Englander: Is The Fed (Or Any Central Bank) Still Credible?

The Chicago Fed’s recent "Conference on Monetary Policy Strategy,Tools,and Communications Practices" was designed to address various questions (and doubts) that academics and economists have raised, and also to listen to those supposed practitioners' perspectives.

However, as Standard Chartered's Steve Englander details in the note below, the conference will have very little impact on market expectations and do little to allay investor concerns about the ineffectiveness of monetary policy near the zero bound.

Critically, Englander says, the problems that the papers at this conference address are not the problems that worry market participants.

Instead, the questions they should have asked are more straightforward to put forth - and more difficult to answer honestly for The Fed.

Are the Fed’s models broad enough?

The basic model includes a Phillip’s curve, a zero lower bound and a policy rule. It is meant to optimise policy outcomes over a long period of time using alternative rules and choose the one with the best set of outcomes based on some objective function. This is a simplified version of something that requires considerable technical expertise.

In this modelling framework, nothing can go wrong. Some policy rules work better than others, but all eventually meet the targets. There is no banking sector that stops lending when rates are super-low, no investors who go too far out the risk-return curve, and no financial markets that stop trading because the safest assets are concentrated in the Fed’s balance sheet.

Such features are very difficult to model analytically. They require parametrisation that reflects empirical regularities, which are very hard to come by. However, investor concerns are not whether price-level targeting beats inflation averaging, but whether either will solve the problem of the zero lower bound.

Is the Fed or any central bank credible enough?

To his credit, Fed Chair Powell has admitted: “In models, great confidence in central bankers is achieved by assumption.”

The credibility assumption requires the model to be correct and for investors to have confidence that the central bank can stick to it.

If the model is not correct, investors must choose between believing that the central bank will follow a doomed policy or that it will change its policy.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-12/englander-fed-or-any-central-bank-still-credible

Denver police will soon dispatch trained civilians rather than officers in response to some 911 calls

Counselors and medics will replace law enforcement in certain instances

The Denver Police Department has announced it is working on a plan to allow certain emergency services calls to be handled by trained civilians rather than officers of the law.

What are the details?

Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen told KUSA-TV roughly 10-20 percent of 911 calls in the city do not require the presence of law enforcement, and could be diverted to paired-up counselors and medics rather than police officers. So, the department is working on a program allowing trained professionals to be dispatched with the goal of better serving citizens while redirecting law enforcement resources.

When it comes to non-threatening cases such as homelessness or substance abuse, "If we have a team of dedicated individuals with those types of backgrounds, we feel like we can have a positive impact on our most vulnerable population," the chief explained to KVAL-TV.

Pazen does not yet have a timeline or a budget laid out for the program, but says he recognizes there is an immediate need so the department is "working as quick as possible" to work out the details.

Anything else?

Denver is basing its new pilot program off a similar scheme operating in the city of Eugene, Oregon, called "Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets," or, "CAHOOTS." Launched in 1989, Cahoots has successfully served the people of Eugene for decades, prompting other communities to take a look at their pioneering model.

Pazen notes that Denver's program will not be identical to Eugene's, but city officials and community leaders have reached out to CAHOOTS leaders for help in developing their own unique plan.

The Daily Mail reported Denver Alliance for Street Health Response director Vinnie Cervantes was part of a group who recently visited Eugene to check out the CAHOOTS program. He says, "They are trying to have not as many situations where law enforcement is the response and rather a community-based response is the answer for it."

https://www.theblaze.com/news/denver-police-will-soon-dispatch-trained-civilians-rather-than-officers-in-response-to-some-911-calls

‘Extraordinary & persistent illegality’: UK's MI5 accused of mishandling bulk surveillance data

UK domestic counter-intelligence service MI5 has been accused in High Court of violating data collection and storage privileges by storing private citizens’ information in bulk without proper protections.

MI5 has no control of its storage of vast volumes of people’s calls, messages, web browsing history, as well as other personal data that the agency has managed to obtain on the basis of surveillance warrants, which were often issued under false pretext, the High Court heard on Tuesday in a legal challenge brought by the human rights organization Liberty.

Liberty claims that the MI5 persistently violates privileges obtained by the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), which allows the security services to hack individuals' computers and phones in the name of national security. The agency’s failures have been identified by the head of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office (IPCO), Sir Adrian Fulford, who is tasked with safeguarding the storage and timely deletion of bulk data. A series of 10 documents and letters from MI5 and IPCO have been shared with the court in support of the claims.

The spy agency has been aware of breaches of compliance with the IPA for at least three years but has “kept the failings secret,” according to the evidence presented. The MI5 handling of people’s data was found to be “undoubtedly unlawful” by Fulford, who accused the intelligence service of “historical lack of compliance” with IPA safeguards.

Furthermore, the spying apparatus is being accused of misleading the judges when applying for surveillance warrants under false assurance that proper storage of the data will be met. Hacking warrants would have never been issued if breaches were known, Fulford pointed out.

https://www.rt.com/uk/461652-mi5-data-storage-violation/

Hillary: Circumstances Of Trump's America "More Dangerous" Than Hitler's Germany

Hillary Clinton warned her audience of the rise of fascism in America during an alumnae event held at Wellesley College.

The former presidential candidate joined former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, both alumnae of the school, on campus for a reunion event at the all-women’s college, according to The Hill. The two were interviewed on stage by Wellesley president Paula A. Johnson. During the interview, Clinton alluded to President Donald Trump as a proponent of a fascist America.

“I think Madeline [Albright]'s book is really well-named: "Fascism: A Warning," Clinton said.

“And the idea that 'oh, it can’t happen here' is just old-fashioned, my friends.”

“The demagoguery, the appeal to the crowd, the very clever use of symbols, the intimidation, verbal and physical,” she listed…

“this is a classic pattern. There is nothing new about it, it's just different means of messages being delivered.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-12/hillary-circumstances-trumps-america-more-dangerous-hitlers-germany

UK report on ‘human rights’ forgets to mention Saudi Arabia in section on Yemen war

The UK has published its annual human rights report, but with some notable omissions in its section on Yemen’s war – namely the identity of the country bombing its civilians, and the UK’s own involvement in the conflict.

The 2018 “Human Rights & Democracy”report from the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) includes an almost 800-word section on the humanitarian situation in Yemen – but, to a reader unfamiliar with the specifics, the document offers few clues as to who bears most responsibility for the crisis, since the British report seems to have forgotten to mention some key details.

The FCO report laments that the “human rights situation worsened in Yemen in 2018” and “the conflict in the country has had a devastating effect.” It then details the estimated numbers of lives lost and displaced citizens according to UN statistics, but doesn’t seem eager to pin blame on anyone in particular, laying responsibility at the feet of “multiple parties.”

“Multiple parties across the country committed a wide range of human rights abuses and violations.”

Yet, a UN investigative report last year found that airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition had caused “most of the documented civilian casualties” in the country – and said the indiscriminate strikes had hit “residential areas, markets, funerals, weddings, detention facilities, civilian boats and even medical facilities.”

The UN also criticized the Saudi coalition’s sea and air blockades, which, it argued, could violate international humanitarian law, and called on the “international community” to “refrain from providing arms that could be used in the conflict.”

But who is providing arms? The FCO report is quiet on that front, too.

https://www.rt.com/uk/461697-uk-human-rights-report-yemen/

Ilhan Omar filed joint tax returns with man she wasn’t married to

Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar is under fire once again for filing joint tax returns with a man she hadn’t yet married.

Omar and her current husband, Ahmed Hirsi, filed joint tax returns in 2014 and 2015 while Omar was married to another man, according to a report published earlier this week by the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board. Omar didn’t divorce her previous husband until 2017 and did not become married to Hirsi until 2018.

Omar was ordered by campaign finance officials to pay a fine of $3,500 over this incident and her misuse of thousands of dollars in campaign funds between the years 2016 and 2017.

This revelation will lead to further scrutiny of the freshman congresswoman, who has become a lightning rod since arriving in Washington, D.C., earlier this year.

Just months into her tenure, Omar has caused an uproar for her views on Israel and her perceived use of anti-Semitic tropes to justify those views. Omar has claimed that U.S. support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins,” and supports a movement to boycott the Jewish state.

The Minnesota Star Tribune’s editorial board lambasted Omar Tuesday over the situation, as well as for her other scrutinized comments.

“Omar’s political rise has been marred by a series of unforced errors, including intemperate remarks and tweets earlier this year that were widely perceived as anti-Semitic,” the board wrote.”Every month seems to bring a fresh problem.”

https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/12/ilhan-omar-tax-returns-husband/

Never expose Israel's control over the US government!

EU Commission, Germany: New Prime Minister Cannot Change Brexit Deal

President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker has ruled out time-limiting the Irish backstop as a number of European leaders are telling prospective Tory Party leadership hopefuls that a new prime minister will not be able to change the withdrawal treaty.

“There will be no renegotiation as far as the content of the Withdrawal Agreement is concerned,” Mr Juncker said on Tuesday in comments reported by The Sun, adding that the most the next prime minister could hope for would be “some clarifications, precisions, additions to the Political Declaration relating to our future relations”.

The Irish backstop remains the greatest obstacle to MPs supporting the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, as it would keep Northern Ireland locked in regulatory alignment with the EU should a future deal not be agreed between London and Brussels by the end of the proposed transition period in December 2020, in order to prevent a so-called ‘hard border’ with the Republic of Ireland.

Such a scenario could result in either the whole of the United Kingdom remaining in the Customs Union or Northern Ireland remaining in EU alignment whilst Great Britain diverges, representing a threat to the union. Asked whether there would be any possibility to give a time-limit to the backstop, Mr Juncker said: “No.”

European Leaders Get Fret Over Suggestion Britian Could Withhold £39 Billion 'Brexit Bill' https://t.co/63qZaRtlJ2

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 10, 2019

A number of Conservative Party leadership candidates have campaigned on a pledge to return to Brussels to renegotiate the deal, the latest being Boris Johnson who said that he would withhold the £39 billion divorce bill in exchange for reopening talks However, a spokesman for the Commission backed Mr Juncker’s position, saying: “Everybody knows what is on the table. What is on the table has been approved by all member states and the election of a new prime minister will not change the parameters.”

Germany’s Europe minister Michael Roth also said that there would be no renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement — even if there were a new prime minister — telling Reuters: “I see no willingness to restart negotiations from the beginning. The candidates would do well to bear that in mind in the course of their internal party campaigns.”

The comments by the Commission president and German minister follow similar remarks by French minister Amelie De Montchalin who said that the EU-approved treaty is the only deal available and that “31 October is the final deadline”.

France: Renegotiation Of Britain’s Brexit Withdrawal Not Possible — Britain Must Leave the EU in October https://t.co/6l02yTv92Y

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 11, 2019

French President Emmanuel Macron and Guy Verhofstadt MEP attacked leadership contender Boris Johnson for threatening to withhold the £39 billion, with Mr Macron claiming to do so would be “a failure of international commitments equivalent to a sovereign debt default, whose consequences are well known”.

However, British lawyer Martin Howe QC had said in a paper published in 2017 that the divorce bill is not legally binding, adding: “In law, we will owe no money at all to the EU when account is taken of what we are owed for the return of capital the UK has in the EIB [European Investment Bank].”

Last week, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said that the treaty cannot be renegotiated saying at the end of last month that the only options are May’s treaty, cancelling Brexit, or leaving on no-deal.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/06/12/european-commission-germany-new-prime-minister-cannot-change-brexit-deal/

Brazil: Couple Stabs Nine-Year-Old Boy To Death After Makeshift Gender Reassignment Surgery

Rhuan Maycon, 9, was stabbed to death on May 31st by his mother, Rosana da Silva Candido, 27, and lesbian partner Kacyla Damasceno Pessao, 28.

The boy was stabbed to death as he slept after suffering for a year after a botched gender reassignment surgery.

According to Brazil’s Child Protective Services, the boy had a“kind of a sex-change surgery. After removing the penis, they sewed the mutilated region and improvised a version of a female genital organ, making a cut in the groin”

The surgery had apparently been performed with no medical supervision after Rhuan’s mother had decided to turn her son into a girl.

Rhuan’s father had previously contacted Child Protective Services and the police after expressing concerns about the welfare of his son.

Rhuan’s mother and her partner were able to evade the authorities by moving across states and around the country.

Child Protective Services were unable to keep up or save Rhuan’s young life.

Rhuan’s father told the press, “We tried to save Rhuan. We published messages on the social media, we contacted police and the Child Protective Services. No one helped us.”

It appears that Rhuan had suffered extensive psychological trauma from his mother for being male before his penis was severed and his eventual death.

https://www.newmediacentral.net/brazil-couple-stabs-nine-year-old-boy-to-death-after-makeshift-gender-reassignment-surgery/

Homelessness - California's Ugly Growth Industry

It's a fucking disgrace that the US gov spends so much money on war/other countries yet allows this to happen to its own people.

Those responsible need to hang.

Israel Police recommend charging Netanyahu associate with bribery in ‘Submarine Affair’

Israel Police has recommended charging Miki Ganor, an associate of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with bribery for his role in Case 3000, often known as the “Submarine Affair”.

The case refers to a series of allegations against close associates of Netanyahu, who it is claimed lobbied Israeli defence officials to sign deals with German shipbuilding firm ThyssenKrupp. The multi-billion-shekel deals, many of which date back to 2009, would have seen Israel purchase naval vessels and submarines from the German firm. Netanyahu’s associates, however, are suspected of “skimming” millions of shekels off the top of the deals for their personal profit.

One of these associates is Miki Ganor, a former sales representative of ThyssenKrupp who turned state witness in 2017. Under the agreement, Ganor would testify for the prosecution in exchange for only having to serve one year in prison and pay a ten million shekel ($2.7 million) fine for his role in facilitating the deals.

However, in a shock move in March, Ganor presented himself to the police and asked to change his previous statement, despite standing by it during 50 meetings over the course of the investigation. He was subsequently arrested for “obstructing an investigation with false information”, while Israel’s State Prosecutor threatened to rescind his partial immunity.

Having had his immunity rescinded, the Israel Police’s Lahav 433 anti-fraud unit today recommended that prosecutors indict Ganor on five counts of bribery and one count of receiving an illicit gift, in addition to six counts of money laundering, the Times of Israel reported, citing Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

The Israeli daily added that “despite the recent developments, all the recommendations against the other suspects in the case have remained unchanged”. One of these other suspects include Netanyahu’s cousin David Shimron, who represented Ganor in the deals and allegedly promised to use his influence over the prime minister to secure the sales, in return for a “hefty cut” of the money exchanged.

Other close associates of Netanyahu have also been implicated in the affair: another of his cousins, Nathan Milikowsky; his former bureau chief David Sharan; his former pick for National Security Adviser Avriel Bar-Yosef; former head of the Israeli Navy Eliezer Marom; and former government minister Eliezer Sandberg.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190612-israel-police-recommend-charging-netanyahu-associate-with-bribery-in-submarine-affair/

The Tyranny of Drug Laws

The recent drug bust of Russian journalist Ivan Golunov reminds us of another aspect of drug laws — the ability of tyrannical regimes to use such laws to target innocent people. In fact, consider any tyrannical regime in the world — North Korea, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Egypt, Myanmar (Burma), Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others. I will guarantee you that every one of them has viciously enforced drug laws. That’s not a coincidence. Tyranny and drug laws go together like bread and butter.

Golunov specializes in investigating and uncovering official corruption. According to the Washington Post, his investigations have uncovered corruption in the office of the Moscow mayor, the funeral business, and elsewhere.

The police said claimed they found 3 grams of mephedrone 5 grams cocaine in Golunov’s backpack and apartment. They charged him with drug possession with intent to sell, which carried a potential jail sentence of 10 years. Golunov denied the charges and claimed that the police had planted the drugs.

Immediately, the pushback began, with journalists and others coming to Golunov’s defense, arguing that he was being framed by the police in an attempt to silence him.

But one can readily see the problem. When the case comes to trial, the prosecutor will ask, “Who are you going to believe — this drug defendant or the police who keep you safe? Why, police would never lie because they have no motive to lie. But this drug defendant clearly would lie in order to save his own skin.”

That’s precisely how the issue is framed in drug prosecutions here in the United States in which the defendant is claiming that the police are framing him. The police or the DEA would never do such a thing, prosecutors argue. This is just a fanciful conspiracy theory to enable the defendant to walk free and continue to destroy society with his drug sales, they tell jurors.

Ever since the drug war got started, planting drugs and framing innocent people has been a modus of law-enforcement agents. When I was in high school in the 1960s, my father was serving as U.S. Magistrate in my hometown of Laredo, Texas, which was a major hub for the importation of drugs into the United States. He told me that one day the federal judge called him into his office to discuss a growing problem of “dropsie” cases. The immigration and customs officials at the international bridge were stopping and searching automobiles of long-haired hippies, who undoubtedly opposed the Vietnam War and, therefore, were considered enemies or traitors to America. Unable to find any drugs, the officials were dropping drugs into the vehicles and exclaiming, “Look what I found!” and then charging innocent people with drug possession. At the trial, the prosecutor would ridicule the notion that clean-cut federal law enforcement agents would drop drugs into people’s cars in order to frame them. Guess who the jurors would believe. The dropsie problem got so big that the federal judge, who himself was fierce drug warrior, got concerned about it.

https://www.fff.org/2019/06/12/the-tyranny-of-drug-laws/

Antitrust Hearing Starts With Big Media Citing Junk Study to Demand Big Tech Hand Them Tons Of Money

Congress's antitrust probe into Big Tech started Tuesday with Big Media demanding the tech giants give them tons of money because of a junk study media industry lobbyists published in advance of the hearing.

From Forbes:

A congressional panel will today kick off its antitrust investigation into Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook with an examination of the way they affect the news media landscape.

The investigation coincides with the publication of a new report from the News Media Alliance which concludes that Google received an estimated $4.7 billion in revenue last year from crawling and scraping news publishers’ content.

That's not a coincidence. The News Media Alliance is an media industry lobbyist group.

Today's hearing by the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, led by Rhode Island Democrat David Cicilline, will examine whether current antitrust laws are effective in preventing anti-competitive behaviour.

"I think we’re going to hear about what the impact has been on the news industry as a result of this huge market dominance," Cicilline says.

This bill will provide a much-needed lifeline to local publishers who have been crushed by Google and Facebook. It’s about time we take a stand on this issue."

That's all lies. This is about helping Big Media, not the smaller news sites crushed by Google's algorithms which were rigged in Big Media's favor.

Scheduled to testify at the hearing is David Chavern, head of publishers’ campaign group the News Media Alliance. He has pushed hard for the introduction of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, currently making its way through the US Congress, which would allow publishers to negotiate collectively with the platforms.

That bill is a scam.

"Journalism is critical to our civic society. The major tech platforms know this and they extract the value from our reporting without adequately compensating the publishers who create it," he says. "News publishers need the ability to band together to negotiate a sustainable future for quality journalism."

The study they cited (and nearly the entire media ran with) is total garbage.

It was debunked by journalist Bill Grueskin on Twitter and by the Columbia Journalism Review.

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=60336

>>6735045

I think all LGBT…. should be banned from having children with all this drag time BS it's clearly a stepping stone to making pedophilia acceptable. These two cunts should be shot.