Over the past week we have shown on several occasions that there once again appears to be a sharp, sudden dollar-funding liquidity strain in global markets, manifesting itself in a dramatic widening in FX basis swaps, which - in this particular case - has flowed through in the forward discount for USDJPY spiking from around 0.04 yen to around 0.23 yen overnight. As Bloomberg speculated, this discount for buying yen at future dates widened sharply as non-U.S. banks, which typically buy dollars now with sell-back contracts at a future date, scrambled to procure greenbacks for the year-end.
However, as Deutsche Bank"s Masao Muraki explains, this particular dollar funding shortage is more than just the traditional year-end window dressing or some secret bank funding panic.
Instead, the DB strategist observes that the USD funding costs for Japanese insurers and banks to invest in US Treasuries - which have surged reaching a post-financial-crisis high of 2.35% on 15 Dec - are determined by three things, namely (1) the difference in US and Japanese risk-free rates (OIS), (2) the difference in US and Japanese interbank risk premiums (Libor-OIS), and (3) basis swaps, which illustrate the imbalance in currency-hedged US and Japanese investments.
In this particular case, widening of (1) as a result of Fed rate hikes and tightening of dollar funding conditions inside the US (2) and outside the US (3) have occurred simultaneously. This is shown in the chart below.
What is causing this? Unlike on previous occasions when dollar funding costs blew out due to concerns over the credit and viability of the Japanese and European banks, this time the Fed"s rate hikes could be spurring outflows from the US, European, and Japanese banks’ deposits inside the US. Absent indicators to the contrary, this appears to be the correct explanation since it"s not just Yen funding costs that are soaring. In fact, at present EUR/USD basis swaps are widening more than USD/JPY basis swaps.
According to Deutsche, it is possible that an increase in hedged US investments by Europeans could be indirectly affecting Japan, and that market participants could also be conscious of the risk that the repatriation tax system could spur a massive flow-back into the US, of funds held overseas by US companies
In fact, one can draw one particularly troubling conclusion: the sharp basis swap moves appear to have been catalyzed by the recently passed Trump tax reform.
Corporate tax reform in the US
The United States House of Representatives and Senate recently passed a tax reform bill that lowers the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% starting 2018. Lowering corporate taxes would likely accelerate the pace of Fed rate hikes, which could trigger a shift from dollar deposits to Government MMFs. Revisions to interest tax deductions would encourage companies to repay corporate bonds and could spur a decrease in dollar deposits (however, demand to bank loan could also weaken).
Repatriation tax system
The tax bill also includes the abolishment of taxation (currently 35%) on dividend payments from overseas subsidiaries. However, overseas subsidiaries" retained earnings would be subject to a one-time tax. It is expected that this repatriation tax system would result in reserves held overseas by US companies (we estimate 90% are USD-denominated) flowing back into the US. This could create tighter conditions for USD financing outside the US.
Which leads to a bizarre outcome, that while the GOP tax reform may benefit corporate America, it appears set to punish America itself as buyers of US Treasurys suddenly require far greater yields to offset the surge in funding costs!
* * *
Whatever the cause behind these sharp funding shortages, one thing is clear - dollar funding costs (FX hedging costs) for both Japanese and European insurers and banks to invest in US Treasuries are surging (with Japanese buyers and reached a post-financial-crisis high of 2.35% on 15 Dec. And in terms of practical implications for the treasury market this means that, all else equal, marginal demand for US paper is about to plunge for one simple reason: the FX-hedged yields on US Treasurys have plunged to (negative) levels never seen before (unless of course foreign investors buy US Treasurys unhedged).
To demonstrate this point, the chart below from Deutsche Bank shows the yields on currency-hedged US Treasuries from the perspective of Japanese investors. Japanese financial institutions tend to use 3-month FX forwards when they invest in hedged foreign bonds. Annualized hedge costs have recently risen to 2.33%, which means that investments in 10y US Treasuries result in virtually no yield. Furthermore, yields from investment in shorter than 10y US Treasuries would be less than JGBs and result in negative spreads. This means that unless funding costs slide, Japanese buyers will simple pick JGBs over TSYs, eliminating one of the biggest sources of Treasury demand in receng years.
There is another consideration: as Deutsche Bank notes, whenever it is time to roll over a hedge, financial institutions need to decide whether to (A) sell US Treasuries or (B) hold them as unhedged foreign bonds. Engaging in (B) on a large scale would be difficult unless the institution"s outlook calls for yen depreciation. After implementing (A), institutions should then choose to invest in high-yielding US MBS (high interest rate risk), medium- to low-rated corporate bonds (high credit risk), European and other sovereign bonds, or to reinvest in JGBs.
Moving away from Japan, and looking at Europe one finds an even more dramatic slide in hedged TSY yields, which net of hedge costs have plunged to -0.6%, by far the lowest - and most negative - on record, something we highlighted yesterday in "There"s Never Been A Worse Time For A European Investor To Buy US Treasuries" .
The conclusion is that as a result of the recent surge in funding costs, seemingly in response to the nuances of Trump tax reform as explained above, suddenly buying US Treasurys is no longer an economic option for virtually all foreign buyers! Needless to say, something will need to change because if funding costs stay where they are, yields across the curve will have to jump for US Treasurys to once again be an attractive purchase for foreign buyers, which as a reminder comprise the majority of TSY buyers in recent years.
What is the outlook? Some parting thoughts from Deutsche, which writes that according to the chart below, fundings costs will likely continue widening as the Fed raises interest rates.
DB then also warns that the repatriation tax system that was just passed into law, coupled with ongoing Fed rate hikes, will indirectly result in the widening of dollar funding conditions in and outside of the US. And the punchline: if these indeed continue to widen, and US long-term interest rates stay at a low level, "this would restrict investments in US Treasuries by Japanese financial institutions relying on short-term dollar funding." This could then lead to a sharp move higher in US yields - and rates- as the US finds it needs an aggressive increase in foreign demand to finance the widest US budget deficit in years.
In other words, by pounding the table on - and recently passing - tax reform, Donald Trump appears to have sown the seeds of the equity market"s own destruction, because remember that the one thing that can bring the house of manipulated cards down faster than you can say covfefe, not to mention burst the equity bubble, is a sharp move higher in long-term yields, rates, and ultimately - inflation.
Today"s single most dangerous Wall Street meme is that there is no risk of a stock market crash because there is no recession in sight. But that proposition is dead wrong because it"s a relic of your grandfather"s economy. That is, a reasonably functioning capitalist order in which the stock market priced-out company earnings and the underlying macroeconomic substrate from which they arose.
Back then, Economy drove Finance: You therefore needed a main street contraction to trigger tumbling profits, which, in turn, caused Wall Street to mark-down the NPV (net present value) of future company earnings streams and the stock prices which embodied them.
No longer. After three decades of monetary central planning and heavy-handed falsification of financial asset prices, causation has been reversed.
Finance now drives Economy: Recessions happen when central bank fostered financial bubbles reach an asymptotic peak and then crash under their own weight, triggering desperate restructuring actions in the corporate C-suites designed to prop up stock prices and preserve the collapsing value of executive stock options.
Accordingly, you can"t see a recession coming on Janet Yellen"s dashboard of 19 labor market indicators or any of the other "incoming" macroeconomic data---industrial production, retail sales, housing starts, business investment---- so assiduously tracked by Wall Street economists.
Instead, recessions gestate in the Wall Street gambling parlors and become latent in carry trades, yield curve and credit arbitrages and momentum driven excesses. Eventually, these latencies---central bank fostered bubbles-----erupt suddenly and violently. So doing, they spew intense, unexpected contractionary impulses into the main street economy via the transmission channel of C-suite "restructuring" actions.
Within weeks of a bubble implosion, therefore, a No-See-Um Recession is born and goes rampaging across the economic landscape. But it comes as a shock to economists and especially the Keynesian apparatchiks at the Fed because they are focused on the macroeconomic externals rather than the coiled spring internals of the financial markets.
In this context, it can be said that the Great Recession was the first major business cycle contraction that reflected the new regime of central bank driven Bubble Finance.
What happened was that a garden-variety macroeconomic slowdown which incepted in 2007 went rogue when it was monkey-hammered by the Lehman bankruptcy and the related crash of fundamentally insolvent Wall Street gambling houses thereafter.
This is evident in much of the macroeconomic data, but the snapshot of retail sales below aptly illustrates the case.
From July 2006 through August 2008 (the ninth orange bar in the shaded area) the US economy oscillated along a flatline of weak and inconsistent retail sales growth. Although in its wisdom the NBER dated the recession as incepting in December 2007, the retail sales pattern during the first nine months of the downturn was not appreciably different than during the 17 months just prior.
But in September 2008 retail sales went into free fall----coterminous with the Wall Street meltdown and the desperate Washington interventions via the massive Fed liquidity injections and the TARP bailout. During that month, retail sales plunged at a 21% annualized rate-----followed by 50%annualized rates of collapse in November and December and nearly a 30% rate of shrinkage in January 2009.
As demonstrated more fully below, those four months were ground zero of the Great Recession. They constituted a macroeconomic air pocket ignited by panic on Wall Street and in the corporate C-suites---exacerbated by the frenzied sky-is-falling machinations of Treasury Secretary Paulson and Ben Bernanke.
Stated differently, the violently collapsing Greenspan mortgage, credit and Wall Street gambling bubbles triggered four to eight months of macroeconomic freefall that no one saw coming. As late as July, the Fed minutes denied that a significant downturn was even likely in 2008, while the Wall Street stock peddlers were insisting that the goldilocks economy was alive and well.
The clueless Keynesian monetary central planners in the Eccles Building had thus fostered the first big No-See-Um Recession, but remained ignorant as to why it suddenly happened; and, consequently, doubled down on Bubble Finance policies that were destined to generate a future replay of the same.
Needless to say, that"s where we are now. The Wall Street casino has again become a coiled spring of excesses, deformations and unsustainabilities---that is, recession latencies waiting to burst.
For instance, there is no other way to describe current razor thin credit spreads in the junk and investment grade sectors alike. Central bank financial repression has fostered a relentless scramble for yield among fund managers that has caused the high yield spread to contract by more than 700 basis points from its post-recession high.
Likewise, the investment grade BBB spread at 1.32% now stands at just 29% of its June 2009 level. And since then the massive explosion of investment grade corporate debt has been concentrated in the BBB tranche of the bond market (one notch above junk), where it now comprises 50% of outstandings compared to just 25% a decade ago.
Needless to say, cheap high yield and BBB debt has had but a single major application since the post-recession recovery of the corporate bond market. To wit, it has funded trillions of financial engineering deals in the form of LBOs and levered recaps in the junk sector and massive stock purchases and dividends in the BBB sector.
So doing, these Fed-fueled financial engineering flows back into the casino have functioned to shrink the stock float and balloon the supply of speculative capital on Wall Street. At length, stock bubbles get aggravated and recession latencies intensified.
When the bond bubble finally implodes, of course, the overwhelmingly largest stock purchaser of the present bubble cycle---LBO shops and financial engineering addicted C-suites---will be forced to the sidelines. The coiled spring of financial engineering will thereupon unwind violently, triggering the next No-See-Um Recession.
And it will be self-reinforcing in a manner that is obvious, but to which the nation"s monetary central planners remain completely oblivious. That is, they continue to pronounce the "all clear" on financial instabilities and signs of incipient financial bubbles based on the alleged improved condition of bank balance sheets---especially the dozen largest mega-banks which account for 80% of deposits.
But the coiled spring this time is not in the mega-banks, but in the trillions of fixed income and high yield mutual funds and ETFs which have arisen to absorb the massive flow of corporate debt. And their liabilities are the ultimate "demand deposit", callable by investors on a moments notice and at the hint of a financial crash.
Nor is the $6.1 trillioncorporate bond sector---double the $3.3 trillionoutstanding in late 2007----the only coiled spring of recession latency lurking on Wall Street. The massive expansion of the ETF market since 2007 is probably even more potent as a bubble crash accelerant and therefore ignition channel for the coming No-See-Um Recession.
Outstandings have increased by 10Xin the last decade and at more than $5 trillion are 3.3Xthe level extant on the eve of the financial crisis. Yet in the context of a dramatic market break---whether triggered by a black, orange or red swan---they will function as pure downside accelerants as fund managers are forced to dump their holdings in order to buy-in and liquidate the torrent of ETF shares which will be on offer.
Then, too, the violent break in September 2008 occurred long before the massive "short vol" play of the present moment had metastasized in the trading pits. Yet today an estimated $1 trillion is invested in risk parity funds, double and triple inverse VIX ETFs and a menagerie of bespoke vol shorts concocted by Wall Street for its hedge fund customers.
Indeed, the current massive short vol trade is the ultimate coiled spring that will aggravate and accelerate the next bubble collapse, and thereby function as the mother of all recession latencies. Yet we are quite certain that our bubble blowing monetary central planners have given no consideration at all to this ticking time-bomb---even as they gum endlessly over the meaning of hairline noise in the BLS" latest (and useless) JOLTS report.
In this context, we do not profess to know the catalyst for the next bubble implosion, but we can readily identify the speed with which the post-Lehman collapse occurred in the stock market, and the manner in which that triggered massive restructuring actions, inventory liquidations and sweeping job cuts by the corporate C-suites.
What we do know, however, is that the financial market internals and their coiled springs of recession latencies are far more widespread and combustible than last time around. So it is worth specifying in more granular detail the recession transmission channel that operated through the corporate C-suites during the on-set of the Great Recession. The fall-winter dislocation of 2008-2009, in fact, is a roadmap for what comes next.
The S&P chart below is indexed to 100 as of September 1, 2008 and represents the eve of the Wall Street meltdown. By October 10, the S&P index was down 30% and by November 20 it closed at 58.7% of its September 1 level.
So in roughly 50 trading days the broad market lost 41% of its capitalization.
Again, that was the heart of the bubble implosion. Thereafter the market gyrated along the flatline until it hit a one-day capitulation low on March 9 at a 47% loss. So fully 90% of the capitulation low occurred during the first 50 days, and it was the speed and violence of this bubble collapse that triggered what amounted to mayhem in the C-suites.
Needless to say, the response of the corporate C-suites was swift and violent. The Challenger survey of monthly corporate layoff announcements accordingly surged during the 4-6 months that the stock market was establishing a bottom 50% below the November 2007 bubble peak.
But as will be further documented below from the BLS payroll employment data, this spree of excess payroll liquidations occurred in a very concentrated pulse and then reverted to low order clean-up until hiring growth resumed about a year after the stock market crash.
Another measure of C-suite liquidation activity is represented by corporate restructuring charges. The latter not only capture severance expense associated with job terminations but also plant and store closures, charge-offs for bad debts and excess/obsolete inventories and numerous other categories of asset write-downs.
But it all shows up on the true bottom line---GAAP net income---which plunged to negative $15per S&P 500 share in Q4 2008.
As shown below, that represented a negative $34 per shareswing from the level of Q4 2007 and more than a 40% drop from Q4 2006. Still, the housecleaning was relatively short lived and confined to the period of maximum C-suite panic over company stock prices and option values.
The panic in the C-suites was aggravated substantially by a household sector buying strike----especially on high price tag durables and automobiles.
In fact, the drop in auto sales was spectacular: After drifting steadily lower earlier in the year, dealer sales took a further sharp plunge after August 2008. Altogether, the dollar value of sales off the dealer lots contracted by a stunning 33% before hitting bottom in March 2009.
Needless to say, the above plunge of dealer sales occurred at a time when their lots were already bulging with excess vehicle inventory. Accordingly, the production cut back at domestic assembly plants was downright brutal----with the seasonally adjusted assembly rate dropping from 9.1 millionunits in July 2008 to just 3.6 millionunits at the January 2009 bottom.
Indeed, that staggering 60% dropin six months-----which also sent GM and Chrysler into Chapter 11---represented anything but your grandfather"s economy. This was a collapsing Wall Street bubble ripping through the main street economy with malice aforethought.
The recession transmission channel through the C-suite liquidation process is starkly evident in the business inventory data and the BLS data on payroll employment change. As to the former, the chart below makes clear that business inventories had continued to build through the spring and summer of 2008, reaching a peak level of $1.54 trillionin July.
Eventually, $225 billionof that inventory (15%) was liquidated before restocking commenced in November 2009, but the key point is that more than 60%of the destocking occurred during the concentrated period of stock market collapse between September and March. The C-suite was desperately attempting to lighten the load.
Finally, the payroll data surely leaves nothing to the imagination. Nearly 5.5 million jobs were liquidated during eight months stretching from September 2008 through April 2009. That represented nearly 65%of all job losses during the entire Great Recession.
Stated differently, desperate to appease the Wall Street casino via "restructuring" actions to increase ex-items earnings, corporate America essentially embarked on a scorched earth policy of shooting jobs first and asking questions later.
In short, there can be little doubt that Finance drives Economy in the world of monetary central planning, and that the only place to look for the next recession is in the coiled springs of Bubble Finance.
Needless to say, you can once again find them metastasizing rapidly from one end of the casino to the other; and you will also find not a single word about them in today"s swan song by our Keynesian School Marm.
Then again, Janet Yellen"s cluelessness is also why Wall Street is telling you that the macroeconomic dashboard shows nary a sign of recession, and that its safe to plunge into the casino at 110Xthe Russell 2000 and 280XAMZN"s miserly earnings.
Call that misdirection like never before. But also know that another No-See-Um Recession is coming right at you.
It’s fairly easy to categorize Patrick Byrne, the founder of Overstock.com, as a visionary, although he is usually described in less glowing terms in the mainstream media, a typical adjective being “controversial”. Byrne founded the $1.4 billion internet retailer of mainly “closeout” merchandise in 1997. In January 2014, Overstock became the first major online retailer to accept Bitcoin in payment for goods. Byrne explained how he became an advocate of cryptocurrencies in an interview with Adam Taggart of PeakProsperity.com.
In the 1980s, I was a graduate student at Stanford in philosophy, but with a heavy quantitative and logic approach. I studied the mathematics that underlies cryptography. It’s called computation theory. It was a fascinating field, probably the only religious experience I’ve ever had in my life. I felt like I was seeing the face of God -- I loved it. So, in about 2012, I was reading Fast Company or Wired, and I saw this blurb about this new form of money that no government was behind, based on cryptography. And, I realized, Gee, this is like an application of that math I’d studied 30 years earlier. Someday I want Overstock.com to be one of the first companies to take it.
In 2017, Overstock’s share price has more than doubled due to its blockchain investments rather than its online retailing activities, which have seen it categorised as a cryptocurrency “play”. Blockchain investments are contained in its Medici Ventures business and include a digital currency trading platform tZero. As the Financial Times notes.
Medici’s most closely watched bet is tZERO, a regulation compliant exchange geared towards initial coin offerings, which has been touted as Wall St meets blockchain. It will launch its own much-hyped initial coin offering to raise funds next week.
On Monday, Overstock’s share price surged 23% after Morgan Stanley Investment Management disclosed an 11.4% stake in the company.
In an interview published in the Financial Times today, Byrne discussed how he’s planning on selling the online retailing business to develop a global blockchain business focused on the property sector. According to the FT.
Patrick Byrne, the controversial entrepreneur who runs Overstock.com, is exploring options to sell the online retailer, whose stock has soared amid this year’s cryptocurrency mania, to fund an ambitious attempt to make a global property registry on blockchain. Hernando de Soto, a well-known Peruvian economist who argues that formalising land rights is key to alleviating poverty, has joined forces with Mr Byrne in the latest attempt to leverage the distributed ledger technology to tackle social problems. Mr de Soto and Mr Byrne, a long-term cryptocurrency and blockchain enthusiast who waged a campaign against short selling, have formed a non-profit venture called De Soto, Inc. that intends to gather local informal ownership records into a blockchain database. A pilot is expected early 2018.
“One of the possibilities is I sell the (Overstock) business and we have all the capital we need” to fund the new venture, Mr Byrne told the Financial Times on Tuesday, adding that he would cherry-pick a dozen of Overstock’s top talent to take over to De Soto by late January. “I feel a great moral obligation to refocus my life around this,” he added.
You could be forgiven for getting confused between Hernando de Soto the Spanish conquistador who led the first European expedition deep into the modern United States (he was the first European to cross the Mississippi) and Hernando de Soto Polar, the economist and President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) in Lima. The ILD is credited with more than 400 initiatives, laws and regulations which have changed the Peruvian economy. On de Soto Polar, Wikipedia notes.
The main message of de Soto"s work and writings is that no nation can have a strong market economy without adequate participation in an information framework that records ownership of property and other economic information. Unreported, unrecorded economic activity results in many small entrepreneurs who lack legal ownership of their property, making it difficult for them to obtain credit, sell the business, or expand. They cannot seek legal remedies to business conflicts in court, since they do not have legal ownership. Lack of information on income prevents governments from collecting taxes and acting for the public welfare.
In its special May 1999 issue, Time Magazine named de Soto as one of the “five leading innovators of the century” while Forbes’ 85th anniversary edition named him as one of the fifteen innovators “who will reinvent your future”.
In May 2015, de Soto attended the 1st Annual Block Chain Summit hosted by British billionaire, Richard Branson, at this private Caribbean residence, Necker Island. De Soto was one of three moderators along with a former WSJ columnist and an editor of The Economist.
Byrne, who owns 40% of Overstock’s equity with other family members, has committed himself for five years to set up the blockchain property registry. The FT reviews the three options for selling Overstock which Byrne is mulling.
One option is selling Overstock’s retail business to a bricks and mortar company seeking a strong online presence, to avoid disruption by Amazon. “Really, since this summer there’s a mass freak-out in corporate America,” Mr Byrne observed.
The second is for the entire company to be bought by or take a large investment from a multibillion-dollar investment fund that does not “want to cede the earth to Amazon”. Mr Byrne claimed that one such fund had approached the company two months ago. He would not name the fund, but hinted that interest from Asia was especially strong.
The third option is to be bought out by a large private equity firm, which would allow Mr Byrne to step away from Overstock to pursue the De Soto project. Mr de Soto, a recipient of the $500,000 Milton Friedman Prize from the Cato Institute, a conservative think-tank, was linked to a land registry blockchain project with the Republic of Georgia in April 2016. But he says that after the inauguration ceremony, he was not consulted further.
The combination of Byrne and de Soto could be powerful force for good, exploiting blockchain technology in a positive way for free market capitalism. However, they will no doubt have to contend with central planners and central bankers who will attempt to hijack the technology for collectivist purposes. This was Ronald Reagan’s view on de Soto’s work.
"De Soto and his colleagues have examined the only ladder for upward mobility. The free market is the other path to development and the one true path. It is the people"s path… it leads somewhere. It works.”
Frankly put: retirement is now a myth for the majority...
The Origins Of The Retirement Plan
Back during the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress promised a monthly lifetime income to soldiers who fought and survived the conflict. This guaranteed income stream, called a "pension", was again offered to soldiers in the Civil War and every American war since.
Since then, similar pension promises funded from public coffers expanded to cover retirees from other branches of government. States and cities followed suit -- extending pensions to all sorts of municipal workers ranging from policemen to politicians, teachers to trash collectors.
A pension is what"s referred to as a defined benefit plan. The payout promised a worker upon retirement is guaranteed up front according to a formula, typically dependent on salary size and years of employment.
Understandably, workers appreciated the security and dependability offered by pensions. So, as a means to attract skilled talent, the private sector started offering them, too.
The first corporate pension was offered by the American Express Company in 1875. By the 1960s, half of all employees in the private sector were covered by a pension plan.
Off-loading Of Retirement Risk By Corporations
Once pensions had become commonplace, they were much less effective as an incentive to lure top talent. They started to feel like burdensome cost centers to companies.
As America"s corporations grew and their veteran employees started hitting retirement age, the amount of funding required to meet current and future pension funding obligations became huge. And it kept growing. Remember, the Baby Boomer generation, the largest ever by far in US history, was just entering the workforce by the 1960s.
Companies were eager to get this expanding liability off of their backs. And the more poorly-capitalized firms started defaulting on their pensions, stiffing those who had loyally worked for them.
So, it"s little surprise that the 1970s and "80s saw the introduction of personal retirement savings plans. The Individual Retirement Arrangement (IRA) was formed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in 1974. And the first 401k plan was created in 1980.
These savings vehicles are defined contribution plans. The future payout of the plan is variable (i.e., unknown today), and will be largely a function of how much of their income the worker directs into the fund over their career, as well as the market return on the fund"s investments.
Touted as a revolutionary improvement for the worker, these plans promised to give the individual power over his/her own financial destiny. No longer would it be dictated by their employer.
Your company doesn"t offer a pension? No worries: open an IRA and create your own personal pension fund.
Afraid your employer might mismanage your pension fund? A 401k removes that risk. You decide how your retirement money is invested.
Want to retire sooner? Just increase the percent of your annual income contributions.
All this sounded pretty good to workers. But it sounded GREAT to their employers.
Why? Because it transferred the burden of retirement funding away from the company and onto its employees. It allowed for the removal of a massive and fast-growing liability off of the corporate balance sheet, and materially improved the outlook for future earnings and cash flow.
As you would expect given this, corporate America moved swiftly over the next several decades to cap pension participation and transition to defined contribution plans.
The table below shows how vigorously pensions (green) have disappeared since the introduction of IRAs and 401ks (red):
So, to recap: 40 years ago, a grand experiment was embarked upon. One that promised US workers: Using these new defined contribution vehicles, you"ll be better off when you reach retirement age.
Which raises a simple but very important question: How have things worked out?
The Ugly Aftermath
America The Broke
Well, things haven"t worked out too well.
Three decades later, what we"re realizing is that this shift from dedicated-contribution pension plans to voluntary private savings was a grand experiment with no assurances. Corporations definitely benefited, as they could redeploy capital to expansion or bottom line profits. But employees? The data certainly seems to show that the experiment did not take human nature into account enough – specifically, the fact that just because people have the option to save money for later use doesn"t mean that they actually will.
First off, not every American worker (by far) is offered a 401k or similar retirement plan through work. But of those that are, 21% choose not to participate (source).
As a result, 1 in 4 of those aged 45-64 and 22% of those 65+ have $0 in retirement savings (source). Forty-nine percent of American adults of all ages aren"t saving anything for retirement.
In 2016, the Economic Policy Institute published an excellent chartbook titled The State Of American Retirement (for those inclined to review the full set of charts on their website, it"s well worth the time). The EPI"s main conclusion from their analysis is that the switchover of the US workforce from defined-benefit pension plans to self-directed retirement savings vehicles (e..g, 401Ks and IRAs) has resulted in a sizeable drop in retirement preparedness. Retirement wealth has not grown fast enough to keep pace with our aging population.
The stats illustrated by the EPI"s charts are frightening on a mean, or average, level. For instance, for all workers 32-61, the average amount saved for retirement is less than $100,000. That"s not much to live on in the last decades of your twilight years. And that average savings is actually lower than it was back in 2007, showing that households have still yet to fully recover the wealth lost during the Great Recession.
But mean numbers are skewed by the outliers. In this case, the multi-$million households are bringing up the average pretty dramatically, making things look better than they really are. It"s when we look at the median figures that things get truly scary:
Nearly half of families have no retirement account savings at all. That makes median (50th percentile) values low for all age groups, ranging from $480 for families in their mid-30s to $17,000 for families approaching retirement in 2013. For most age groups, median account balances in 2013 were less than half their pre-recession peak and lower than at the start of the new millennium.
The 50th percentile household aged 56-61 has only $17,000 to retire on. That"s dangerously close to the Federal poverty level income for a family of two for just a single year.
Most planners advise saving enough before retirement to maintain annual living expenses at about 70-80% of what they were during one"s income-earning years. Medicare out-of-pocket costs alone are expected to be between $240,000 and $430,000 over retirement for a 65-year-old couple retiring today.
The gap between retirement savings and living costs in one"s later years is pretty staggering:
Nearly 83% of retired households have less saved than Medicare costs alone will consume.
One-third of retired households are entirely dependent on Social Security. On average, that"s only $1,230 per month – a hard income to live on. (source)
34 percent of older Americans depend on credit cards to pay for basic living expenses such as mortgage payments, groceries, and utilities. (source)
As for Medicare, the out-of-pocket costs could easily soar over retirement. The Wall Street Journal reports that the current estimate of Medicare"s unfunded liability now tops $42 Trillion. Such a mind-boggling gap makes it highly likely that current retirees will not receive all of the entitlements they are being promised.
And the denial being shown by baby boomers entering retirement is frightening. Many simply plan to work longer before retiring, with a growing percentage saying they plan to work "forever".
But the data shows that declining health gives older Americans no choice but to leave the work force eventually, whether they want to or not. Years of surveys by the Employment Benefit Research Institute show that fully half of current retirees had to leave the work force sooner than desired due to health problems, disability, or layoffs.
Add to this the nefarious impact of the Federal Reserve"s prolonged 0% interest rate policy, which has made it extremely hard for retirees with fixed-income investments to generate a meaningful income from them.
The number of Americans aged 65 years and older is projected to more than double in the next 40 years:
Will the remaining body of active workers be able to support this tsunami of underfunded seniors? Don"t bet on it.
Especially since their retirement savings prospects are even more dim. With long-stagnant real wages and punishing price inflation in the cost of living, Generation X and Millennials are hard-pressed to put money away for their twilight years:
And for those "lucky" folks expecting to enjoy a public pension, there"s a lot of uncertainty as to whether they"re going to receive all they"ve been promised.
Due to underfunded contributions, years of portfolio under-performance due to the Federal Reserve"s 0% interest rate policy, poor fund management, and other reasons, many of the federal and state pensions are woefully under-captialized. The below chart from former Dallas Fed advisor Danielle DiMartino-Booth shows how the total sum of unfunded public pension obligations exploded from $292 billion in 2007 to $1.9 trillion by the end of 2016:
And the daily headlines of failing state and local pension funds (Illinois, Kentucky, New Jersey, Dallas, Providence -- to name but a few) show that the problem is metastasizing across the nation at an accelerating rate.
Affording Your Future
The bottom line when it comes to retirement is that you"re on your own. The vehicles and the promises you"ve been given are proving woefully insufficient to fund the "retirement" dream you"ve been sold your whole life.
That"s the bad news.
But the good news is that the dream is still attainable. There are strategies and behaviors that, if adopted now, will make it much more likely for you to be able to afford to retire -- and in a way you can enjoy.
In Part 2: Success Strategies For Retirement, we detail out these best practices for a solvent retirement, including providing 14 specific action steps you can start taking right now in your life that will materially improve your odds of enjoying your later years with grace. For far too many Americans, "retirement" will remain a perpetual myth. Don"t let that happen to you. Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)
Over the weekend, CNBC reported on five companies that halted all advertisements of their products on Fox News’ Sean Hannity show. These companies included:
23 and Me
Eloquii
Keurig
Nature’s Bounty
Realtor.com
The story began last Thursday, with the sexual allegations against Roy Moore, the Alabama senate candidate who, The WaPo reported that day, made sexual advances towards four teenagers when he was in his early 30s. As of today, there is even a fifth women accusing Moore of sexual misconduct.
After the story broke on Thursday, Fox host Sean Hannity came out and asked his audience to give Moore the benefit of the doubt. According to NYTimes,
Mr. Hannity, describing those actions on his radio show while speaking with a co-host, Lynda McLaughlin, seemed to justify Mr. Moore’s reported conduct by calling one of the encounters “consensual.”
Hours later "On his television show, Mr. Hannity said that the statement “was absolutely wrong” and that he “misspoke.” He then brought up the possibility of accusers lying for money, or for political purposes."
The following day, Angelo Carusone, President of Media Matters, a ‘politically progressive media watchdog’ that monitors “conservative misinformation in the U.S. media” said this to Keurig:
Good afternoon @Keurig. You are currently sponsoring Sean Hannity"s show. He defends child molester Roy Moore and attacks women who speak out against sexual harassment. Please reconsider.
On Saturday, Keurig responded by saying “we worked with our media partner and FOX news to stop our ad from airing during the Sean Hannity Show”.
Angelo, thank you for your concern and for bringing this to our attention. We worked with our media partner and FOX news to stop our ad from airing during the Sean Hannity Show.
What happened next was a firestorm on social media that swept across the United States late Saturday into Sunday. The bulk of the trend #BoycottKeurig exploded on Sunday, as many conservatives who have boycotted the NFL because of kneeling problems, decided they had to urgently get involved in the latest bitter debate splitting America. We start with ‘Snoop Baily’ who smashed the living hell out of Keurig with a driver.
For a while, Hannity played along with the trend empowering it to grow through his enormous social media network as conservatives were called to action to smash Keurig machines. As the day closed, he then told his audience that he was buying 500 coffee makers to give away on Monday.
Deplorable friends, I am buying 500 coffee makers tomorrow to give away!! Details on radio and TV. Hint; best videos!!
On Monday, however, the Krush The Keurig fun ended when Hannity told his audience to stop smashing the Coffee machines, after Keurig CEO apologizes for ‘taking sides’…
Hannity asks supporters to stop smashing their Keurig machines, says he"ll replace the ones already smashed pic.twitter.com/YVVpbXw6RU
Moore"s sexual allegations aside, which have yet to be rejected or confirmed, what is more concerning is the blind willingness of substantial portions of the population to succumb to instant mobilization through social media and or a media figure(s), to collectively work as a unit in completing tasks, in this case the destruction of one"s own property. Ironically, something tells us that for Keurig the news that its machines were being "Office Spaced" across the nation, was music to the CEO"s ears (think replacement value), not to mention the unprecedented media exposure as virtually everyone spent the day talking about the incident (think unlimited advertising).
Keurig is getting more airtime than any other advertiser on Hannity"s show
There"s more: as The Atlantic writes, "in destroying Keurig machines also clearly aligns these people with a global environmentalist movement. In 2015, the “Kill the K-Cup” campaign took hold among those concerned about the net waste of so many pods. A Canadian advocate encouraged people to publicly abandon the machines."
Now America finds itself in the midst of hordes of angry people with clubs who will soon be going through caffeine withdrawal. They could go to Starbucks, though the chain has also been condemned and boycotted by some isolationist conservatives, since earlier this year it promised to hire 10,000 refugees in response to President Trump’s executive order barring them from the country.
Meanwhile, always eager to ride on the latest social media trend, corporate America has promptly noticed the events over the past 72 hours, and it is guaranteed that many more companies will follow in Keurig"s activist footsteps. Who knows: the resultant breaking and smashing of various "resistance" products may just end up being the CapEx spark that the US economy so desperately needs...
Since all the people involved in the JFK murder and investigation are dead, one might wonder why all the fuss about documents from 50 years ago really matter. FX traders are mostly conspiracy theorists, either they are part of the FX rigging scandal making billions off the backs of unsuspecting clients that don"t understand FX, or they are traders trying to guess why markets move the way they do in order to protect their positions. In any case, FX traders see how FX moves ahead of terrorist events, and how the US Dollar tracks several hours ahead of key global military events. Also, the world really hasn"t changed much, especially the architecture of modern political power, so a look into the past can be also a look into the present. The parallels of JFK and Trump are interesting, both being from rich families and both in some way "turned" against the mainstream establishment. Although the world is too different now for a fair comparison, and JFK and Trump are nearly polar opposites when it comes to them individually. While the recent data dump of documents presents more circumstantial evidence than ever before - all from the ultimate source (the US Government) any "smoking gun" document has long been destroyed. Perhaps the only smoking gun is the "burned memo" which could be a cryptic assassination directive.
While the world wonders about President Trump, 54 years ago, a US President was murdered in broad daylight in Dallas, Texas; John Fitzgerald Kennedy - the only Irish Catholic President, and possibly one of the only US Presidents that was not a Freemason. To this day, the facts surrounding this event remain clouded. The "official" Warren Commission report presents fanciful theories about a "Magic Bullet" that was able to go in and out of JFK"s body multiple times, and other wild fantasies. But this official report is "official" and any other explanation of the events of that day are "conspiracy theories." As time has passed, and secondary information surfaces, there are indications of the true power of the information that was kept secret for so long.
The murder of JFK is perhaps one of the most significant events of the 20th century. In the past 10 years, new information has surfaced that portends to a major re-investigation into the issue. As well, a generation has passed since the event which took place 1963. This article presents two unique viewpoints, previously unpublished, as well as looking at some recently released evidence:
New evidence that has surfaced since the making of Oliver Stone"s "JFK" in 1991
Groundbreaking documentary created BEFORE release of documents "JFK to 911 is a Rich Man"s Trick"
The Warren Commission came up with nonsensical conclusions he said, such as the "Magic Bullet" and the lone assassin theory, that Oswald did it by himself. No one took it seriously, at the time, but what could anyone do? It was obviously much bigger than one agency, even bigger than the office of the President, so whatever power lurking in the shadows - was not one to mess with!
Part 1: The Book that all JFK researchers should read
Kennedy"s Last Stand: Eisenhower, UFOs, MJ-12 & JFK"s Assassination - This is a must read, for those interested in the topic of "information" and "informatics" even if you"re not interested in the subject of UFOs. The point here is that documentary evidence regarding the UFO conspiracy is real and comes from the top. A group so powerful (MJ-12) they shut out the President (Eisenhower) who overcame them only by threatening to invade Area 51 with the Army. In the past 20 years, new evidence has surfaced, some of which is presented in the book. Most significantly, the book points a paper trail right to the top of the CIA and beyond.
Small background on UFO phenomenon as it pertains to this story; UFOs were first discovered by the military over Los Angeles during World War 2. It was alarming because the Army believed that it was the enemy Japanese attacking, all they saw were "airships" shooting down from the sky; the idea of Aliens or UFOs wasn"t common knowledge at the time. See a brief summary of the "Battle of Los Angeles":
The Battle of Los Angeles, also known as The Great Los Angeles Air Raid, is the name given by contemporary sources to the rumored enemy attack and subsequent anti-aircraft artillery barrage which took place from late 24 February to early 25 February 1942 over Los Angeles, California.The incident occurred less than three months after the United States entered World War II as a result of the Japanese Imperial Navy"s attack on Pearl Harbor, and one day after the bombardment of Ellwood on 23 February. Initially, the target of the aerial barrage was thought to be an attacking force from Japan, but speaking at a press conference shortly afterward, Secretary of the NavyFrank Knox called the incident a "false alarm." Newspapers of the time published a number of reports and speculations of a cover-up.
Some contemporary ufologists and conspiracy theorists have suggested the targets were extraterrestrial spacecraft.When documenting the incident in 1949, The United States Coast Artillery Association identified a meteorological balloon sent up at 1:00 am that "started all the shooting" and concluded that "once the firing started, imagination created all kinds of targets in the sky and everyone joined in". In 1983, the U.S. Office of Air Force History attributed the event to a case of "war nerves" triggered by a lost weather balloon and exacerbated by stray flares and shell bursts from adjoining batteries.
After this "battle" UFOs were on the radar of the military - literally. Military planners, practically, incorporate every kind of potential attack into their strategy planning. UFOs were not looked at scientifically by the military - simply as a potential threat, whether from Hitler or another planet they didn"t care.
The second event that marked this age was the Roswell crash, still a big mystery to this day. Apparently, there were 2 crashes, one with actual biological bodies, and the press release was designed to take the focus away from the more sensitive site. According to the book, everything was taken to Area 51 for review, where the facility was placed under the security of the CIA and managed by a group formed by Truman known as MJ-12. A lot of this is not science fiction when considering Nazi scientists developed rockets that NASA still uses to this day via Project Paperclip. Remember that all of this happened around a time when USA was becoming a superpower, the CIA was just formed, along with the military industrial complex - including its corporate technology arm, still in use today (Silicon Valley).
This all shortly after the Roswell incident. Looking at all this from a technology standpoint is not so sensational. The fact that the Roswell crash was in fact a UFO possibly operated by a "robot" or "drone" from another planet or another timeline is not so far fetched. If the reader could be transported back to the middle ages of Europe equipped with a laser pointer, iPhone 7, automatic handgun, and other wizard"s tools, certainly the people would think that the user is a "God" who practices "Magic".
The most dramatic directive, likely drafted by Dulles (MJ-1), Director of CIA under JFK and apparently approved by six other MJ-12 members was a cryptic assassination directive. In full, this states: see last memo in series in link below.
Draft - Directive Regarding Project Environment - When conditions become non-conducive for growth in our environment and Washington cannot be influenced any further, the weather is lacking any precipitation … it should be wet.
The term “it should be wet” is a coded command to kill someone.
Detractors of this book will say that the author is reaching to connect the dots, and this cryptic message is not "clearly" the smoking gun evidence that everyone is looking for. But is it? Have a deeper look through these documents here:
To the less educated researcher, documents such as the letter from respected scientists Oppenheimer and Einstein regarding the UFO issue, and the letter from the anonymous CIA leaker re: James Angleton; may be of more significance, as the authenticity of these documents is more verifiable, and anecdotally more believable. Einstein for example published thousands of public essays and letters on various important topics of the day; this was a time when the power Elite relied on high IQ scientists.
There is no alternative paper trail, with a more powerful suggestion - solving the JFK murder. Most of the files have been released in a searchable archive, which you can find here: https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk
It is not likely that in the next 20 years another "smoking gun" document will be discovered, although it"s possible (it could be in some relatives attic, next to baseball cards and grandpas pipe saved from last century). So it"s reasonable to conclude that 95% of relevant information regarding the JFK scenario is out there, somewhere - in the ether. With the speed and velocity of the internet sleuth community, if there was such a relevant document such as photo (right) - it would have been distributed and redistributed, analyzed and discussed, ad nauseum.
What is the significance of this event, you ask? It"s a singularity, as they describe in physics (a point at which a function takes an infinite value, especially in space-time when matter is infinitely dense, as at the center of a black hole). From one perspective, it was simply a power grab by "faction 2" from "faction 1" as some describe big power politics. The Kennedy clan were outsiders, they were social climbers, they went against the power structure of the haves - case closed. But Kennedy or someone else - something more meaningful happened here. A group called the "Shadow Government" stopped Kennedy from exercising the powers granted to him by the Constitution and by the voters. It puts the entire system into question, proving basically that the United States operates by Mob Rule not so much different than a banana republic. A group of rich families and companies with deep pockets control the country through their trained surrogates. The continuation of this can be seen with political families such as Bush and Clinton who have a statistically unusual amount of deaths of associates, friends, and workers surrounding them. Some were even afraid to work for the Clinton camp due to the high number of workers who "suicided", disappeared, had heart failure, or stabbed themselves in the back 10 times.
Let"s thread through the irony of the power structure for the last 30 years with this interesting photo, and comparison, of a figure outside the Texas School Book Depository:
The photo on right, comparing the posture of a figure standing in a suit and tie is striking. George H.W. Bush Sr. later went on to be the director of the CIA, only for 2 years, under Gerald Ford. But Bush"s impact on the establishment would be large, as he would later be Reagan"s Vice President (and rumored that was more of a "President" during this time than Reagan ever was) and eventually President of the United States, and father of a future president, George W. Bush (his son).
(NOTE: It is interesting that the shadowy figure would 30 years later popularize the phrase "One World Order")
What kind of "organization" is out of the public view, has the means to organize such an assassination, and the motive? All points to one organization, really the only capable organization of organizing such a project. Look at some evidence, such as this list compiled by Wikispooks, of attempted or successful assassination attempts on foreign leaders organized by the CIA since World War 2: https://wikispooks.com/wiki/US/Foreign_Assassinations_since_1945 And here"s "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders" as compiled by the US Senate in 1975: CIA_Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders
With such overwhelming evidence of the CIA"s involvement in foreign assassinations, if only one of these "plots" is true it"s reasonable to assume they all are true because after all, the CIA is a spy agency, not an overt military operation, so most of this is done with the clandestine service. And, if the CIA really does have a "hit squad" trained to topple and kill foreign dictators, then it is reasonable to assume this same operative group inside the CIA could potentially use this same group domestically. In fact, it is the only group in the world capable of assassinating a US President so successfully, including the use of insiders to change the course of the motorcade, for example.
Or to use another analogy as a means of deductive logic, 95% of hackers are inside jobs - in other words, hackers very rarely breach security from the "outside" - they rely on a rogue employee, security expert, or insider to provide key information such as passwords or other details needed to complete the job. This must have been the case with the murder of JFK because without those on the inside, such an epic target would not have been possible to hit. It was for this reason the "higher ups" at the FBI wanted this case closed and not discussed, because there clearly were insiders working against JFK who provided key info and modifying security protocols leading to the assassination.
The peak of outrage against government-sponsored assassination was the mid-1970s, when the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations — better known as the Church committee — spent more than 60 days questioning 75 witnesses about C.I.A. plots of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Back in the darkest days of the cold war, the agency had devoted significant resources and creativity to devising unhappy ends for unsavory or inconvenient foreign leaders. Among those listed for assassination were Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic and, most famously, Fidel Castro of Cuba, who survived no fewer than eight C.I.A. assassination plots. The senators on the committee were intent on divining the full extent of the government’s role in these plots. How much direct authority, for example, did Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy exert over them? The committee’s conclusions were vague at best. The truth was that neither president would have allowed his hand to show in such affairs. Times have changed. Our president now interrupts regularly scheduled broadcasting to announce the news of an assassination himself.
Perhaps the details of the JFK murder, public coverage, and FBI investigation would have been different had it happened in 2010. Certainly it was a different time, before the internet, and at a time of much happiness and prosperity. Since "JFK" we"ve had "911" which is another game changer event that put the US on a different path as it was during the 90s. Perhaps every generation needs such an event to "remind" them of who is in charge? (Dr. Tony Blanton from Pine Crest Prep School is ringing in my ears "history is a struggle between the haves and the have nots and you are the movers and the shakers who are going to change society")
What secrets are the "shadow government" protecting or are they simply exercising their power to show the have nots that their ownership of the planet is above any government, any nation state, religion, or other entity? The UFO issue is concerning, particularly due to security concerns; because the information we do know is only bits and pieces from whistle-blowers and a few encounters that are not well documented. There are rumors that Eisenhower himself made a deal with the Aliens to keep them a secret in exchange for technology transfer through the military and corporate America. Maybe it was a good deal, maybe it never happened - who knows? The point is that, until real discovery and disclosure is achieved, we will be in the dark regarding important issues that can impact daily life on planet earth. Some important questions we need to ask beyond the shock value of understanding we are not alone in the universe:
Who are these aliens, what do they want? What has been "agreed" with them, if anything, and what current involvement do they have with US Military operations?
What of the stories that some of these creatures are multi-dimensional, or from another "timeline" (that they aren"t aliens from other planets but beings that live in many dimensions)?
How can we address issues of exo-politics if the CIA was dethroned as the sole security to Area 51 and ultimately, controlling the diplomacy between such aliens, if any?
Is there any truth to the stories they are abducting humans for purposes of experimentation, whether it be biological or genetic? What about the "hybrid" projects? If there is truth to it, how to stop it?
Do aliens have any current business arrangements with US corporations, US politicians, or are involved in major conflicts in any way? If so, this urgently needs to be addressed, and contracts re-evaluated. For example there are many accounts that UFOs were seen when nuclear warheads went dead (if even for a test).
Are there any secret government "libraries" or "archives" where files about aliens are kept, if so - where are they and in what format?
What"s interesting about this issue that it seems to be a wealth of information right here under our own desert. It"s like the metaphor about exploring space when we know less about our deep oceans. There again, rumors of alien bases under the deep seas. The amount of information regarding the veracity of such stories is immense, and it has gone parabolic in the last years as many who were alive and working during these times before modern security protocols and training were in place, are retired, dying, or have passed information onto children.
Part 2: The New Evidence
1963 was a long time ago. New facts and evidence have surfaced, most interestingly - we are on the precipice of a major data dump by the US Government still to be determined, scheduled for "sometime" in 2o17. See explanation from http://2017jfk.org :
In 1992, the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act mandated that in 2017 all remaining JFK records and redactions be released. However, the National Archives has recently informed federal agencies that if they intend on maintaining secrecy over these records they should begin preparing appeals to the next president of the United States. We are working to ensure that the law is upheld. We are calling on you, fellow Americans, to come together and ensure that our government upholds the law.
The parallel of the information secrecy both for the JFK murder and the UFO issue, and their purported interconnection, is interesting. If state secrets or a modern political organization were not at stake, why the hold up to release information about JFK? Everyone mostly already believes it was the CIA, a group we have shown capable of organizing assassinations of many foreign leaders, and recently (2016) was caught meddling in a US domestic election. The UFO issue can be the motive to cover up the JFK murder for so long, so deeply. And the less obvious, more subtle "can of worms" argument, that if the US Government lied and hid the facts about JFK, of course - everything else including the 9/11 investigation would be open for re-investigation. This is another reason for waiting for so long because there"d be no one to "blame" as those who orchestrated the conspiracy / cover-up would all be dead by now (or so the thinking of this strategy goes).
A recording of radio communications to and from Air Force One on November 22,1963, discovered in 2011, is among the most important new pieces of JFK evidence to emerge in recent years,
The tape, an edited excerpt from a longer recording, captures some of the communications of the leaders of U.S. national security agencies as they learned about the assassination of a sitting president.
I wrote about the importance of the Air Force One tape in the fall of 2013:
This old-fashioned reel of analog tape surfaced at Philadelphia auction house in 2011. The recording was found in the estate of the family of Gen. Chester Clifton, a military aide to JFK. Clifton died in 1991. His children put the estate up for auction.
Bill Kelly, a JFK researcher, enlisted Primeau Forensics, a Michigan audio engineering firm, to produce a cleaned-up version of the tape.
What is significant in this piece of information, as far as data analysis is concerned, is the source. It was an unclassified transcript of a non-essential to the JFK operation (Project Environment). It only "suggests" through information via what was said and not said, and as such, is not a "smoking gun". But much like the UFO phenomenon, in a similar thread - it seems that it"s simply IMPOSSIBLE to keep such a high profile operation secret for so long. The analogy to the UFO issue is Dr. Steven Greer"s "Disclosure Project" available at www.disclosureproject.org; in summary:
Beginning in 1993, I started an effort that was designed to identify firsthand military and government witnesses to UFO events and projects, as well as other evidence to be used in a public disclosure. From 1993, we spent considerable time and resources briefing the Clinton Administration, including CIA Director James Woolsey, senior military officials at the Pentagon, and select members of Congress, among others. In April of 1997, more than a dozen such government and military witnesses were assembled in Washington DC for briefings with Congressmen, Pentagon officials and others. There, we specifically requested open Congressional Hearings on the subject. None were forthcoming.
These materials are, as you can now discern, only the tip of the iceberg of what we have recorded on digital videotape. That is, from over 120 hours of testimony by over 100 witnesses we transcribed only 33 hours and then further edited materials down to a fraction of that amount. Moreover, the full archive represents the testimony of only 100 witnesses of the more than 400 identified to date. The edited testimony will be appearing in book form. A portion of it appears in The Disclosure Project Briefing Document and only small excerpts and summary bios of testimony appear in this Executive summary. We hope in the future to secure funding for a 5-6 part broadcast quality video documentary series to be made from the videotaped testimony we have as the impact of hearing and seeing these witnesses speak is very moving.
This then brings me to my last point: The witnesses who have given testimony to date are extraordinarily brave men and women - heroes in my eyes - who have taken great personal risks in coming forward. Some have been threatened and intimidated. All are risking the ever-present ridicule that attends this subject. Not a single one of them has been paid for his or her testimony: It has been given freely and without reservation for the good of humanity. I wish to personally thank them here and extend to them my personal, highest respect and gratitude.
This summary is focusing on the testimony of important first-hand witnesses. We have thousands of government documents, hundreds of photographs, trace landing cases and more, but it is impossible to include them in a summary of this length. These materials will be made available for any serious scientific or Congressional inquiry.
These 2 issues are interrelated on so many levels, it"s only fitting that both have strong nonclassified, civilian groups dedicated to identifying, collecting, archiving, sorting, and classification of all relevant information on the topics. They are after all, significant issues, with implications on all sciences. These 2 topics may even be more important than recent scientific discoveries. For example, as hundreds of high level government witnesses have testified in the disclosure project, one of the technologies kept under lock and key by the CIA (as reverse engineered from ET) are several energy technologies including but not limited to "zero point" energy which would literally, instantly end our dependence on oil, coal, and nuclear. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as hundreds of ground breaking tech has been leaked from ET such as thorium "clean" nuclear technology, Kevlar, nanotechnology, advanced long distance energy communication, the ability to manipulate space time (or at least, to pass through a "wrinkle" in time), and hundreds of others. The business element of this provides a solid motive alone, without religious, social, or political implications. There would be no need for 90% of the Fortune 500, the stock market would crash and the entire economic system as we know it would be immediately restructured (who would pay for gas when free energy is available?).
The public stated reason, for locking away the JFK files for 75 years, which plausibly is also the reason of keeping UFO information secret; is that the public "cannot handle the truth" - that it would be "too much to handle" - the first implication being some embarrasing political facts, such as the fact that the CIA with the help of insiders like LBJ were critical to the murder or completely organized it themselves. But that"s not hard to swallow, generations of hardened Americans watching real-time cameras on missiles bombing and maiming brown people (mostly) have become desensitized to such emotional dribble. But the elephant was in the room all along - this "shocking" fact really is shocking, because it would change every aspect of life on our planet - quite literally (not figuratively). For example, having free energy would change manufacturing, transportation, computing - just about everything. It would change war, it would have implications into governance, we can skip religious implications and take the lead from the Catholic Church who is ahead of the information curve on this issue (for obvious reasons).
There is a lot of new evidence, much of which has been referenced in the below documentary - we chose this as an example because it was likely overlooked during the sweep of evidence hiding.
So there we have it, the JFK murder has been solved.
WHO - It was a sub-set of the Intelligence aparatus, MJ12/CIA under the direction of Allen Dulles operated by Jesus James Angleton, involving multiple CIA agents including but not limited to George H.W. Bush Sr.
WHAT - The murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) US President, Elite leader, representative of the powerful Kennedy clan, Irish Catholic, father, patriot, and civil servant
WHERE & WHEN - Dallas, Texas November 22, 1963
HOW - A fine tuned machine prepared the ultimate kill scene, which involved extensive research and planning, significant funding, resources, highly skilled and trained soldiers, and a "cover-up" scenario which had to involve LBJ and others around JFK.
WHY - To maintain the big Illuminati secret - that the US Government has obtained technology from other worlds, given to us directly and reverse engineered, and this transfer of tech continues to this day - and that the revelation of what happened to JFK regarding the UFO issue would start a chain of events that would finally lead to the complete disclosure of this technology, and thus - change the entire global political and economic system forever.
Part 3: JFK to 911 Everything is a Rich Man"s Trick
This is a well documented detailed documentary that simply connects the dots between JFK and 911, and basically exposing the "pattern" of such events, we can include the recent shootings in Las Vegas to the long string of such events. Some call them "false flag" operations or "PsyOps" but really they are no more significant than your local pest control guy planting nests of ants and roaches near your home when business is slow. Since World War 2 there has not been a serious threat to the United States - and at the same time the US Military "over prepared" for the possibility of going to war with ten planets, so all that needs to be justified. The Military Industrial Complex needs an enemy, it doesn"t matter if the enemy is Russia, or terrorists.. or aliens..
