“There are numerous reasons why police tend to focus on certain types of law enforcement. Not all of them originate with the police agencies themselves.”
Read more: https://mises.org/blog/why-police-prefer-drug-raids-over-investigating-violent-crimes
“A new form of insurance that this law may create: A policy that would pay for health insurance premiums if the user ever got sick enough to need them. Such insurance would be very cheap, as the maximum exposure to the insurance company is only 130% of the premium for a standard health insurance policy. In the end, the only people buying health insurance would be those who can buy it for free using their tax credits and really sick people for whom insurance premiums are cheaper than their medical bills. But as insurance companies lose money on the latter group, they will be forced to raise their premiums on the former. This puts us right back in the box we are stuck in with Obamacare.”
Read more: http://www.europac.com/commentaries/trumpcare_different_plan_same_problems
“The nomination of Jeff Sessions to the office of Attorney General has made many criminal justice advocates nervous, as he has a long history of justifying the practice of policing for profit. On Tuesday, Trump confirmed these fears when he threw his support behind the controversial practice, saying that he saw ‘no reason’ to restrict law enforcement’s use of civil asset forfeiture. Ignoring the substantive concerns over the practices’ disregard for due process, Trump even threatened to ‘destroy the career’ of libertarian-leaning Texas legislator Konni Burton for her outspoken opposition to the practice, a comment met with approving laughter from the law enforcement officials in attendance.”
Read more: https://fee.org/articles/highway-robbery-gets-presidential-seal-of-approval/
“As Indians struggle with the chaos caused by last month’s sudden banning of their 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, money-laundering networks are spreading across the country, seizing on a new market in helping people turn their cash hoards into legal tender. While people have until year-end to deposit old notes in their bank accounts, the government has said it will scrutinize large cash deposits and money with undeclared origins — and will tax or penalize depositors. That’s created a scramble for ways to turn so-called black money, the local term for cash that has evaded taxation, into white.”
Tends of thousands of desperate refugees from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are pressured by ‘coyotes’ to fast-forward their plans so as to reach the US before Trump’s inauguration:
Since Trump’s victory, the number of people flocking north has surged, Central American officials say, contributing to a growing logjam along the southern U.S. border.
“We’re worried because we’re seeing a rise in the flow of migrants leaving the country, who have been urged to leave by coyotes telling them that they have to reach the United States before Trump takes office,” Maria Andrea Matamoros, Honduras’ deputy foreign minister, told Reuters, referring to people smugglers.
Carlos Raul Morales, Guatemala’s foreign minister, told Reuters people were also leaving Guatemala en masse before Trump becomes president.
“The coyotes are leaving people in debt, and taking their property as payment for the journey,” he said in an interview.
Last week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection opened a temporary holding facility for up to 500 people near the Texan border with Mexico, in what it said was a response to a marked uptick in illegal border crossings.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said earlier this month immigration detention facilities were holding about 10,000 more individuals than usual, after a spike in October of migrants including unaccompanied children, families and asylum seekers.
And Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, is an opponent of the H1-B work visa program, leaving tech companies worried about a brain drain:
Sessions, however, has long sought to curtail the program and introduced legislation last year aiming to make the visas less available to large outsourcing companies such as Infosys. Such firms, by far the largest users of H-1B visas, provide foreign contractors to U.S. companies looking to slash information technology costs.
“Thousands of U.S. workers are being replaced by foreign labor,” Sessions said at a February hearing.
[..]
Sessions last year urged then-Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate Southern California Edison’s use of H-1B visas in a letter than was also signed by Democratic Sens. Bernie Sanders, Richard Durbin and Sherrod Brown.
“For investors with $12 trillion of negative-rate bonds worldwide, U.S. junk securities and their 6.9 percent average yield look like a gold mine. But with so many investors streaming into the market, the debt is now yielding almost 3 percentage points less than the average of the past two decades, Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show. And they’re buying it up at the same time that junk-rated borrowers default at the fastest pace in six years.”
“The reason anyone would buy negative-yielding debt is actually pretty simple: Because they have to. They are central bankers looking to help promote economic growth. They are insurance companies, pension funds and money managers who have to match liabilities with assets. They are not, by and large, retail investors who are so afraid of risk that they’re willing to pay for the privilege of lending money to a government. Together, those buyers have helped build a nearly $12 trillion funnel of negative-yielding sovereign debt — unprecedented in world history. But what awaits on the other side is adding to the worries of investing professionals.”
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/11/negative-rates-leading-to-day-of-reckoning-fear-on-wall-street.html
“Now, everyone calls them, ahem, ‘non-prime.’ A few subprime (excuse me — non-prime) mortgage bond offerings started trickling out in recent quarters. But the one that caught everyone’s attention came out earlier this month: 368 mortgages packaged into a bond with a total principal balance of nearly $162 million. Many of the senior executives who led those companies are back in today’s non-prime ball game, too — once again aiming to capitalize on today’s Fed-induced low mortgage rates and re-inflated housing bubble.”
http://thesovereigninvestor.com/us-economy/new-subprime-meltdown/
“Who would you lend money to for 100 years? Your children? Your best friend? Perhaps. But the Irish government? Or the Belgian or French government? They all seem to think they are worth a loan for this kind of duration. Ireland last month launched the first 100-year bond, raising €100m. If you hang around to 2116, you will earn 2.35pc on your cash. Last August, Belgium blazed that trail, with its own century-long debt issue. Mexico has also issued one. The Spanish and the Italians have both gone above 45 years, and will probably join the century club as soon as they think they can get away with it. Even the UK has already dipped its toe in the water.”
“Traders at global banks colluded to artificially inflate the price of instruments that allow them to sell U.S. debt before they own it, and then bought the debt at auctions for an artificially suppressed price, unfairly profiting at investors’ expense, according to several lawsuits filed against the banks. The banks haven’t responded to those allegations in court. The probes and lawsuits come as many primary dealers’ bond-trading businesses have been squeezed by recent capital requirements from regulators, which have limited how much risk banks can take. This year, dealers’ purchases at Treasury note and bond auctions for their own trading books represent the smallest share on record.”