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Sydney M. Williams:Financial Markets and Politics

Posted By on February 24th, 2016

Financial markets are humbling. After spending forty-eight years working in the industry, one would think I would have learned some, if not many, of the answers. Not so. In my late teens, I met the president of a regional brokerage firm based in Boston. He told me that he had been in the business for several years and claimed he knew less each year. That is familiar territory. Financial markets are akin to discoveries about space. Just as boundaries to the latter keep expanding, complexities to the former become more ubiquitous. Just when we think we know the answer, something else gets added to the mix.

One ingredient this year is the campaign for President and the possible nominees. A recent Barron’s article spoke to the “Bernie and Donald factors.” They included a chart which contrasted the spike in their respective polls, beginning late last year, with a collapse in the S&P 500. Coincidence? I don’t know. Isolationism is troublesome to markets. While neither man campaigns as an isolationist, they both advocate policies that lead that way. Mr. Trump talks of imposing tariffs on goods imported from China. Senator Sanders recently stated: “Unfettered free trade has been a disaster for working Americans.” While the odds that either man will win the Presidency may not be high, it is impossible to avoid the fact that the popularity of both reflect the thinking of millions of Americans. Voters should not ignore the positive contributions that free trade and globalization have brought to man’s well being. To the extent the policies of Mr. Trump and Senator Sanders have economic consequences, they will be reflected in financial markets.

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Jewish Donors: Stop Funding Anti-Semitism – Divest From Universities Rachel Lefkowitz

Posted By on February 24th, 2016

Paul Bronfman is a hero to the Jewish people. He gave York University an ultimatum: Take down the anti-semitic mural within 24 hours or else I withdraw all support. As the chairman of Pinewood Toronto Studios, he had been supplying thousands of dollars of film equipment, technical services, and know-how to York University’s Cinema and Media Arts Program. They refused to take down the mural. And he followed through with his threat. He pulled money, production equipment, seminars, open houses with students, learning labs and training programs – everything!

Mr. Bronfman’s action has attracted a lot of media coverage because it is big news. As a result, anti-semites everywhere have been crawling out of their holes. A hundred faculty members at York University have exposed themselves as Israel haters when they signed an open letter defending the now infamous anti-semitic mural and critizing Paul Bronfman for pulling funding over it. Even Rogers Waters of Pink Floyd fame, today mainly known for Jew hatred, has chimed in with his useless opinion. It doesn’t happen every day that a Jewish donor steps up to the plate. In fact, it has as far as I can recall, never happened…until now.

Despite the fact that universities across North America have become sewers of anti-semitism, rife with anti-semitic professors, anti-Israel demonstrations, and verbal and physical assault of Jewish students, Jewish donors have generally chosen the path of denial and continue their love affair with their chosen universities. Personally, I lose sleep when I know fellow Jews are harassed or attacked. But maybe that’s just me and my like-minded friends and cohorts. Apparently Jewish donors have no problem dishing out hundreds of millions of dollars to educational establishments that allows its Jewish students to be treated like garbage. They pretend that all is well and continue pouring big money into their alma matters – because after all, that campus building is simply not going to name itself.

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With GOP nomination looming, Trump slated to take witness stand in fraud trial Michael Isikoff

Posted By on February 24th, 2016

Here’s a part of the political calendar that nobody in the Republican Party seems to have noticed: This spring, just as the GOP nomination battle enters its final phase, frontrunner Donald Trump could be forced to take time out for some unwanted personal business: He’s due to take the witness stand in a federal courtroom in San Diego, where he is being accused of running a financial fraud.

In court filings last Friday, lawyers for both sides in a long-running civil lawsuit over the now defunct Trump University named Trump on their witness lists. That makes it all but certain that the reality-show star and international businessman will be forced to be grilled under oath over allegations in the lawsuit that he engaged in deceptive trade practices and scammed thousands of students who enrolled in his “university” courses in response to promises he would make them rich in the real estate market.

Although the case has been winding its way through the courts for the past five years — and Trump has denied all wrongdoing — the final pretrial conference is now slated for May 6, according to the latest pleadings in the case. No trial date has been set, but the judge has indicated his interest in moving the case forward, the pleadings show.

“This is pretty amazing,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican Party consultant, about Trump’s upcoming due date in federal court. “Usually, you clean this stuff up before you run for president.”

Trump’s new lead lawyer in the case, Daniel Petrocelli, best known for representing one of the slain murder victims in a civil suit against O.J. Simpson, did not respond to emailed questions about Trump’s upcoming testimony, including how long he expects his client to be on the witness stand.

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Now I Am Being Serious, Deadly Serious: Stopping The Trump Disgrace BY David Bahnsen

Posted By on February 23rd, 2016

“For the sake of our country and the movement we have devoted our lives to, sit down with each other and work out the logistics on a single non-Trump candidate strategy that will protect this race from a Donald Trump nomination, and protect our country from a Hillary Clinton presidency.”

Several years ago I penned a piece on then Presidential candidate, Ron Paul, someone who had no chance at the time of being President, but who had captured the affections of far too many discerning people. I know my article could have never swayed the opinions of the typical Ron Paul supporter, but I have received more emails on that piece than on any non-investment piece I have ever written thanking me for that article, telling me that they did not know, or had not thought through, the problems with Ron Paul until that piece.

I hold out no hope that this article will sway the opinions of any Donald Trump supporters, and yet the stakes are far, far higher. Ron Paul never won a single state in three Presidential attempts. My motives to shine a light on his conspiratorial ideology were because he was a credible and capable spokesman for free markets and Constitutionalism, which I will take a bullet for, and yet he was damaging those causes I believed in so much with such an inane and morally reckless view of America and her role in the world. With Trump, my motive is both similar and dissimilar: Similar in that I desperately want to protect the sanctity of the movement known as conservatism for which I consider myself a passionate advocate, but dissimilar in that Ron Paul was going nowhere, whereas Donald Trump has a serious chance of becoming the GOP candidate for the Presidency in the most important election of our lifetimes. Worse, he may even become President.

Do not mistake this article, though, as motivated by the desire to change Trump voters minds. I would be grateful if it happened, but let me concede a few very important things:

Donald Trump has staked his campaign on being a successful businessman, when he is no such thing. His supporters do not care.

Donald Trump has no professed compatibility with conservatism. I don’t mean in a Burkean sense, or Kirkian sense, or Buckleyian sense, or Reaganite sense. I mean, he has no conservative sense at all. None. He has never quoted a single word of any of the great forefathers of conservative ideology, and to the extent he ever spoke or wrote about Ronald Reagan, it was to call him a con man and failed President. His supporters do not care.

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The Playboy Bully of the Western World By Ian Tuttle

Posted By on February 23rd, 2016

Donald Trump is not content to bully the residents of just one continent, it seems.

In the mid 1990s, there was Vera Coking, the septuagenarian widow whom Donald Trump tried to squeeze out of her Atlantic City apartment to make room for a limousine parking lot for his nearby casino. Ten years later, in Scotland, trying to foist a golf course and resort onto a stretch of Scottish coastline, Trump encountered a set of equally incorrigible homeowners — and did his best to run them out of their homes, too.

In March 2006, Trump visited Scotland and proposed to build a 36-hole golf course — “the greatest golf course anywhere in the world,” as he would reiterate time and again — along with a 450-room hotel with a conference center and spa, 950 time-share apartments, 36 golf villas, and 500 for-sale houses, and accommodations for hundreds of full-time employees, in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire. He billed it as an economic boon to the country and, in his usual theatrical fashion, as a “homecoming,” waxing poetic about his immigrant mother, who departed Scotland’s Western Isles for the U.S. as a young woman. In reality, it was a vanity project.

“I always wanted to do a golf course in Europe, and of the 211 sites we have looked at, we have seen some incredible places,” said Trump. “But this was something special.” Indeed — more than Trump understood. The Menie Links, north of Aberdeen, is home to the Foveran Links, a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). The Foveran Links – which is a dynamic dune system that moves several meters annually, giving rise to a unique collection of plants and wildlife — is unique in the United Kingdom.

To build on SSSIs, of which there are 1,400 in Scotland, one requires special permission from the relevant municipal government, which can decide that the potential economic boon from a proposed project outweighs the environmental cost. In November 2007, the Aberdeenshire Council’s Infrastructure Committee rejected Trump’s proposal, 8–7. One month later, though, in a surprise move, the Scottish national government “called in” the plan, removing it from the Aberdeenshire Council’s jurisdiction on the grounds that the plan was of national interest.

In October 2008, the national government gave the green light. “The balance of opinion among people in the northeast of Scotland and among my constituents is very strongly in favor. And that’s because we can see the social and economic benefits.” So said Alex Salmond, then a local Scottish parliamentarian (now known for spearheading last year’s failed referendum effort). According to Salmond, Trump’s project promised 6,000 jobs across Scotland, 1,400 of which would be “local and permanent jobs in the northeast.” Construction revved up.

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Dear Trump Fan, So You Want Someone To ‘Tell It Like It Is’? OK, Here You Go.Matt Walsh

Posted By on February 23rd, 2016

Dear Donald Trump Fan,I’m going to tell you the truth, friend.
You say you want the truth. You say you want someone who speaks boldly and brashly and bluntly and “tells it like it is” and so on. According to exit polls in South Carolina, voters who want a president who “tells it like it is” are an essential demographic for Trump, just as they’re an essential demographic for Judge Judy and Dr. Phil. You say you want abrupt and matter-of-fact honesty, and you want it so much, you’ll make a man president for it regardless of whether he defies every principle and value you claim to hold.
Personally, I think you’re lying, and I’m going to test my theory. In fact, I believe I’ve already proven my theory because you’re now offended that I called you a liar. But Trump has called half of the Earth’s population a liar at some point over the past seven months, and you loved every second of it. You said you loved it not out of cruelty or spite, but out of admiration for a man who’s willing to call people liars — even if he’s lying when he does it.

Yet here I am employing the same tactic — accurately, I might add — and you recoil indignantly. Over the course of this campaign season I’ve said many harsh words about you and your leader, all of which I stand by, but you’ve never respected my harsh words, or the harsh words of any Trump critic. Indeed, you insist that our tough criticism of you only vindicates your support of Trump, while Trump’s vulgar and dishonest criticism of everyone else also vindicates your support of Trump. You’re tired of people being critical, but you love Trump because he’s critical. You say you like Trump for his style, but you hate his style when it’s directed at him or you.

You say you like Trump for his style, but you hate his style when it’s directed at him or you.

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You say you want someone who’s politically incorrect. You’re so desperate for political incorrectness — a supremely ridiculous reason to vote a guy into the Oval Office, but never mind — that your esteem for him only grows when he belittles the disabled, mocks American prisoners of war, calls women dogs, calls his opponents p*ssies, calls for the assassination of women and children, says he’d like to have sex with his daughter, brags about his adultery, etc.

You’re excited by the most vile statements and most cretinous behavior imaginable — not remotely deterred by any of it, no matter how many times he gloats over infidelity, curses his opponents, and publicly ogles his own children — because, you say, it’s politically incorrect. That is how unfathomably desperate you are for someone to come along and just say what’s on their mind, you claim. You’re so fed up with political correctness that you celebrate political incorrectness without distinguishing between the healthy sort and the “LOL I slept with married women and I’m not sorry” sort. It doesn’t matter if you don’t personally agree, you say, you just respect the hell out of someone who’s willing to shoot straight, even when ”shooting straight” means comparing Ben Carson to a child molester, calling the entire electorate of Iowa stupid, and referring to women as “pieces of ass.”

Trump won South Carolina on the support of Evangelical Christians who were so impressed with his alleged straight talk that they overlooked the fact that he’s a crass, cruel, unrepentant philanderer who says he does not need God’s forgiveness, and who praises Planned Parenthood as “wonderful” and his radically pro-abortion sister as a “phenomenal” candidate for the Supreme Court. That’s how much you pretend to admire bluntness in a man. So much that it overrides literally everything else.

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The Obama CIA Is Putting Diversity above National Security By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on February 23rd, 2016

America’s intelligence agencies have a serious and difficult mission: protecting our national security from a world of diverse and changing threats. These include nuclear, military, terrorist, and economic threats from nation-states and non-state actors. China is a rapidly growing intelligence, military, and cyber threat. Russia has exploited a power vacuum in the Middle East caused by President Obama’s failure to exercise leadership in the region. ISIS, which did not exist in 2009, is now a global threat and could be planning new terrorist attacks with chemical weapons and dirty bombs.

Protecting our nation from such threats requires extremely competent and capable individuals to conduct intelligence operations and write analysis in challenging security and legal environments. This means the intelligence profession needs officers who will speak truth to power, obey the law, and resist pressure to politicize analysis.

CIA Director John Brennan apparently believes otherwise and that advancing President Obama’s political and social agendas should be an important part of the CIA’s mission. This may be why Brennan recently announced his “Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (2016–2019)” to make the CIA more diverse and politically correct. Brennan says in the introduction to this strategy:

Diversity at CIA is defined as the wide range of life experiences and backgrounds needed to ensure multiple perspectives that enable us to safeguard US national security. It encompasses the collection of individual attributes that together help Agencies pursue organizational objectives efficiently and effectively. These include but are not limited to characteristics such as national origin, language, race, color, disability, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic status, veteran’s status and family structures.

Brennan has mandated “diversity and inclusion performance objectives for all CIA managers and supervisors and ultimately [for] the entire workforce,” so that CIA personnel must weigh diversity and gender figures in making key assignments and senior-level promotions. Brennan’s plan also includes agency-wide “unconscious bias” training.

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An Iraq of Myth and Fantasy Donald Trump’s account of the Iraq War is all wrong. Why aren’t his Republican opponents saying so? By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on February 23rd, 2016

Donald Trump constantly brings up Iraq to remind voters that Jeb Bush supported his brother’s war, while Trump, alone of the Republican candidates, supposedly opposed it well before it started.

That is a flat-out lie. There is no evidence that Trump opposed the war before the March 20, 2003 invasion. Like most Americans, he supported the invasion and said just that very clearly in interviews. And like most Americans, Trump quickly turned on a once popular intervention — but only when the postwar occupation was beginning to cost too much in blood and treasure. Trump’s serial invocations of the war are good reminders of just how mythical Iraq has now become.

We need to recall a few facts. Bill Clinton bombed Iraq (Operation Desert Fox) on December 16 to 19, 1998, without prior congressional or U.N. approval. As Clinton put it at the time, our armed forces wanted “to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors. Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world. Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas, or biological weapons.” At the time of Clinton’s warning about Iraq’s WMD capability, George W. Bush was a relatively obscure Texas governor.

Just weeks earlier, Clinton had signed the Iraq Liberation Act into law, after the legislation passed Congress on a House vote of 360 to 38 and the Senate unanimously. The act formally called for the removal of Saddam Hussein, a transition to democracy for Iraq, and a forced end to Saddam’s WMD program. As President Clinton had also warned when signing the act — long before the left-wing construction of neo-con bogeymen and “Bush lied, thousands died” sloganeering — without such an act, Saddam Hussein “will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he’ll use the arsenal.” Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, often voiced warnings about Saddam’s aggression and his possession of deadly stocks of WMD (e.g., “Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face”). Indeed, most felt that the U.S. had been too lax in allowing Saddam to gas the Kurds when it might have prevented such mass murdering.

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Trump’s Yuuge Lies By Ian Tuttle

Posted By on February 23rd, 2016

Among South Carolina Republicans who preferred above all else a candidate “who tells it like it is,” 77 percent voted for Donald J. Trump.

That is astonishing, given that Donald Trump’s entire life has been an extended exercise in deception.

Start with his wealth. How much is Donald Trump worth? $1.7 billion? $6 billion? “TEN BILLION DOLLARS,” as he claimed in his presidential filing? Tim O’Brien, then a reporter for the New York Times, wrote in his book TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, that in one 24-hour period, Trump claimed two different net worths differing by $3.3 billion. He has never permitted an independent, third-party audit of his finances. The closest anyone has come is Deutsche Bank, which in 2005 estimated that Trump was worth . . . $788 million. Several sources with knowledge of Trump’s finances have put the number significantly lower.

And Trump has admitted to lying about his wealth. “Have you ever exaggerated in statements about your properties?” he was asked during a deposition in the mid 2000s. “I think everyone does,” Trump replied. “Does that mean that sometimes you’ll inflate the value of your properties in your statements?” the lawyer followed up. Trump: “Not beyond reason.”

Translation: “Yes,” as evidenced by this exchange about a Trump-owned property in Westchester County, N.Y., which Trump claimed had doubled its value in twelve months. “Did you have any basis for that view other than your own opinion?” he was asked during a different deposition. “I don’t believe so, no.”

Trump’s wealth-related lies abound. Did he actually receive $1 million for a 2005 speech, as he told Larry King?? No. He was paid $400,000. He lumped in promotional efforts on behalf of the address to inflate his compensation.

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In Praise of Christian Walls By:Srdja Trifkovic

Posted By on February 23rd, 2016

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Pope Francis declared on his flight back to Rome last week.The political implications of his statement have been considered in some detail in recent days, but his assertion also needs to be examined in the light of history.

Had it not been for the walls, strongly built and staunchly defended, Christendom would not have survived the onslaught of Islam in its thousand-year-long period of military expansion. Two prominent examples come from the final two centuries of that period: the sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683. The first marked an important early check on Turkish advances, after a century of conquest in the Balkans and Central Europe. The second saved Europe and finally turned the tide. German, Hungarian, Polish, and other defenders of the walls of Vienna were Christian warriors par excellence. During the second siege the city was saved thanks to an alliance between the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Poland, which was brokered at the last minute by Pope Innocent XI. In thanksgiving for the victory at Vienna on September 12, 1683, Pope Innocent fixed that date as the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary.

Over two centuries earlier, in July 1456, some 6,000 Christian soldiers successfully defended the walls of Belgrade from Sultan Mehmed’s army of 50,000. During the siege Pope Callixtus III ordered the bells of all churches to be rung every day at noon, as a call for believers to pray for Belgrade’s defenders; that practice has continued to this day, even though not many people know its origins. An old Franciscan monk and preacher, John of Capistrano, played a key role in the battle and personally led a detachment of troops. For his valor and burning faith Pope Alexander canonized “the soldier priest” in 1690.