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Donald J. Trump
DAMON WINTER / THE NEW YORK TIMES
Donald Trump Is Not Going Anywhere
Where does his political adventure end? “I have no idea. But I’m here now. And it’s beautiful.”

By MARK LEIBOVICH
SEPTEMBER 29, 2015
‘I don’t worry about anything,’’ Donald J. Trump told me aboard his 757 as we were flying to the recent Republican debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. He was dividing his attention between the brick-size slice of red-velvet cake he was annihilating and the CNN commentator on the 57-inch television who at that moment was talking about Trump, as most commentators have been at pretty much every moment for the last three months. The commentator, Dylan Byers, was saying that Trump now ran the risk of ‘‘jumping the shark’’ because voters were becoming so familiar with his act. ‘‘Nah,’’ Trump said, smirking at the screen. As the real estate and reality-­show tycoon sees things, this is all win-win for him. Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal wrote something to this effect recently, Trump told me, explaining that even if he loses, ‘‘he goes back to being Donald Trump, but even bigger.’’

The Trump campaign may be a win-win for Trump, but it is a monstrous dilemma for a lot of other people. It is a dilemma for the Republican Party and a dilemma for the people Trump is running against. They would love to dismiss him as a sideshow and declare his shark jumped, except he keeps dominating the campaign and the conversation, and they have no clue whether to engage, attack, ignore or suck up in response. It is a dilemma for the elected leaders, campaign strategists, credentialed pundits and assorted parasites of the ‘‘establishment.’’ They have a certain set of expectations, unwritten rules and ways of doing things that Trump keeps flouting in the most indelicate of ways. And, of course, it is a dilemma for the media, who fear abetting a circus. This is why The Huffington Post announced in July that it would publish stories about Trump only in its ‘‘entertainment’’ section, so that when it all ended, as it surely would soon, the website could remain pristine and on the side of the high-minded. A similar sort of worry prevented me from writing about Trump throughout his rise this summer. Initially, I dismissed him as a nativist clown, a chief perpetrator of the false notion that President Obama was not born in the United States — the ‘‘birther’’ movement. And I was, of course, way too incredibly serious and high-­minded to ever sully myself by getting so close to Donald Trump.

I initially doubted that he would even run. I assumed that his serial and public flirtations with the idea over several election cycles were just another facet of his existential publicity sustenance. I figured that even if Trump did run, his conspiracy-­mongering, reality-­show orientations and garish tabloid sensibilities would make him unacceptable to the polite company of American politics and mainstream media. It would render him a fringe player. So I decided not to write about him, and I felt proud and honorable about my decision.

In June, Trump, who is now 69, actually declared that he would run for president. The big crowds, soaring poll numbers and magazine covers started a few weeks later, and I began to wonder if I had been too rash in disregarding him. The problem was that having decided not to write about him, I couldn’t start now. What were the chances that he would still be around by the time I was done? He kept touching supposed third rails — calling illegal immigrants rapists and criminals in his announcement speech, questioning whether John McCain was really a war hero (‘‘I like people who weren’t captured’’) and seeming to suggest that a moderator of the first Republican debate, Megyn Kelly of Fox News, asked him uncomfortable questions because she was menstruating.


Donald Trump at a campaign event in Long Beach, Calif., in September.
DAMON WINTER / THE NEW YORK TIMES
And yet his lead in the polls kept growing. He was impolite company personified, and many Republican voters were absolutely loving him for that. They seemed to be saying en masse that even if Trump could be crass and offensive at times (or, in his case, on message), could he possibly be any worse than what politics in general had become?


I encountered the phenomenon up close at the first Republican debate, on Aug. 6 in Cleveland. I positioned myself in the post-­debate ‘‘spin room,’’ the area where campaign surrogates spew their customized nonsense to media types. The candidates themselves almost never venture in. But suddenly, at the end of the night, a literal stampede was rumbling toward a far corner of the room, where Trump had crashed this assembly of polite company. I have seen many press scrums, but never like this. It was scary. People were tripping, falling and being shoved out of the way. Cameras were dropped. What I saw was polite routines and traditions breaking down as the American political order reoriented itself around a new center of gravity. As the shouts and cries intensified, I found myself being drawn toward the bedlam.

In the months since, Trump has grown into a kind of one-man chaos theory at the center of a primary campaign in disarray. The solemn party leaders desperately want him to go away; the consultant and donor class feel irrelevant (because they largely are to Trump); even Fox News, with which he episodically feuds, seems rattled. At the first sign that, after an uninspired performance in the second debate, Trump’s poll numbers were stalled, pundits on the left and the right rushed to declare yet another ‘‘beginning of the end’’ for Trump. And still he leads in every poll, and it’s October, and it keeps going. Where does this end? I kept asking Trump this as we sat around his office and rode around in limousines and airplanes. ‘‘I have no idea,’’ he always said, sometimes modifying the noun with a big, unclassy profanity. ‘‘But I’m here now. And it’s beautiful.’’

It was early September when we met for the first time in his 26th-floor office in Trump Tower. When I walked in, Trump had the legendary college basketball coach Bobby Knight paying homage to him over speaker­phone. Knight, who had never met Trump, apparently called him out of the blue to offer his support. I was slightly dubious about how ‘‘out of the blue’’ this really was, given how perfectly it was timed to my arrival, but Knight delivered a stirring tribute regardless. ‘‘No one has accomplished more than Mr. Trump has,’’ Knight raved after Trump informed him that a reporter was in the room. Trump nodded and motioned to the ­phone and made sure I had my recorder running. ‘‘What a great honor, man,’’ Trump said. ‘‘I will talk to you soon, and I won’t forget that you called. Thanks, Bobby.’’


Trump at the Long Beach campaign event, held aboard the battleship Iowa.
DAMON WINTER / THE NEW YORK TIMES
Trump is 6-foot-3 and looks taller in person than you might expect, in part because he is all head, hair and flattened, squinty expressions behind the tables and lecterns where we typically experience him. He was standing behind a desk cluttered with papers, piles of recent magazines with him on the cover and a Trump bobblehead doll. ‘‘You ever see guys with nothing on their desk?’’ he said by way of explaining his messy one. ‘‘They always fail. I don’t know what it is. I’ve seen it for years.’’

Trump motioned to the gallery of magazine covers on the wall next to him, which included an issue of Playboy from 1990 (‘‘And that’s when it was really Playboy’’) and another of Trump on the front of The New York Times Magazine in 1984. ‘‘I’ve had much more than 15 minutes of fame, that’s for sure,’’ he said. Trump can be hyper-­solicitous of the press. His orbit is largely free of handlers and is very much his own production, down to his tweets — which he types or dictates himself. I asked Trump if his campaign conducted focus groups. I knew what his answer would be but asked anyway. ‘‘I do focus groups,’’ he said, pressing both thumbs against his forehead, ‘‘right here.’’

Getting close to Trump is nothing like the teeth-­pulling exercise that it can be to get any meaningful exposure to a candidate like, say, Hillary Clinton. This is a seductive departure in general for political reporters accustomed to being ignored, patronized and offered sound bites to a point of lobotomy by typical politicians and the human straitjackets that surround them. In general, Trump understands and appreciates that reporters like to be given the time of day. It’s symbiotic in his case because he does in fact pay obsessive attention to what is said and written and tweeted about him. Trump is always saying that so-and-so TV pundit ‘‘spoke very nicely’’ about him on some morning show and that some other writer ‘‘who used to kill me’’ has now come around to ‘‘loving me.’’ There is a ‘‘Truman Show’’ aspect to this, except Trump is the director — continually selling, narrating and spinning his story while he lives it.

With me, Trump toggled often between on and off the record, one of which seemed only marginally more sensitive than the other, but with enough difference to indicate that he is capable of calculating from word to word and knowing where certain lines are. At one point, Trump declared himself to be ‘‘semi off the record’’ (it wasn’t that interesting, or even semi-­interesting). He kept browbeating me to ‘‘write fairly’’ about him, meaning that I should do a full and proper rendering of the Trump Phenomenon — the full degree to which it is, as he so often says, yooooge. Otherwise it would be ‘‘disgusting,’’ as it was recently when a reporter described a ‘‘smattering of applause’’ that he received at an event in Iowa, when in fact it was much more than a ‘‘smattering’’ — trust him. ‘‘I don’t do smatterings,’’ he said, spitting out the word.


Trump leaving a town-hall-style meeting in Rochester, N.H., in September.
DAMON WINTER / THE NEW YORK TIMES
As I surveyed the magazine covers on the wall and endured his running boasts, I wondered aloud whether Americans might not prefer a more humble brand of chief executive, feigned or otherwise. ‘‘Nope,’’ he sneered. ‘‘They want success. They wanted humility in the past. They wanted a nice person’’ (for the record, he added, ‘‘I am a nice person’’). But what they really want is someone who can win, as Trump always does. ‘‘We’re going to have so many victories, you will be bored of winning.’’

I asked whether he had ever experienced self-doubt. The question seemed to catch Trump off guard, and he flashed a split second of, if not vulnerability, maybe non­swagger. ‘‘Yes, I think more than people would think,’’ he told me. When? ‘‘I don’t want to talk about it.’’ He shrug-­smirked. ‘‘Because, you know — probably more than people would think. I understand how life can go. Things can happen.’’ This was a rare moment when Trump’s voice trailed off, even slightly. He then handed me a sheet of new polling data that someone had put on his desk. ‘‘Beautiful numbers,’’ he said, inviting me to take them with me.

A curious feature of the mob scene that has surrounded Trump at most public events since August is that people keep handing him money to sign. I first witnessed this on Sept. 11, a day of national mourning. Trump was working his way through the lobby of Rockefeller Center after taping an appearance on ‘‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,’’ and a boisterous crowd had been waiting for him. One building security guard described the commotion to me as ‘‘Justin Bieber level.’’ It consisted heavily of tourists and foreign visitors, many of them young. There were the usual paparazzi, and some shouted questions. But what struck me about this Trumpus Ruckus were the dollar bills. Trump signed one after another, and the recipients clutched and cherished them like winning lottery tickets. ‘‘Look, a hundred-­dollar bill?’’ Trump said, showing me a C-note that a woman from Long Island had handed him to sign. You don’t often see politicians signing money. If asked, some will refuse — I’ve seen Hillary Clinton do this — possibly because it is technically illegal to deface currency. But it is a fitting souvenir from one of the high priests of the nation’s secular religion: aspirational consumerism. Reagan was a capitalist and a free-­market icon, but conspicuous consumption (as people used to call it) was a benefit of American freedom and prosperity, not a national objective or a virtue in itself. Not so much with Trump, who of course owns many beautiful, classy things. There is a certain prosperity-­theology aspect to Trump’s appeal, the idea that you follow a minister because he is rich and has his own plane and implicitly and sometimes explicitly promises that you, too, will be rich.


And yet, throughout his rise, Trump has been labeled a ‘‘populist.’’ I had always equated populism with economic uprisings by the disenfranchised against the privileged. Trump, who grew up in Queens as a son of a wealthy real estate developer, promotes his astronomical wealth, elite academic credentials and ‘‘good genes’’ (‘‘my uncle was a professor at M.I.T., he was the smartest guy up there’’). He is, presumably, the first ‘‘populist’’ presidential candidate to mention his degree from Wharton at a campaign rally in Alabama. Certainly, there have been other rich-guy populists, like Ross Perot. And previous populist movements have, like Trump’s, been driven in part by stoking fear of ‘‘the other’’ (in Trump’s case, his bare-knuckled attacks on the undocumented immigrants who have made the United States ‘‘a dumping ground for the rest of the world’’).

But while populism is often associated with grass-roots movements, Trump’s brand of it flows not from the ground up, as did Obama’s campaign in 2008 or even the Tea Party movement in subsequent years. Rather, Trump’s is pure media populism, a cult of personality whose following has been built over decades. The popularity of Trump’s NBC reality franchise, ‘‘The Apprentice,’’ for instance, made him a potent cultural persona; the power of that persona (the frowning, pitiless boss) might actually outweigh the customary strategic imperatives (message discipline, donor bases) that the political wiseguys like to get all aroused about. In large measure, the core of Trump’s phenomenon is his celebrity itself, which, in today’s America, is in fact as populist as it gets.

Out on the sidewalk of Rockefeller Center, the horde for Trump was edgier and included several protesters. There were chants (‘‘Trump’s a racist’’), taunts (‘‘Donald, you want to deport me?’’) and placards (‘‘You’re not hired’’). A few protesters moved in and shouted within a few feet of Trump as he made his way into the back of his stretch limo for the short drive back to his tower. Seated serenely, he betrayed no sense whatsoever that he had just fled a tumultuous and slightly menacing situation to find sanctuary behind tinted glass. ‘‘There’s something happening here,’’ he told me.

There was pounding on the side of the vehicle as we pulled away. Hope Hicks, Trump’s 26-year-old publicist and a former Ralph Lauren model, sat opposite us; next to her, Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s wiry wisp of a buzz-cut campaign manager, was buried deep in his iPhone. After a few seconds in the quiet of his limo, Trump suddenly seemed deprived of oxygen. He kept opening the window to inhale more pandemonium and sign more magazine covers of himself. ‘‘Donald! Selfie!’’ a woman yelled and stuck her head in. Trump obliged before sealing the window again.

‘‘Our country needs to be glamorized,’’ Trump said, turning to me. Hicks interjected that Bloomberg Politics had recently conducted a focus group of New Hampshire voters, in which a woman used the word ‘‘classy’’ to describe a potential Trump presidency.

As we inched along a side street, Trump said he believed there was a crisis in the way America and the presidency are imagined by customers at home and abroad. ‘‘The branding of our country is at an all-time low,’’ Trump said. ‘‘Now, ‘branding’ might not be the most beautiful word to use, but the fact is the country has been labeled so badly.’’

Trump makes no attempt to cloak his love of fame and, admirably, will not traffic in that tiresome politicians’ notion that his campaign is ‘‘not about me, it’s about you.’’ The ease with which Trump exhibits, and inhabits, his self-­regard is not only central to his ‘‘brand’’ but also highlights a kind of honesty about him. He can even seem hostile to any notion of himself as humble servant — that example of mod­esty that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln strove for.

The idea of a president as Everyman stands at odds with his glamorized vision for the nation. The president should be a man apart, exceptional and resplendent in every way. ‘‘Jimmy Carter used to get off Air Force One carrying his luggage,’’ Trump said. ‘‘I used to say, ‘I don’t want a president carrying his luggage.’ ’’ Carter was a nice man, Trump allowed. ‘‘But we want someone who is going to go out and kick ass and win.’’ Which apparently cannot be done by someone ‘‘who’s gonna come off carrying a large bag of underwear.’’

Hicks pointed out that a few stragglers from 30 Rock were now running on foot after the limo on Sixth Avenue. ‘‘Look at these people,’’ Trump said, turning around to see them. ‘‘It’s literally a little bit sad.’’ The stragglers finally caught the limo at a red light, and Trump opened the window to sign autographs for them. ‘‘How much are you gonna sell this for?’’ he asked.

‘‘America is tired of being pushed into a corner,’’ Matt Yelland, a 60-year-old electrical engineer was telling me before Trump took the stage at the American Airlines Center in Dallas in mid-­September. We were just days from the debate at the Reagan Library, and a crowd of some 17,000 had gathered for a rally. Behind Yelland, a man flashed a ‘‘Silent Majority Is Getting Louder’’ sign, alluding to the old Nixonian notion — the Silent Majority — that Trump has identified as both a campaign slogan and a target market. ‘‘We’re a gentle dog, but we’re tired of being pushed around,’’ Yelland said.

This was a common sentiment among Trump supporters I met, a group that felt worn down from being bullied. Implicit in the campaign’s ‘‘Make America Great Again’’ rallying cry is a yearning for a leader to restore a lost swagger — a return to a less complex, less politically correct and more secure nation. Trump’s war on political correctness is especially pleasing to many of the white voters of the G.O.P. who feel usurped by newcomers and silenced by the progressive gains that women, Hispanics and gays have enjoyed. It also provides a kind of permission structure for Trump to offend in the guise of ‘‘telling it like it is’’ and only enhances the reality-­TV plotline. What will he say next? How will he say it?

Trump’s speech in Dallas, a 70-­minute stemwinder, came out like a zigzagging rocket attack against the many sectors of the political establishment. If, as Mario Cuomo said, a politician campaigns in poetry and governs in prose, we can shove that notion aside in the case of Donald Trump. He campaigns in poetry in much the same way a wild hog sips chardonnay. He ridiculed John Kerry for breaking his leg in a bicycle accident during the Iran nuclear negotiations — so weak and pathetic. ‘‘The people from Iran say, ‘What a schmuck,’ ’’ Trump said of the secretary of state.


But what was more compelling to me about both the speech and the spirit of the room was how nonideological it all was. Other than undocumented immigrants, who represent a go-to boogeyman for the right, Trump’s targets consisted of a bipartisan assembly of the ‘‘permanent political class’’ that Joan Didion described in her book ‘‘Political Fictions’’: that incestuous band of TV talkers, campaign strategists and candidates that had ‘‘rigged the game’’ and perpetuated the scripted awfulness of our politics. ‘‘Everyone knows that what you see in politics is fake or confected,’’ Didion wrote. ‘‘But everyone’s O.K. with that, because it’s all been focus-­grouped.’’

Resentment of this class has built over several years. It has been expressed on both sides, by the rise of insurgent movements like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street (Trump’s railing against fund-­raiser ‘‘blood money,’’ ‘‘bloodsucker’’ lobbyists and Wall Street ‘‘paper pushers’’ would play well across the board). As a reporter in Washington, I, too, have grown exceedingly weary of this world — the familiar faces, recycled tropes and politics as usual — and here was none other than Donald J. Trump, the billionaire blowhard whom I had resisted as a cartoonish demagogue, defiling it with resonance. He tacked not to the left or to the right, but against the ‘‘losers’’ and ‘‘scumbags’’ in the various chapters of the club: the pundits who ‘‘wear heavy glasses’’ and ‘‘sit around the table,’’ the ‘‘political hacks’’ selling out American interests overseas. Karl Rove ‘‘is a totally incompetent jerk,’’ Trump told the crowd in Dallas, referring to the Fox News commentator and chief Republican strategist of the George W. Bush years. The crowd went nuts at the Rove put-down, which in itself is remarkable — the ‘‘architect’’ of Bush’s political ride being abused by a right-­leaning crowd in Bush’s home state.

It was at this point that I began to feel glad I decided to write about Trump, who seemed to have clearly seized on some profound exhaustion with our politics. There’s very little difference between Trump when he’s not running for president and Trump now that he is running for president, except that he makes more public appearances. Trump is the same boorish, brash and grandiose showman we’ve known across many realms. And for some reason, that character has proved an incendiary match with this political moment. It was a repeat of what I saw that night of the first debate, when the whole room abandoned the professional campaign surrogates in favor of the blazing chaos of Trump himself. Was Trump the logical byproduct of a cancerous system in which American democracy has mutated into a gold rush of cheap celebrity, wealth creation and narcissistic branding madness? Or has he merely wielded the tools of this transformation — his money, celebrity and dominance of the media — against the forces that have engendered this disgust in the system to begin with?

Either way, Trump left the rally to sustained applause as two songs played back to back: Twisted Sister’s ‘‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’’ and Aerosmith’s ‘‘Dream On.’’

‘‘There was good energy in that room!’’ Trump told me from the passenger seat of a Suburban as we left the arena after the rally. He exuded the red-­faced giddiness of a teenager who can’t quite believe what’s happening to him. ‘‘You never get a crowd like that without a guitar.’’ He reported that his wife, who watched his speech on cable, ‘‘said I got an A-plus.’’

We were headed to Love Field, where Trump’s Boeing 757 was waiting to ferry us the rest of the way to Southern California for the debate. A small group of gawkers stood along the fence line, snapping pictures of the sleek jet with a big ‘‘T’’ on the tail and a gold-­painted ‘‘Trump’’ on the side. Trump was eager to show me his plane — the conference room and the sleeping quarters, the mohair and silk couches and the gold-­plated seatbelts.

‘‘Do you want to wash your hands or something?’’ Trump asked when I joined him in the main cabin. Trump hates germs (‘‘I am very, very clean’’). He was also hungry. He barreled back to a pantry area arrayed with tin trays of chicken, shrimp, sea bass and chateaubriand. ‘‘Beautiful stuff,’’ Trump marveled over the spread. ‘‘There’s more food than it’s yooooomanly possible to eat.’’ He shoveled big spoons of potato au gratin onto his plate and then turned to the shrimp. ‘‘You like shrimp?’’ he said. He urged me to indulge, just as long as I did not double-­dip in the cocktail sauce. This is a pet issue for him. He was recently at a cocktail party, and they were passing around hors d’oeuvres. ‘‘This big, heavy guy takes the shrimp, puts it in, bit it and puts it in again,’’ he told me. Trump was appalled at the repeat dunking, even in the retelling. ‘‘I said, ‘You just [expletive] double-­dipped!’ He didn’t know what I was talking about.’’

Trump said he was not following any special diet or exercise regimen for the campaign. ‘‘All my friends who work out all the time, they’re going for knee replacements, hip replacements — they’re a disaster,’’ he said. He exerts himself fully by standing in front of an audience for an hour, as he just did. ‘‘That’s exercise.’’ Nor did Trump show much interest in going through the traditional paces of preparing for a presidential debate, which was now 48 hours away. CNN moderators could ask him a million different questions, he said. It makes no sense to lock yourself into a room with briefing books and 20 experts. ‘‘That’s what Romney did, and he was unable to speak,’’ Trump said.

Instead, Trump took his mountain of food and parked himself on a couch next to the big-­screen TV. He spent a good part of the three-hour flight staring up into the giant image of Donald J. Trump giving his speech. He kept flipping between Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, sampling the commentary in tiny snippets. Whenever a new talking head came on screen, Trump offered a scouting report based on the overriding factor of how he or she had treated him. ‘‘This guy’s been great to me,’’ he said when Bill O’Reilly of Fox appeared (less so O’Reilly’s guest, Brit Hume, also of Fox). Kevin Madden of CNN, a Republican strategist, was a ‘‘pure Romney guy,’’ while Ana Navarro, a Republican media consultant and Jeb Bush supporter, was ‘‘so bad, so pathetic, awful — I don’t know why she’s on television.’’ Click to Fox News. Jeb Bush was saying something in Spanish. Click to MSNBC. Hillary Clinton was saying she wished Trump would start ‘‘respecting women’’ rather than ‘‘cherishing women.’’ (‘‘She speaks so poorly, I think she’s in trouble,’’ Trump said.) Click to CNN. It showed a graphic reporting that 70 percent of Latinos had a negative view of Trump. Click to Fox News. Trump asked for another plate of au gratin.

After an hour, as Trump continued to watch himself on TV, I tried to draw out some of the particulars of his big, great plans. We were at the part of the rebroadcast in which Trump was discussing people whose families had been ‘‘decimated’’ by illegal immigrants, the emotional apex of his speech. He described illegal-­immigrant ‘‘rough dudes’’ that join street gangs and commit murder. When Trump is president, ‘‘they will be out of here so freaking fast,’’ he said in the speech. I asked Trump how he planned to round up and eject these thugs. ‘‘Just get ’em out,’’ he said, waving his hand, not looking away from the screen.

It can be difficult to picture Trump, such a pop-culture showman, presiding over the kinds of presidency-­defining ‘‘moments’’ that require solemn empathy. I mentioned Obama after the shooting this summer at a church in Charleston, S.C., or George W. Bush at ground zero in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks. Empathy, he assured me, ‘‘will be one of the strongest things about Trump.’’ But for now, he is in sales mode, trying to convince people that he can do a job. ‘‘When I’m in that position, when we have horrible hurricanes, all kinds of horrible things happen, you’ve got to have empathy.’’

Trump returned to watching himself on the big screen. He was delivering the crescendo of his speech, about how they were all part of a movement to take back the country. ‘‘We will make America great again,’’ he said. Looking up, Trump was pleased.

‘‘Very presidential,’’ he said.

Donald Trump is a dilemma because of the sheer exhaustion he elicits. Every day, there is a fresh feud, a new provocation, an ‘‘inartful description’’ or a ‘‘disgusting’’ story about him somewhere. Not long after I returned from California, there were indications that the Summer of Trump might finally be ceding to a harsher autumn. His lead showed signs of slipping after the last debate. There were slightly tightening polls. He had resorted to taunting Marco Rubio, who was polling better after the debate, for, among other things, sweating a lot.


Still, Trump kept having his aides send me the latest ‘‘beautiful polls.’’ I talked briefly to him before he went on ‘‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.’’ ‘‘We did really well in the Morning Consult poll,’’ he told me. ‘‘I guess you saw that one.’’ I observed to Trump that I had never encountered a candidate who talked so much to me about the latest polls. He knew precisely why that was. ‘‘That’s because they’re not leading,’’ he said. Trump signed off by saying that he hoped my article would be fair and added that there was no reason it shouldn’t be. ‘‘I’ve done nothing bad,’’ he told me. ‘‘What have I done bad?’’

How do you answer that question? Trump might be the single most self-­involved yet least introspective person I have ever met in my life, in or out of politics. I’m guessing he would say this is a good quality in a president. It spares him unglamorous dilemmas. But it’s unsettling to encounter a prospective leader whose persona is so conspicuous and well defined and yet whose core is so obtuse. The Obama political acolyte David Axelrod has likened campaigns to ‘‘an M.R.I. for the soul.’’ If that’s the case, maybe the most fascinating question for Trump is not where this all ends up, but what his expedition reveals about Donald Trump’s soul, if it reveals anything at all. ‘‘Some people think this will be good for my brand,’’ Trump concluded, as deep as he probes. ‘‘I think it’s irrelevant for my brand.’’

My lasting image from my travels with Trump was imprinted on me after we landed in Los Angeles late on the night of the Dallas rally. Trump, who says he regularly operates on four hours of sleep, appeared to be dragging for the first time. His face was flush, and his barreling gait had slowed as he crossed the tarmac into a waiting car. At the last minute, one of Trump’s aides invited me to ride with Trump to Beverly Hills, where he owns a mansion. I had planned on getting a cab, and in fact was eager to be alone and also leave Trump in peace after an 18-hour day. But it was tricky to get to the terminal, where the cabs were, so it was just easier to ride — again — with Trump.

‘‘Don’t speak,’’ Trump instructed me as I sat down next to him in a Suburban. That was fine by me. None of the five staff members and security people in the vehicle said a word. We sat, per Trump’s dictate, in silence for the half-hour drive. It was almost comforting to me that he would take a break from being Donald, the Brand, and turn relatively ‘‘off’’ in my presence; that he could, as much as he ever does, retreat into himself. I wondered what he was thinking about.

After a few minutes, I saw Trump staring down into a phone glowing up into his shiny face. I checked my phone, too. ‘‘Speech in Dallas went really well,’’ it said in my Twitter feed, courtesy of @realDonaldTrump, who was tweeting next to me in the dark.

Mark Leibovich is the chief national correspondent for the magazine. His last feature was a profile of Larry King.

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repo4sale Loc: 89041

Last Updated: 10/2/2015
Former U.S. Budget Director:
Few Will Survive "Sundown in America"
David Stockman, architect of President Reagan's economic turnaround known as 'Morning in America', warns of the looming collapse of free market prosperity and the destruction of American wealth.

Plus: Emergency actions viewers can take now to protect themselves from the crisis.




Tracy McCullough: Hello. My name is Tracy McCullough. I want to thank you for joining us for this urgent broadcast detailing a looming financial crisis that will bring an end to America's free market system. This crisis engineered by our own government's destruction of capitalism will directly impact every person in ways they never saw coming. It doesn't matter where you live, who you know, or how much money you have. Once this crisis hits, your life will forever change. Nobody is safe.

However, there are specific steps you can take now to protect you and your loved ones, which we will reveal a little later in the broadcast. With us today is David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's budget director from 1981 to 1985. David is also a former US congressman, Wall Street veteran, and famed Washington insider. His bestselling book, The Great Deformation: Corruption of Capitalism in America, is a searing indictment against Washington's interventionist, and many would say, illegal response to America's recent financial catastrophes.


David, thank you for joining us.

David Stockman: Well thank you. We're going to be talking about some vital topics today, and I really look forward to the conversation.

Tracy McCullough: We're also joined by Harry Dent, renowned economist and author of The Demographic Cliff. Harry's meticulous research led to his early predictions of Japan's lost decade, the stock market crash of 2008, his early 2014 forecast, the plummeting oil and gold prices, and the surprising US dollar rally. Harry, thank you for joining us as well.

Harry Dent: Good to be here. Great time to have this discussion.

Tracy McCullough: Both David and Harry have worked tirelessly to spread the word of the dangers of the massive government expansion and its ceaseless intrusion and intervention into the free market economy that's destroying our great nation. And David was recently the keynote speaker at Harry's Irrational Economic Summit. David and Harry warned that Washington and its central bank cohort, the Federal Reserve, have lulled Americans into this false sense of financial security. But Americans have been led to believe that the state is able to provide its citizens with permanent prosperity, a caution that the decades of borrowing money, racking up an unsustainable $18 trillion debt is stealing prosperity from future generations.


Unfortunately, this reckless behavior is about to destroy America and hurl us into a frightening world of deep shortages, falling prices, collapsing profit margins, lost jobs, a stock market selloff, and a great depression so devastating that it will make the last great one seem like Boomtown. As things stand now, it's hard to believe that just over 30 years ago, Ronald Reagan won a landslide victory with his famous political ad proclaiming, "It's morning again in America." The ad showed a strong economy with more people working than ever before and a future we could look forward to with confidence.

But in our broadcast today, we'll examine the forces that have taken our once strong free market economy and turned it into a sick, feeble, debt ridden dystopia that's reached its limits and is incapable of stopping the incoming collapse in stark contrast to President Reagan's good morning. Today, we're facing an economic sundown in America. And more importantly for you, we'll discuss the safe money strategies you can implement now to insulate your wealth during these calamitous times. In fact, towards the end of this presentation, we'll even provide a step-by-step blueprint you can easily access that will show you exactly what to do.

We call it The Sundown Action Plan, and it's yours, free. Let's get started. David, your book, The Great Deformation, has been denounced on all sides of the political spectrum. Right and left, Keynesian and supply siders, neocons, tax cons, lobbyists hate it. Wall Street hates it, yet it quickly became a New York Times bestseller. What truths are you telling us that have so many Washington Insiders outraged?

David Stockman: Well, I'm tempted to say that I told the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and that was inconvenient, but what I really mean is that the fundamental themes challenge frontally the status quo in Washington, at the fed, and on Wall Street. People don't want to hear the reality and the truth that we're facing. But I think there is an enormous appetite out in the country to get a different perspective than what you have from the media day in and day out, so I say the fed is out of control. Its balance sheet is exploded. It's printing money like never before.


Zero interest rates for 70 months have basically destroyed the pricing function in the financial markets. I said that as a result of this, Wall Street has become a huge casino which basically rewards gamblers, but it is not functioning as a capital raising, capital allocating instrument, which really is what the financial markets should do in a free market system. I warned about the size of the federal debt. I'm an old budget director from the Reagan days. We had a trillion dollar national debt, a 3 trillion economy when I started. Today, it's 18 trillion. Eighteen fold gain in the last 35 years versus maybe a fourfold gain in the economy. So all of these trends are taking our economy in a direction that is dangerous, that is not sustainable, and is likely to fully undermine everything that's been built up and created by the American people over decades and decades.

So people don't want to hear the warning. They don't want to hear the truth in the establishment, in Wall Street, in Washington, but I think out in the country they must, or somebody was buying the book, and someone – people wanted to hear a different perspective.

Tracy McCullough: For years now, Americans have accepted the fed's massive printing of paper money and the huge amounts of stimulus and bailouts. It's like a new normal, something we're told has to be done to prevent a financial crisis. Any time there's even a mention of cutting back on quantitative easing, the stock market sinks like a stone. Trillions of dollars have been printed in the past few years. So with such widespread public acceptance, what will ever make the fed stop printing money in the future? Will we ever return to a sound money principle?

David Stockman: Well it's obvious that Wall Street is addicted to cheap money and unlimited flow of new liquidity into the markets. Traders can then borrow money on an overnight basis for five basis points, which is nothing. Buy anything with a yield like a ten-year or five-year bond or speculate in stocks that they think might be going up or even get fancier and go into derivatives or commodity futures or whatever. And then capture the profit or the spread between the cheap money that the fed is putting into the overnight market and the yield or profit they're making on the asset, and they're leveraging way up.

You know, 90 percent, 95 percent in many cases. So obviously, the whole financial market is dependent on this, but it comes at a cost. It is destroying savers in America. If you worked a lifetime and saved $100,000.00, you're making $400.00 a year in interest from a lifetime of savings. I think there will be a revolt sooner or later of the American public against this disastrous crushing of the saver in order to essentially accommodate Wall Street's appetite for liquidity.

Harry Dent: Yeah, I agree. I mean the funny thing is that we had the greatest debt bubble in history. We had a financial bubble, and when it all burst in 2008, what did they do? They recreated the bubble. They're trying to cure credit crisis with more debt. They're trying to recreate a bubble that only favored Wall Street and the top one percent. It's really the top .1 percent. One out of 1,000 families get most of the gains. Unlike with this three and a half trillion in fed stimulus, QE, what if they had sent a check for $30,000.00 to every household? That's what they could have done with that money. Don't you think that would have helped income and equality?

Don't you think that would have helped the country? They're saving the banks and the financial systems that became this gambling casino David is talking about. They're saving – special interests are driving this. They're the big lobbyists. They brought in the foxes to look over the henhouse. Goldman Sachs, I hate to say it, but that's what they brought in to cure the situation. Crazy.

Tracy McCullough: So tell me, how did the fed gain the control where they could control the interest rate over six years? I know it's in an effort to stimulate the economy, but how are they allowed to do this?

Harry Dent: Well they started doing it in 1987. It's Keynesian economics. The government is supposed to push down interest rates, spend money when the private sector is not to offset. Well that'd be fine if they didn't run deficits since the 1970s and trade deficits on top of that and create this giant bubble. But this is the only way they can deal with it. This is what economists think you should do. Leading economists like Paul Krugman thinks you should just keep interest rates low forever if necessary. Print money forever if necessary. This is insanity. The economy can never rebalance the debt or the financial bubbles or the imbalances or the inequality in incomes or any of this or excess capacity if we don't let the economy go down, deleverage.

What they're doing is preventing deleveraging. As David said, you keep the interest rates low. Well people can speculate. Banks aren't making money on loans anymore. They're speculating, and the fed has made that the only way to go. Investors, the only place to go is stocks. You can't go into bonds anymore.

Tracy McCullough: What do you think about that, David?

David Stockman: Well you know, the problem is the fed, I've described, is a rogue institution. It's operating beyond any of the legislative intent or statutory authority that's been given to them over the years. They have essentially become a national monetary planning agency that has decided they can drive the daily, weekly, monthly movement of the economy by manipulating interest rates and the yield curve by putting a put under the stock prices by essentially trying to drive the entire 18 trillion or 17 trillion US economy from Wall Street. That is fundamentally at variance with the requisites of a healthy capitalist economy. You need an honest financial market. Not a manipulated one.

You need price discovery by people that have their money at risk, not the central bank.

Harry Dent: Actually, it's a centrally planned economy, isn't it?

David Stockman: Right, exactly.

Tracy McCullough: It appears Washington and the feds simply defy, even break, the sound money rules, thereby corrupting the natural business cycle. Nowhere is this more evident than the bailout schemes that have swept through Washington. David, you claim these bailouts are illegal, but they keep happening. From trillions spent in bailouts to AIG and Wall Street, to billing out the audio industry, and in essence bailing out the green energy industries with massive subsidies. So why haven't all these bailouts helped the economy?

Harry Dent: Well you know, a lot of politicians say the stimulus hasn't worked. Look, we would have been and seen a Great Depression. We were – this was unraveling. Financial institutions from AIG to General Motors and banks were failing. This was exactly what happened in the early '30s. So what the quantitative easing and the zero interest rates did was put liquidity in the market, put – this money went straight in the financial institutions. Like I say, it didn't go to the average household. Didn't go to write down their mortgage or anything to help them. It went to save the financial institutions.

So in that sense, it worked. Did it work as good that we're growing as well s we did in the best part of the 1990s or 2000s? No, but we're growing at two to three percent. Two percent on average, which is a big difference from a Great Depression. So it has worked and it will not bring us to escape velocity. There's no way we can have sustainable growth with demographic trends pointing strongly down and worse with the debt loads we talked about. Eight times GDP, there's no way an economy can go at normal speed with that sort of debt. So it won't work long-term, but it has made a difference. The problem is it's only shifted the can down the road.

It's like taking more drugs to keep coming down from a high, which means you're going to crash harder later. So I think the next downturn, which we're seeing for 2015, '16 or so, is going to see a worse crash and a deeper crisis than we saw in 2008 and '09.

David Stockman: Well the problem with the fed stimulus is there's nothing magic about money printing and zero interest rates. The only way it can work is if it induces households and businesses to borrow more and spend or invest. What they fail to recognize is that after 30 years of doing this since the 1970s, they have brought the households of America, the overwhelming 90 percent of American households to a position of peak debt. They have so much mortgage debt, credit card debt, student loan debt for their kids or that they guaranteed. And other forms of debt, auto paper that they can't borrow anymore. So if you offer the average American household zero or cheap money, they can't borrow because they're up to their ears in debt already.

So therefore, there's been no stimulation to mainstream. Instead, all the cheap money has stayed in the canyons of Wall Street where the speculators can access it day after day or week after week, use that cheap money to buy things that might produce a return or a yield, and pocket the difference. That's called arbitrage. Therefore, the mechanism of easy money is no longer working because we're at peak debt, and the fed is simply creating a bigger and bigger bubble in Wall Street.

Tracy McCullough: In 2014, republicans won a sweeping midterm election, taking back full control of congress. In fact, the house has its largest majority since World War II. So David, do you think the republican congress can save us from this economic sundown that we've been discussing today?

David Stockman: Well I would like to think so, and they talk a good game, but unfortunately when push comes to shove, they're in the consensus with everyone else in the beltway in Washington and are unwilling to take on the hard issues. We are borrowing still $600 billion in the last year, six years after allegedly the great recession ended, and we are setting ourselves up for trillion dollar deficits again, the next time the economy stumbles or we have a recession or some other dislocation. The fact is the fed is not abolished the business cycle. The fed has not made the world completely safe from these kinds of dislocations. So therefore, we need to look at what's driving this huge deficit, and the answer is big entitlements and big defense spending, and the republicans are unwilling to take on the Pentagon. They want more, and they're afraid to take on Social Security and the entitlements because they believe that is going to be problematic politically.

So therefore, nothing is being done about the structure of this deficit problem, and we're just basically stumbling our way into another huge crisis in ballooning national debt.

Tracy McCullough: Sounds like we'll be forced to make the accommodations. We won't have a choice.

Harry Dent: That is what happens. There is no way to cure this bubble because it's already been created. Once the bubble gets extreme and stocks, there are more overvalue, far more overvalue, more bubble like than they were at 2007 peak. We have more total debt here and around the world than we had at the 2007 piece. So we've got a bigger debt bubble, bigger financial asset bubble. This thing, the only way to correct it is to let this thing burst. Now you can do it more civilized. We could do – a smart government would engage a Chapter 11-like reorganization of the private debt in these markets, but they're never going to do that.

The republicans, anything they did do to try to balance the budget would only decrease the stimulus and cause the bubble to burst. And we've got to remember the republicans created most of this debt bubble between 2000, 2008. Doubled the federal debt and private went from 20 to $42 trillion. The greatest surge in debt in history. Yes, the democrats have increased – almost doubled government debt again. They've led that, but the republicans helped create this bubble, so like you say, they're not the good guys, fiscally sound guys they say they are.

Tracy McCullough: So with interest rates at zero, the printing presses running day and night, the national debt at a staggering 18 trillion plus, the modern Keynesian state broken and unable to stimulate demand, you're both predicting this easy money bubble to burst with devastating consequences. Well, we can't do anything to stop this massive bubble burst. Perhaps the largest and most shocking in our history. We have spent months preparing a solid economic action plan we believe will spare you from the worst and even point you toward the tiny pockets of opportunity that could insulate your wealth against the financial fallout. In a few minutes, I'm going to give you specific instructions on how you can get your own copy of what we call the Sundown Action Plan, and to underscore the urgency of sending for your own free copy. I'd like to ask a question about how bad things could get after sundown hits. David, in your own words, you say all hell will break loose. What will this crash look like, and how will people survive?

David Stockman: Well, it's one of the scariest moments I think in our history, but also we need to recognize we're in uncharted waters. No central bank has ever printed this much money this long, kept interest rates at zero, fueled so much speculation. Not just here, but worldwide. Not just in the normal stocks and bonds, but the whole shale boom, for instance, in the United States was massively funded by cheap debt based on oil prices that weren't sustainable, and now that's all coming unwound. We have never had deficits of ten percent of GDP back to back, or even still four or five percent four or five years into a recovery.

We have a runaway budget where the population is getting older and older, 10,000 people are retiring every day. Nothing is being done about Social Security. It's a festering time bomb, and we're not sure how it will explode, but we know it isn't sustainable. We have a Wall Street that is more addicted to pure overnight gambling and trading and speculation for the ultra short run that is driven by robo traders, the so-called HFT money, like never before. It's unstable. That's why we see things happen like the overnight 40 percent gain with the Swiss Franc when the Swiss National Bank pulled the pay.

Forty percent overnight – not overnight, but in a couple of minutes or seconds when there were hundreds of billions of short positions in the Swiss Franc. All of these things have never existed simultaneously, not only in the United States, but worldwide. All the central banks are doing it. We're reaching the point where it's unsustainable, things are going to give and break, but the good thing is it's going to be more a disaster in the financial markets in my view, less some kind of Great Depression impact on Main Street. It will be difficult on Main Street, but Wall Street is in the gun sites of this disaster coming.

Tracy McCullough: So people, take heed I guess.

David Stockman: Right.

Harry Dent: Yeah, I can get very concrete about this. I have a chart that I always parade around. It's called The Megaphone Chart. It shows basically that each bubble we've had, the bubble that peaked in 2000 and then crashed, each bubble has gone to higher highs in the stock market as it did in 2007, and then it crashed, and then gone to new higher highs here in late 2014, early 2015. Lower lows, higher highs. It's a megaphone. The next crash is going to be worse than the last one if this very clear pattern works out. The Dow is going to peak, I don't know, 19,000 or something I think in early 2015. Just my best guess because you're only guessing at these sort of thing.


And then the next support level is like five and a half to 6,000. That's a 70 percent crash, which will probably happen in two years, give or take. Much more dramatic than the 2008 and '09 thing. The other thing I think will happen, we talked about Main Street versus Wall Street. We start having this crash, Wall Street is going to say, "We gotta double down on QE." Economist going to say it – Main Street is going to say, "What the hell are you smoking here?"

Tracy McCullough: You can't go any further.

Harry Dent: No, we already did this. We already pumped trillions of dollars. We all thought we were getting something for nothing, but it seemed to be working. Now we're in a bigger crash. I don't think the public is going to vote for doing this. But the public I think is going to get hit. The worst place they get hit is like 2008. Home prices. Bubbles always burst, and they go back to where the bubbles start or lower. For housing to just get back to where the bubble started in January of 2000, and that's very clear where they went kind of exponential, they have to drop after this rebound 40 to 50 percent. So how many people are going to be underwater now in that downturn and being thrown out of their homes and all this sort of stuff, and unemployment we've been predicting a long time, official unemployment, will go up to at least 15 percent, and underemployment, which is more the real number, will be 25 percent.


Plus, I actually do see a Great Depression, and I think it is going to affect Main Street. But I tell you, what we warn people, especially our readers who are the top one percent, the richest people who own 80 to 90 percent of the financial assets are going to see their wealth evaporate much faster than Homer Simpson. That's what it looks like. It doesn't look good.

Tracy McCullough: So once this bubble bursts, will any good come from it?

Harry Dent: A lot of good will come from it. Our economy needs a great reset. Income inequality needs to go back and favor the middle class as it did after the great depression. Stocks need to be affordable, and bonds, at reasonable interest rates for the next generation to invest in the future. Housing needs to be more affordable, especially in major cities if this next generation is going to have a good standard of living. This reset will happen from the markets, from the collapse of all this stimulus, and not by political policies. So we've been saying there's a lot of good things. If you look at the Great Depression, that was the worst downturn in US history, but it deleveraged massive amounts of debt at the private level and brought reality and reinvestment and a strong work ethic for the next generation coming out of that.

Stocks, the greatest bull market in all of stock market history was 1933 up until this recent boom. Decades and decades of boom. The greatest economic boom and standard of living increase in US history and world history came in that time period. Clearing the decks is exactly what the free market capitalist system does. Everybody espouses it, but nobody wants the darn thing. Nobody – the companies don't want the disciplines. They all want monopolies or near monopolies. Politicians want to control everything and set interest rates and set growth rates and make it like a machine.

The economy does well, the golden goose, I call it, precisely because we have this play of opposites, booms, which accelerate the adoption of new technologies and growth. But bust, which facilitate innovation, the greatest innovation comes in downturns and inflationary periods or in deflationary periods. Feds and the government don't want deflation. We had the great – the whole computer, jet engines and zillions of things came after the great depression because of that challenge, and personal computers, internet, cell phones, smart phones, all of this came in the '70s inflation. They're killing the golden goose by not letting these play of opposites, boom and bust, inflation, deflation, innovation, creative destruction. This is what makes us rich, but it causes some pain.


Tracy McCullough: What do you have to say about that, David?

David Stockman: I agree. In the long run, we have to get off this debt addiction. We need to get back to sound finance both in government and households, but beginning between here and there is going to cause enormous pain for millions of households who have been herded into risky investments, junk bond funds, stock market funds, high flying biotech stocks and on and on because they were told it's the only place to be. If you put your money in a CD, you get no return. If you put your money in a safe bond, you get almost no return. Now when the big reset, as Harry calls it, happens, and the stock market drops by large magnitudes, 50 percent, more, those people who were herded into these risky investments late in life – Because remember, we have the baby boom, you know, heading towards their retirement homes, are going to be badly hurt at a time that they can't recover, and it will be a massive injustice that is being done by Washington and the fed to this current generation of middle class Americans. That will produce, in my view, a political reaction, a political revolt that will begin to say, "What's wrong here? Who believed that printing money out of thin air can make a society wealthier? Why did we do that? Who believed that we can actually create jobs and new economic output on Main Street simply by having the fed press a button and create another billion dollars?"

I think the public is going to be asking all these questions soon, and that will be part of the therapy that Harry is talking about. Not only financially, but the real therapy is political.

Harry Dent: You know, real quick Tracy. The way I would put it, the aging baby boomers who own almost all the financial asset, they are going to get hurt the worst and longer term more. It is the emerging millennial or echo boom generation that's going to benefit from a massive deleveraging of the cost of living and all of this sort of stuff. So it's going to affect different generations and people differently.

Tracy McCullough: So Harry, with all this free money being printed, many of the economists that I hear from say that the expectation is for inflation, but that is not in fact what you all are talking about now, is it? Now what is the difference?

Harry Dent: You know, that is so common sense, but if you study history crystal clear, almost no exceptions, every great debt and financial asset bubble in history has been followed by deflation. And it doesn't mean governments try to either print money or invest in infrastructures or lower interest rates to prevent it, and that would tend to be inflationary in normal times. But here is what happens. When these debt bubbles burst, we said before $62 trillion in debt in the United States. Forty trillion of that is private debt which can deleverage as much as 50 percent, which is how much it deleveraged in the Great Depression.


$20 trillion disappears. I talked about 184 trillion worldwide in financial assets, loans, stocks, bonds. Half of that or more. Eighty, 90, 100 trillion disappears. I call it magic, and printing money and in debt is magic. It is a financial drug. It is getting something for nothing, and when it deleverages, now you see it, now you don't. $100 trillion in financial debt around the world, 20 trillion in private debt in the US disappears. That's less money. This is real money. Debt is money. Financial assets and your retirement plan or your house. This is real money to people that they're going to use in the future. That disappears, you've got less money chasing the same goods, which is the classic definition of deflation.

So yes, money printing in normal times – if we printed money in the '70s when we already had inflation, we'd have hyperinflation. We'd have printed money even in the '90s and 2000s. With low inflation, we'd have had higher inflation no question. The money has to be lent and spent – lent by banks and spent. The central banks only create a tiny fraction of the money. It is magnified by the fractional reserve banking system. That's not happening here. Banks aren't lending. As David said, they're speculating because they can borrow money cheap, lever it up 30 to 50 to one, and that's how they're making money. So the way you see this, money velocity when it's going up, which it did into 1998, it means we're investing in productive assets that'll pay off for consumers and businesses.

When it starts to go down, it means it's going towards speculation, which it did from '98 – now when it starts to go way down, which it's already started to do since 2008, you're in deleveraging and deflation. That's when no amount of money printing can create inflation. So it's not going to be inflation. You need to protect your assets against deflation, which means safe, safe, safe. Don't be in any risk assets. Not high yield bonds, not stocks, not commodities, not even gold and silver. They went down in the last crash.

Tracy McCullough: David, do you have anything to add to that?

David Stockman: Yeah, I agree with that, and the point to remember is that massive money printing by central banks on a worldwide basis is inherently deflationary for two reasons. One, it fuels massive financial speculation. When we talk about speculation, we're talking about professional gamblers who borrow 95 cents and use that borrowed money that they pay practically nothing for to buy stocks or bonds or commodities or derivatives or biotech stocks and so forth as I indicated. All of that buying power is artificial. That is not coming from production today, real effort in the economy. That's coming from newly minted credit.

So it takes asset prices to unreasonable, unsustainable levels. They crash, and that creates a negative economic cycle. Secondly, massive money printing makes capital and debt too cheap to the real sector of the economy. So therefore, massive capital investments are made on the basis of cheap cost of capital, not on the basis of the likely return or sustainable return over time.

Harry Dent: You know, real quickly, it does spread to the mainstream beyond the professional gamblers. In the '90s, everyday people were flipping tech stocks in the 2000s with all these lower interest rates. They were flipping homes and condos. China today, the most affluent people there are buying not just condos, empty condos at the highest prices in history. Everyday people are going to be killed as well as the gamblers when this bubble bursts.

Tracy McCullough: It sounds like we're heading towards sort of an inevitable evolution of finances, a revolution of sorts that will clean the slate and allow the natural course of things to just happen again.

Harry Dent: Yeah, I keep calling it a great reset, and that's what we need. And every great reset has been followed by the greatest booms in history.

Tracy McCullough: Harry, you used the science of demographics to predict future market events, and for the past 30 years, you've been uncannily accurate. You predicted the '92 to 2000 Bull Run, and the 2002 to 2007 one as well. You've also called for the devastating crashes, the one in 2000, the dot com bust, the 2008 stock market crash, and the recent slowdown in oil and gold prices just to name a few. Harry, can you discuss how your famous suspending wave will play out in the face of this coming sundown?

Harry Dent: Well first, you know, I discovered the simplest leading indicator in history in 1988. I found the average person spends the most money at Age 46. If you move forward the birth index, how simple is this, 46 years for that peak in spending, a new generation like the baby boomers will predictably drive a boom. We saw from the beginning back in the '80s that we'd have a boom from 1983 to 2007. That is a 46-year lag on the rising births of the baby boom generation. And it's going to be the greatest boom in history we said way back then because the baby boom is so supersized, it's larger than any generation before it or afterwards, and it's around the world.


So that's the premise. As we predicted 20 years ago, over 20 years ago, the economy started to weaken in 2008. Well that was enough to cause the subprime crisis in housing that we can further, and housing we predicted would weaken after 2005 because it peaks early in the cycle. So that – we are in a demographic downtrend in the United States, but it's different. In my book, The Demographic Cliff, that's why we call it that. It's different for different countries. Japan peaked back in the late '80s. We were the only ones to see that when Japan looked like China today like they were going to overtake the United States and they were doing everything right. We said no, they were just at the top of their game getting ready for a big crash in the '90s.

Well guess who is getting ready for the biggest demographic downturn of any country. Germany. Germany is supposed to hold up the Euro zone and they've got the worst demographics, followed shortly by Italy, Greece, Portugal, and eventually Spain and much of the rest of Europe. Europe is just going off their demographic cliff from about 2015 forward. We started in 2008. So more countries are going to go off this cliff, and it's going to make it harder. I think, you know, the central banks think if we just keep printing more money, we'll get to escape velocity. The demographics only get worse. One final thing that's very important and unique in the United States. We have the most income inequality of any developed country.


The rich are richer here. The rich peak later than Homer Simpson at 46. Age 53. Guess what year that is. 2014. Car sales peak at the last of the durable goods cycle way after housing and furniture, age 53. That's 2014. We're saying the economy is going to surprisingly get weak in 2015 just when clueless economists say, "We've reached escape velocity," and the fed is tightening into that what will start tapering just at the wrong time. So I think 2015, we're going to see demographics show strongly in the US and even stronger in Germany, and then the only emerging country in the world that has falling demographic trends in the year ahead is China, and everybody thinks China is going to be the growth engine for decades to come.

Their workforce has already peaked. How do you grow at ten percent with a workforce that's contracting like Japan has been doing since the '90s? So demographics is key, and demographic trends point down, especially in the next several years. Around the world.

Tracy McCullough: David and Harry, how do you respond to your critics who have said, and I'm quoting here, first from Money Watch, "Dent's success as forecaster would be more accurately compared to the blind squirrel who occasionally finds an acorn. Make enough forecasts, and you eventually will get one right," or Barron's that said of you, "Profits of doom and gloom are often criticized for being stopped clocks. Bound to be right, but just twice a day." Yet you both have never wavered from your prediction that this crash is coming.

Harry Dent: Well you know, the worst thing in history is to warn people about bubbles. They always go longer and higher, especially with central banks at this unprecedented level. So people keep saying, "Oh, Harry, your warning about something is not going to happen." I'm telling you this is going to happen. The bubble has gotten extreme. I have developed over the last 20, 30 years four key indicators. Just one of them is demographic, which allowed us to see the Japan collapse and the greatest boom in history in Europe, the United States, and the rest of the world at the same time. Nobody saw that. It allowed us to see the housing bubble peaking due to demographics and weakening. We've been able to see major trends, and sometimes that can be a little early and late, but we're never wrong about these because we're looking at predictable fundamentals.

Now what I see here, these four cycles, one of them is demographic, one of them is geopolitical. Nobody argued since 9/11 – we have nothing but bad geopolitical trends. That's going to continue for another five years before it gets better. Innovation trends and increased productivity, this comes in surges every 45 years. And a descennial boom bust cycle. All four of these cycles point down at the same time from mid-2014 to late 2019, early 2020. The only time that happened at that level was in 1930 to '34. The last Great Depression. So the bubble is getting extended. We see triggers.

I tell people literally if we do not see a major financial crisis the next four to five years, I am going to quit my profession and become a limo driver in Australia.

Tracy McCullough: Might be a little less stressful. Anything to add to that?

David Stockman: Yeah, a famous American economist once said anything that's unsustainable tends to stop. My argument is that we're at the stop point. The fed has been printing money like there's no tomorrow really for 25 years since Greenspan took over in 1987. They are now at the point where their balance sheet has become so bloated, so enormous that even the people running the fed are confused about what to do. They've painted themselves into a corner, and they're playing it by the day, and they're going to make a huge mistake. So the money printing thing is near an end.

Secondly, our political system has become totally non-functional. We have a lame duck president who can accomplish nothing, a congress that is totally paralyzed, meaning that before 2017 at the earliest, nothing will be done about our fiscal and entitlement explosion. Finally, the American people have believed falsely that all of this is going to work out. It's not going to. When they find out that the adults so called in Washington had no clue what they were doing, there is going to be a collapse of confidence, and that will flow into the system as well.

Tracy McCullough: So it seems like this bubble bursting is inevitable. How much time do we have? Is it years, months? How will we know? Are there some clues we can look into to make sure that we're prepared?

David Stockman: There's really no magic numbers here, but it's remarkable that these central bank driven bubbles tend to peak after about six years. The dot com bubble started really in mid-1994 with the famous Netscape IPO. It crashed in March 2000, six years. The housing bubble roughly started in 2002. It totally crashed in 2008. Six years. The meltdown on Wall Street bottomed in March 2009. Add six years. 2015. I think we're at the end of this bubble simply based on the fact that they can't expand forever. They reach an asymptotic peak, and then confidence is lost, a catalyst occurs, a black swan appears, the selling begins, and there's nothing under this market. There is no safety net under this market.

Tracy McCullough: Yeah, so the cycles happen, and in the past, we might have had a safety net, but now there's not even that left.

Harry Dent: But you know, real quickly, he's right. Bubbles don't last more than five to six years, and they can get burst because of a trigger like 2008, but the tech bubble, there was no trigger. There was no economic downturn. There was no disaster. It burst of its own extremes. Every bubble bursts. There are no exceptions in history.

Tracy McCullough: So are Americans truly on their own? Is there anything that can save us?

David Stockman: Yes, there are, and in the short run, that will be painful. There will be great dislocations, both in the financial markets and the real economy. But in the long run, that's a good thing. We have become so dependent on government, we have come to believe that the Federal Reserve drives the economy hour by hour, day by day. None of that is historically true. Real wealth, real prosperity comes from the sweat and from the enterprise and from the invention of people on Main Street, not the politicians on Wall Street who are on the central bank. So I think the big inflection point that we're facing is when the big crash comes, on the other side, maybe we can get back to the private enterprise system and the kind of family self-reliance and thrift and prudence that our prosperity was built on 40 years ago.

Harry Dent: Clearly, nobody is going to warn you about this. Last time, Ben Bernanke, economist, said, "Housing bubble is not a problem. Subprime crisis is not a problem." Next thing you know, we're in a total meltdown at the speed of light. Most of that crash happened in several months. I mean literally four, five, six months including oil. $147.00 to $32.00. Nobody is going to warn you. You're the only one that can save yourself here. As a business, if you hunker down now, I don't care how bad things get. Your competitors are going to fall faster than you. They say you don't have to outrun the bear. You have to outrun your friend.

That's the way. It's going to be a shakeout economy. Somebody is going to be left standing and do well. If you're a consumer, be nice to your boss, keep your job, develop income strains on the side if you can, and get your kids to do so as well. Develop income. You'll survive, and your financial assets, this is a bubble. Anybody who cashes out anywhere near the top is going to come out a huge winner, and when things fall 50, 60, 70, 80 percent, you're going to be the only one that can buy those assets at bargain prices and increase your wealth long-term again.

You can do plenty of things. You can actually prosper. That's the whole theme of our book, The Demographic Cliff, but you're going to have to do it. Your stock broker is not going to do it for you. Government isn't going to warn you. Nobody is going to protect you, and nobody is going to stop this bubble from bursting because every single one in history has burst, and this is one of the biggest.

Tracy McCullough: So preparation is going to be key.

Harry Dent: And preparation now. You can't wait for the signs. When the NASDAQ burst in early 2000, in just the first couple months, it dropped 40 percent, half of its whole two and a half year drop happened in the first couple months. The same in the early – in 1929, early '30s. The first crash was the most violent. If you wait until there's signs, it's too late. Better to get out a bit early than late when bubbles burst.

Tracy McCullough: I'm sure at this point you're wondering what you can do now to protect your assets when the collapse David and Harry are warning us about today arrives. Fortunately, thanks to their early alerts, we've been diligently working on a financial protection plan for quite some time, and this plan is vastly different from the government's false and misleading one. This one actually works.

And the good news is we're making this plan available to everyone watching today. Now let me be straight with you. It's not going to be easy to survive the times ahead, but there are steps you can take today to build a strong shield around your money so that it doesn't disappear as capitalism collapses all around us. And while our first mission is to make sure you hold onto what you have, we also want you to do better than to just tread water. That's why we'll show you several moves you can make today to take advantage of the few growth prospects that will remain when the stock market and the global economy plummets.

But I have to warn you, too, you can't delay. The time to start protecting your wealth is now, before David and Harry's warnings unfold. Surviving is all about being prepared. That's why you'll want to get your copy of our protection blueprint we call the Sundown Action Plan. As America faces the sundown of her economic golden years, this plan can help you hunker down and await the sunrise with your wealth safely intact. Now this whole process could take years, but you won't be alone. Here is what you'll receive with the plan. First off, we've had such a short amount of time to discuss David and Harry's warnings regarding this economic collapse that we'd like to send everyone watching today a free copy of David's blockbuster book The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America. It's on bookshelves today and selling for about $25.00, but in – this is important.


The version we're sending you is different than the one being sold in the stores. You won't find it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. You won't see it at the library. The only place you'll find this emergency edition updated with new information is right here with this special offer. While David's book is a brilliant analysis of US economy and documents and detail how the US government mismanaged us into this mess, David has penned an exclusive new chapter for you with brand new assessments on how fast we're approaching the collapse of free market economics and what this means for you, your family, your future wealth. You'll understand, perhaps for the first time, the full potential for this economic catastrophe. David, can you elaborate a little bit more about what you're going to tell us about in this special update?

David Stockman: Well in The Great Deformation, I said, "We're heading towards a day of reckoning. This isn't sustainable." It's happening in real time, and in the updates, what I try to do is focus on the catalyst events, the catalyzing forces that will warn us when we're really getting to the edge of the cliff.

That is the central banks. Japan's central bank is out of control. I watch that. It's important to know what happens there because if the great money printing debt experience in Japan finally fails, it's going to be noted in markets all around the world. I watch the ECB, European Central Bank. It is divided between Germans who want to try to maintain some semblance of some money and the rest of Europe that would like to print and drown themselves in debt as far as the eye can see. It's important to watch China, which is a giant house of cards, that's on the verge of collapse, and that will ricochet around the world in terms of the countries that supply it. Australia, Korea, the so-called emerging markets, and what it'll do to the theory, which I think is false that China is the engine of growth in the world, it is not. It is the biggest speculative disaster in human history.

So in the updates, what we try to do is keep our eye on this unfolding day of reckoning that I think is not that far down the road.

Tracy McCullough: Harry, you've been a huge supporter of David's analysis long before his book even came out. You both agree that an economic collapse is imminent. But Harry, you've taken these warnings a step further. In fact, you've put together an expert team of economic and investment researchers to develop our exclusive Sundown Action Plan so our viewers can take the necessary steps today to protect their hard earned wealth when the economy inevitably falls over that proverbial cliff. Harry, can you elaborate more on the research and solutions your team has discovered to help everyday folks shield their wealth from this disaster that's heading our way at what seems like increasing speed?

Harry Dent: The most important thing we do for investors especially and businesses, we have a four season model of the economy that's unique, alternating booms and busts generated by generations and demographics, and alternating cycles of inflation and deflation.

These two things tell you what's going to happen to the economy. We can predict both, but the most unique insight is simple. You have to have a different investment and/or business strategy in each season. The booms are different. The '50s and '60s boom was nothing like the bubble boom of the '90s and the 2000s. The inflationary recession of the '70s is nothing like the deflationary downturn we had in the '30s that we'll see here. So we do research and say, "Here is the investments and the strategies that work in these seasons." We don't have one strategy like most investment strategies or financial advisors. We have a strategy for each season, and the ones that are most unique is this winter season that we're in with deflation and the bubbles bursting.

Tracy McCullough: Thank you, Harry. To help our viewers prepare, the team at Dent Research is offering exclusively today two special and just published research reports. The first research report is called Sundown Investing: Four Strategies to Prosper in the Inevitable Crisis Ahead. The purpose of this report is to prepare you for this very real crisis, what we call sundown in America. This crisis is shaping up to be the most disruptive and potentially dangerous event in our lifetime, but this report, Sundown Investing, isn't about fear. It's about protection and opportunity.


It's about panic proofing your life for the years ahead. That's because in this report, you'll discover the two best safe havens to hide your money as the stock market suffers the most spectacular crash you'll ever see. Every stock will suffer, so where do you put your money to shield your wealth and protect your family? You'll find the answer in this report. It reveals two assets that are a must for your portfolio in the deflationary years. During the last great depression, one asset returned 75 percent in total gains. The second asset returned 108 percent. People who heeded the warnings and took action before the crash doubled their money during the worst economic failure in our country. The crisis that's coming may very well dwarf the depression years of the 1930s. But you don't have to suffer. Not when you have this actionable research at your fingertips.

In addition to this safe haven strategy, the report also outlines three more investing strategies and the exact investments to target. That'll allow you to prosper in the sundown years ahead. With this report as your guide, you will also be able to take sure and steady steps to preserve and grow your wealth as the rest of the public is wiped out. And to bullet proof your portfolio, Dent Research is also offering a second investment research report called Ten Stocks to Dump Now Before the Sundown. The number one investing rule that so many people sadly forget is simple – don't lose money. Many industries will suffer, even collapse during the deflationary crisis as prices and profits plummet. In the second report, you'll get a list of the highest risk industries and stocks you may already own that you'll want to dump now.

The time for profits on these future losers is now before sundown, so you'll want to act fast. These are two reports you can't face the uncertain future without. So as a part of the Sundown Action Plan, we'd like to rush you copies of David's book, The Great Deformation, plus his unpublished chapter, The New Government Lies Rushing the Coming Collapse. This will give you the deep background and big picture understanding of the economic destruction about to hit America.


But remember, that's only the first part of the Sundown Action Plan. Next is to examine your investments and make the smart decisions to protect and prosper during the dark days ahead. That's why we are also going to send you absolutely free two new special reports from Dent Research. Sundown Investing: Four Strategies to Prosper in the Inevitable Crisis Ahead and Ten Stocks to Dump Now Before Sundown.

So David, Harry, what's one last thought you want to leave our viewers with that will help them prepare for this sundown in America?

David Stockman: Well, the crisis is unfolding by the day. It is not too late to start preparing right no. Now is the time to begin to save if you can and minimize your outlays for unnecessary luxuries. This is going to be a devastating crisis, and people will be happy down the road if they take the steps to prepare today.

Harry Dent: My final thought would be bubbles. Human beings are the smartest species on earth by far, but we are dumber than toads when it comes to understanding bubbles. We never see them. People warn against them. We never believe them, and it's because it's a high. When your stocks are going up for no reason, you're making money sitting and your stocks are going up. Your house is going up for no good reason. You're able to borrow, get a mortgage for three percent instead of six to seven percent. It's a high. Nobody wants it to end, so we go into denial.

I spent a whole chapter in my book, a whole chapter, just looking at every major bubble in history. They always go exponential, which this is long done. They always burst twice as fast as they go exponential, and people get slaughtered every time. They just don't see it, and almost no economist is warning about this. Politicians definitely not. Stockbrokers never. You can't listen to the experts here. You have to understand bubbles. If it looks like a bubble, quacks like a bubble, it's a bubble. I go and lay this bubble – we've seen from 2009 into 2014, early 2015, over the past great bubble, the tech bubble. It lays almost exactly. It looks like a bubble, therefore it is. People say this time it's different. It is always different, but they always crash. It doesn't matter what causes the bubble, as David said earlier. Nothing can go up exponential forever without dying of its own extremes. So understand bubbles and realize – just look at this. If it looks like a bubble, it's a bubble. Protect yourself because they crash twice as fast as they build. Fear runs faster than greed is my motto.

Tracy McCullough: David Stockman, Harry Dent, thank you for appearing on our program today. I'm sure what you had to say was not easy for people to hear, but thanks to you, they'll have a short window of time to prepare for the economic catastrophe that lies ahead. The dangers loom large. While it's difficult to pinpoint the exact moment of the collapse, we do know that free markets and capitalism are in a tailspin. We know sundown's impact is coming, and it's better to be prepared now instead of waiting when it's too late to save yourself. To help protect your family, your wealth for what could be years of hardship, we'd like to send you a free copy of our Sundown Action Plan today. Start music here

It includes David Stockman's New York Times bestseller The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, David's exclusive new chapter The New Government Lies: Rushing the Coming Collapse, Dent Research's newest special report, Sundown Investing: Four Strategies to Prosper in the Inevitable Crisis Ahead, plus a second free special report, Ten Stocks to Dump Now Before Sundown. Simply click on the link below to claim your exclusive Sundown Action Plan.

I strongly urge you to act without delay. As you've heard today from two of the leading experts on the subject, there isn't much time to prepare.

You only have a short window to safely and comfortably get your family through the destructive years ahead with an action plan to insulate your wealth. When you click on the link below, you'll also discover how you can receive timely ongoing information and support during this highly fluid situation to safeguard your wealth no matter what happens. You'll always be informed of the best profit opportunities and safe havens as the crisis unfolds. In order to survive, you must be prepared, so please, click the link below or call 1-800-507-9382 and mention Promocode EBNBRA04 to learn how to receive your free Sundown Action Plan today.

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Oregon college shooting is all the more reason to carry a gun

The Roseburg Gun Shop
The Roseburg Gun Shop in Roseburg, Oregon. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian
Rory Carroll in Roseburg, Oregon
@rorycarroll72
Friday 2 October 2015 18.06 EDT Last modified on Friday 2 October 2015 19.41 EDT

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The deadliest mass killing in the state’s history had taken place a few miles away and to the staff and customers of the Roseburg Gun Shop it was clear they faced a grave threat – from Barack Obama.

Authorities had just discovered a cache of 13 weapons possessed by the shooter, Chris Harper Mercer, but the man they feared was thousands of miles away in the White House, plotting, as they saw it, to confiscate their weapons and leave them defenceless.

“I’ve just ordered some more ARs,” said the owner, Candi Kinney, referring to assault rifles. “There’s always a rush on them after a big shooting. We can’t keep the stuff on the shelves.”

A lifesize cardboard cutout of the president with an Arab keffiyeh scarf stood at the door with a mocking sign: “Gun salesman of the year.”

A sign in the Roseburg Gun Shop.
A sign in the Roseburg Gun Shop. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian
The fact that this shooting had happened not in Aurora, or Columbine, or Sandy Hook, but up the road at Umpqua community college, leaving 10 dead and shocking this rural Oregon community, seemed all the more reason to stockpile and carry guns.

“They need to leave us our guns and go after the lunatics,” said Ray Lee, 61, a retired diesel mechanic cruising the aisles of rifles and handguns.

Tanner Langdon, 39, shopping for a holster for the 9mm wedged in his jeans, said the massacre would have been averted if the victims had been armed. “A whole different outcome.” He patted his gun. “I refuse to be a victim.”

While gun control advocates hope the president’s blistering response to Roseburg’s tragedy will prompt reform, Roseburg hopes it will produce more armed citizens.

Interviews with almost a dozen residents on Friday yielded unanimity – even in the queue of people lining up to donate blood at a tent set up downtown. “Obama sucks, he’s stupid,” said Chris Allen, 43, a mill worker. “If criminals want to get guns they’ll get guns.” Allen had lost a brother to gun violence – a separate tragedy which only steeled his pro-gun resolve.

“Make this a gun-free zone and you paint a target on us,” said one elderly man, a laptop shopper at Staples who declined to give his name. “Criminals will come here because they’ll know no one will damn well shoot back at them.”

The fact Mercer had legally acquired an arsenal – he passed background checks – and had no criminal record before murdering nine people and wounding 10 more dented residents’ passion for gun rights not a bit. It was an armed police officer, after all, who cornered and fatally shot Mercer, ending his rampage.

Oregon allows permit-holders to carry concealed weapons but Umpqua college did not, leaving staff and students vulnerable – and now Obama wanted to do the same to all Americans, said Del Appelgarth, who works at the Roseburg Gun Shop. “He wants to control everything, leave us defenceless. What he said was a slap in the face.”

The defiant commitment to gun rights after Roseburg contrasted with other massacres in Aurora, Tucson and Santa Barbara, which immediately produced grieving victims demanding greater gun control.

Douglas county sheriff John Hanlin set the tone by standing by a 2013 letter to vice-president Joe Biden saying stricter firearm regulations would be an “indisputable insult to the American people”.

Jason Gray, an anaestheologist at Mercy Medical Center, which received 10 wounded, said the main difference between road accident trauma and gunshot trauma was that gunshots penetrated.

Many of the wounded suffered multiple wounds, he said. One died in the emergency room. “Call it luck or the grace of God but millimetres can make the difference between walking out of here, or not.”

The profile of Mercer that emerged was of a troubled loner. The 26-year-old lived with his mother in an apartment a few miles from the college.

In a blogpost appearing to be by Mercer, the author described Vester Flanagan - who killed two US journalists live on air in August - as a man who “wanted the world to see his actions” before adding: “Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”

A neighbour, Bronte Hart, said he lived upstairs and would “sit by himself in the dark in the balcony with this little light”.

Mercer’s stepsister, Carmen Nesnick, expressed shock and confusion over her stepbrother’s role in the attack, telling reporters he was a “nice guy”.

“All he ever did was put everyone before himself,” said Nesnick, who lives in California, where Mercer lived before moving to Oregon. “He wanted everyone to be happy.”

In the aftermath of the rampage, harrowing details emerged of the scene inside the classroom. Witnesses said the gunman demanded to know students’ religion before shooting them.

Hannah Miles, a 19-year-old freshman who had been in her writing class when her teacher got a call from security saying the school was in lockdown, said she heard gunshots from a neighbouring classroom.

“There was a huge pop. It sounded like a ruler smacking against a chalkboard. Everyone jumped and we didn’t know what was going on. Then there was another one,” Miles told reporters. She was eventually evacuated by police from the locked classroom.

Seven weapons were recovered at Mercer’s home, in addition to the six weapons that were recovered on the campus, Celinez Nunez, of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), told reporters during a Friday morning press briefing. A bulletproof jacket and five extra magazines were also recovered at the scene.

All 13 weapons were purchased legally by the shooter or a family member in the last three years, Nunez said, as a national debate reignited over long languishing gun control reforms. The Douglas County Sheriff’s department said on Twitter that investigators recovered five pistols and one rifle from the crime scene.

Sheriff Hanlin said during the press conference that officials were still working to notify victims next-of-kin and said the medical examiner’s office was expected to release their names and brief biographies Friday afternoon.

Hanlin has refused to name the gunman out of deference to the victims and their families, and chastised the media for reporting his name, saying it “glorified” a murderer.

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Alternative to Feinstein bill protects desert
By Rep. Paul Cook
Posted Oct 3, 2015 at 5:31 PM
Updated Oct 3, 2015 at 5:34 PM

Those of us who live in the Mojave Desert and surrounding areas often encounter a prejudice that we care little about the environment. I know that to be unequivocally false. Conservative, moderate, or liberal, almost every rural resident I know appreciates nature and its amazing economic, recreational and ecological qualities. I know that local residents must be in the driver’s seat when the future of our desert is at stake.
Last October, President Obama used the Antiquities Act and signed an executive order declaring the San Gabriel National Forest a national monument. Originally, the Antiquities Act was designed to protect historic landmarks and structures situated on federal land. Presidents have abused this power creating massive monuments. (A recently created monument in Nevada totals 704,000 acres.)
I opposed the San Gabriel National Monument designation because the creation process occurred behind closed doors, and there was little opportunity for local residents to provide input. Save for the commendable efforts by our San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and others to push back the monument boundary to Los Angeles County, the creation of this monument was an unmitigated disaster, angering nearly every party involved. In fact, I first saw a map of the finalized boundaries not in October when the president created the monument, but the following February when it was published in a local newspaper. Frighteningly, it appears the president is once again considering executive action to create new monuments in San Bernardino County.
Earlier this year, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced the California Desert Conservation and Recreation Act (CDCRA), a wide-ranging proposal with five congressionally designated Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) areas, pristine wilderness areas, and — among other items — a 965,000-acre Mojave Trails National Monument on federal land to the south of the existing Mojave National Preserve.
However, with a Republican-controlled Congress, some proponents of CDCRA are urging President Obama to create this monument through the Antiquities Act. In short, the process would be turned over to unaccountable bureaucrats, most of which don’t live, work or recreate in the very areas they will transform.
I do not support Feinstein’s CDCRA, but I believe her bill should have a hearing in the Senate and be considered on its merit. If the senator is encountering resistance to her proposal in Congress, altering her proposal seems a reasonable solution

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Those of us who live in the Mojave Desert and surrounding areas often encounter a prejudice that we care little about the environment. I know that to be unequivocally false. Conservative, moderate, or liberal, almost every rural resident I know appreciates nature and its amazing economic, recreational and ecological qualities. I know that local residents must be in the driver’s seat when the future of our desert is at stake.
Last October, President Obama used the Antiquities Act and signed an executive order declaring the San Gabriel National Forest a national monument. Originally, the Antiquities Act was designed to protect historic landmarks and structures situated on federal land. Presidents have abused this power creating massive monuments. (A recently created monument in Nevada totals 704,000 acres.)
I opposed the San Gabriel National Monument designation because the creation process occurred behind closed doors, and there was little opportunity for local residents to provide input. Save for the commendable efforts by our San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and others to push back the monument boundary to Los Angeles County, the creation of this monument was an unmitigated disaster, angering nearly every party involved. In fact, I first saw a map of the finalized boundaries not in October when the president created the monument, but the following February when it was published in a local newspaper. Frighteningly, it appears the president is once again considering executive action to create new monuments in San Bernardino County.
Earlier this year, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced the California Desert Conservation and Recreation Act (CDCRA), a wide-ranging proposal with five congressionally designated Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) areas, pristine wilderness areas, and — among other items — a 965,000-acre Mojave Trails National Monument on federal land to the south of the existing Mojave National Preserve.
However, with a Republican-controlled Congress, some proponents of CDCRA are urging President Obama to create this monument through the Antiquities Act. In short, the process would be turned over to unaccountable bureaucrats, most of which don’t live, work or recreate in the very areas they will transform.
I do not support Feinstein’s CDCRA, but I believe her bill should have a hearing in the Senate and be considered on its merit. If the senator is encountering resistance to her proposal in Congress, altering her proposal seems a reasonable solution.

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ObamaCare & a fuck you from Obama!
​Hawaii insurers Kaiser, HMSA, get OK to increase insurance rates by roughly 30%
Hawaii’s largest insurers will increase individual rates by approximately 30 percent in 2016, according to the state insurance division. Click to see which carriers are planning which increases

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Trump will stop this behavior!
LOCAL CALIFORNIA
Farmworkers find a bumper crop of squalor in Coachella Valley trailer parks
St. Anthony's trailer park
At St. Anthony's trailer park in Mecca, the nonprofit Pueblo Unido stepped in as owner to make improvements, but residents are frustrated with the slow progress. Above, Aaron Gonzalez, 11, tosses a football. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Paloma Esquivel Paloma EsquivelContact Reporter
THERMAL, Calif. — When five farmworker families pooled their money to build the Don Jose Mobile Home Park on a plot of dusty land here, they knew little about building permits.

So they jury-rigged almost everything: Electricity was tapped from a post meant to power one well, the dirt road was covered in rugs to keep down the choking dust.


Twenty years later, some things have improved. But the park is still without permits. Its 55 residents live in aging trailers and cope with prolonged power outages. Their dirt road turns to pools of mud when it rains.

But its manicured lawns, whitewashed iron gate and carefully tended rose bushes signal that despite its flaws, it is home.


This part of the Coachella Valley, with its abundant agricultural fields, is dotted with unpermitted mobile home parks, housing thousands of farmworkers in dozens of tiny neighborhoods that were never designed to be permanent.

See the most-read stories this hour >>
What to do about them has long vexed county officials. There have been attempts to shut the worst ones. But as one county official said, "there's just too many, quite simply," to start closing them down — and, crucially, not enough alternative low-cost housing.

Now, county officials along with some non-profits are working to give some permanence to this makeshift housing, with projects like paving roads and making permits easier to get.

But each is costly and complicated, and long-term fixes — such as connecting parks to regional sewer and water lines — seem far out of reach.

"How long has it been like this, since the '60s?" asked Michele Hasson, a local organizer for a non-profit group that works with low-income communities. "It's like the abyss of the Valley. We get left out of the California dream."

Exactly how many unpermitted parks are in the region is difficult to determine, but there are dozens if not more than 100, county officials and activits say.

Safety problems and lack of infrastructure can be overwhelming. Tap water, taken from wells, is sometimes tainted by arsenic and unsafe levels of cancer-causing chromium 6. Power outages are common, sewage systems are frequently inadequate and trailers often crowded and crumbling.

Because of this, some advocates say it's best to start fresh with new housing. But resources are scarce.

Three years ago, the 181-unit Mountain View Estates — featuring tidy homes with modern amenities, a soccer field and playground — was opened to house the residents of Duroville, a squalid mobile home park that was closed by a federal judge.

"You would think, if we could just replicate the model for building a 181-unit park elsewhere that would be ideal," said John Aguilar, deputy director of the Riverside County Housing Authority.

But the project cost about $28 million, cobbled together with "multiple layers" of grant funding, including redevelopment money (which no longer exists), federal funds and a developer's investment. Residents of such parks typically pay $150 to $400 a month in rent.

"It's just really, really difficult … to build parks of that size again," Aguilar said.

Sergio Carranza, executive director of the nonprofit Pueblo Unido Community Development Corp., said a better model is to invest to help residents and owners bring parks up to code.

Some owners are slumlords who don't care to fix their properties, he said. But in his experience, many more are low-wage farmworkers who simply don't have the means or know-how to comply with complicated regulations.

"These families with the little income they have as farmworkers have managed to invest in land and mobile homes, but they never got assistance to properly do it," he said. "There is no question that they want to do improvements."

Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >>

Heidi Marshall, director of the county housing authority, said Riverside County has changed its approach to unpermitted parks. In 2000, allegations that the county was targeting Latino-owned and occupied parks for closure resulted in a $21-million settlement to improve farmworker housing, most of which was used to build three housing projects and a service center.

"The shutting-them-down approach, I think, was something that was done because that's what the laws required, instead of having an overall approach that would truly help both the county achieve its goals and the families have affordable housing," she said. "I think we're on the right path now."

Since last year, the county has taken steps to improve conditions for people living in existing parks.

To address one of the biggest problems — prolonged outages caused by makeshift power systems — officials authorized the use of temporary construction power lines to return power.

The county has also undertaken a $3.4-million project to pave dirt roads at 35 parks.

This year, the county will make standardized designs for septic, electric, water and fire-suppression systems available to small park owners. The plans, which would create something of a blueprint for permits, eliminate the need for each owner to hire engineers and streamline a part of the permitting process that many found overwhelming.

"We kind of all seized on the idea that if we had a standard plan, or a cookbook, to make this work, that would allow these owners to allow the process to move forward," said Bob Lyman, regional office manager for the Riverside County Transportation & Land Management Agency.

But even with the changes, fixes are expensive and difficult.

This summer, residents of the neglected Shady Lane Mobilehome Park in Thermal, teamed up with students at UC Irvine School of Law and the legal services group California Rural Legal Assistance Inc. to launch an online campaign to raise $225,000 to buy the park from its owner so they can make improvements.

The park, which houses 34 farmworkers and their families, has dilapidated homes and frequent outages. Water shutdowns are common, and septic systems often overflow.

With four days left in its online campaign, the group had raised only $6,587.

At St. Anthony's Park, which has more than 100 trailers in Mecca, Pueblo Unido, the nonprofit, stepped in as owner to make improvements, but with changes coming slowly, many are frustrated.

Carranza said the group simply doesn't have the money to make changes faster. State and federal funds for a $3.2-million project to connect the park to a regional sewer line, set to begin construction next year, took years to secure, he said.

At Don Jose park, the needs are great: This summer, a storm cut power to the park, leaving residents without electricity for four days while some slept in tents to escape suffocating triple-digit heat. The same storm knocked the roof off one aging trailer, and its owner can't afford to replace it.

Even so, there are signs of improvement. County workers recently flattened the dirt road to prepare it for paving, which should be complete in the next few weeks. And residents are determined to finally get permits.

Carranza, who is helping the families, believes the process will cost $75,000 to $125,000, which includes, among other costs, installation of a fire-suppression system, electrical upgrades and a contractor to oversee the work. Already they have paid thousands in back payments for things such as electricity.

The costs are impossible to pay without help, Cervera said. So the families are hoping they can get access to low-cost loans or grants.

There was a time, residents said, when they thought they might get kicked off the land. But projects such as the paving make them think that threat has passed.

Now, Cervera said, "there's got to be some help for those of us who want to make things right."

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com

Twitter: @palomaesquivel

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10-6 “Affordability”??? Housing is more “UNAFFORDABLE” then ever before…
by MARK on OCTOBER 6, 2015
Those who think this housing market is “affordable” have little knowledge or respect for recent housing market history, or are trying to sell you something.



Last Friday, Doug Yearly, CEO of Toll Bros, as an hour-long guest on CNBC, was asked about the “health” of the housing market by the Home Depot CEO, Craig Menear.

Reflexively, Doug responded as if Craig was inquiring about “prices” and said, ‘house prices are mostly back to 2006 levels, some places are higher, some are almost there’.

Then, Craig said, “Uh, I am more interested in construction than prices”.

To that, Doug responded, “Four years in, and given how bad the depression of 2007 was, I would have thought construction would have been far more along given how much more affordable houses are today”. (Note, this quote is not exact, but it’s taken from my written notes and close)

This interchange was classic and highlights the disconnect between Wall Street’s new found exuberance for everything housing-related and what’s really happening in the field, both on an absolute basis and relative to prior “recoveries” and strong housing markets, which were led by construction, not surging prices like this time around.

Put simply, house prices surging higher, leading a housing market plagued with pitiful demand is something totally unique to “this” housing market “recovery”. And based on my research and experience, this is not what a “durable recovery with escape velocity” is made of.

In the days of “anything goes”, NINJA financing caused housing prices to lurch higher, which forced people rush in and buy, which in turn pushed prices higher, thus increasing volume more, and so on. But, when it comes to the new-era, end-user buyer that can’t happen any longer, as buyers actually have to fundamentally “qualify” for the mortgage for which they apply.

However, when it comes to institutional and foreign buyers from 2012 to present, that’s exactly what happened – an exact replay of 2003 to 2007 when unorthodox demand with unorthodox capital would pay any price it took to hit the bid – which makes the ultimate hand-off to the end-user all the more painful and volatile.

In short, end-users today are being handed a red, hot-potato market already in a bubble larger than 2006.

Doug’s response clearly confirms a point I have been making for a long time now; that the most recent upturn in housing “was” nothing more than a liquidity and unorthodox capital driven “demandless house price recovery”, unlike from 2003 to 2007 when volume and prices surged.

In fact, in retrospect, 2003 to 2007 looks solidly fundamental when comparing the data side-by-side with 2012 to 2015.



“Affordability”

Additionally, Doug’s “talking point” on “affordability” shows me that exactly like from 2005 through 2007, the builders are only looking at the data they need to in order to justify building more houses, which is the only way they get paid, and discarding the rest.

Hearing Doug rave about “affordability” tells me that builders don’t understand, or are not factoring into their assumptions, housing market history. That’s because – even with “30-year fixed rate” mortgages at record low rates – houses are more “unaffordable” today than they ever have been, as shown in the following charts comparing the contemporary cost to buy a house vs 2004 and 2006/07 periods.



Item 1) BUILDER “Affordability” Comparisons 2015 vs 2006/07 and 2004

Bottom line: The data in the chart below show that to buy the average priced BUILDER house today, using the popular mortgage loan programs of each era, the incremental buyer will pay 38% more per month and need to earn 76% more per year to “afford” to buy a house priced only 15% greater. This is “in spite of” rates being at 4% vs 6% in 2006.

Understanding these data…

This chart is as apples-to-apples as it gets, as it shows what the incremental buyer in each era could really afford to buy on a monthly payment basis. It’s clear that prices today are wildly “unaffordable” relative to 2004 to 2008.

Think about it…see the data…if since 2006/07 builder prices are up 14%, it costs 38% more on a monthly payment basis, you need 76% more income to qualify for a loan, and wages are more/less flat…if 2006/07 was a bubble, then this is a mega-bubble.

Aug 15 builder afford comp1

In order to buy the average priced builder house, the incremental buyer using today’s 30-year fixed mortgage and putting down 20%, which is a stretch, must earn $59,100 which is 76% more than in 2006, when buyers had several, legitimate choices of high-leverage loans making “buying” a house the most “affordable on record by a wide margin.

builder afford sept 2015 chart



Item 2) RESALE “Affordability” Comparisons 2015 vs 2006/07 and 2004

Bottom line: The data in the chart below show that to buy the average RESALE house today, using the popular mortgage loan programs of each era, the incremental buyer will pay 26% more per month and need to earn 61% more per year to “afford” to buy a house priced only 1% greater. This is “in spite of” rates being at 4% vs 6% in 2006.

Understanding these data…

This chart is as apples-to-apples as it gets, as it shows what the incremental buyer in each era could really afford to buy on a monthly payment basis. It’s clear that prices today are wildly “unaffordable” relative to 2004 to 2008.

Think about it…see the data…if since 2006/07 builder prices are up 1%, it costs 26% more on a monthly payment basis, you need 61% more income to qualify for a loan, and wages are more/less flat…if 2006/07 was a bubble, then this is a mega-bubble.

RESALE AFFORD COMP

In order to buy the average priced builder house, the incremental buyer using today’s 30-year fixed mortgage and putting down 20%, which is a stretch, must earn $50,100 which is 61% more than in 2006, when buyers had several, legitimate choices of high-leverage loans making “buying” a house the most “affordable on record by a wide margin.

resale affordability Spet 2015



Item 3) First-Time Buyers; a fundamentally weak demand cohort, which is carrying the weight of the entire housing market on its shoulders

Despite what people think, first-time buyer demand is thin, transitory and on an absolute basis isn’t very healthy, in spite of the deceivingly sharp y/y increase that has more to do with the response of much lower mortgages y/y than durable, underlying, fundamental demand.

Bottom line: First-timer demand last year was so rotten, this year was an easy comp, especially on the heels of plunging rates…First-timers still have a long way to go to even match the Homebuyer tax credit of 2009/10 and pre-Twist levels of 2011 and early 2012.

FIRST TIME SHARE OF TOTAL MO RESALES

The first-timer cohort was responsible for 100% of the August y/y resale volume gains, meaning other important cohort demand, investors and end-user move-up buyer, is stagnant.

first timer resale volume

Builder Names: Despite what I considering a “weak foundation” and “unfundamental recovery”, with 10s back at ~2%, I can’t bet against builders and other housing-related names in Q4, especially after the performance issues in Q3. Names that I have always liked on dips -– small cap builder that build small price tag houses – are likely to do well with a backdrop of 30-year rates in the 3%’s and should be relatively insulated against the recent, global financial market volatility. However, larger cap builders that build high price tag houses, which have held up much better than their small cap counterparts, are at risk of a larger demand drop-off related to the high-volatility in financial markets.

Thanks,

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Where is the worst traffic in the world?
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Last updated 16:12 09/10/2015

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Vehicles are seen stuck in a traffic jam near a toll station as people return home at the end of a week-long national day holiday, in Beijing, China.CHINA DAILY
We'd all prefer not to waste our lives stuck in traffic, but in some cities it's unavoidable (unless you own a helicopter).

In New Zealand, while not really comparable to the crazy queues of other countries, we still get a little bit of buildup.

The Auckland Harbour Bridge has the busiest vehicle count, with about 160,000 vehicles crossing it every day. Further south, the next highest rate is the Wellington Urban Motorway between Ngauranga and Aotea Quay - at 90,000 vehicles a day.

Crashes or extreme weather cause the most disruptions on our roads, says the NZ Transport Agency. Oh, and the holidays (cue groaning over Labour weekend lines).

But, in comparison with Hong Kong's 50-lane gridlock 'carmageddon', we look pretty good, right?

So if you're heading overseas, here are some other places you'd be wise to plan ahead in:

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL

It's the worst on a Friday evening. The line-up of vehicles reaches 180 kilometres on average, reported the BBC - going up to 285km on a bad day.

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In a city of 11 million people, traffic jams have just become part of the culture. Many richer commuters prefer to helicopter to work, where landing pads are at the top of a lot of the buildings in the city centre.

Rio de Janeiro is similar for traffic woes.

LONDON, ENGLAND

Have another cuppa tea before grabbing your car keys in London. Motorists wasted up to 96 hours of their lives stuck in gridlock in the city last year, according to the INRIX traffic scorecard report.

The 16km stretch of the motorway from Rosehill Roundabout to the New King's Road was pinpointed as the most congested road, costing drivers 139 hours a year.

ISTANBUL, TURKEY

According to TomTom's annual traffic index, commuters in the Turkish metropolitan experience the worst traffic congestion in the world.

"The average 30 minute drive in the city will take over an hour during evening rush hour, leading to an extra 125 hours wasted stuck in traffic every year," the navigation company reported.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, US

Home to the Hollywood stars, but not so glamorous to get through. A 30 minute trip through the city can double during peak hour

The City of Angels ranked first on the TomTom's top hundred US cities.

PARIS, FRANCE

Home to the craziest roundabout in Europe, the romantic city is also known for its murderous traffic.

The 10 lanes of chaos around the Arc de Triomphe in particular has seen many crashes.

A local Parisian told The Financial Times that a 35 minute trip can take up to two hours in weekday congestion.

Holiday time also causes big delays on the roads out of Paris, with vacationers caught in 600km worth of queuing around Paris in July last year.

HONOLULU, USA

This island paradise becomes a nightmare in peak hour.

The waiting time was so bleak that the Hawaiian city came dead last when it came to overall driver satisfaction, according to data from the navigation app Waze.

HISTORIC TRAFFIC JAMS

Bethel, New York, US

The year was 1969 and a legendary music festival was born - Woodstock.

500,000 people descended on Max Yasgur's farm causing major congestion for more than 32 kilometres.

Eventually a lot of drivers abandoned their cars to join the crowd revelling in the three days of peace and music.

East/West Germany

Eager to connect with family and friends after the Berlin Wall came down, hysteria to get on the roads only ended up in a huge hold-up.

The ensuing record-breaking backup on April 12, 1990 was estimated at a whopping 18 million cars on a roadway that otherwise averaged a half million vehicles a day, reported Forbes.

Texas, Houston, US

With Hurricane Rita on the way and residents advised to leave, as many as 2.5 million people packing to get out.

The result was a 160km line on the interstate. Drivers were stuck for as long as 24 hours.

Beijing, China

In 2010, construction slowed the Beijing-Tibet freeway causing a back-up of vehicles for 100km.

But in Beijing, this was an opportunity. Out came the vendors, selling noodles and drinks to the frustrated drivers (for four times the price, according to Gizmodo).

No use being mad on an empty stomach.

- Stuff

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7 Comments

AJ01
Jakarta!
Reply +1

DennisBloodnock
Waze rates Manila City as the worst on Earth based on a global collection of data from over 50 million users in 32 countries using a grading system from a 10 (satisfying) to 1 (miserable) - Metro Manila got 0.4.
I know this for a fact because I commute twice a day through the chaos - a 8 Km trip can take 45 minutes ( a very rare exceptionally good day) to over 4 and 1/2 hours.....
Reply 0

YouAreWrong
Makes you appreciate how much better life is here - especially if you don't live in one of the main cities.
Reply +2

Rick
So, someone on the internet sees a photo of a stretch of concrete with no lane markings, and speedbumps every few metres, and they count approx. 50 cars across its width and declare that this is a "50 lane highway"... and every news service runs the same story about the apocalyptic traffic jam on China's "50 lane highway".
Of course, there are no 50 lane highways anywhere in the world. This is obviously a special waiting area in front of these toll booths. And none of the stories even ask the important question - how LONG is the traffic jam, not how wide. The photos used show maybe 300 metres length the waiting area. That is not really much of a traffic jam if that's all there is to it.
Reply 0

cluffy
No traffic at Takapau where we live. If you live in Auckland and most stories, come out of here as there is nobody living south of the Bombay Hills. We laugh at your traffic, move to the provinces folks for a slower pace of life
Reply +1

Bazzle
traffic is killing you slowly
Reply +1

BarryReid
None of the above - it is Manila, by far. : http://www.gman­etwork.com/news­/story/539084/n­ews/nation/waze­-metro-manila-h­as-worst-traffi­c-on-earth
Reply 0



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Calculated Risk
Finance and Economics
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Goldman: Expects Participation Rate to decline 0.25% per year, Unemployment Rate to below 4.5%
A few excerpts from a research piece by Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle: What We Have Here Is a Failure to Participate
[W] now expect the participation rate to fall by about 0.2-0.25pp per year. The main reasons for the forecast change are that we have flattened the slope of the upward trend in participation rates for older workers and will see a smaller boost from declines in the now-lower stock of discouraged workers in the future. This implies that a given amount of GDP growth will put more downward pressure on the unemployment rate than we previously estimated, and we now expect the rate to fall below 4½% in coming years even as growth slows toward a trend rate. Exhibit 10 shows our new forecast paths.
Click on graph for larger image.

This graph from Goldman Sachs shows their projection for the labor force participation rate on the left. Goldman expects the participation rate to decline from the current 62.4% to around 61.8% in 2018. Most of the expected decline over the next few years will be from retirement.

Note: Economist at the BLS expect the participation rate to continue to decline for the next couple of decades due to demographics.

The right side of the graph shows Goldman's forecast for the unemployment rate (previous forecast and revision).

Goldman expects the unemployment rate to decline to around 4.6% at the end of 2016, and to see further decline in 2017 and 2018.
Bill McBride at 10/11/2015 11:36:00 AM

1 comment:

HotIrr1:30 PM
WtF!!!,61.8% work participation rate! Without Trump as President, USA will become as lazy & stupid as Africa & Central America! We are Doomed!!! USA will be as violent as North Africa & The Muslim countries!!!

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resident Vladimir Putin on Tuesday slammed Washington for refusing to share intelligence with Russia on Syria, and accusing it of muddled thinking.

"I believe some of our partners simply have mush for brains," Putin said, expressing some of his strongest criticism yet of Washington's handling of the Syrian crisis.

Late last month Moscow launched a bombing campaign in Syria, saying it needed to target Islamic State jihadists before they cross into Russia, which has a large Muslim population.

But Washington and its allies slammed Russia's intervention in the conflict, saying Moscow was also targeting Western-backed moderate rebels and sought to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad.


"Now, we often hear that our pilots are striking the wrong targets, not IS," Putin said at an investment forum in Moscow explaining that Russia had asked Washington to provide a list of targets.

But Washington declined.

"'No, we are not ready for this' was the answer," Putin quoted them as saying.

"Then we thought again and asked another question: then tell us where we should not strike. No answer too," he said, adding: "That is not a joke. I did not make this up."

"How is it possible to work together?" he asked.

"I think some of our partners simply have mush for brains, they do not have a clear understanding of what really happens in the country and what goals they are seeking to achieve."

Russia notified the U.S. and the European Union in advance “out of respect” that it intended to begin airstrikes against Islamic State and other militants in Syria, Putin said at an annual conference organized by VTB Capital in Moscow on Tuesday. This showed Russia’s ready to cooperate on Syria, while nobody ever warned the authorities in Moscow about their operations, he said.

Russia’s military intervention “has changed the whole dynamic of the situation,” though it must not distract from efforts to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis, Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy on Syria, said at talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.


Putin’s colorful phrase, normally used to describe someone as confused, to characterize relations with the U.S. and its allies on Syria comes amid deep tensions over the Russian bombing campaign and cruise-missile strikes that began Sept. 30. The EU demanded on Monday that Russia stop targeting moderate groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter warned that Russia’s actions “will have consequences” and the bombing“will only inflame” Syria’s four- year civil war.

Putin said Russia’s military and the U.S.-led coalition that’s also conducting missions over Syria are cooperating on air force communications and using friend-or-foe systems to avoid incidents. Russia proposed high-level talks in Moscow and is ready to send a large delegation to Washington to discuss a resolution of the Syrian crisis, he said.

‘No Answer’

Russia “received no answer” when it asked its international partners to provide information on terrorist targets in Syria, or to say at least where its planes shouldn’t bomb, Putin said.

U.S. air drops of weapons and ammunition intended for the Syrian Free Army, which is fighting Assad’s regime, could end up in the hands of Islamic State instead, Putin said.


Russia’s very concerned at efforts by some states to delay the formation of a wider coalition against terrorists in Syria, Lavrov said. “We’re at a critical phase,” for a political resolution of the crisis, though more and more preconditions are being placed in the way, he said.

“While there is an acceleration of military activity, there should also be an acceleration on the political side,” and Russia should use its influence on the ground to promote a settlement, de Mistura said.

“I fully agree with you that there is no military solution to the conflict,” Lavrov said. “But fighting terrorists is something else and this doesn’t have any national boundaries.”

Russian planes flew 88 sorties, hitting 86 Islamic State targets, in the past 24 hours in Raqqa, Hama, Idlib, Latakia and Aleppo provinces in Syria, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said on Twitter.

repo4sale Loc: 89041

Global inequality is growing, with half the world’s wealth now in the hands of just 1% of the population, according to a new repor

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Russian computer attacks have become more brazen and more destructive as the country grows increasingly at odds with the U.S. and European nations over military goals first in Ukraine and now Syria.

Along with reported computer breaches of a French TV network and the White House, a number of attacks now being attributed to Russian hackers and some not previously disclosed have riveted intelligence officials as relations with Russia have deteriorated. These targets include the Polish stock market, the U.S. House of Representatives, a German steel plant that suffered severe damage and The New York Times.


U.S. officials worry that any attempt by the Russian government to use vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure like global stock exchanges, power grids and airports as pressure points against the West could lead to a broader conflict, according to two people familiar with the debate inside government and who asked to not to be named when discussing intelligence matters. When NATO officials met last week, they voiced alarm about Russia’s rapid involvement in Syria, including the firing of cruise missiles, and vowed the biggest reinforcement of their collective defense since the end of the Cold War

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LOCAL CALIFORNIA
In raucous tent hearing, Sen. Feinstein defends desert national monument plan
Feinstein outlines desert protection plan
Sen. Diane Feinstein stops the crowd in Whitewater, Calif., from booing John Sobel, Rep. Paul Cook's chief of staff, who outlined Cook's opposition to her desert protection bill Tuesday. (James Quigg / The Victor Valley Daily Press)
Julie Cart Julie CartContact Reporter
Sen. Dianne Feinstein moderated a raucous public hearing in the California desert Tuesday over her proposal to set aside three swaths of Southern California as national monuments.

The sometimes wild meeting illustrated that when it comes to public land management decisions, reaching consensus is no easier in California than it is in Washington, D.C.

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At issue is a vast swath of federal land nestled among national parks, national forests and military reserves — a landscape highly regarded by renewable energy companies, mining firms, hikers and off-road enthusiasts.

Supporters of the monument designation say it would preserve the land for future generations to enjoy. Opponents argue that it would impose unwanted rules restricting their long-standing uses of the land.


Since 2009 Feinstein has been trying to persuade her colleagues in Congress to designate the Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains areas as national monuments.

Stymied, Feinstein is now advocating a dual track to achieve monument status: continuing her effort to bring her legislation to a vote, but also asking President Obama to take executive action to protect hundreds of thousands of acres in the California desert. She sent a letter to Obama requesting that he invoke the Antiquities Act to set aside the three areas as monuments.

Feinstein asks Obama to bypass Congress to create three desert monuments
Feinstein asks Obama to bypass Congress to create three desert monuments
The hearing was held on a still, hot day under a tent in the Whitewater Preserve, five miles up a dirt road north of the 10 Freeway outside Palm Springs.

The heat did little to damp the energy of the more than 800 people who showed up to either praise or criticize the proposal. Speakers were lustily booed or cheered.

When Feinstein mentioned the need for urgency to pass the legislation as Obama's second term winds down, the crowd clapped wildly. Feinstein gently chided the audience for interrupting speakers, referring to the crowd as a "talky group."

After the two hours of allotted time for public comment, Feinstein began to make closing remarks and was shouted at by opponents who protested that they had not been fairly heard.

"Calm down, calm down," Feinstein called out. The California Democrat eventually allowed everyone who desired to speak to do so.

Monument designations can be controversial because they sometimes place restrictions on hunting, off-road recreation, mining and other long-standing uses. Feinstein's proposal would preserve existing recreational activities, and she has asked that the president do the same.

Many opponents of the designation said that although they support some of the conservation aims, they object to executive action without widespread public hearings or congressional input.

"I am not opposed to everything in the legislation," said Jim Bagley, former mayor of Twentynine Palms. "But I can't support being cut out of the process."

Feinstein said asking the president to consider monument designation was not her first choice. But in a comment that drew chuckles from the crowd for stating the obvious, she added: "It is very hard to pass a land protection bill right now."

All of the land proposed for monument designation is in federal hands, and no property transfers would be required.

The three proposed monuments:

• The Mojave Trails National Monument, which straddles U.S. 66 between Needles and Barstow and would provide a link between Joshua Tree and the Mojave National Preserve.

• The Sand to Snow National Monument, which would rise from the Coachella Valley to Mt. San Gorgonio, at 11,503 feet the highest peak in Southern California.

• The Castle Mountains National Monument, in the high desert adjacent to the Mojave National Preserve, in an area that would include a proposed gold mine.

Feinstein was the architect of the 1994 California Desert Protection Act, which elevated Joshua Tree and Death Valley to national park status and created the Mojave National Preserve.

Her interest in protecting the desert has been enduring. Feinstein, who is from the Bay Area, spoke at length Tuesday about the value of the California desert. After listing the economic, environmental and recreational value of the region, Feinstein concluded, "What this desert carries is the tradition of the West."

julie.cart@latimes.com


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Are women safer with guns around?

Lex Talamo, Alexa.Talamo@shreveporttimes.com
10 hours ago
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Paul Kieu, The Advertiser
Couples dance to music by Jimmie Vaughn and his band during Downtown Alive in Parc Sans Souci in downtown Lafayette, La., Friday, Oct. 16, 2015.

Courtesy of Courtney Free
Courtney Free was four years old when she learned to use a gun. Free currently owns several guns for self-defense and hunting

Courtney Free was four years old when she was introduced to guns.
Her father was an avid hunter who took Free and her brother shooting and to the range for target practice. Later in her life, Free bought a 9 mm Smith & Wesson for practice at the range and a shotgun for duck hunting.
“Living in the South, it’s almost a rite of passage," Free said. "You get your BB gun, then you get a shotgun and then when you get older you get a rifle to go deer hunting.”

Courtesy of Courtney Free
Courtney Free said she practices shooting at a range two to three times a month
Free also purchased a 9 mm Ruger LC9, a sleek handgun she started carrying concealed for self-defense. She's one of a growing number of American women who believe carrying guns will allow them to better protect themselves in case of an unexpected violent attack.
But statistics from the Violence Policy Center suggest the opposite. A 2003 study revealed women who live in a home with a gun are nearly three times more likely to be murdered than women who live with no gun in the home.
Louisiana ranks fourth in the nation for most female homicides, according to a 2013 FBI Supplementary Homicide Report. The average female homicide victim was 36 years old, and more than 90 percent of murdered women were killed by someone they knew. Fifty-five percent (22 of 40) of Louisiana's female homicides in 2013 involved a firearm.
The Violence Policy Center's "When Men Murder Women" report concluded, “The picture that emerges from 'When Men Murder Women' is that women face the greatest threat from someone they know, most often a spouse or intimate acquaintance who is armed with a gun. For women in America, guns are not used to save lives, but to take them.”
Guns and Self Defense: Myth or Magic?
Janalee Tobias, a conservative Mormon housewife and president and founder of Women Against Gun Control, deals daily with women who wonder if buying a gun is a smart life choice. Tobias said she has seen women transform and develop confidence as well as competence as they learn how to properly handle firearms.

Courtesy of Janalee Tobias
Janalee Tobias (right) said the best weapon a woman can use for self defense is a gun.
“Guns are magical," Tobias said. "If people think you have a gun, they’re afraid of you.”
Several The Well Armed Woman Chapters exist in Louisiana to educate and empower female gun owners. Adrianna Eschete, chapter leader for the Bayou Region in Houma said women increasingly are finding themselves in roles where they need to protect others.
"Today, more and more ladies are independent, travel alone for their careers, are single moms, take care of a household while the husband works away from home for long periods of time, run errands after daylight hours," Eschete wrote in an email. "Because of these and many other circumstances, we find ourselves as the protectors, rather than the protected, of ourselves and our families."

Courtesy of Adrianna Eschete
Adrianna Eschete (left) provides firearms tips and training to women in the Well Armed Woman Bayou Region Chapter in Houma
So it was in Shreveport in January 2014.
Elzie Pipkins, then 63, managed to reach the gun she had stashed in her safe when 16-year-old Devon Antonio Young broke into her home. He was armed with a shotgun and demanding money. Now he's dead.
“I was only defending myself and my family inside of my home,” Pipkins told The Times. “It wasn’t on the outside, this was on the inside. When someone comes at you with force to do bodily harm, you have the right to defend yourself.”
A 2015 report from the National Shooting Sports Foundation stated more than 48 percent of women surveyed said they kept a gun for self-protection and home defense. More than 80 percent of women reported feeling more secure because of owning a firearm, while 74 percent said they considered owning a gun a matter of survival and self reliance.

Courtesy of Adrianna Eschete
The Well Armed Woman Bayou Region Chapter Firing Line
According to the report, the average female gun owner was between 25 and 34 years old, white, employed full time and married. She also had a college degree and lived in a rural area.
Kristen Blakeney, 28, lives with her husband and five-year-old son out in the country near Calhoun. She got her first handgun from a boyfriend who wanted to be sure she could protect herself. Blakeney currently owns several handguns, shotguns and an AR-15. Blakeney said she can't rely on police for help in case of an emergency because of how far away she lives from the city.
"I live in the sticks. You have to depend on yourself out here," Blakeney said. "It all comes back to my son. What if something happened? My kid needs a mom."

Patrick Peele taught his two daughters how to handle firearms from an early age and said they have since taken concealed carry and basic firearm safety classes, in addition to NRA-sponsored classes on self and home protection.
"They’re not under my roof anymore," Peele said of his daughters, both grown and with families of their own. "I want them to be able to protect themselves and my grandbabies.”
Peele added, “You hear people saying I’d take a bullet for my child. Well, why don’t you use a gun to protect yourself and your child so you can be there to raise your child?”
More than 80 percent of women surveyed in the NSSF report said owning a firearm made them feel more secure. Half said that owning a gun made them feel empowered.
Margot Bennett, Women Against Gun Violence executive director, said despite feelings of empowerment many women have been misled by fear and propaganda to purchase guns for self-defense and are not aware of the facts of gun violence.
“The only message women are hearing is that guns make you safer. I understand the way having a gun makes them feel but feelings aren’t always accurate. Statistics don’t lie,” Bennett said.

Courtesy of Janalee Tobias
A gun rights rally in Washington DC
Data from the National Crime Victimization Survey disclosed that in a five year period between 2007 and 2011, only 0.8 percent of individuals surveyed said they “threatened or attacked with a firearm” in self-defense. An FBI Uniform Crime report disclosed that of 270 justifiable homicides in 2013, only 23 involved a woman killing a man. Of those cases, a total of 13 — or 56 percent — involved a firearm.
That same report analyzed the total number of attacks on one female by one male and found that 53 percent of female homicides involved the male using a firearm to kill the woman. In 280 cases, the woman was shot and killed following an argument.
Nearly all local domestic violence-related killings — from Jane Guiden in 2012 to Annie Bond in 2013 to Cynthia McCray earlier this year — came from the business end of a gun.
Bennett said women involved in domestic disputes can quickly become victims of domestic homicide and the presence of a gun can escalate a situation.
“Instead of a physical assault, it becomes an assault with a weapon because it’s accessible,” Bennett said, and added, "If you insist on having a gun, you need to be able to use it properly and you need to be prepared to kill someone, which is not something that’s an easy thing to do.”
Bennett said most of the women who ask her about buying guns haven't thought through street scenarios, such as what they would do if they were carrying a gun and were surprise attacked from behind. Bennett said alternative means of self-protection, like taking self-defense classes, could prove more effective in such a situation.
“I’m a strong advocate of learning self defense," Bennett said. "You have a better chance of stepping on an attacker’s instep, swinging your head back and breaking their nose, than swiveling around, pulling a gun out of a holster and shooting someone.”
Local restauranteur Carolyn Simmons doesn't have a gun, partly because she's sure if she needed it to defend herself she'd be more likely to add deadly element to an already dangerous situation.
"If I had a gun on me and tried to pull it out, the person who's trying to assault me would probably get it away from me. I'd be adding a weapon to the mix," Simmon said. "I feel perfectly safe without one."
The reason she does, Simmon said, is because she keeps herself — both in her home neighborhood of Highland and at her restaurant, Blue's Southern Comfort Food — surrounded with good people she trusts. It doesn't bother her some people prefer a weapon on hand to defend themselves, but it concerns her when they fight to carry them in places like schools and other settings where children are present.
Other self-defense alternatives taught to women in colleges and seminars across the country — like vomiting on an attacker or peeing their pants — are met with scorn by gun-toting ladies.
“It’s completely insulting to our intelligence to be told to throw up on an attacker, to pee our pants, to blow a whistle,” Tobias said. “It became crystal clear to me that you can spend years taking self-defense classes, but the best weapon that a woman can use for self defense is a gun. If we send the message ‘Criminals beware because American women know how to use firearms,' watch what would happen to the crime rates.”
Pam Smith, nicknamed "Miss Open Carry Texas" following her appearance on a radio show, said guns will always be her self-defense weapon of choice.
“With tasers, stun guns, I have to wait till they can literally do me harm," Smith said. "That’s very fearful."
Smith added that people who carry guns often don't have to kill someone to stop a threat: sometimes making criminals aware of the presence of a gun is enough to deter a would-be crime. She mentioned as an example a particular day when she was 17 years old and driving down a lonely backstretch of highway with her father. They noticed a car tailing them. Her father pulled over to the side of the road and stuck his gun out the window.
Whoever was driving the car stopped lingering behind them and drove off quickly.
Smith said her firearms training classes taught her situational awareness — how to avoid dangerous situations and to be more aware of her surroundings — as well as teaching her a mindset to deal with would-be attackers. Women tend not to want to hurt others, Smith said, but she learned to value her own life and the life of her loved ones.
“If that’s in their mind, they have an agenda, and they’re going to take it out on someone," Smith said of criminals. "It’s not going to be me. You shoot to stop them. You don’t aim for a leg. I won't regret for having to save my life or a loved one from someone who doesn't care."
Proper Training, Situational Awareness are Critical
Both female gun owners and advocates of gun control agree proper training and situational awareness are critical to a woman being able to protect herself.
Leslie Conger bought her first handgun when her husband was sent to work in an oil field and she was left alone for months at a time. She felt so uncomfortable with the gun that she kept it stowed in her closet. She knew she needed formal training and enrolled in several firearms classes. She said the empowerment she currently feels is because of that training.
“I would say if you want to buy a gun, training is imperative. It’s the No. 1 thing you have to do,” Conger said. “Instead of having gun control laws and taking people’s guns away, the No. 1 thing we need is training and gun education. It’s teaching respect for guns and respect for people’s lives. Respect for human life is lacking in this country. That’s the problem.”
Courtney Free said the firearms classes she took taught her more than gun safety. She learned a deeper respect for guns and a situational awareness mindset that could one day save her life.
"Owning a gun brings more responsibility, more awareness," Free said. "It’s more about situational awareness, the transitions between your car and the Walmart. People always have their heads in their phones, they're not aware of what’s going on. You have to pay attention to your surroundings."

Courtesy of Courtney Free
Courtney Free owns a Ruger LC9 for concealed carry, a Smith&Wesson for practice at the range and a shotgun for duck hunting.
Fast Facts About Female Gun Owners
42 percent of women owned more than three guns
65 percent of women sought recommendations from family before buying a gun
42 percent of women surveyed carry concealed
56.3 percent of female gun owners have kids in the home
84.7 percent of women reported attending zombie hunting activities
73 percent reported taking at least one training class
98.3 percent reported training was very important
58.1 percent of women bought their guns from a gun shop
42.6 percent come from a mass retailer: Walmart, Cabelas, Bass Pro Shops
- Data from the 2013 National Shooting Sports Foundation