Maverick's World

The Daily Donald 03/31/2017

Things got really bad for President Trump yesterday.

For starters President Putin gave a disastrous interview where he made ambiguous statements about RIS interference in the US election. This was the wrong time to act cute in front of the camera. Perhaps whoever advised President Putin on this should be retrenched because they clearly underestimated how much impact this would have on things.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had its first open hearing. A lot of information was presented about how the RIS (and its predecessors KGB and NKVD) had historically indulged in information operations to try and influence the election in the US and Europe. Much was made of the fact that this latest digital version of disinformatsya is just a variation on older themes. And Clinton Watts basically came out in front of the committee and openly said that the reason the Russian IOs succeeded was because Donald J Trump used these RIS active measures to undermine his opponents. This process was at work both in the primaries and the general election. Whenever some RIS info-warrior would shoot a virtual bullet Donald Trump neatly pushes his opponents in front of it. 

This is a very common form of collaboration with a hostile foreign power. It is also a form of treason. There is so much public domain evidence of Donald Trump doing this - there is no way for him to pretend he doesn't do this. A treason charge made in this context will stick. When you use information provided by a hostile foreign power to undermine your political opponents - you commit treason and you belong in jail. 

Not a single Trump supporter will deny that he said those things. They all repeated the things he said - and it is very clear all those things came from RIS sources. 

It comes as no surprise that the suspected felon Gen. Micheal Flynn's lawyers suddenly came up with an offer to testify before the SSCI and the HPSCI in exchange for immunity. This is unlikely to happen as an officer who has clearly betrayed his oath to the nation is not a very credible witness. Also there is more to be gained in making the same offer to Paul Manafort who clearly could offer evidence that implicates Putin himself too.

Against that backdrop Chairman Devin Nunes found himself in even more hot water as several leaks revealed that three different officials (Micheal Elias, Ezra Cohen-Whatnik, and ?) leaked information from the NSC's classified documents to Chairman Nunes. Chairman Nunes then went through an elaborate charade of presenting the information to President Trump at the WH, which completely obstructed the efforts to hold President Trump accountable. This entire exercise appears to have been orchestrated by Steve Bannon's Strategic Interests Group faction of the NSC. This is a part of the NSC that Gen. McMaster does not have any control over. This group has been suspected of feeding RIS disinformatysa to the President as part of policy discussions. As things stand, it may be that the Bannon led SIG is the actual footfall of the RIS inside the WH.

Now we are seeing rumors of a President having a come-to-Jesus meeting where all options including resignation are on the table. FWIW - I do not think he will resign. To resign would be to hand over all leverage to his opponents. My guess is that Putin will urge him to stay and fight. That may explain why Wikileaks has dug out Vault No Whatever. In this latest piece of "leaked information" WL attempts to blame the CIA for all viruses on the internet. I guess the staff of the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg need to do something to keep their jobs. I wonder at what point they will switch gears to Anti-Putin propaganda. Probably a few months into the protests.

In any case, whether decides to stay or leave, President Trump will need to come up with a bunch of crazy proposals in Congress to use as leverage against the imminent impeachment. This may explain why he is simultaneously reaching for the Democrats in one tweet and pushing them away as enemies in the next tweet. The same applies to the GOP Freedom Caucus. Both the Freedom Caucus and the House Dems are in a weakened position. This might make President Trump believe that he is likely to find support by leveraging either or both of this group. It remains to be seen whether this succeeds.

Mainstream GOPers are slowly peeling away from Donald Trump. One prominent one has indicated to his friends that it is time for people to build bridges with Vice President Pence. Interviews with focus groups are showing that some Trumpers still want to give President Trump more time to sort out his "teething troubles" but there does not appear to be any real basis for trusting him even among his staunchest supporters. Direct questions about trust elicited blank stares even from his traditional base.

In this climate, I would say there is more on its way. The crisis is fast approaching a level that completely outstrips the Admin's resources. At time will be upon us when they simply cannot respond to the number of questions raised about their integrity. While the questions posed by the public at large can be ignored, questioned posed by powerful groups in the Senate and House, by powerful groups inside Wall Street, and the high priests of Law Enforcement cannot be brushed aside.

President Trump also reshuffled his White House staff, and depending on who you ask Katie Walsh was either rewarded for her superb performance as Dy Chief of WH Staff with a plum posting at America First Policies PAC or she was dumped in a graveyard for leaking sensitive information to reporters and "frogmarched out of the WH". I don't know what to believe and I really don't care which of those accounts is true. It is entirely possible that both are true.

If that all sounds disturbing there is a small bit of good news. It seems the Trump Administration has backed off for now on its plans to introduce a 20% tariff on goods made in Mexico. The Mexicans for their part passed legislation in the Senate which reciprocated the 20% tariff with a complete ban on import of US corn. Mexico began highly public negotiations with Brazil and other South American producers to buy corn without any taxation at all. This caused the Trump Admin officials to push the brakes on the bullshit machine that is CiC's mouth.

Alas this will not last. A train wreck has been set in motion. As Mexico begins taking competitive offers on Corn from South America, it will undoubtedly begin to receive better offers than what US corn producers can make. This will lead to open competition between US Corn and South American Corn. That competition will lead to a price war which in turn will push us closer to a Great Depression. It is important not blame the Mexicans for this state of affairs - as in complete honesty - it is completely our own damn fault.

We failed the world when we allowed Donald J. Trump to become President of the United States. 

posted by maverick @ 5:33 AM 0 comments

The Daily Donald 03/30/2017

The Trump admin's move to stall the HPSCI investigations appears to have worked to some extent. While the obvious blockage of the HPSCI testimonial channel has resulted in numerous detrimental leaks, it has prevented a highly visible accountability mechanism from taking the Trump Admin to task over its RIS links.

This blockage will not last indefinitely as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) will eventually begin its own hearings and that will lead to more problems for the Trump Admin. However this Admin appears to operate on a week by week basis. It has so little by way of think-ahead/look-ahead there is nothing else that would make sense of it to do. Most cabinet officers and staff in the Trump Admin don't think they will last more than a few weeks or at most a few months.

As for the HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes, it appears he is operating under the belief that he is not meaningfully accountable for his actions and whatever he does will not have meaningful personal consequences for himself. This is not unusual as House Reps tend to be dimwitted as a whole, but what Chairman Nunes seems to be relying on is that he will either be paid off handsomely by Trump Admin and never have to bother with running for election again or he will go to jail and be pardoned by President Trump.

Perhaps he doesn't realize that once the HPSCI blockage fails to contain the situation, President Trump will discard Chairman Devin as he will become a liability as opposed to an asset. We all know what happens to liabilities and right now the Trump Admin is racking up a lot of such liabilities.

The Trump Admin's Eminence Grise Steve Bannon is in the news again. This time it appears his Brieitbart News online paper acted as an undeclared foreign agent of an Egyptian billionaire name Mustafa Al- Gendi.

In other news the high levels of scrutiny of Jared Kushner has caused the Chinese multinational Anbang to go slow on some "deals" they were going to make. How this affects the Chinese Premier's visit to Mar-a-Lago next week, I cannot say.

And President Trump signed some piece of paper designed to make it look like he favors carbon fuel based energy. This was part of some vague promises he made to the Coal miners in West Virginia and there are many doubt about whether this will actually benefit them or simply make life easier for the Natural Gas producers who want to kill coal mining completely, but it is strange to see a President who is so anti-Globalization but so pro-Carbon fuels. Carbon fuels are the most globalized commodity ever. If you are pro-Carbon fuels you are in the pockets of the biggest players in the globalization movement. Obviously I don't expect the average VW coal miner to grok something that complicated but the rest of us have a right to know.

Apparently the GOP and Trump Admin had some kind of meeting of minds yesterday. They can't agree on the "Replace" part of the "Repeal and Replace Obamacare" - so they are going to go ahead with the "Repeal" part so that they don't look like complete feckless idiots right now. As has been repeatedly pointed out the "Repeal Obamacare" without the "Replace" part is a genocidal agenda - but that doesn't seem to stop a GOP which is finding itself fast losing popularity.

In sync with this the Mercers are now paying out millions of dollars into a multi-state ad campaign that is seeks to bolster the image of the failing President Trump. This campaign is being coordinated by Cambridge Analytica -so keep on the lookout for pro-Trump/anti-Hillary messaging that mysteriously appears on your social media feed and be sure to thank Cambridge Analytica and the Mercer family folks!!!

The single minded devotion of this Admin to committing genocide - of the old and the poor - and their love of all things corrupt and corporate, makes me wonder. I wonder if the Trump Admin is merely another facet of the "Evil Globalist Agenda". Globalization relies on having minimal opposition to the free transport of goods and services across national borders. If certain segments of the population in a country want to resist globalization - then the "Evil Globalists" will want to remove these people from power. Clearly as Hitler demonstrated w bullets you can only kill a few million or so, and that too is not very efficient so that's probably not on. But then as the Spanish Flu demonstrated, you can kill ~100 millions with a pandemic. Yes it is indiscriminate but perhaps it can be made more discerning by selectively moderating the health management system that would attempt to contain the pandemic?

It is clear that from an "Evil Globalist" perspective the old white people of Middle America are a major barrier to the global economic integration they seek. If their health management could be degraded, a pandemic would wipe them out fairly selectively. In doing so the opposition they represent would ebb away and globalization could proceed apace?

Perhaps that is the missing piece of the Trump puzzle.

posted by maverick @ 5:15 AM 0 comments

The Daily Donald 3/29/2017

It seems that Cypriot financial authorities have turned significant amounts of evidence concerning Paul Manafort and his bank accounts over to FinCEN at the US Treasury Department. While it is likely that this will cause further fracturing of the Trump establishment as efforts to distance itself from Paul Manafort will increase in strength, for the moment at least the Trump administration appears to have stalled the Russia investigation in the House.

As things currently stand, Chairman Nunes has clung on to his post for all of yesterday defying numerous calls to resign from within his own party. As most of you are aware Chairman Nunes has been part of the Trump admin's transition team - an organization that was widely believed to be massively infiltrated by RIS agents and agents of influence. It comes as no surprise that Chairman Nunes seeks to  stall the inquiry on behalf of President Trump, but what is more interesting is that Speaker Ryan intends to let him do so.

Given Trump is overwhelming more popular that Speaker Paul Ryan, it should be easy for the President to push Ryan over. However as we all know Donald Trump is incompetent and usually fails at most things he does. His ham handed attempts at trouncing Speaker Ryan have largely failed and the Paul Ryan clings to his power. As the President increases the intensity of his efforts - it is unlikely that Speaker Ryan can hold on for ever. It is only a matter of time before Paul Ryan is out.

This should be obvious to Paul and one would think he would be looking to make an honorable exit - preferably something that covers him with glory and makes him look like a martyr for the nation as a whole. All opinion polls show that the majority of Americans want to see an impartial inquiry into the Trump-Russia ties. Clearly Chairman Nunes is trying to prevent that from happening.

What better way to cover yourself in glory than to take Nunes off the HPSCI and then let things proceed in a bi-partisan way? What is the worst that could happen if Paul Ryan does that? I know Trump loyalists will try to unseat Ryan - but they are doing that anyway. What more can they do that they haven't done? If anything Paul Ryan would become much harder to remove if he does that. To remove the speaker who supported a bi-partisan inquiry into the Trump Russia affair would be extremely devastating to the GOP.

So it is curious why Speaker Ryan hasn't already removed Chairman Nunes. It is almost as if Speaker Ryan is keen to prove he is the slow witted bumbling idiot that his enemies accuse him of being. He is living up to Steve Bannon's caricature of himself from Breitbart News editorials.

I am aware that the GOP is dependent on corporate payoffs so that bills like the repeal of the FCC's broadband privacy rules but do they really need Donald Trump's approval? Would it not work to the GOPs benefit if they passed all sorts of bills and had Donald Trump hold them up because of the "Trump Russia" inquiry stuff? Hey - isn't that the approach used with the Obama White House? That worked wonders electorally. By all rights the GOP should have been voted out, but because their voters were stupid and blinded by hatred of a black president - they voted them back in vast numbers.

So why do GOPers think it can't work again?

It is in the GOPs best interests to replace Nunes right away. It puts the entire Bannon faction in the WH on notice and hobbles the Ivanka-Kushner-NYC crowd permanently. This would put Preibus in a position of total domination until the Trump Administration collapses and is replaced by the Pence dispensation.

And the stinger in the tail here is that if Ryan chooses not to act right now. His replacement will.

posted by maverick @ 5:17 AM 0 comments

The Daily Donald 03/28/2017

Extremely damaging revelations about unreported meetings between Jared Kushner and Sergei Gorkov (head of Vnesheconombank)  have appeared in the lay press. Given Mr. Gorkov's links to the FSB and VEB's links to a Russian spy ring, this latest revelation is making it look like the whole Trump Family is in bed with the RIS.

Chairman Nunes bizarre behavior has completely baffled most analysts but it appears that he is working for the Trump Administration (rather than the HPSCI or the people that elected him). The main objective of this Trump Admin employee appears to be to derail the HPSCI efforts to depose critical members of the USIC and DOJ. Apparently these members are in possession of evidence that would very damaging to the Trump Admin. (Update : both HPSCI and SSCI hearings for the week have been cancelled 8:35 AM 3/28/2017. Update 1:51 PM 3/28/2017 SSCI still on - Sally Yates to testify).

After the TrumpCare/ACHA fiasco President Trump is making a great deal of effort to lay the blame for everything wrong on House majority leader Paul Ryan. While it looks like DJT is doing this to avoid being blamed for going back on one his campaign's signature promises, I feel there is a much more sinister agenda in place. I feel it is more likely that DJT deliberately drove the TrumpCare bill to defeat because he wanted a lever on Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan has the ability to recall the HPSCI chairman and "un-fuck" the HPSCI investigation, but with DJT calling for his removal, Paul will be forced to make a deal that saves his own skin but essentially stymies the HPSCI for the moment.

This latter bit is a double edged sword - if DJT's efforts at planting the TrumpCare Fail at Paul's door fail or new evidence of collaboration between RIS and DJTC appears in the public domain, Paul will be left with no choice but to go on the offensive. He will have to unfetter the HPSCI investigation in order to protect the GOP form the adverse fallout of DJT's ties to RIS.

Speaking of Russia - it would appear that civil unrest is spreading to several cities despite the fact that Russian TV isn't actually covering any of the protests. As the number of protests grow, the Putin Admin's response to them is going to become harsher. Crude estimates of RU GDP (see below) put the number at 1998-2000 levels. This is catastrophic and it is unlikely that President Putin will be able to survive the political fallout of this madness.

RU GDP (source)

* Update 8:38 AM 03/28/2017 - if both SSCI and HPSCI are cancelled, that means the DJT Admin is in deep shit. This is a very reactive entity. They actually believe they can get away with anything and react poorly when they find they can't.  If they had to push to cancel those meetings it probably means that the Kislyak-Gorkov-Kushner conversation records contain something very incriminating or damaging to DJT himself. Wonder who he will throw under the bus now. 

posted by maverick @ 4:58 AM 0 comments

The Daily Donald 3/27/2017

Three major developments

1) The TrumpCare/ACHA failed to pass despite a GOP majority in the House and Senate and a GOP President. Trump is now attempting to place blame for the failure on Speaker Paul Ryan and Chief of Staff Reinhold Preibus. The entire White House staff is leaking profusely as the Bannon, Preibus and Kushner factions attempt to land this mess on each others' door. The Bannon faction has been exposed as being completely useless at actually getting anything done. The GOP has quite predictably resisted President Trump's attempt to tie the Obamacare repeal to its tail. With a vast majority of people in US opposing the ACHA/TrumpCare - the GOP put its foot down and dissolved into what appeared to be infighting. Now President Trump has to explain to Goldman Sachs and other on Wall Street why he isn't such a great deal maker and negotiator. That lack of confidence will show up in the DJIA over the next week. I think it is fair to say that the Trump rally is over and the Great Collapse has begun.

2) Consistent reports of Gen. Flynn turning state witness in the Russian spying case have appeared. Given the wide extent of collaboration between the Trump organization, the Trump campaign and people close to the RIS/Putin - this may very well be the kiss of death. In the middle of last week, President Trump seemed disconnected from his work. His mind was clearly elsewhere. He let it slip to the National Enquirer that the WH had "caught a Russian Spy working in their midst" - Apparently that was a reference to Gen. Flynn. The NE also claimed that President Pence had been saved from falling into the jaws of a HRC driven conspiracy by Julian Assange.  In the shit-you-can't-make-up category - it seems Mr. Trump is coming to the grips with the reality that his Russia ties make a clear case for treason and this gross violation of the sanctity of electoral process voids the verdict. One can expect to see more disturbing facts emerge as the train-of-pain winds its way through the week.

3) The RU Min External Affairs mysteriously threatened the USIC. In an article published in a newspaper, the Min Ext. Aff. (probably Peskov himself) threatened to release "damaging secrets" from the Obama days if the "leaks" of not just US but also "Russian" matters did not stop. When I saw this, the first thought I had was wow - Moscow's ass must be in the fire if they are desperate enough to do this. Turns out I was not far off, over the weekend 80 cities have erupted in "Anti-Corruption" protests. The news of the protests leaked out on the internet but Russian TV largely refused to cover it. With crowds chanting "Russia without Putin" and repeated comparisons to the Tsar - it appears the Putin regime is fast losing the narrative in Moscow. Naturally like all regimes in this situation, it will resort to repression (which of course will make matters worse) and ultimately collapse into a hell of its own making.

Given the way that Mr. Trump compulsively golfs and lies about it, and the complete lack of interest he has in the "little shit" (to borrow his words) - I think this Presidency is over. The grievous and failed attacks by Mr. Trump on Speaker Ryan have left the GOPers with no choice but to push ahead with a full impeachment. While a few Trumpers (with curiously Russian sources of funding) like Chairman Nunes have tried to remain loyal to him, their behavior is so absurdly out of order, it is likely they will be facing a criminal obstruction charge themselves.

The only question now is whether Mr. Trump will be able to go prevent a conviction.

It is here that the words "neuro syphilis" will take on crucial meanings.

PS. The Toronto Star treated us to an article about how deep in the "forgotten belt" Trump still evokes support. I agree that may be true, but then I remind everyone poverty can produce a vicious cycle - people are poor they make poor choices and become poorer or remain poor and make poorer choices or repeat their previous poor choices. These "forgotten people" have had their trust breached by GOPers so many times that it is unlikely that anyone will be able to reach out to them.

PPS. The Trump rally is ending. The market will correct in predictable ways. As Putin is too busy sorting out his own problems, I doubt he will make time for anyone else. Perhaps this can be inferred from Boris Epshtyn's sudden resignation. Mr. Trump's show has been cut loose. The Russians have withdrawn as much as they can from the market. There is quite literally nothing holding it up.  Expect the obvious.

posted by maverick @ 3:54 AM 0 comments

The Daily Donald 3/21/2017

The evidence of significant links between Trump Campaign and RIS is piling up. Yesterday we watched as HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes broke with the long standing traditions of his committee and with known best practices in criminal investigation and ran to the White House with everything he was told by the FBI and other IC sources.

Using the information that HPSCI Chairman Nunes gave the WH and the press (apparently before he told his fellow committee members), the WH attempted to make it seem that Rep. Nunes' information "vindicated" President Trump's claims of President Obama "wiretapping" his campaign in 2016. That attempt failed after making a feeble headway on some Trump Pravda outlets.

It turns out that HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes had told the WH yesterday that the FBI had been tapping known RIS operatives and it had recorded several conversations between Trump Campaign staff and the RIS. In these conversations a great deal of information had been obtained about Donald Trump's relationship with the Russians. Even though Rep. Nunes was never shown the details of the information, it became clear that the DJT Admin sees the mere existence of this information as a threat to its political existence.

This is unprecedented in our history.

For its part the Trump Admin has been steadily distancing itself from RU interests. Gone is President Trump's overt praise of President Putin. DJT's former campaign manager and current neighbor in Trump Tower - Paul Manafort and Carter Page are being hung out to dry. Roger Strone Jr seems quite scared if his twitter is anything to go by. And Secy Tillerson is now saying he didn't know President Trump until he was actually offered the SoS job. Both claims are remind us of how close to Baghdad Bob's media operation this circus in WH PressSec's office really is.

Out in Ukraine, the Russian mobilization grows in strength and reaches frightening proportions. Today it appears another Putin detractor has been killed in Kyiv. President Trump may be comfortable with letting things go to hell, but President Putin's taking no chances.

As several ranking GOPers begin to defy President Trump in subtle but unmistakable ways, one can now  visualize not just an impeachment process, but also a conviction and jail time. It is only fitting that the man who said he would put his opponent in jail by appointing a special prosecutor, is the one who now faces the prospect of impeachment and jail time.

Which brings me to another thing that candidate Trump did. Candidate Trump always made it seem like Hillary Clinton was a weak woman with terminal health issues. He went to great lengths to make her seem diseased.

Since his election we have seen his behavior and it appears a great deal of what he was projecting on to HRC was reflecting his own inadequacies and failings.

Since he was so insistent on not letting his health record become public like all other candidates and his doctor seems keep dropping the word "dementia" into random conversations - we are left wondering what he is still hiding from us.

It is curious that back in Sept 2016 reports had emerged that suggested that statements he had made about STI being a "Personal Vietnam" and other odd patterns in his behavior were very similar to the symptoms associated with neuro syphilis. After he became president again the pattern was noted in an article in The New Republic. The article was discussed on various democratic forums and other information was found to be supportive of the basic notion. The entire discussion on the issue was mercilessly trolled by the RIS's cyber ops people, but still the core premise seemed to withstand a basic level of scrutiny.

If the idea that a President has neuro syphilis seems plausible, we must open ourselves to the possibility that an embattled President facing a conviction will attempt to use it. So we may be looking at a well planned insanity defense on his legal teams part. Kind of like what Vincent Gigante did but on a scale we have never quite seen this pulled effectively - that is if you believe that Reagan's Alzheimer's disease was real.

We stand on the threshold of an special prosecutor appointment. Any such attempt should be opposed by the RIS Cyber Army (its trolls, bots and cyborgs) and if it isn't - we all need to ask "why do the wolves not howl?".

posted by maverick @ 5:43 AM 0 comments

The Daily Donald 03/21/2017

Yesterday was a really bad day for everyone. Neither Trumpers nor the Anti-Trump crowd was prepared for the enormity of the Dir. Comey's and Gen. Roger's testimony.  I for one was completely shocked by the manner in which so many seemingly out-there allegations were confirmed publicly. Usually the testimony of bureaucrats serves to calm down frayed nerves. 

posted by maverick @ 10:58 AM 0 comments

The Daily Donald 3/20/2017

We all know today will be quite interesting. The House committee on intelligence will meet and review evidence of Russian ties to the Trump regime. While not as powerful or important as the Senate Committee on Intelligence, we are seeing significant damage to the Trump admin even with this minimal level of scrutiny.

If DJT's admin was subject to the same level of investigation that HRC was during the "Benghazi" Affair or the BHO admin was over the "Birth Certificate" issue - the entire DJT Admin will collapse in microseconds. There is simply too much rotten wood in the DJT power structure - too many public associations with drug traffickers, money launderers, RU oligarchs, middle eastern dictators, and general scum to permit him a sure foothold on anything.

Add to that the problem of his debilitating  narcissism, his behavior with Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Kenny proved that he is incapable of interacting with equals in a mature fashion. The entire performance left one with the impression of a schizophrenic WH policy staff coupled with a leader who didn't know how anything actually worked.

As some of you may have heard RU is activating its spearheads. We don't know if this is real world or drill. If we had clear intelligence on how well the mud-season was affecting the routes parallel to the axis of these maneuvers we might have a sense of what the RU intentions are but at this time that intelligence is not available to the public. I estimate that forces in the Baltics, Scandinavia and Ukraine can be relied on to hold major nodes for a period of 48 hours at maximum. This timescale will shrink dramatically if RuAF achieves air superiority. Beyond that the USAF will have to step in to restore the balance of terror.

Everyone anticipates that DPRK will demonstrate a version of the Ulam-Teller design with LiD fusion fuel and an enriched Uranium tamper. This would allow them to achieve a yield in the 100 kT range and put MT level yields within their reach. They would also be in possession of extremely proliferation sensitive information that would make it impossible to avoid negotiating with them. Could a position of advantage be attained by quick military maneuver at this time? perhaps something that douses the test itself? - Maybe - but that is a lot to orchestrate in a very short time and it is very high on details. Details is something DJT doesn't do well in general - less so when he is looking at the prospect of jail time over ties to Russian criminals. That may explain Secy. Tillerson's reticence to take the press along and why the dinner meeting with SoKo was called off. A military option would require a SoKo approval which would require a discussion of details and Secy Tillerson was not prepared for that. IMHO - that's why the SoKo acidly remarked that he was "fatigued" and couldn't make the dinner. 

This leaves us with the House Committee hearings today. I think we will see more information about the nature of ties between Alfa Bank and the Trump organization. It would interesting to see if the IC thinks a subterranean communication protocol like Iodine was used. It is likely that any text transmitted over this channel was encoded with an OTP. And if one wants to transmit an OTP, the best place to do it via brush pass. If your yacht passes an RU oligarch's yacht close enough, you can pass an OTP between the two via a short range low power protocol like BT3 or BT4. Using that OTP and the Iodine tunnel protocol, you  would get end-to-end encryption. As long as the entire exercise was placed on servers separated from the main players, you would have a semblance of deniability.

The mere existence of this covert communication route or even the existence of encrypted communications between between the RIS and the DJT Campaign staff is not sufficient to guarantee that a treason charge will stick. Until the exact content of the communications and their true interpretation is known - we will not be able to say for certain that DJT conspired with the RIS to influence the election. I suspect this is the bottom we will be able to reach with the investigation.

It is possible that associates of DJT like Secy Sessions, Carter Page, Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, Sean Hannity, Paul Manafort, Corey Lewandowski etc... would end up being sent to jail for their role in facilitating such communication, but it is unlikely a charge of treason would stick to DJT. It is possible that one or all of these people could turn against DJT and turn state witness in exchange for reduced sentences, but that is a distant possibility at this time. In any case if they entertain such notions, RIS would put them to sleep. In the worst case scenario, DJT would resign from office in exchange for an end to scrutiny.

Against that background, one sees the simple outlines of the basic Democratic Party strategy. The party cannot really believe that it will successfully impeach or convict DJT on a charge of treason. It may be able to do that on the "Emoluments Clause", but the GOP will stand in the way of that. From a strategic perspective, we must also realize two things.

1) By impeaching DJT, the Democratic Party will essentially allow the GOP plan of riding DJT's coat-tails into power to succeed.
2) Trumpers who enjoyed the benefits of Democratic Party's governance during the BHO period and then spat on its face by voting for Trump, will face no consequences for their actions.

It is therefore much more efficient for the Democratic Party to simply push this impeachment and RIS narrative (as supported by facts - ofcourse)  to a place where it generates the maximal amount of friction in the GOP+Trump machine. The prevalence of such friction will slow down some of the genocidal agendas of Bannon et al,, but more importantly it will create enough leverage to permit Democratic senators and congressmen to insert earmarks inside major bills that deflect the blow of collective DJT+GOP stupidity on to the very voters that brought them into power. This way only those people who actually wanted Trump to be president will suffer the consequences of his rule. Trumpers alone will face the consequences of their insanity.

Should Trumpers want to return to the fold of sanity - the path will be quite steep. They will have to visibly and verifiably renounce all hatred of HRC and BHO. Since that hatred has been a staple of their existence, it will be quite hard for them to do so. But should they make this transition, one can work on ways to elect the right people in 2018.

Clearly Trumpers do not have to do this - they can keep voting for DJT and the GOP and live out the rest of their lives (which may be quite short due to a total cessation of welfare & entitlement spending in GOP controlled states) in the twisted vindication that comes from holding on to their bizarre ideas about HRC and BHO.

What applies to Trumpers - applies equally well to Berniecrats. They too should be made to realize the extraordinary price that accompanies stupidity.

posted by maverick @ 6:15 AM 0 comments

A brief summary of the situation at this time.

It is obvious to everyone that there is a catastrophic amount of debt that has built up in the US economy. The total government debt alone is far in excess of what can be serviced without serious cut backs in government spending. So far financial eclipses that have loomed have been avoided by raising the debt limit and borrowing from the Federal Reserve, but with interest rates rising that measure will not offer as much relief as one might think.

There are no visible alternatives to cuts in entitlement spending. The vast bulk of the boomer dominated workforce is not in a position to accept this demand for productivity. Most boomers are in their productive twilight, they cannot acquire new skills. They also cannot remain economically viable for much longer:  even if they successfully remain employed, the rising health costs associated with an aging workforce will ultimately produce a decline in their net productivity.

One could get into the weeds of this and try to figure out how much debt is internal to the country and how much is external but quite frankly I fear that picture may be misleading as the two debts are linked. The mantra of "forgive internal" and "repay (or "forget") external" is not actionable - as the two debts aren't necessarily separable.

There are few a big picture workarounds - each comes with caveats.

1. By careful automation, one could theoretically reduce the skill gap in the workforce. This works up to a point beyond which the robot is way cheaper to own and operate than the human workers.
2. Another solution would be to import labor from foreign lands and fill the ranks of the middle aged with more taxpayers. This works up to a point where the immigrants drop the price of labor to a point where the native labor is no longer profitably employed. That is the point at which the nativists gain ground and incite violence.
3. Assets can be sold to foreign buyers at a premium and with that one can hope to reduce the debt. This comes with other problems as the foreign sources can be contaminated with conflict capital flow which are very corrosive to our economy*. 

posted by maverick @ 1:50 PM 0 comments

The Daily Donald 3/15/2017

Yesterday Pres. Donald Trump's IRS returns for 2005 were "leaked". Based on what is in the return and the WH pre-release statement, it is fair to conclude that Pres. Donald Trump "leaked" this himself. Given that the House intelligence committee is due to meet on the issue of Russian links to his Administration, it is likely that DJT felt the need to put something that cast him in a positive light. It is unclear why he is going through the motions of making it look like he didn't release this information himself, but it is quite baffling to see him first tweet that the returns are genuine and then to claim that they are fake news in a sequence of tweets that leaves most people including his own staff baffled.

The House committee itself seems to have publicly admitted that the whole accusation DJT laid on Pres Obama's door about "wiretapping" was not backed by any evidence. Since there are at least two FISA warrants at play against Russian targets with close ties to Donald Trump, this wild "wiretapping" allegation can be interpreted as judicial obstruction. That is a felony charge which Donald can be impeached upon. The thought of this is putting President Trump under great strain. As the strain accelerates so do the reports of fear among the White House staff.  I guess his staff know that unlike him - they enjoy no immunity or pardon from Soon-to-Be President Pence.

The dumpster fire also appears to have gained some. Anbang visibly paid off the Kushner family and China suddenly became much more friendly towards President Donald Trump. That is an odd thing for China to be doing, after all candidate Trump did advocate a trade war with China. That said Pres. Trump did kill the Trans Pacific Pact which China didn't like - so I assume that Anbang's generous offer to the Kushners is China's way of saying "Thank You".  Under normal circumstances these people would be facing jail time, but we don't live in normal times.

As things stand State, Justice, DHS and most of the NSCS are almost completely emptied out. The usual watchdogs that keep an eye on illegal behavior in the stock market have been rendered completely silent by President Trump's policy of fire-but-not-replace. The EPA and other agencies that could mount a serious challenge to Steve Bannon's limitless expansion of power have been dismantled. It will not be long before this plague reaches the DoE, and the DoD as Trump begins to decline into a mixture of senility and paranoia. I don't know how long Gen. McMaster will last as NSA, he has had his first open feud with Bannon. If you thought Steve Bannon couldn't possibly be do so much damage - well think again.

NY-USAA Preet Bharara has been fired. Just when he started an inquiry into the illegal actions of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News corporation. Apparently he was also beginning an investigation into stuff that could be interpreted as Emoluments. Obviously he became a threat to President Trump and that meant he had to go.

In other entertaining news, Wikileaks (as it unsurprisingly turns out) is hosted in Russia by an associate of President Putin. This development has left the usual "IC accountability" crowd in a bit of a pickle. Glenn Greenwald and other are now quick to try and dismiss the entire "hosted in Russia" business as being a case of hype. They still want to cling to the idea that by bringing Snowden's exploits to light, they weren't somehow amplifying a Russian agenda. Well that is going to be difficult given how much proximity there is in the public imagination between Russia, Wikileaks and Snowden.

A related issue is the behavior of the Berniecrats (or the "Almost Trump Supporters"). Berniecrats (as many will candidly admit) didn't turn up to vote against Trump. They were a small but vocal minority who preferred to waste their votes on upstanding (and clapping for Putin) candidates like Jill Stein. This is a wonderful group of people who appear to operate on a simple calculation - the system must be destroyed - Hillary has been destroyed, and Trump will do exactly that as he attempts line his own pockets. These folks never take responsibility for anything. Mostly millennials - these great folk capture the same toxic combination of ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and mental disorganization so popular among the Boomer generation. Like the Boomers they don't want to be on the hook for all the debt created so far. So destroying the system is the only way to get clear of that debt - or so they believe.

The end result of their efforts will be a massive conflict that corrodes the power of the establishment - leaving the door open for the Berniecrats to seize power and then burn what is left of the nation to the ground. They have been successful in this agenda so far. Now their approach is to offer token support to the Russian backed Wikileaks platform in the hope that it further hobbles the USIC and degrades its ability to rein Trump's destructive behavior. If your only agenda is "destroying the system" I guess you can make it work.

Which brings me back to the other thing that is all set to destroy the country - TrumpCare. Everyone (including Trump himself) feel the proposal is not going to get them where he wants to go. There is an attempt by Trumpers to call it "Obamacare 2.0" but that name isn't sticking. Current estimate of the people that will lose coverage is 24 million by one estimate. The Trump WH has taken to discrediting its own CBO estimates in an effort to mask their utter embarrassment in this fiasco.

So the remains of the day are - we are one tiny step closer to the collapse of the national government. Both Trumpers and Berniecrats feel they will gain liberation from their debts in this climate, but neither gets where this is really going to lead. As both depend on Obamacare and Medicare for actual survival, I feel a Trump engineered collapse of the state will produce a very different outcome than what either desires.

I don't expect either group to take responsibility for its actions, the Trumpers are too old and beyond caring and the Berniecrats are a alternative reality unto themselves.

posted by maverick @ 12:11 PM 0 comments

The Daily Donald 3/9/2017

Yesterday we saw more links emerge between the DJTC and various FSB associates.

1) Roger Stone appears to have been in contact with Guccifer 2.0. Guccifer was one of the entities involves in DC Leaks, a platform that released all manner of material inimical to HRC Campaign. Guccifer is suspected of bring an RIS/GRU front operation.

2) Paul Manafort was apparently investigated for his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik. It seems that Kilimnik was instrumental in editing the GOP party foreign policy document to exclude arms aid to Ukraine.

A detailed timeline of key events is also available at this site. And Pro Publica has a list of people on DJT's "Landing Teams" - all sorts of conflicts of interest here.

As questions about the "Wire Tapping" allegation that DJT made swirl, we are treated to a series of discussions about how DJT made the tweets in the morning and then had misgivings about them by the time he was done with his morning golf game. He then went around asking if a private investigator could be hired to substantiate his claim. He may be on to something, I think the private investigators that Mr. Trump hired to look into Mr. Obama's birth certificate issue in Hawaii might be in the market for new employment.

One interesting line of questions is emerging around the exact nature of the FISC warrant the DOJ obtained on October 15th. The presence of FinCEN (US Treasury) on the investigation suggest that the target was a banking entity. In the public domain, there are two candidates for such a target - Alfa Bank and Bank of Cyprus. Both have been associated with all manner of financial involvement in RU flight capital. A dark horse candidate is Deutsche Bank but we don't know who the FISC warrant targeted yet.

On the TrumpCare front, we are seeing serious pushback from major conservative voting groups. As GOP tries to shove TrumpCare down America's collective throats, it seems like they don't care about the next election at all. Do they know something we all don't? Has the next election been cancelled? Is DJT going to be president for eternity? Is this the last congress/senate election in history? Is our nation so bankrupt that it doesn't matter whether we have Obamacare/TrumpCare we are not going to be able to pay for it?

Far as I understand the GOP, it seems to think of the election as a joke. It has successfully gerrymandered (thru redistricting and voter discrimination) a political enclave in the Midwest and it has a revolving door policy for lobbyists and government officials. Between these two supports, the legislators can basically sit around in their offices and smoke crack all day long and do no work. Come election a small fragment of the impoverished voters in their enclaves will come forward to vote them back into power. They don't have have a long term, because as long as their voters stay stupid (which they will for an eternity) there is no one else to vote for.

In the context of the above, it should come as no surprise that former NSA Micheal Flynn has registered as a lobbyist for Turkey after unofficially lobbying for them for a much longer time.

In somewhat positive news, I feel the Vault7 Wikileaks event marks the USICs first real victory in the battle against RIS cyber aggression. I had almost muted Wikileaks last week after their announced Vault7 but then I was persuaded by others to stay tuned. I am glad I listened because I got to see the cyber equivalent of the Battle of the Coral Sea. The RIS overplayed its hand when it attempted to use parts of the Vault7 release to blame the CIA for the DNC hack. This led the grand narrative put out by the RIS to snap in half and gave the USIC the "in" they were waiting for.  Well played USIC!! Go Team!!

Prior to this mistake the RIS narrative had been that the DNC hacks were unrelated to RU posture. But when they alleged that it was done by the CIA and that the CIA had outed itself in Vault7, the narrative broke. Why would the CIA hack the DNC, leak emails to Wikileaks, get Donald Trump election, get him praised in Putin controlled RU TV channels, and then leak its own tools to Wikileaks? Why would Wikileaks (ostensibly a CIA front) which heavily redacted Vault7, highlight the CIA Umbrage program which showed that the CIA appropriates RIS malware for deniable attacks?

This was a major strategic fail for RIS. They are not in a position of major vulnerability, as the USIC can now use Vault7 to launch aggressive investigations of RIS moles. And the RIS just lost its Wikileaks "Pocket Aircraft Carrier", its "Battleships" - Roger Stone Jr, Milo Y, Zerohedge, and a whole host of other support vessels on Twitter and Facebook. The USIC may be badly dented due to the loss of the CIAs offensive codes but RIS will not have to think several times over before launching another major cyber assault.

All in all - it was a good day for the USIC even if it didn't appear that way in the news.

posted by maverick @ 6:23 AM 0 comments

The Daily Donald 3/8/2017

This is a series of posts where I hope to record the astounding developments of the day. As things sink into lows I considered unimaginable, I hope this will serve as a chronicle of my journey through these troubling times.

While the President's accusations of "wire tapping", the IC's denials, and the subsequent release of Vault7 from Wikileaks continue to distract the TV pundits, news of the scandal exposed this week in Baku continues to spread in whispers. The inexplicable behavior of the DJT Corporation in Baku is growing in visibility and this is again opening the DJT Administration up to questions about violating US laws.

Of particular interest now are petitions filed by the Democratic Coalition Against Trump before the DHS/CBP which allege that Ivanka Trump violated the US Sanctions against Iran by shipping her clothing products from China to the US on a Iranian flagged vessel. Taken in conjunction with DJTs involvement with the Azeri Minister Mammadov and his links to Iran - this is starting to look real bad.

A natural question at this point is whether the DJTC was paid any money by the IRGC to denounce the US-Iran JCPOA? It is well known in most places that the IRGC was not happy with the JCPOA and felt that it diluted the IRGCs supremacy inside Iran. Was the Azeri infrastructure deal merely a way to pour money into the DJTC? Surely a matter to be investigated?

For a guy who can't wait to "Ban Muslims" and spouts so much blood libel against Islam, DJT seems to have a lot of Muslim business partners who pay him way more than he deserves in so many deals. He even has businesses in Saudi Arabia and Qatar where customers routinely overpay for stuff.  But somehow his supporters still believe that Hillary was the Saudi-Qatari backed candidate and Obama was the "founder of ISIS".  At some point a question is going to be asked by these people that he isn't going to like.

In terms of its promises, the DJT Admin is keen to see a quick repeal of Obamacare. The GOP has put together a package that is more suited to its own instincts but it worries that the plan will be seen as being too much of a tax cut on the rich. Somehow the prospect of an ill-thought out plan raising health care costs on the elderly and the poor doesn't bother them as much. This last part is odd considering that the older white folks are usually the GOPs vote bank. You would never shop your own supporters unless you felt you weren't going to ever face an election again. Does the GOP know something the rest of us don't?

In other news, it seem the NRA met with the Russians and then donated a $30M to the DJTC. The NRA meetings took place at the same time as the Jill Stein, Micheal Flynn and Vladimir Putin dinner. One wonders where this thread will lead.

posted by maverick @ 5:07 AM 2 comments

Gaming this out with reasonable assumptions

At the topmost level, we see two outcomes

1) DJT survives a challenge to his political power - DJT weathers the adverse political climate and survives exposure of his RU ties. The opposition cannot mount a credible legal challenge to his continuation either because they are unable to find enough evidence or because he is able to counteract their initiatives through political action.

2) DJT does not survive a challenge to his political power -  DJT admin's political side crumbles and he is unable to prevent an impeachment proceeding. The motion to impeach carries and he ends up out of power, possibly facing a criminal prosecution. It is likely that after he is prosecuted and sentenced, he will be pardoned by President Pence/McConnell/Ryan depending on how many others this takes down with it.

If we work forwards from either outcome we see economic instability and serious social chaos as peer competitor factions battle for control over various economic crumbs. We see at least two contested elections and a "Lost Decade".

Going backwards, in both outcomes we see major legislative deadlock as pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions duke it out over the impeachment process. We see an Iran-Contra type black hole which spirals pulling more and more government organs into its orbit. With major government organs entering failure more, we will see sudden market shifts and irrational behavior.

The two outcomes described above seem degenerate and the only point of split of between them is the success of DJTs counteractive measures.

The biggest counteraction measure is  "Truth Dominance" - a measure which allows DJT at least for a short period of time to become the sole arbiter of "Truth".  If this is measure is successfully deployed then DJT will control the information cycle - essentially enabling him to convince his targets that "everything isn't as bad as it is made to seem" or "I am the victim here" etc... Obviously the loyalists will always converge to those positions (that BTW is a good way to find loyalists) but the others will not do so without "Truth Dominance". (A fact that will be visible in subtle trends in open source polling data.)

To this end, RIS backed leaks and agitprop campaigns will go a long way in discrediting traditional information sources such as the major news media, USIC, judiciary etc... If Cambridge Analytica style digital opinion modification techniques are used - then one could supplement the effectiveness of RIS information dominance operations.

It is unlikely that this counteraction measure will survive contact with the reality of evidence emerging against him. As his position weakens, he is basically dropping deep into the RIS' debt and there is a limit to how far the RIS can extend itself to protect him. If overt RIS interference is visible, then that will be fatal to his political survival.

From the RIS perspective, this is now a major recovery operation. Unless they do whatever it takes to keep him in place at least until their own tracks are covered, they will be doubly hit - they'll take a hit from the collapse in the US market (where a lot of RU conflict capital is invested) and they will take a hit from the public exposure of their support ops. It will be a repeat of the carnage they saw after the fall of the USSR and this time around there will be nowhere to move the monies to.

As support operations are launched via usual channels, the likelihood of something stupid happening - a wrinkle in the tradecraft, a slip-up in OPSEC, or a tiny little crack in the mirror will increase. Mistakes after all are made when people are in a hurry.

The failed attempt to deploy the "Tapping" balloon is an example of what happens when an OP is launched without sufficient prior preparation and conditioning. The appearance of a very convenient Vault 7 release from Wikileaks is also illuminating. Wonder what errors lie in that deployment? - perhaps accidentally compromise the source of the vault itself? perhaps the agency was clever enough to imprinted with unique text patterns and typos in specific copies of the documents? old school but it works.

Who know what exactly lies ahead but it isn't going to be pretty.

posted by maverick @ 11:50 AM 0 comments

Threads in the DJT story

As with all things, we have only tantalizing hints about the underlying story here, and absent a major investigation - it is unlikely we will find incontrovertible proof of anything. It is also true that in the current atmosphere of partisanship it is unclear if we will have the courage to accept the truth once we find it.

That said - this is what the story is sounding like so far. And since everything is about the tone of the story as opposed to the factual content these days - the mere allusion of fact is infinitely more powerful than fact itself.

As things stand - there appear to be two branched threads in the DJT Saga.

The main thread reads something like this.

1) xKGB folks like Putin etc... sucked wealth out of the collapsing USSR and funneled it in to the American/Western stock market using intermediaries like the DJT corporation. The money grew in the Western stock market, and using some of the returns moved via banks of convenience in Bahamas, Cypress etc.., Putin was able to make himself Emperor of Russia. The ROI was good, and the good times rolled in Moscow.

2) As the price of oil fell, the financial leg of the Grand Duchy of Moscow crumbled. Putin needed to pull money out of the US stock market (prices need to be high) and shore up his shaky throne. So he secretly offered his old contact DJT political support for taking off sanctions and allowing Exxon to funnel about $0.5 T into the RU economy. With Putin's help and his extremely divisive campaign DJT won the election but due to poor OpSec in DJTC and RIS- exposure occurred and DJT failed to deliver his end of the bargain.

3) This left Putin in a difficult position. DJTs behavior was seen as an echo of his untrustworthy past. Fears that DJT might literally or figuratively nuke RU interests grew and that increased the instability of Putin's throne.  A troop mobilization created as a show of strength now leans closer to a real shooting war which no one in RU has the stomach for.

This brings me to the second thread that we are now seeing emerging in the Sessions saga.

In pt 2. indicated earlier, Putin offered the support of his immense cyber forces to help DJT with the election.

At least one part of this was a strategy of deliberately hacking the DNC and selectively releasing emails from HRC Campaign officials. The hope appears to have been to wean away democratic leaning progressives.

The exact mechanics of this process required that the Russian hacking efforts were mated to deep knowledge of the DNC political machine. Such knowledge existed only in the GOP. This is where Sessions came in. It appears some kind of information sharing agreement between RIS cyber forces and GOP dirty tricks people came into being after the meeting between Amb Kislyak and Sen. Sessions. At a deeper level a connection was established between the RU backed Assange Organization (i.e. Wikileaks) and DJT campaign. The bridge appears to have been Rudy Giuliani/Roger Stone Jr, Felix Sater and Julian Assange. It appears Assange was connected to APT28/Fancy Bear, APT29/Cozy Bear and some other hackers. Another line appears to run via DJT lawyer Micheal Cohen, thru his now dead relative and Felix Sater to someone close to Putin himself. A separate line ran via Carter Page to Rosneft leadership.

A separate part of this strategy involved data mining and social media based targeting for an anti-GOTV campaign. This was run out of Cambridge Analytica, Brietbart (which seems to be the main data nexus) and various other "news sites". Some of these appear to have been run by GOP dirty tricks people but the Russians actually appear to have financed the big data end. A lot of questions are being asked about the human links between Robert Mercer's organizations and Russian Oligarchs. I fear we will learn more unpleasant things about this in the days to come.

A third thread runs via Micheal Flynn and Jared Kushner. We have only seen a grazing coverage of this in various media sources and again I expect this to become newsy as days go on.

For its part the DJT Admin is struggling to control the narrative on anything. The climate of partisanship and divisive behavior that they fostered to ensure DJT was elected president is backfiring. DJT is now locked in a open war with the media and he spends half his physical resources on combating the "Media". That does not leave time for basic cabinet level functions and it is unclear how long he will be able to physically withstand this level of stress.

The entire stock market is rising on one premise that DJT will soon announce meaningful economic packages that permit greater economic growth. This is happening despite the fact that the Fed is set to raise interest rates again, and every analyst worth their salt is pointing to large PE ratios and repeated shorts being positioned in the futures market.

As DJT's star fades, the market crash of the century draws nearer.

posted by maverick @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Why was there such an emphasis on getting a positive coverage of President Trump's speech?

Prior to the SOTU speech, the WH went to great length to position the speech carefully in the media. A number of TV anchors were invited to the WH and spoke personally to the President and then there they were told a number of things that they obviously wanted to hear. President Trump yet again made all manner of conciliatory sounding noises and every single anchor bought the act.

During the SOTU speech however President Trump completely disavowed everything he had said to the anchors and it took them over a day to realize that they had given him all that publicity and it was all lies that he had told them.

A WH official has now admitted that this was an act of deliberate misdirection on part of the President. It was done to boost the positive appraisals of the speech.

Another curious event was that the release of a very controversial executive order was delayed after there was a massive increase in positive publicity for the President.

Taken in isolation, this doesn't mean much - we all know how attached President Trump is to adulation and that he would be perfectly on board with saying and doing whatever it took to bolster his standing in the press just so that he felt better about himself.

But there is a different issue that appeared linked.

I came across the a MarketWatch article by Nigam Arora which suggested that a number of big players had set up a short to coincide with the speech. The rationale behind the positioning the shorts was that people would notice that the SOTU would fail to meet expectations in terms of policy specifics and that in turn would bring the famed Trump rally to an end.

This move failed as the positive coverage of the SOTU caused the prices to continue their positive trend. This in turn forced the short sellers to cover their positions, and that in turn forced the algorithmic traders to drive up the prices even more and caused an artificially large rise in the stock market.

We can read this information in two ways.

1) The Trump regime is under threat from a group of traders in the market who will exploit any sign of weakness in the public perception of President Trump's viability to enrich themselves through shorts.

2) The Trump phenomena has put the market in a place where even a slight fluctuation in the hype surrounding President Trump will have catastrophic consequences for the market as a whole.

I leave it to you to choose the version that suits your narrative.

posted by maverick @ 7:18 AM 0 comments

Daylight robbery masqueraded as progress

The GDP growth numbers from India's CSO are quite interesting.

Like most people, I expected to see an immediate decline in GDP due to demonetization but the opposite has happened.

I think I know where I went wrong. I forgot that this is India's GDP we are talking about and not that of a first world nation. India's GDP does not directly capture effects on its informal economy at all.

As the demonetization was put into place, cash in the informal economy was funneled into the formal economy. The end result was a destruction of productivity in the informal sector and an apparent rise in productivity in the formal sector.

For example, a businessman had Rs. 1 Million sitting around from tax evasion. He didn't want to lose it all, so he converted his cash into Rs. 100,000 bonuses and advanced salaries he paid to 10 of his employees.His employees didn't want to have this cash sitting around either, they in turn went and bought cars, fridges, TVs etc... The Consumer electronics retailer, the car company etc... all showed a rise in sales revenue. The raised revenue was deposited into a bank which reports all transactions to the RBI. The RBI will then lend this money out to private banks, these private banks will in turn lend the money to India's super rich.

The CSO surveillance captured the rise in money flows as seen by the RBI, but it cannot capture the fact that the 10 employees will not be getting  a raise next next three years.

If there had been no demonetization, the $ 1 Million would have gone into more directly increasing the size of the business itself. This would normally have led to increased staffing. The new staff in turn would not have bought cars or fridges or TVs but they would have bought clothes, food, shoes, etc... things that are typically bought only with small amounts of cash - you know that kind of revenue that 100s of millions of poor people in India rely on... that stuff.

The loss in the productivity of these large numbers of people is also not captured by the CSO as they never pay taxes, and they don't have a bank account.

Now it could be as these poor people come to realize they have all been shafted, and they are going deeper into debt - they may become angry and the Govt. will have to pay to contain that anger. It can ignore it for a while, but eventually it will have to pay to deal with it.

The CSO will record any such expenses in a different quarter, and again the impact will appear to be uncorrelated from the Great Event.

This is the way the world works. The unscrupulous rich can dress their money grabs as "anti-corruption" and rob the poor. And this entire affair can be made to look like economic progress.

The one paradoxical but good side of this is that the absence of an immediate GDP decline will embolden the Modi machine to attempt stupider things. So an Electronic Property Pass Book and a Gold Ownership Certificate are almost certainly going to happen now.

I am strongly in favor of these new schemes that are likely to emerge from the same group of people that pushed for demonetization in the PMO. These people will feel strongly vindicated and their belief in their own invincibility will rise.

The higher they fly - the closer they will get to the sun and then the inevitable will happen.

posted by maverick @ 5:46 AM 1 comments

That other thing we are kept from knowing

We have gotten used to being denied access to information. It is obvious when someone denies you information they are trying to hide something. That was always known, but it is only now that we know what was being hidden from view by not releasing tax returns.

It turns out that there was a very long and heavy engagement with RIS controlled conflict capital going back decades. And whatever this special relationship it came with electoral benefits and apparently was  ballasted by a promise to end sanctions on RU for their mess in Crimea. If we had read the tax returns we would have known everything up front.

Right now it looks like that RIS OP is completely blown and some kind of accountability mechanism has kicked in Moscow. That's why so many potential witnesses are being killed. It is the Chekist way - old fashioned but effective. It usually buys the leader a year or so before everything comes down.

I am sure an accountability exercise will kick in to gear in the House and Senate too and when that happens there will be a lot of Bill Caseys all of a sudden. Again that is the price of the bride, you get mixed up in this kind of thing, you have to pay the price eventually.

That said - let's all recall for a moment something else we have been denied access too - a health record.

All the others put out a great deal (even too much information in some cases) about their health but we were unworthy of seeing anything from you know who.

This brings me to an important point about narcissists.

Narcissists live on the adulation of their victims. Each word of praise from a victim is a source of life giving strength to them. However all with all living things, it must all come to an end. Everyone knows that - and that end is the biggest fear a narcissist has.

The fear that all the adulation must come to an end and there will be nothing after. Nothing for the ego to feed on after the end.

A narcissist facing the end becomes obsessed, driven by ravenous hunger he seeks the greatest number of victims possible. Regardless of how they are lured, the narcissist focuses on only one thing - going big - because he knows there is nothing after this.

A narcissist facing the end always becomes malignant.

I think this explains things that otherwise defy rational explanation.

It could be that I am trying to make sense of something that doesn't really make sense, but I feel once you factor in the narcissism issue correctly - the illogical suddenly has a beautiful thread that links it all together.

posted by maverick @ 5:05 AM 1 comments