Lucas Daniel Smith's blog

BREITBART, by Joshua Caplan — December 9, 2019

View the complete article including image, links and comments at:

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/09/ig-report-fbi-had-authorized-purpose-to-investigate-trump-campaign-but-wrongdoing-found/

ZeroHedge, by Tyler Durden — December 8, 2019

Excerpt:

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The growing significance of these new cash sources “can result in unfamiliar market dynamics“, said BIS’ Claudio Borio. Dynamics such as the one where impossible moves such as repo rates exploding from 2% to 10% in seconds become a daily occurence.

So where does that leave us? Well, as the BIS concludes, since 17 September, “the Federal Reserve has taken various measures to supply more reserves and alleviate repo market pressures. These operations were expanded in scope to term repos (of two to six weeks) and increased in size and time horizon (at least through January 2020). The Federal Reserve further announced on 11 October the purchase of Treasury bills at an initial pace of $60 billion per month to offset the increase in non-reserve liabilities (eg the TGA). These ongoing operations have calmed markets.”

We have covered all these “mitigating events”, and the problem is that even though the Fed has now injected $208BN in liquidity via overnight and term repos, and $114BN via permanent T-Bill purchases, or POMO (i.e. “Not QE”), expanding the Fed’s balance sheet by $322 billion, the repo market still remains broken…

... and the world may find just how broken it is as soon as December 31, when the next repocalypse event is tentatively scheduled to strike. The big question is whether the world’s mega hedge funds, the Millenniums, the Citadels, the Point72s afraid they will lose access to the precious repo funding that permits them to lever up as much as 10x, will sharply deleverage ahead of this event, in the process sending risk prices tumbling and precipitating the next market crash.

But don’t take our word: here again is the top financial expert at the BIS, Claudio Borio, warning that that September’s dislocation suggests that such repo “events” are only just starting and the repo markets “may again find themselves in the eye of the storm should financial stress arise at some point”, a point which as the Fed recently revealed in its October FOMC Minutes could take place as soon as year-end.

View the complete article including images and links at:

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fed-was-suddenly-facing-multiple-ltcms-bis-offers-stunning-explanation-what-really-happened

Rana Foroohar’s new book, ‘Don’t Be Evil,’ paints an alarming portrait of Silicon Valley tech companies that need to be reined in before they start to affect our lives in even more insidious ways.

The FEDERALIST, by John Thomas — December 6, 2019

Excerpt:

In 1998, in an academic paper titled “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin described how their project, which they had named Google, worked. Until Page and Brin published, their work had been shrouded in secrecy, much to the consternation of the Stanford faculty. However, their mentor was eventually able to convince Page and Brin to publish some of their work—it was an academic project, after all—and the two relented.

In the paper, Page and Brin outlined how search could be monetized—via advertising—and noted the danger of such a funding model, writing, “The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.” Indeed, such a model lead to what the two labeled “search engine bias” a phenomenon they identified as “particularly insidious.”

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View the complete article including image and links at:

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/06/why-big-tech-companies-cant-stop-being-evil/

Stilton’s Place, by Stilton Jarlsberg — December 6, 2019

Excerpt:

There wasn’t much to laugh about yesterday when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi officially declared war on the 63 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump in the last election. She did so by making it clear that the House of Representatives will indeed vote to impeach the President, because – according to Nancy’s tortured logic – it’s the only way to prevent him from becoming King.

Which is why we enjoyed the delicious irony when Cory “Spartacus” Booker chose the same day to introduce the CROWN Act – a bill which would outlaw (wait for it!) race based hair discrimination.

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View the complete post including image, links and comments at:

http://stiltonsplace.blogspot.com/2019/12/throne-for-loop.html

BREITBART, by Charles Hurt — December 6, 2019

Excerpt:

Never in the history of public schooling has a regiment of substitute teachers been so disappointed in their rowdy new pupils as the impeachment professors were Wednesday.

Inside the chambers of the House Judiciary Committee, the great professors were interrupted, dismissed, and ignored by the very worst goof-offs ever seen in American academia. Preening, entitled cutups, the pupils were unruly, loud and obnoxious.

And, entirely unlearning.

After all, not a single one of the class clowns slouching up on the dais was there to learn anything. They already know everything. What was some stuffy substitute teacher from someplace else going to teach them about what they all already knew?

President Trump will be impeached over a non-crime for which there is no actual evidence. He will be impeached without the vote of a single Republican — in fact, look for a few Democrats to abandon this sinking ship of an impeachment effort before it’s all said and done.

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View the complete article including image, links and comments at:

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/06/the-nuclear-option-professor-karlans-lonely-hearts-club/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=best_of_the_week&utm_campaign=20191207

TIME (via Yahoo), by Darlene Superville / AP — October 5, 2018

Excerpt:

Children living at The Nest in Nairobi greeted her with singing and dancing, and it didn’t take long before the typically reserved U.S. first lady gave in to the moment. She walked up a pathway holding hands with two children, then began to sashay to the beat as she approached the building.

She was briefed on the children living at the house for babies. Some of them were abandoned or their parents are incarcerated. She was surrounded by babies either sitting in walkers or lying on their backs beneath play mobiles.

Staff praised her for visiting.

“Thank you for what you do and taking care of them,” Mrs. Trump said, while holding a baby girl originally handed to her wrapped in a blanket bearing the logo of Be Best, the child welfare initiative she launched this year and is promoting during this week’s Africa visit.

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View the complete article at:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/melania-trump-dances-children-kenyan-113801477.html