It’s the biggest problem we face, by far.”
Rapidly rising interest rates already mean the infrastructure program will become much harder to finance. If Trump waits three years to get seriously started, interest rates could make the plan nearly impossible, plus he will likely have expended all his political capital that comes from a surprise election victory, which will be ancient news by then. He will need that capital to get the plan through a reluctant congress.
Rising interest rates already mean the mammoth national debt that came about as the result of the Great Recession will become much harder to finance over the next few years, even without taking out another trillion for new infrastructure. So, that will be a new and serious burden on the economy unless so much money flees Europe to bond and stock safety in the US that we’re saved by dumb luck … as once again being the best horse in the glue factory.
So, is the stock market irrational in its exuberance for shifting so much just because of Trump’s pledges, which are far, far from becoming reality? I think so. I haven’t even talked about Democrat resistance to Trump’s plans, and he’s already got resistance from the Republican leader of the senate. He is already fading back on his own push for the plan … before he is even in office. He has faded back on almost everything he has promised.
So, I think it is extremely irrational for the market to completely reposition from bonds to stocks — especially banking stocks — when Trump is hedging his words on all of his pledges … backpedaling hard on immigration enforcement and on putting Hillary in jail and now even on infrastructure spending.
David Rosenberg, chief investment strategist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc., agrees:
The bullish run “probably can get extended into the new year,” but “we’ve just taken a very big leg up here, and levels of sentiment, levels of market positioning and levels of valuation do have me a bit worried that if we see any disappointment at all, it could lead to the sort of pullback we had last year….” Rosenberg calls current valuation levels “extreme.” (Newsmax)
Gathering around the stock ticker in the US stock market crash of 1929.
That doesn’t mean the market won’t keep going up. Who knows what the maximum height or duration of irrational exuberance is (because who knows how crazy people can get); but I am certain of this much: the higher stock market rockets upward on such irrationality, the harder it falls into the chasm of ever-growing debt from which it has been constructed. NO significant economic reforms have happened since the start of the Great Recession. There has been no significant improvement in corporate earnings, just a lot of expanded debt to buy back shares in order to improve Price-Earning ratios, which still look terrible. The entire market is but a poof of speculative hot air.
But, for the time being, Merry Christmas. If you’re not heavily invested in stocks or bonds, raise a glass of cheer and party on because you have less to fear. There is nothing you’re going to do that can stop the markets (in stocks and bonds) from having their hangover when the bubbly stuff is over and irrational exuberance suddenly looks like delirium. Our greatest economic crashes have always happened when least expected.
—David Haggith
Apocalyptic wall of icy fog above Lake Superior is the beginning of a VERY white Christmas for Minnesota and millions of Americans as huge blizzard looks set to hit on December 25
- Frigid -18 degree air and warmer water created a wall of fog at the lake Sunday
- The startling phenomenon precedes blizzards that will sweep over on Xmas Day
- The cold front will start at the Rockies on Saturday then push North-East
- And on Xmas Day blizzards will hit Wyoming, the Dakotas and Minnesota hard
- High winds could also result in flights being delayed or cancelled
Residents
of Duluth Harbor, Minnesota, were witness to a spectacular phenomenon
Sunday, as a wall of 'steam', hundreds of feet high, rose from Lake
Superior.
Created by warmer lake waters evaporating in the -18 degree air, the churning cliff of fog was stunning but harmless.
However,
it was a sign of much harder times to come for the state and its
neighbors, which will find themselves suffering dangerous blizzard
conditions when a powerful winter storm hits on Christmas day, AccuWeather reported.
Scroll down for video
Frozen: A spectacular wall of 'sea smoke'
hundreds of feet high was seen over Lake Superior Sunday, as -18 degree
air caused water to vaporize. Mroe cold times are ahead for the state
Christmas Eve: On Saturday a cold front
will push up from the Rockies, with snowfall in Wyoming and the Dakotas,
and freezing rain over to Minnesota
The
storm formation will cover a swathe of Midwestern states, blowing
eastwards in a path over the Rockies and gaining in strength as it
passes over Wyoming.
Saturday
evening will see conditions in the Interstate 25 corridor between
Billings, Montana and Casper, Wyoming, deteriorating dramatically,
making travel difficult.
The
snowfall will carry on to Bismarck, North Dakota on Saturday. As night
falls, it will hit Fargo in North Dakota and Rapid City in South
Dakota.
The area
from central South Dakota to central Minnesota and northern Wisconsin
will experience a wintry mix with periods of freezing rain.
Christmas Day: On Sunday there will be a
massive blizzard stretching across Wyoming, the Dakotas and the northern
tip of Minnesota, and high winds that could stop plane travel
Airline
delays may occur on Christmas Day as winds pick up from the southern
Plains to the Canadian border, and out east as far as the Great Lakes
region.
That will also pose a threat to lightweight cars and tall vehicles on motorways.
And that's
not to mention the blizzards that will spread up from the Rockies to
the northern Plains, likely resulting in portions of the I-80, I-90 and
I-94 being shut down.
Outside of
the core blizzard area, heavy snowfall will still occur all the way
across to northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, with a wintry mix hitting
the middle and southern areas of those states.
All of
those states have already been hit hard so far this winter, although
heavy snowfall in Green Bay, Wisconsin proved an attraction as much as
an annoyance for some.
Cold comfort: Southern and more eastern states will experience storms and showers on Christmas Day, rather than snowfall
Packers fans flooded the stadium on Thursday to clear the pitch of snow ahead of Saturday's game, WBAY reported.
Fans were given shovels and $10 per hour to clear the way for the team, but many would likely have done it for free.
Fan Rob Wartick turned up extra early because, he says, he got turned away early last year.
'I didn’t get in, I didn't get a chance,' he said.
'I wanted to come that much earlier this
year so I made sure I was one of the people who got to shovel,' Rob
said. 'With the playoffs looming for the Packers, I wanted to be part of
the atmosphere.'
That atmosphere will likely be warm Saturday, but come Sunday - and the snowstorms - it will be a different matter entirely.
Next week: Snow is expected to continue falling into Monday
Friday, December 23, 2016
AmeriTrust Groupe Inc. STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS PROGRAMME
PART TWO -
U.S. PRESIDENT - ELECT DONALD J TRUMP PR0POSED CAPPING RE-PAYMENTS AT TWELVE POINT FIVE PERCENT [ 12.5 % ] OF THE BORROWER'S INCOME AND OFFERING DEBT FORGIVENESS AFTER FIFTEEN [ 15 ] YEARS OF FULL FEDERAL LOAN PAYMENTS.
SIMPLE QUESTION ? JUST WHAT WAS WRONG ABOUT THE STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS TUITION
PROGRAMME OF THE AmeriTrust Groupe Inc. STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS PROGRAMME !!!
U.S. PRESIDENT - ELECT DONALD J TRUMP PR0POSED CAPPING RE-PAYMENTS AT TWELVE POINT FIVE PERCENT [ 12.5 % ] OF THE BORROWER'S INCOME AND OFFERING DEBT FORGIVENESS AFTER FIFTEEN [ 15 ] YEARS OF FULL FEDERAL LOAN PAYMENTS.
SIMPLE QUESTION ? JUST WHAT WAS WRONG ABOUT THE STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS TUITION
PROGRAMME OF THE AmeriTrust Groupe Inc. STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS PROGRAMME !!!
AmeriTrust Groupe, Inc.
Office of the Chairman / Chief Executive Officer
Ambassador Lee Emil Wanta
S.D.R. Diplomatic Passport No. 04362, 12535
4001 North 9 th Street, Suite No. 227
Arlington, Virginia, USA 22203-1954
Commonwealth of Virginia
_____________
White House INTEL Files Received and Acknowledged -
George Washington’s Advice to Us Now
George Washington’s Advice to Us Now…
by Eric Zuesse
George Washington’s final words to his fellow Americans when leaving the White House will soon again become a part of this country’s hot political debates, but the person who will be interpreting these words to today’s Americans will be an American aristocrat whose viewpoints are actually far more similar to those of the British redcoats that Washington killed during the Revolutionary War, than to the viewpoints of General Washington himself.
John Avlon (former speechwriter for Rudolf Giuliani, and before that, schooled at Milton Academy and then Yale) is now the Editor-in-Chief of the rabidly anti-Russian — or «neoconservative» — ‘news’ (or propaganda) site «The Daily Beast». He will issue on January 10th, his book, Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations, which is an extended essay on President George Washington’s famous Farewell Address.
Here, then, is a passage from that Address, in which our first (and — along with Lincoln and FDR, one of our three greatest) President(s) actually had warned us against the neoconservative path, which our nation has been on ever since 24 February 1990 and the end of the USSR and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance. That’s the path of wars (such as in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine) (which some wags call «perpetual war for perpetual peace») to conquer first all of Russia’s allies, and then finally (once Russia is thus thoroughly isolated), to conquer Russia itself — in other words, George Washington, when retiring from public life, warned us against Mr. Avlon’s website’s own neoconservative foreign-affairs obsession: eternal enmity against Russia (President Washington warned us, instead, to avoid eternal enmity against any nation, including Russia, as is indicated in this passage):
Nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot.
How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it.
Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop
Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.
Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.Such «temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies» includes The Allies (England, Soviet Union and U.S.) during World War II, but certainly nothing after the Soviet Union and its communism and Warsaw Pact ended in 1991.
The entire ‘Western Alliance’ — basically NATO plus Japan — is anti-American policies by the American aristocracy (controlling the U.S. Government) after 1991, and should therefore promptly terminate, and U.S. armed forces be withdrawn from all foreign countries, in accord with the will and intention of America’s democratic Founders including President Washington.
Using the U.S. Defense Department, and the U.S. Treasury Department, as (which neoconservatives do) a vast welfare program for the super-wealthy owners of U.S. weapons-manufacturers and for U.S. and other mercenaries, is unauthorized by America’s Founders, and was explicitly condemned by George Washington.
If any U.S.-based international corporations need those foreign U.S. military bases, then they should pick up all of the government’s tab to pay for them, because that kind of ‘capitalism’ is mere imperialism, which is nothing that any of our Founding Fathers advocated — it’s un-American, in terms of the U.S. Constitution and the men who wrote it.
As Alexander Hamilton wrote on 9 January 1796, in defending the new Constitution, and especially its Treaty Clause: «I aver, that it was understood by all to be the intent of the provision [the Treaty Clause] to give to that power the most ample latitude to render it competent to all the stipulations, which the exigencies of National Affairs might require—competent to the making of Treaties of Alliance, Treaties of Commerce, Treaties of Peace and every other species of Convention usual among nations and competent in the course of its exercise to control & bind the legislative power of Congress. And it was emphatically for this reason that it was so carefully guarded; the cooperation of two thirds of the Senate with the President being required to make a Treaty. I appeal for this with confidence».
He went further: «It will not be disputed that the words ‘Treaties and alliances’ are of equivalent import and of no greater force than the single word Treaties. An alliance is only a species of Treaty, a particular of a general. And the power of ‘entering into Treaties,’ which terms confer the authority under which the former Government acted, will not be pretended to be stronger than the power ‘to make Treaties,’ which are the terms constituting the authority under which the present Government acts».
So: there can be no doubt that the term «treaty» refers to any and all types of international agreements. This was the Founders’ clear and unequivocal intent. No court under this Constitution possesses any power to change that, because they can’t change history.
Furthermore, the third President Thomas Jefferson said in his likewise-famous Inaugural Address, that there should be «Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none». Jefferson’s comment there was also a succinct tip-of-the-hat to yet another major concern that the Founders had regarding treaties — that by discriminating in favor of the treaty-partners, they also discriminate against non-partner nations, and so endanger «peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations,» which was the Founders’ chief goal in their foreign policies. But, the Founders’ chief concern was the mere recognition that treaties tend to be far more «permanent» and «entangling» than any purely national laws.
This was the main reason why treaties need to be made much more difficult to become laws, and so the two-thirds-of-Senate requirement for passing-into-law any treaty was instituted as the Treaty-Clause, Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2.
Though this thinking — avoidance of favoritism in America’s foreign policies — was pervasive amongst the creators of America’s democracy (or people’s republic), America’s newly developed aristocracy subsequently in the 20th Century targeted elimination of the two-thirds-of-Senate requirement, because it’s an impediment toward their re-establishing the aristocracy that the American Revolution itself had overthrown and replaced by this people’s republic. And, the big chance for the aristocracy to restore its position via an imperial President, and so to extend their empire beyond our own shores, came almost two hundred years after America’s founding; it came in 1974, which was when a law finally became passed by Congress allowing some treaties to emerge as U.S. law with only the normal 50%+1 majority in the Senate (unconstitutional though that is).
Without that Nixonian law, George Herbert Walker Bush’s NAFTA wouldn’t have been able to become law under Bill Clinton in 1993, and Barack Obama’s TPP with Asia and TTIP with Europe wouldn’t have stood even a chance of becoming law in 2016. Both of Obama’s proposed mega treaties were designed to isolate and weaken both Russia and China in international trade, but all that Obama ended up with, before his leaving office, was economic sanctions against Russia for its having accepted the desire of the vast majority of Crimeans to rejoin with Russia after Obama’s Ukrainian coup overthrew the democratically elected President of next-door Ukraine, who had received 75% of the vote within Crimea.
Avlon’s website, as a mainstream neoconservative ‘news’ site, opposes both Donald Trump and Russia. They actually urge punishing Russia for Trump’s election! What would George Washington think about having a person (Avlon) so partisan against George Washington’s vision for our country as that, becoming the modern ‘interpreter’ of his famous Farewell Address? Would he like that?
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/george-washingtons-advice-to-us-now_122016
the famous "Patton Prayer" and Christmas greeting
Below is the famous "Patton Prayer"
and Christmas greeting
sent to the men of the Third Army
December 8, 1944:
Villager in China uses grenade to crack open walnuts for 25 years
BEIJING - A hand grenade was used to crack walnuts for 25 years by a
villager in China who had no idea what he was using until he saw a photo
of a grenade on a leaflet handed out by local police.
The man from Ankang, in China's Shaanxi province, saw that his walnut cracker looked similar to a grenade pictured on a leaflet warning about forbidden explosives, according to Huanqiu.com.
According to villagers, the man used the grenade specifically to crack open the nuts.
According to reports, the man had been using the grenade without realising what it was for some 25 years, said Britain's Mail Online on Dec 21.
It had been given to him by a friend.
Images taken on Dec 5 (2016) show the device.
Police found that the grenade had not detonated and they were unsure if the device had explosives inside it, the Mail said.
It was only when the man was handed a police leaflet that he realised that he possessed a forbidden explosive.
Grenades usually explode when the safety lever is released and the object is thrown away. As it rotates, it detonates the primer and ignites the fuse before burning down to the detonator, said the Mail.
People have been commenting on social media site Weibo about the man's lucky escape.
One user wrote: "Why would a friend gift him a bomb?"
Another said: "It's more stable than a Samsung phone."
The man from Ankang, in China's Shaanxi province, saw that his walnut cracker looked similar to a grenade pictured on a leaflet warning about forbidden explosives, according to Huanqiu.com.
According to villagers, the man used the grenade specifically to crack open the nuts.
According to reports, the man had been using the grenade without realising what it was for some 25 years, said Britain's Mail Online on Dec 21.
It had been given to him by a friend.
Images taken on Dec 5 (2016) show the device.
Police found that the grenade had not detonated and they were unsure if the device had explosives inside it, the Mail said.
It was only when the man was handed a police leaflet that he realised that he possessed a forbidden explosive.
Grenades usually explode when the safety lever is released and the object is thrown away. As it rotates, it detonates the primer and ignites the fuse before burning down to the detonator, said the Mail.
People have been commenting on social media site Weibo about the man's lucky escape.
One user wrote: "Why would a friend gift him a bomb?"
Another said: "It's more stable than a Samsung phone."
BUNDY-THE TRUE STORY...
BUNDY-THE TRUE STORY...
Published on Dec 10, 2016
This is the real story the courts will not let you hear, narrated entirely from inside a jail. All 3 parts HD. Narrated by Ammon Bundy. Produced by Gavin Seim. This was produced at my own expense; to support costs please donate: http://callmegav.com/donate. You can support the Bundy family at: http://paypal.me/carolbundy or http://paypal.me/lbundy.
Clips were provided by Seim and the Bundy Family, goverment records, donated by makers or used under the fair use act, 17 U.S. Code § 107. Please share and tell the world this true story.
This video may be reproduced for non commercial purposes providing credit is given to the maker.
Clips were provided by Seim and the Bundy Family, goverment records, donated by makers or used under the fair use act, 17 U.S. Code § 107. Please share and tell the world this true story.
This video may be reproduced for non commercial purposes providing credit is given to the maker.
WATCH THIS....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNPNRmEHBb0
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