BANNON OUT AT NSC

Well, it looks like the leaks out of Roger Stone yesterday were made with precision, as news breaks today that Trump’s main advisor, Steve Bannon, has been removed from the national security council.

According to main stream reports, Bannon’s removal came at the behest of the national security advisor H.R. McMaster — who didn’t want politics intermingled with national security (cue Susan Rice).

Moreover, they’re trying to spin Bannon’s appointment to the council, as originally being purposed for baby sitting General Flynn.

Clearly, this is bullshit.

Responding to the news, Bannon said: “Susan Rice operationalized the NSC during the last administration. I was put on to ensure that it was de-operationalized. General McMaster has returned the NSC to its proper function.”

“Steve was put there as a check on [Mike] Flynn,” a second official told the WSJ, referring to the former national security adviser who was forced to resign in February over undisclosed contacts with Russia. With Gen. McMaster now in charge, “there was no longer a need [for Bannon] because they share the same views,” the official said. “The idea initially was to make sure Flynn implemented the vision they had talked about,” the official said.

The Trump team is being dismantled, one brick at a time.

The mall is dead, very dead. I’ve been saying so for years and have, thus far, done nothing about it. Meanwhile, the sector continues to follow the path of least resistance down.

Are we missing one of the biggest meltdowns in market history, because the declines are happening slowly?

I’m starting to feel like the end game is near.

Citi is out with a note today, begging clients to stop betting against nice commercial lenders and mall operators, and instead focus on the retailers themselves. Please, for the love of God, don’t bet against the banks or persons who finance shopping malls. After all, according to Citi, their CDS can go no lower.

“A more appropriate way to express a short view on the retail sector is to go directly to the source,” Citigroup’s analysts wrote, pointing out that deterioration in the sector will be reflected in the issuers’ credit quality, and investors won’t have to worry that mall operators will head off disaster by filling their space with new kinds of tenants.

The analysts, Anindya Basu and Calvin Vinitwatanakhun, are suggesting to take out protection against $TGT, $GPS, $JWN and $M.

“It is difficult to assign a timeline around when the retail sector begins to capitulate and defaults start to occur,” Citigroup said. “We are more comfortable using the CDS market where maturities are longer — even go up to 10 years — versus the options market, where maturities are much shorter.”

That sounds definitive.

For the year, retailers have been mangled and left for dead, with outsized losses in JCP, M, KSS, DDS and LB. Over the past 12 months, losses are even greater — down in the magnitude of 35% amidst large share losses to the likes of Amazon.

On the 10th and final day of the Exodus Oversold cycle, I’m pleased to announce an estimable win for my computerized brain.

With this, I shall live forever — helping young lads beat the market for the rest of eternity. The system was designed to be intuitive and learns as the market progresses. As such, it is capable to surviving even after I’ve left for the green fields of Romania to live out my days as a shepherd.

Here we are again, winning.

It’s not an accident or by happenstance that my algorithms consistently predict the bottoms in trading ranges, but by design. With a track record of an 80% win rate since 2008, I think it’s fair to say, without equivocation, I’m predicting the future.

It’s pretty obvious what Google is trying to do here. After the Wall Street Journal began routing out Nazis on YouTube, in an effort to get ads scrubbed from their videos, a massive overhaul of YouTube’s advertising policies began, shortly thereafter. It was incredible, really, as if Google was simply waiting for an excuse.

A number of major advertisers suspended their ad campaigns on YouTube, waiting for Google to get rid of its Nazis. Unlike other social media venues, YouTube is largely dominated by right of center, logic based, thinkers.

Obviously, this was a problem. Ergo, an effort to demonetize free thinkers is underway.

A manager for YouTube posted this kind note last week, warning creators that ad revenues will be fucked until they find the Nazis.

“If you’re seeing fluctuations in your revenue over the next few weeks, it may be because we’re fine tuning our ads systems to address these concerns,”

Nomura believes $GOOGL could lose $750m in revenue this year due to the new witch hunt.

Famous conservative personality, Paul Joseph Watson, posted a picture of his YouTube revenues, after the crackdown, and they’re virtually zero.

This is my YouTube ad revenue since the crackdown. I don't get any of it anyway, but illustrates how independent voices will be strangled. pic.twitter.com/GgNwx1Hl0T

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) April 5, 2017

On iBankCoin’s channel, which only has around 3,000 subs, our revenues have flatlined as well.

YouTube said they’ve begun to hire 3rd party ‘brand safety’ organizations, who will help eliminate ‘bad actors’ from the platform. How nice.

I expect similar efforts will be made on the web that will take aim at independent media, taking away their financing and the incentive to create content.

There are no anti-trust concerns here, folks. It’s just a nice little private equity firm, run by the Chairman of Anheuser-Inbev, buying up all fast food companies and consolidating them into their matrix to be spun off later at extreme rip off prices.

For some of you older nerds out there who grew up on Star Trek, JAB is the borg — get assimilated or eliminated by the gentlemen below.

Panera’s board accepted the offer because none others will come. JAB is the only entity who could pull this off. Ergo, resistance was futile.

By absorbing $PNRA into their gigantic corporate portfolio, JAB has created a formidible entity focused on quality fast food and coffee. Their portfolio includes Caribou Coffee, Peet’s Coffee and Tea, Einstein Noah, Keurig Green Mountain, Krispy Kreme, Espresso House, Baresso Coffee, Stumptown Coffee, Mighty Leaf Tea and Intelligentsia Coffee.

I will note that Stumptown iced coffee, sold in Whole Foods, is delicious.

Nothing anti trust about JAB folks. As you were. Keep it moving.

Et tu, Jared?

Roger Stone, former Trump Chief of Staff, is out with a rather exclamatory and emphatic claim, accusing Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner, of ‘enjoying lively exchanges’ via text message with none other than NeverTrumper and neo con shill, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.

“There’s no question now, sources tell me, that the President’s son in law enjoys a very lively text exchange with Joe Scarborough. And that Scarborough’s repeated attacks on Steve Bannon, not to mention some of his attacks on the President, clearly are being manipulated for his internal purposes.”

If true, this is a betrayal of the first order. One expects to be backstabbed by political operatives, friends and rivals, but not family.

I’d bet my nuts that the following stocks are about to move sharply higher. What we’re looking for are strong technicals, coupled with a high short interest relative to the float. The net result should be, a stock price buttressed by natural buyers and forced buyers trying to escape the pangs of a short squeeze.

After careful examination of names in the Exodus short squeeze screen, here are my favorites.

$RES
$OAS
$CLR
and maybe $MTCH and $W.

Follow the money. Right now, all roads lead to Saudi Aramco.

Amidst a cacophony of smug laughter and abject ridicule on the ultra-left leaning Morning Joe panel, Senator Rand Paul managed to weave his way into the discussion and utterly destroy their narrative.

Paul’s claim was the collection of data, ‘backdoor searches’, encroaches on the civil liberties of all Americans and that ‘secret warrants’ by ‘secret courts’ should be eschewed and replaced by standard old fashioned search warrants.

When Paul asserted the White House had used the collection of surveillance for political purposes and that Rice should be subpoenaed and questioned under oath, the panel led by Mika Brzezinski and Bill Press, jeered him.

“They were not spying on these Americans”, said Press. His argument was that foreign agents were being spied on and that Trump and his team just happened to come up in ‘incidental’ intelligence gathering.

Paul then ripped his spine out when he said “I think it’s a mistake to downgrade this and say oh it was just incidental and not a big deal. It’s a HUGE deal that we are collecting millions of Americans phone calls and that someone can go to a keyboard and search for it without a warrant. This is an illegal warrantless search.”

In response to Mika’s opposition, Rand shuts down the conversation, saying “I believe Susan Rice abused this system, and she did it for political purposes, and needs to be brought in and questioned under oath.”

Senator Paul says Rice needs to be brought in for questioned under oath for Trump surveillance. pic.twitter.com/ptJ90RAxvH

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) April 4, 2017

“This was a witch hunt that began with the Obama administration, sour grapes out the door, and used the intelligence apparatus to attack Trump and I think they did.” — Rand Paul

Watch

One of the most overlooked aspects of the Trump surveillance controversy is the fact that ‘incidental’ intelligence might’ve made its way to the White House by way of ‘foreign intelligence’ aka British. Both parties seem to simply mention this in passing, as if it were okay. How on earth is this acceptable to our government to know that foreign intelligence agencies are spying on US citizens?

In an interview with Andrea Mitchell today, Susan Rice said “I leaked nothing to nobody.” But, she did offer some interesting insight into what actually happened, which was completely different from how she described the events in a recent interview with PBS when she stated that she knew nothing of any sort of surveillance done on Trump.

Firstly, Rice ceded the point that ‘unmasking’ was ordered by her during her years with Obama, saying “there were occasions when I would receive a report in which a U.S. person was referred to. Name not provided, just U.S. person. And sometimes in that context, in order to understand the importance of the report, and assess its significance, it was necessary to find out, or request, the information as to who that U.S. official was.” Rice argued it was necessary for her and other officials to request that information, on occasion, to “do our jobs” to protect national security.

She admitted to ordering the unmasking of Trump and his team during this exchange with Mitchell: “Did you seek the names of people involved in — to unmask the names of people involved in the Trump transition, the people surrounding the president-elect in order to spy on them and expose them?” Rice replied: “Absolutely not for any political purposes to spy, expose, anything.”

She denied being the source of leaks that helped ABC News break the Flynn story. It’s important to note that Rice’s husband, Ian Cameron, is an executive at ABC News. When was the last time ABC News broke any story, let alone one of national importance? I’m sure it was just a mere coincidence.

“I leaked nothing to nobody, and never have, and never would.” She added that to discuss particular targets would be to reveal classified information. She later walked back her denial. Mitchell: “The allegation is that you were leaking the fact that he spoke to the [Russian] ambassador and perhaps to others.” Rice: “I can’t get into any specific reports … what I can say is there is an established process.”

Entrenched in denial, Rice furthered the notion that Obama had not ordered surveillance on Trump, saying  “absolutely false … there was no such collection [or] surveillance on Trump Tower or Trump individuals … directed by the White House or targeted at Trump individuals.”

She did not deny that there might have been some surveillance by other agencies, however. She said it was impossible for the White House to order such surveillance, but that the Department of Justice could have done so.

When Mitchell said “The President, his associates, their names could’ve been bandied about by foreign officials, they could’ve been picked up in incidental collection… and you could’ve asked for American #1,  American #2, however it’s identified, to be unmasked to know how significant it was.”

Rice: “That’s exactly right.”

Here's the money shot in the Mitchell-Rice interview. Rice admits to 'incidental' Trump intelligence and her order to unmask. pic.twitter.com/nUuAq2bWnM

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) April 4, 2017

She admitted to unmasking Trump and his team, without offering valid reasons as to why this was done. Clearly, more detailed answers need to be ascertained by a Senate panel.

Rand Paul thinks so too.

Full interview.

The Washington Post is out with a few more leaks today, this time purporting that Trump is set to impose two liberal wet dreams on the people, VAT and carbon taxes.

Washpo said the administration is trying to find ways to raise revenues, in order to provide the people with the tax cuts they promised. Moreover, they painted this in a light that Trump and his team are trying to extend olive branches to the batshit democrats, by way of onerous taxes on the American people, to meet them ‘halfway’ in an attempt to find common ground.

A carbon tax would target the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases in the burning of gasoline, coal and other fossil fuels. Many Democrats support the creation of a carbon tax as a way to address climate change, but they couldn’t even reach an agreement on the issue when they had control of Congress and the White House during the early years of the Obama administration.

I call 100% bullshit on this fake news.

A man who eschewed global warming as nothing more than a Chinese scheme to deindustrialize America does not simply agree to carbon taxes as a means to an end.

The VAT tax, or ‘value-added tax’ is used in other countries of lesser qualities. It serves as a national sales tax, targeting fuckheads to enjoy to spend all of their money at the mall. Critics argue it target the weak and the poor. It does.

Here is how Washpo described their unnamed sources feeding them this nonsense.

Administration officials stressed that no final decision has been made and they are reviewing different alternatives. Two officials and a third person confirmed the consideration of the value-added tax, while one official and the third person confirmed the consideration of the carbon tax. The carbon tax idea is very controversial within the administration, and some officials strongly oppose it, one person said.

“Two officials and a third person” said Trump was considering a VAT tax, but ‘some officials’ strongly opposed the carbon tax. Therefore, the Washington Post felt it necessary to lie to the American people by suggesting Trump was considering a carbon tax, in order to create resentment amongst his base.

There is a 0% chance that Trump will impose a carbon tax. Write it down.

All of this talk of taxes has reignited the discussion of a ‘border adjustment tax’, which is having a ruinous effect on the shares of retail stocks. Shares of $JCP are leading the way lower by 6.5%, followed by losses in $M, $KSS, $EXPR, $JWN and so many others. It is a bloodbath in retail today.

The problem for retailers, aside from the blackhole that is Amazon, is two fold, amidst today’s news of Trump’s tax ideas.

By enacting a VAT tax, the price of goods will rise, effectively reducing the volume of goods sold and of course profits. The border adjustment tax would cause the price of goods to rise dramatically for retailers, depending on the tax rate, which again would directly affect their bottom line.

Clearly, the party at the ‘made in China’ punchbowl might be coming to an end — ushering in a new era of American austerity and shift away from consumerism.

Are we capable of such a switch after decades of targeted ads brainwashing us into believing we ‘needed’ that latest gadget?

Probably not.