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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Jeff Worthy: "WE DO LIVE IN SUCH A DUMB COUNTRY!!
If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for entering and remaining in the country illegally — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but run by idiots."
And
"If you MUST show your identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a library book and rent a video, but not to vote for who runs the government — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but run by idiots."
The unwillingness of Democrats to perpetuate the illegal immigration issue for over 30 years is not based on compassion, logic or a desire to protect our nation. It is based on hypocrisy, misplaced compassion, a desire to get votes and a complete and utter disregard for the rule of law.
Immigration is what made our our nation. Illegal immigration is another matter.
A nation that will not protect its borders, does not care to protect its borders is doomed. Just a matter of time before it becomes a festering hotbed of radicals. That is what the Democrat Party has become and one extreme begets extreme solutions and countermeasures. (See 1 below.)
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Surprise, surprise. Leeching the system and her constituents. (See 2 below.)
I know I could be wrong but I have observed a long line of black leaders, Adam Clayton Powell, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, John Lewis, Rev. Wright , Charlie Rangle and I believe their constituents see them as bigger than life, in "whitey's face and getting away with it and it gives them a sense of comfort and belief in pay back for all the suffering imposed on them.
The sad part is, it was MLK who got them their richly deserved freedom, it is the Justice Thomases and Tom Sowell's who they should be listening to but ignorance causes their radicals and rascals to be cheered.
Mohammed Ali is also a man I admired and who was a role model. (My number two daughter got him to inscribe his book to me and his museum in Louisville in fabulous.)We took advantage of Joe Louis and that is a bight on us.
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I tend to agree with this. (See 3 below.)
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I have always said I can handle my victories it is my defeats that concern me. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.....Earlier this month, she was part of a procession of black politicians recognized at a Clay County commemoration of the life of Martin Luther King Jr.That made the irony of her prosecution even more bitter.One Door donors testified at Brown’s trial that her personal request to help One Door, which she falsely described as being a tax-exempt charity, was a big part of why they wrote checks that sometimes topped $10,000 or $20,000.The Virginia-based organization was started by a schoolteacher’s daughter as a scholarship fund and support system for projects to help the poor or disadvantaged. But the founder, Carla Wiley, raised no money before she began dating Brown’s longtime chief of staff, Ronnie Simmons, who brought One Door to the congresswoman’s attention.Jurors at Brown’s trial were told that she, Simmons and Wiley all used money meant for charity to pay for personal expenses, which ranged from mortgage payments and travel to shopping in Beverly Hills.....
3)
There Won’t Be Three Rate Hikes This Year
Now would be a good time to follow me on Twitter if you haven’t already, because stuff is about to get real.
I was finger-scrolling through The Daily Shot the other day (a daily chart package mailed out by The Wall Street Journal—it’s a must-read for everyone in the business), and I came across this:
Source: The Daily Shot
People are getting bulled up on the idea that the Fed might hike more than three times this year.
That’s not unreasonable, given that stocks have gone straight up and financial conditions are the easiest they’ve been… ever. I hereby present a chart of the GS Financial Conditions Index.
Source: Bloomberg
Note: an increase in the FCI is evidence of a tightening of financial conditions, and a decrease indicates easing.
Lots of folks (like me) have been telling the Fed to take away the punchbowl. We have bubbles everywhere and we still have negative real interest rates.
Who knows, maybe they will finally listen!
But people have a high degree of certainty about the future path of interest rates at a time when they should have the highest degree of uncertainty about the future path of interest rates. Why? Because we have a new Fed Chairman, of course.
It is possible that we will have more than three rate hikes this year. It is also possible that we will have less than three rate hikes this year.
It is possible that we have zero.
It is possible that we have rate cuts.
Markets being what they are, I will tell you one thing for sure: I don’t know how many rate hikes we have this year, but it probably won’t be three.
Interest Rate Probabilities
Right now, the market is implying an 84.3% chance that we will have two, three, or four rate hikes in 2018, according to Bloomberg calculations based on Fed Funds futures. That is a high degree of certainty.
People are making a lot of assumptions about the Fed:
- People are assuming Jay Powell will be the exact same Fed Chair as Janet Yellen.
- People are assuming the future composition of the Board of Governors will be hawkish.
- People are assuming the volatility of inflation remains low.
- People are assuming tax reform will lead to growth.
- People are assuming the probability of a recession is low.
- People are assuming the best of Trump.
Point is: anything can happen. Powell could rip rates, or the Dow could puke 500 points about a dozen more times, the economic data could roll over, and we could be talking about rate cuts.
Twenty years ago, the Fed was a source of volatility. Intermeeting rate moves, 50bp moves all over the place. Now, the Fed is a source of stability.
What if stability turns into volatility… monetary policy suddenly becomes unpredictable… forward guidance stops, or becomes faulty?
Should the Fed be a source of volatility? In a Fed-free world, there would probably be lots of volatility in the market for short-term interest rates. By suppressing that volatility, is the Fed doing anyone any favors?
It’s leading people to believe that the world is less threatening than it actually is. Do you think people can be encouraged to take risks that they otherwise wouldn’t?
My Personal Opinion
My personal opinion is that the Fed will hike less than three times (could be zero) and the best-performing asset of 2018 will be short-term bonds.
It might be the only performing asset of 2018, because there is no place to hide anywhere else. We saw that on Tuesday—stocks and bonds both down. That is because stocks and bonds are both overpriced, which I’ve said a million times before.
The market is nothing if not filled with irony. These days, people aren’t satisfied with anything less than 50,000% on some alt-coin. The irony is that a total return of 4% on short-term bonds (2% income, 2% capital gains) might be a home run year in 2018. I don’t think two year notes are on anyone’s list of top picks this year.
One more fearless forecast: this might be the first time in maybe forever that we have a bear market, and a recession, without the yield curve inverting. The curve has actually been steepening a bit, which I speculate is mostly due to supply. We run bigger deficits + the Fed chickens out = it is going to be really hard to invert the yield curve.
Sometimes bull markets just get old and die.
It would probably be a good idea to enter this year with lowered expectations. Sharply. What we had last year was investor Nirvana. If you caught it, good for you. I would not try to repeat the experience this year.
Jared Dillian
Editor, The 10th Man
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4)‘Winter’ of cyber-threats is coming, experts warn
At Tel Aviv conference, ex-CIA director David Petraeus says US-Israel collaboration in foiling attacks is ‘far
beyond what is being published in the media’
By SHOSHANNA SOLOMONTimes of Israel
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Cyber threats are growing and the good guys are losing the battle as they are still vastly unprepared. That is the message cyber security experts, both Israeli and international, laid out at a cyber technology conference in Tel Aviv, as they defined 2017 as the worst year yet for cyber-attacks globally, with 2018 shaping up to be perhaps even worse.Cybersecurity experts sounded a dire note at a Tel Aviv conference Tuesday, saying 2017 was the worst year yet for cyber-attacks globally and the good guys are still woefully unprepared.Most institutions and companies are using outdated protections, and are struggling to get even the basics in place against attacks that are becoming more daring an aggressive, both Israeli and international experts said“Winter is coming,” warned Yigal Unna, the newly appointed director general at the Israel National Cyber Directorate, said at Israel’s 2018 Cybertech Conference. The cyber-attack surface is “getting wider” and the risk is “getting darker” with hackers motivated by both financial and political purposes. As more devices get connected, “malicious actors” get an advantage.The World Economic Forum ranks large-scale breach of cybersecurity as one of the five most serious risks posed to the world today, and the scale of the threat is expanding: by 2021, the global cost of cybersecurity breaches will reach $6 trillion by some estimates, double the total for 2015, according to an report by international consultants EY. Cyber-threats were the fourth greatest worry for CEOs worldwide, a report by consultants PwC showed.Countries must cooperate, Unna said, in order to put these malicious elements back into their “dark holes.” Better technology, especially involving the use of artificial intelligence, should be developed to detect and foil threats; more sensors should be deployed to cover the cyber-sphere, and people should be trained. In addition, the regulatory framework should be clarified and streamlined.Unna added that passenger planes are at greater risk too. “There are more and more attempts to attack civil aviation, and these have risen with the launch of the new Boeing Dreamliner” aircraft and other high-tech planes, he said.The former director of the CIA, Gen David Petraeus, said at the conference that US-Israeli collaboration on cybersecurity has reached new heights.“According to various foreign publications, our cooperation has harmed significantly Iran’s nuclear program,” he said at the conference, hinting at the reported collaboration between the two nations in planting the malicious computer worm Stuxnet that damaged Iran’s nuclear program and was uncovered in 2010. He said he could not confirm or deny those reports.Calling Israel a “cyber superpower,” Petraeus said the partnership between the US and Israel has allowed the two countries to foil threats together. “The collaboration reaches new heights time and time again, far beyond what is being published in the media,” he said.He added that legislation was not managing to keep up with the ever-changing technological landscape.“The bad guys continue to evolve, demonstrating diabolical creativity,” he said. “Technological developments are outstripping our strategic imagination. Simple legislation cannot keep up with technology to react to the rapid changes” that are happening.Gil Shwed, the CEO of Check Point Software Technologies, said companies and institutions globally are lacking even the most basic protections against cyber-attacks and that the protections in place today are 10-15 years behind the capabilities of the attackers. “We are at the fifth generation of attacks,” he said. The protections that are widely in place “are still at generation two and three.”Cybersecurity today requires technology that covers PCs, networks, cellphones and the cloud — the last two being the “weakest links” in cybersecurity, he said. Hospital and medical information are among the “most vulnerable,” he said.He said that in the future, “nano-security software” will be installed on every device, controlling the device’s connections to the rest of the world. “It will be small software, open source, that can be put on any IoT device or cloud and connected together with one intelligence control system that can predict and detect attacks.”Marc Van Zadelhof, the general manager of IBM Security, said artificial intelligence would be playing a far greater role in the future in both detecting cyber-attacks and helping security experts make sense of them. “AI will make a massive difference,” taking security to a new level, he said. But AI is a double-edged sword, he said. “There is a war coming, of good AI vs bad AI.”IBM launched Watson Cyber last year in a bid to use artificial intelligence to help analysts identify threats more accurately and resolve them faster.
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