Cycle Top? CEO Resignations Jump Amid Collapse In Corporate Confidence

CEOs generally have a good lead on the economy and can spot acceleration and deceleration periods in the business cycle. With the current economy cycling lower into year-end, CEOs are departing companies at a record rate, fastest in nearly two decades, amid their collapse in confidence in the outlook of the economy.

Bloomberg notes that CEOs are voluntarily abandoning ship [their respected companies] as the economic expansion slows and risks a further deceleration into 2020 with the treat of a mild recession in the back half of the year.

“Historical patterns indicate that when we see this rate of turnover, the economic expansion is almost certainly in its final inning,” Bloomberg warned.

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/cycle-top-ceo-resignations-jump-amid-collapse-in-corporate-confidence/

Chaos Erupts in Texas Border Town as Los Zetas Cartel Attempts Complex Smuggling Operation

RIO BRAVO, Texas — Chaos erupted in a small Texas border town as Los Zetas smugglers launched a complex smuggling operation. Border Patrol agents responded to an illegal crossing that quickly tied up agency resources in the area, enabling smugglers to move higher-value cargo elsewhere.

What had only moments earlier been a quiet neighborhood became a scene of chaos as Laredo Sector Border Patrol agents and a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Air and Marine Operations (AMO) helicopter aircrew leaped into action following the illegal crossing of a few migrants. Agents captured at least one in the presence of the Breitbart News team while the complex Los Zetas-connected smuggling operation unfolded.

Shortly after Breitbart News stopped at a well-known river crossing area in Rio Bravo, a monitoring Border Patrol agent quickly drove off in response to illegal activity. As the Breitbart crew followed, multiple Border Patrol vehicles responded and the AMO helicopter quickly appeared overhead to provide air cover and communications to the ground-based agents. Breitbart News witnessed the initial runner who led agents on a foot pursuit through the neighborhood.

“This is territory that is controlled by Los Zetas,” Breitbart Border and Cartel Chronicles Projects Director Brandon Darby explained. “This is a neighborhood that is a heavy smuggling neighborhood for Los Zetas.”

“We saw Border Patrol looking for someone, and there are multiple things going on,” Darby said describing the chaos that quickly erupted in the neighborhood. “What’s going on is they use one person to come in and run to distract the authorities while they are doing something else.”

During an April 2015 interview with Darby, Border Patrol Agent Hector Garza, speaking in his role as the then-president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 2455, confirmed that the areas directly across the river from Laredo and its surrounding communities are controlled by the Los Zetas Cartel.

As Darby described the unfolding scene, he said, “What’s happening is people in the U.S. connected to Los Zetas and the Los Zetas smuggling operation is occurring. We’re getting to see the CBP response. We’re getting to see Air and Marine. We’re getting to see Border Patrol agents in action. And we’re also getting to see the cartel-connected smugglers and scouts in action in this U.S. neighborhood — Rio Bravo, Texas.”

A Breitbart News videographer captured the moment when Border Patrol agents and a Homeland Security Investigations special agent took one of the runners into custody. The situation became tense while processing the captured illegal alien as what appeared to be a scout vehicle pulled up directly behind the Border Patrol vehicle to document the situation.

“We’ve seen guys walk past on cell phones,” Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow recounted. “They’re eyeing us. They’re counting our cars. They’re counting how many people are here.”

“Some people are driving by and waving and acting nice,” Marlow explained. “Others are driving by and making very aggressive gestures.” He and Darby noted that many of the same vehicles drove by repeatedly. “We’re seeing a lot of action on these streets, where we had been driving all morning and there had been very little action … almost no pedestrians, almost no automobile traffic. Then, all of a sudden, this is the most happening neighborhood in town.”

Darby explained that the cartel smugglers set up complex operations like this where they run a few people across the border to tie up and distract Border Patrol resources. He explained the decoys provide cover for “a drug load or maybe they’re trying to cross a load of people who have given them money — who have given them a significant amount of money or agreed to pay a significant amount of money.”

“So they send one of their own, one of the neighborhood guys who can run fast,” Darby continued. “They send him across and get Border Patrol to look somewhere else, and they can get their load across.”

https://www.breitbart.com/border/2019/12/16/exclusive-video-chaos-erupts-in-texas-border-town-as-los-zetas-cartel-attempts-complex-smuggling-operation/

750 Billion Reasons Why Goldman Is Rooting For Greta Thunberg's Success

Having lost much of its central banker incubation skills over the past decade, and handing over the crown of Wall Street's most profitable trading desk to Morgan Stanley, in recent years Goldman Sachs has been best known for enabling and profiting wildly from Malaysia 1MDB criminal fraud, which culminated with the arrest of former Malaysia PM Razak, but not before Goldman made billions in illicit profits from selling bonds offered by the country's sovereign wealth fund.

And while Goldman is still waiting to learn its criminal and civil fate, and more importantly, how many billions it will have to pay Malaysia/the DOJ to put its 1MDB fraud in the rearview mirror, the company - which a decade ago was hoping to make billions from aggressively entering the carbon credit/offset market as profiled delightfully in Matt Taibbi's "The Great American Bubble Machine" - is already scheming how to profit from the latest round of anti-climate change euphoria, conveniently spawned by a 16-year-old child with Asperger's Syndrome.

On Monday, Goldman Sachs said it will provide $750 billion in financing, advisory services and investments for initiatives that fight climate change, as well as those that foster economic opportunities for under-served people over the next decade. What Goldman did not say is that it will pocket a generous commission, somewhere in the 3-5% ballpark, by peddling "green" products to naive investors (including central banks) who have fallen for the whole ESG virtue signalling charade.

The bank also updated its internal environmental policy framework to rule out providing financing to any new projects that will drill for oil in the Arctic or that create new thermal coal plants or new thermal coal mines. Of course, the destructive consequences of the bank's involvement in the 1MDB scandal would be quietly excluded from this virtuous charade.

Ironically, Goldman's policy changes come just as the United Nations concludes a conference that failed to ramp up efforts to combat global warming, according to Reuters.

Goldman CEO David Solomon announced the plans in an editorial in the Financial Times, where he wrote that there is "a powerful business and investing case" for the bank to take steps to address climate change and the growing worldwide opportunity gap. Very powerful: having failed to make almost any money from the bank's last foray into carbon tax and cap-and-trade, Goldman is now seeking to directly appeal to fellow fake virtue signalers, who in turn will hope to extract capital from naive investors pursuing the oh so noble goal of only investing in green, renewable, and "clean" (whatever that means) projects. Goldman's bottom line, assuming a blended 3% commission on the $750BN in financial services it sells to gullible clients, works out to about $22.5 billion - a "powerful business case" indeed.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/750-billion-reasons-why-goldman-rooting-greta-thunbergs-success

US Secretly Expelled Chinese Officials Who Breached 'Sensitive' Virginia Facility

The United States quietly expelled two Chinese Embassy officials from the country after a September incident in which they were caught entering a sensitive US military facility in Virginia.

According The New York Times, at least one is believed to be an intelligence officer under diplomatic cover. Interestingly, the officials' wives were accompanying them when they drove onto to the as yet unidentified military facility, and the group actually attempted to flee military personnel pursuing them.

They were reportedly apprehended after fire trucks blocked their path, according to the report. Their subsequent expulsion by US authorities marks the first time Chinese diplomats suspected of espionage have been booted from the country in over three decades. The last such episode happened in 1987.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-secretly-expelled-chinese-officials-who-breached-sensitive-virgina-facility

Two More Endangered Trump-District Democrats Announce They Will Vote to Impeach President Trump

Two more vulnerable Democrat Congressmen announced Monday they will vote in favor of impeaching President Trump.

15 Trump-district Democrats have now publicly stated they will back impeachment.

Cunningham and McAdams are two of the most endangered Democrat Reps and they are both going to go on the record and vote with the Stalinist leadership to impeach Trump.

Cunningham of South Carolina told the Post and Courier, “I’ve waited and waited and I have not found any evidence they submitted compelling at all.”

“At the end of day, this is simply about the rule of law, whether we’re a country with laws or not and what type of precedent we want to set for future presidents,” Cunningham added.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/12/two-more-endangered-trump-district-democrats-announce-they-will-vote-to-impeach-president-trump/

Trump's DoJ Blocks Construction Of 'Private' Texas Border Wall

President Trump's Justice Department has shut down an effort to build three miles of private border wall just north of the Rio Grande after the US Attorney's Office for Texas's southern district warned that the project could impact the border river and potentially violate a treaty with Mexico.

Despite Trump's claims that his administration has nearly finished the wall, in reality, Trump has only built 90 miles of border wall. His supporters (who of course blame the Democrats for stymying President Trump at every turn, are now scrambling to finish it to try and cut down on crime and make the border more secure.

Here's more from the Wall Street Journal:

An effort to build a privately funded wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, as the Trump administration’s efforts progress slowly, is running into trouble over concerns that its design may alter the border itself.

Construction of the three-mile section in South Texas was halted last week after a U.S. attorney for Texas’s southern district obtained a temporary restraining order Dec. 5 against its builder, Fisher Industries, a North Dakota-based contractor.

The attorney’s office argued that the wall is being built too close to the Rio Grande and could violate a treaty with Mexico by eroding soil and potentially altering the course of the waterway, which demarcates the U.S. border in Texas, when it floods.

One organization, called We Build The Wall, has raised roughly $25 million for the cause. The organization, founded by a military veteran and triple amputee Brian Kolfage.

A we've pointed out before, the notion that Trump's supporters could pitch in the pay for a large portion of the wall isn't so far-fetched he explained: If every person who voted for Trump were to pitch in $83, the government could use the money to build the entire wall.

Kolfage has become the face of the movement to build more of the private border wall.

Interestingly, the organization that spearheaded the movement for private citizens to build part of Trump's promised border wall has been removed from the lawsuit because it actually has little to do with the company building the wall.

Brian Kolfage, who founded We Build the Wall, said in an interview that his group didn’t hire Fisher Industries, doesn’t have any authority over the project and has paid only about 5% of its projected cost. He said his group didn’t want to invest more because he knew “it was going to be dicey” with potential lawsuits.

However, Mr. Kolfage defended his group’s public association with Fisher Industries’s wall. "We created this movement," he said of the private-wall movement. "It doesn’t matter how much money we put down, we’re taking ownership."

Instead, a mysterious North Dakota-based contractor called Fisher Industries is spearheading the project, helped along by a $2 million "investment" from Kolfage.

Fisher undertook the project to try and demonstrate a different design for the border wall that the contractor claims would be cheaper and, according to the company, more secure.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trumps-doj-blocks-construction-private-texas-border-wall

Russia, China Submit UN Resolution to Lift Sanctions on North Korea

Russia and China have submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council to lift sanctions on North Korea and promptly resume the 'six-party' talks, according to the text of the document.

The resolution proposes to exempt the inter-Korean rail and road cooperation from UN sanctions and lift all measures previously imposed by the UN Security Council directly related to civilian livelihood, among others.

The draft resolution also “calls for prompt resumption of the six-party talks or re-launch of multilateral consultations in any other similar format, with the goal of facilitating a peaceful and comprehensive solution through dialogue, reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula and beyond, and promoting peaceful co-existence and mutually beneficial regional cooperation in North-East Asia".

The draft also says that UN member states should terminate the measure that requests all North Korean citizens working overseas to return home by 22 December.

A diplomatic source said that a date to vote on the measure has not been set yet.

'Crucial' Tests at Sohae Satellite Site

US President Donald Trump told reporters Monday that his administration is closely watching North Korea amid reports that Pyongyang is resuming missile tests and would be disappointed if something was "in the works".

"We're watching it. We'll see. I'd be disappointed if something would be in the works. And if it is, we'll take care of it. But we'll see. We're watching it very closely. We're watching North Korea - we're watching many places, actually, very closely. But North Korea, we are watching very closely", Trump said at a roundtable discussion on the Governors’ Initiative on Regulatory Innovation.

Earlier this month, Pyongyang conducted what it had described as "crucial" tests at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground. The tests reportedly threaten to undermine Washington's drive to denuclearize the Korean peninsula through the use of diplomacy.

A State Department official said Monday, cited by Reuters, the UN Security Council should not be considering "premature sanctions relief" for North Korea as it is "threatening to conduct an escalated provocation, refusing to meet to discuss denuclearization".

Russia, China Stance on North Korea

North Korea has been subject to numerous UN sanctions since 2006 for its nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

Since 2018, the United States and North Korea have held two summits, agreeing in principle to normalize relations while pursuing a policy of denuclearization.

After the second US-North Korea summit in Vietnam in February, Pyongyang committed itself to end nuclear tests and launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles. This non-binding pledge did not, however, extend to engine tests, or the launches of satellites or medium- and short-range ballistic missiles.

https://sputniknews.com/world/201912171077592915-russia-china-submit-un-resolution-to-lift-sanctions-on-north-korea/

Schumer says he wants impeachment trial focused on facts, not 'conspiracy theories,' as he balks at GOP calling witnesses

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during a news conference Monday that any Senate impeachment trial should be “focused on the facts that the House presented, not on conspiracy theories” – an apparent slight at Republican attempts to alleviate blame on President Trump by casting aspersions on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine.

“I think the trial should be focused on the facts that the House presented, not on conspiracy theories that some established liar puts forward,” Schumer said just hours after publically releasing a letter he sent to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., outlining how he would like a Senate impeachment trial to proceed.

Schumer added: “We ought to stick to the facts, and if there are other witnesses who might have witnessed what happened, who might have very strong evidence on the facts that the House presented. I'd certainly want to hear who they are.”

In his letter to McConnell, the New York Democrat specifically asked that four witnesses be called during the trial: Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff; Robert Blair, a senior Mulvaney adviser; John Bolton, the former nation-security adviser; and Michael Duffey of the Office of Management and Budget.

“These are the four who have the most direct contact to the facts that are in dispute – most particularly, why was the aid to Ukraine delayed?” Schumer said. “There is no reason on God's green earth why they shouldn't be called and testify unless you're afraid of what they might say.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/chuck-schumer-trump-impeachment-trial-republican-witnesses

Unconfirmed report: Trump plan sees 3-way peace deal between Israel, PLO, Hamas

Lebanese outlet claims deal would see Israel keep settlements, Palestinians get Jerusalem share, Saudis gain Temple Mount role, Egypt give land for Gaza

Claiming to have obtained a copy of the Trump administration’s long-awaited peace deal, a Lebanese TV station asserted Monday that the US plan envisions a tripartite agreement providing for Palestinian statehood to be signed by Israel, the West Bank-based Palestine Liberation Organization and the Hamas terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip.

The report by the pro-Hezbollah Al-Mayadeen features details that starkly contradict the limited information the administration has released about the plan, and that stand at sharp odds with known US and Israeli positions, casting considerable doubt on the credibility of the report.

The report claimed the United States would end its economic support for Israel if the Jewish state rejects the deal, which reportedly provides for establishing a Palestinian state in Gaza and parts of the West Bank to be called “New Palestine.” The same was said for the Palestinians, though if the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups balk, and the PLO accepts, it would distinguish between the Ramallah leadership and the terrorist organizations.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/report-trump-plan-envisages-three-way-peace-deal-between-israel-plo-and-hamas/

Man Gets 17 Years In Prison For Child Porn Collection

Boston – An East Bridgewater man was sentenced to 17 years in prison on child pornography charges.

Daniel O’Connor Jr., 57, was sentenced on Friday, Dec. 13, 2019 by Chief U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saris to 17 years in prison, five years of supervised release and ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution. In September 2019, O’Connor Jr. pleaded guilty to one count each of production of child pornography, distribution of child pornography and possession of child pornography.

A forensic review of an iPhone recovered during a search of O’Connor Jr.’s home revealed images of child pornography including approximately 137 images and approximately 26 videos of child pornography. Fifteen of those 26 videos depicted the same 11-year-old girl. O’Connor Jr.’s collection of child pornography included girls between approximately five and 13 years of age. In addition, the cellphone contained multiple apps popular with minors, such as Kik Messenger. A review of O’Connor Jr.’s Kik app revealed chats between him and an 11-year-old girl during which he coerced and persuaded the girl to record and send him sexually explicit videos of herself.

https://breaking911.com/man-gets-17-years-in-prison-for-child-porn-collection/