Peso crisis could trigger next dollar-debt crisis in Mexico.
By Don Quijones, Spain & Mexico, editor at WOLF STREET.
Within hours of Trump’s electoral triumph, the Mexican peso, which has become the number-one hedge against a Trump victory, had slumped a staggering 13% to its lowest point in history and its steepest intraday dive since 1994-5, when the Tequila Crisis came within a hair’s breadth of bringing down Mexico’s financial system, and with it some of the biggest names on Wall Street, including Citi and Goldman, before the Federal Reserve, US treasury, IMF, and Bank of International Settlements hastily intervened.
By the end of Wednesday’s trading, it recovered a little to close at 19.84 pesos to the dollar, down 8% for the day. Today, the peso fell another 4%, ending the day at 20.67 to the dollar. A hurricane — as Mexicans are fond of calling Donald Trump — is approaching. Thanks primarily (but not only) to Trump’s march on the White House, the peso has lost 18% of its value against the dollar this year, more than any other major currency except for the pound sterling. But the peso’s current woes began long before Trump announced his intention to run for president.
At the beginning of 2014, it took just over 13 pesos to buy a dollar. Now it takes more than 20. According to some analysts it could soon be 25.
Since Tuesday, Mexico’s monetary authorities have been on red alert but as yet have done nothing to staunch the peso’s decline, largely because there’s embarrassingly little they can actually do, as Mexican Secretary of Finance José Antonio Meade Kuribreña all but conceded just days before the election.
Last year, the Bank of Mexico (endearing known in Mexico as Banxico) tried to slow the stampede out of pesos by selling a small but growing fraction of its dollar reserves in open auctions, but to little avail. Even as the amount under auction rose from $50 million to $200 million, then to $400 million, the peso continued to crumble, until the central bank finally gave up on the costly but futile exercise.
Earlier this year Banxico upped the ante, raising interest rates, twice. But yet again the exchange-rate effects were short lived. That won’t stop the central bank from hiking rates further. If things get really bad, it may even begin auctioning interest-rate swaps, as it did in the wake of the global financial crisis. In the bank’s own words, such an operation is aimed at bolstering credit institutions “by reducing the duration of [their] assets” so they can “operate in a market with higher volatility and rising interest rates.” In layman terms, it’s more free money for the banks.
In 2008, Banxico carried out interest rate swaps with credit institutions for up to 50 billion pesos ($2.5 billion). Back then the swaps may have been enough to avert disaster, but they also coincided with the release of an unprecedented tsunami of newly created money from the Fed.
Conditions are now markedly different. Rather than being starved of cheap credit, the world is drowning in it. Corporate borrowing costs in dollars, euros, and yen have become farcically cheap in recent years, thanks to the rampant interventions of central banks. But as emerging market firms are discovering, it can be a lethal trap. As the peso swoons against the dollar, the dollar-denominated debt held by Mexican corporations with peso-denominated operating income becomes increasingly difficult to service.
This is not a problem for companies that operate predominantly in dollars, such as the mining groups Peñoles and Grupo Mexico, for whom all their sales are dollar-denominated compared to 83% and 90% of their liabilities, respectively. Nor is it much of a problem for bakery giant Bimbo, whose biggest market is the US, or the Petrochemical conglomerate Mexichem.
But Mexico is full of large companies that earn most, if not all, of their income in domestic currency but have nonetheless stacked up on foreign-denominated debt. Last year we reported that between 2010 and 2015 the external debt held by Mexico’s private businesses (in pesos) had increased by 86%. In nominal terms, the total amount had reached 1.69 trillion pesos (roughly $105 billion), 117% more than at the beginning of 2010.
If anything, the pace has quickened. According to a new report from El Financiero, 79.8% of the short and long-term debt held by 30 of the 35 firms listed on Mexico’s benchmark index, the BMV, is denominated in foreign currencies, mostly the dollar. Only 20.2% is denominated in local currency.
Here are some of the more extreme examples:
- For Mexico’s biggest TV broadcaster, TV Televisa, 65% of its debt is dollar-denominated compared to just 13% of its revenues.
- On the books of Carlos Slim-owned telecoms giant América Móvil, 85% of the debt is denominated in foreign currencies, but only 74% of sales are in foreign currencies, many of them weak Latin American varieties such as the Argentinean peso or the Brazilian real.
- The case of ICA, once Mexico’s biggest construction company, should serve as a cautionary reminder about the risks of stacking up on cheap dollar debt. Roughly fifty percent of its debt is dollar-denominated yet almost all its operations are based in Mexico. As we reported, the situation has become so grim that last year it stopped paying its vendors and defaulted on millions of dollars of debt payments.
- Take the case of Mexican mega-retailer Liverpool whose revenues are earned exclusively in pesos but whose debt is 65% dollar-denominated.
With the peso shedding value at its current rate, this is a recipe for a debt crisis. But during good times, most emerging market companies cannot resist the fatal allure of cheap dollar debt, and most investors don’t bother to think about it.
Just how long these companies will be able to continue servicing their debt in the current context is anyone’s guess. One thing that’s clear: as long as Mexico and its currency continue to bear the brunt of Hurricane Donald, the balance-sheet pressures for companies that have recklessly binged on “cheap,” central bank-peddled foreign-currency debt are only going to grow. By Don Quijones, Raging Bull-Shit.
Mexico could face its worst fiscal and financial crisis in decades. Read… Biggest Threat to Mexico’s Economy isn’t Trump but Pemex
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Best to get the Trump wall built asap so Mexico can pay for it before the peso becomes totally worthless…….
Wall?
Where is my tax cutj
LOL, it’s really the Hillary Wall, as she was the one who signed the plan into existence.
At the time Trump was managing a hotel.
??? Please tell me your kidding….. why did she never bring it up during the debate???….(rhetorical), I’ll tell you why :
A) It was a “fence”….
B) She voted for the “Secure Fence Act” in 2006 & it was supposed to be done in 2 years time & it never even got started!….
C) When asked if she “wanted the fence”?, she flip flopped on the issue more than a pancake, leaving reporters to be so confused they wrote; (quote)” Does Hillary Clinton want a Fence or Not? I Honestly Don’t Know” (end quote)…
This is just another thing you can add to the long list of things Hillary flip/flopped about. It would not have ended well if she brought that up at a debate & she knew that thus she didn’t….I swear you Hillary supporters do NO research of your own, it’s clear you just repeated something you heard for had you actually researched it yourself you would know everything I just schooled you on….Hillary’s Fence (lmfao!!)
I would think Gringo touristas will be a dying breed starting quite soon. Literally. I remarked to my wife Canadians will be once again sewing Canadian flags on their backpacks like they did during the Viet Nam decade.
Trump, makes a good centrefold of an ugly American. Toss in his protectionist policies, and the building trend towards isolationism will unleash a whole host of unintended consequences. It may be that Canada and Mexico might have to strengthen their ties, together, and focus on Europe and China. Somehow.
Protectionism is a double-edged sword. Plus, walls keep people in, as well as others out. This will not end well.
And eight years of Obama’s policies have been so beneficial to MX?
“Free” trade agreements only serve to further enrich the multinationals who bankroll the governments which implement them. Inking more deals, even without the U.S., is not going to improve economic conditions in MX one bit.
I believe your ‘Protectionism’ is referring to his immigration plans, in which I see it as, great… finally forcing existing immigration laws. There are laws already for illegal immigrants, but why are only those laws not being upheld? Why is it ok for all other countries to have an immigration policy and strictly follow it? But when Trump talks about it, its upsetting… As far as I’m concerned…those are the illegals talking.
Besides…Canada performs FBI background checks on tourist visa requests… Protectionism indeed!
it’s Canada’s new strategy : blatant hypocrisy.
It wants to present itself as the new great clean country, but builds its wealth on the dirty product of its tar sands.
It signs a free-trade agreement with the EU, but forces background checks on tourists.
It calls for the whole world to welcome migrants, but it is one of the countries least concerned by the poor migrants… mostly rich and well educated migrants reach it because it’s so far away (and cold).
I’m not talking about immigration policies, so no need to be so defensive or aggressive about Canada’s policies. I am talking about the 35% tarriff on all foreign goods produced by American companies who offshored.
Your Ford will be 35% more expensive which means people stop buying Ford, (just to use an example). Now, when all the Mexican employees lose their jobs do you think they will be bending over to welcome US tourists? Even slaves, revolt once in awhile. You just did with the Trump vote.
Wait… is this the same Canada that will not let you in their country if you have a speeding ticket or a credit card default?
I go to Mexico a couple of times a year and yes, last night I told my wife that we have to get some Canada t-shirts!!
I live in Mexico, have for almost a decade. In 2008, the Peso was 10/1 from an ATM. I got 19+ yesterday and have seen 20 within the last 6 months.
Looking from the outside, it may look like Mexico is in trouble but from what I can see locally, Mexico is “blowing and going”. A tremendous amount of new cars, new buildings, new malls, new hospitals, new high rise condos etc.
Trump was complaining about Ford moving production to Mexico, but those trucks are for Mexico and points south. They aren’t built to US standards and are cheaper than imports.
I live at the far southern suburbs of Guadalajara. To the south are big farms sending produce north and to the north in Guad, you can find a lot of Fortune 500 companies because Mexico is beginning to get enough money to buy merchandise.
The amount of new cars on the roads here is just amazing compared to a decade ago.
Oil, drugs, tourism, industry and money being sent back from the US are the big 5 industries as far as getting dollars into Mexico. You can argue the order of importance. Legalizing Marijuana has probably hurt Mexico as much as the drop in oil prices. A low Peso helps tourism and helps the people who receive money from the US.
The multi-nationals who borrowed in dollar dominated loans may be hurting but I don’t see much affect on the local level.
It’s hard to tell what’s going on, but what you are seeing might be the tail end of some bubble. Everything always looks the best before the end comes. Thailand was like that too in 1998. Condos going up like crazy, everyone redecorating with Italian wallpaper. Then the crisis came and it’s goodbye my love.
But then again this is a Don Quijones article. He’s been pointing to possible crises since forever and nothing has actually happened yet.
>> “nothing has actually happened yet.”
… other than that the banks collapsed and were bailed out, that the companies he was talking about either went bankrupt or were bailed out in some form, and Pemex is getting bailed out…. This story is just starting.
It all depends on what you mean with “nothing has actually happened.” Sure, Mexico or Italy or Spain didn’t just all go up in flames… but he never said they would.
:-]
Related have you noticed the big Euro push to soften capital requirements under B 3 for the Euro bank’s. In case it pushes some of them under?
Club-med Banking simply dosent learn, it must undo the euro soon, if it does not allow the zombies to die.
Stimulating!
If its not the projection of their hopes and dreams on a clear mobster than its the complete ignorance of history to the point of comic sadness?
While you are correct that the END hasn’t occurred (yet)….rational people can see the trigger for the collapse.
The obvious trigger point is a rise in the cost of capital. Central banks have relentlessly reduced interest rates to a zero boundary in an attempt to allow the world to continue increasing its purchasing power (i.e. growth) since increasing gov’t revenue (which represent real POWER to those who control (or benefit from) gov’t spending) are dependent on growth. Any attempts to increase revenue via higher taxes increases social unrest and the possibility of the elites getting thrown out by a discontented public. (Compare Clinton’s tax plan (higher taxes) to that of Trump’s (lower taxes).)
Low interest rate enable payments to remain the same while MORE DEBT is taken on. The effect of falling currencies makes servicing existing debt difficult…as more cash flow is diverted to debt servicing…just as if interest rates rise. However, the factor people tend to miss is that interest rates matter most only when debt needs REFINANCING. What has occurred in Mexico has been that even though the corporations with U.S. dollar denominated debt are being hurt by the currency falling (increasing their payments in local dollars)…..they still had (have?) the option of going and getting MORE ‘affordable’ U.S. dollar denominated debt at near zero interest rates (even with the associated currency risk which can be “hedged” to delay the reckoning further). They are in a whirlpool of increasing debt from which they can’t escape…bankruptcy just transfers all the remaining assets to the banks so management teams…who want to continue their salaries and porking up at the trough as long as possible…delay past the point at which bankruptcy is inevitable. This is why the emerging markets are going to take it on the chin FIRST!
The REAL panic occurs when the cycle changes and interest rates begin to rise IN THE U.S….signalling the party is truly over/the music stops and everyone starts looking for a chair in the room. (Even at this point….the collapse will be slowed by the fact that most multinational corporations are well aware of the problem so they have been actively EXTENDING out the terms of their debt since 2011….again, providing more time for management to feed at the trough.)
Because of the delays in need to REFINANCE…the collapse which has started already in the periphery economies will accelerate over the next two – three years….causing capital in those economies first effected to FLEE to the U.S. (and Europe to a much less extent since the writing is on the wall there as well)…..pushing up the U.S. Dollar and providing even MORE UNDERPRICED capital to the U.S. equity and bond markets (but also initially having the effect of stabilizing the Euro).
We have in fact seen this over the past year….and its just starting.
By next year however, we will probably see the crisis in the emerging markets start to bring down the Euro market (i.e. Italian bank collapse…) ….so capital in EUROPE will start flowing to the U.S. as well….FURTHER inflating the U.S. markets with UNDERPRICED capital .
The obvious feedback transmission is why the FED has NOT raised rates yet….and would choose to kick the can further down the road until the system collapses if it could.
Unfortunately for the banksters….we have reached a point where competing large financial industries (insurance, pension to name two) are nearing tipping points themselves due to the suppressed U.S. interest rates. Just look at the Dallas Police and Fireman’s Pension Fund as a microcosm of what is going on in the public pension arena. A little bit of change in unrealistic assumptions was made wiping out 20% of the pension’s already too low funding status. This was a pretty well-regarded pension…unlike the Chicago Teachers or Chicago Police & Firefighters Pension debacles…which were (rightly) considered to be corruption driven.
With the U.S. election being over….I expect the Fed to to raise rates in Dec as it will force Trump to deal with the resulting cascading calamity (mainly outside the U.S. initially) and possibly divert him from pursuing financial system executives to the extent he would absent OTHER worries. Crises have a way of sweeping past criminal conduct under the rug.
” (Compare Clinton’s tax plan (higher taxes) to that of Trump’s (lower taxes).)”
You haven’t looked at the analysis of his tax policy’s very hard,
The middles and lower middle class, will pay more under new POTUS proposals, whilst he and all his crony groups pay less.
Apart from that, as you say unless he gets very trade friendly, and very, Mexico friendly, very quickly.
He is going to trigger a $ debt then US interest crisis, very quickly. once it starts to roll, it will be almost impossible to stop.
Silver lining, a lot of zombies should get flushed out in the process.
The Fed was two rate hikes behind starting Monday morning and now with the bond debacle of this week its a half dozen behind!
Your scenario is reminiscent of the scenario that caused the failure of Long Term Capital Management. When that hedge fund failed due to all the third world bets it had placed and its leverage, the banks were forced by the fed to bail them out. I can see this happening again, except for the bailing them out part. I wonder which fund is over extended right now in those markets.
The boots on the ground report from Mexico sounds pretty good to me.
Most all articles posted here and many responses too (I’m guilty probably, will try doing a better job now we have some ray of hope), easily can be interpreted as the sky is falling in under developed nations and I suspect the trade imbalance trickle-down they were promised probably hasn’t delivered.
Consider, the lion’s share of trade imbalance profits have likely gone to elites, I suspect.
Thanks for your boots-on-the-ground report from Mexico. Nice to hear!
The problem with dollar-denominated debt last time (Tequila Crisis) was the bailout that came as the debt was blowing up. It involved all kinds new debt that Mexican taxpayers are still paying for and AUSTERITY. So cutbacks in government spending, including on social services.
Trump refuses to trade dollars for treasuries
Like Nixon refused to trade gold for dollars!
How did the level of personal and mortgage debt evolve within that time frame?
I never said hillary was a nice thing, just the only logical thing.
Carter, baby bush, Obama, and now, Trump
The American electorate has again been illogical. Now the world ,perhaps starting in Mexico. Begin’s to pay for it.
http://www.politico.com/gallery/2016/11/the-nations-cartoonists-on-the-week-in-politics-002377?slide=15
http://www.politico.com/gallery/2016/11/the-nations-cartoonists-on-the-week-in-politics-002377?slide=7
I think it’s safe to be skeptical of most everything a self-serving media concocts.
I think the US electorate has been fed a pile of manure for 30+ years. We do not control the parties that control who gets elected. The same elite who have transferred our jobs off shore do. Our Democracy is a scam and a sham.
Less than a third of the registered voters voted in Trump and I believe half of them just plain voted against the DNC HRC cabal who was destroying the US for their own personal greed and aggrandizement. Trump has no mandate and no public support other than a few bigots and racists and fewer radical fundamentalists.
Exactly the same Scenario with P45 as Brexit.
In Brexit less than a 1/3 of the electorate voted for it.
Now the Brexiters are screaming you have to obey the will of the people.
Apart from a change to the stupid Duopoly, owned by a Corporate Oligarchy both The US and England need compulsory voting laws then at least you get a 95% + turn out.
P45 didn’t win the election.
Democrats lost it, as the racist who supported p44, and the bernie or I wont vote for her idiots, stayed home.
3 POS US presidents In a row, the world has had enough of this American BS, believe me.
The best thing of all with Trump’s win, we may well have avoided a nuclear conflict with Russia over Syria of all places! Down with the global corporate empire, up with the USA. The financial game can only carry on if and only if life on earth remains. Our ancestors lived in squalor compared to us yet they still lived fulfilling lives, humans are very adaptable to hardship, to radioactive particles not so much.
The main tension with Russia is over Ukraine. That is the reason for the sanctions on Russia, not Syria.
Crimea we could maybe live with, subject to a UN or EU supervised referendum.
The portion of Ukraine where serious fighting has occurred is not Crimea.
If Russians living there feel unwelcome they could always move to Crimea.
Putin has openly stated that he feels that the collapse of the USSR was a great tragedy. The problem: the other former members, and the Warsaw Pact satellites, don’t agree. The USSR was always just a name for the Russian Empire, all important decisions were made in Moscow.
The question to ask about NATO expansion- why do all Russia’s neighbors fear Russia? Ask a Pole, or a Czech.
Sanctions and low oil prices have produced a crisis in Russia, its much vaunted reserves run out in 2017.
But it was in trouble before these events. Incredibly, under Putin the portion of the economy controlled by the state has doubled, from 35 to 70%. So he has succeeded in recreating the dis-functional economy of the USSR.
There are only two remedies to keep the Russian public in line.
The first are what the former minister finance Alexei Kudrin and the current head of the Russian central bank call: ‘painful fundamental reforms’ which is a remarkable and courageous way of saying an end to Putinism, if not Putin.
The second is more foreign adventures in the ‘near abroad’, coming to the aid of ‘oppressed’ Russian minorities.
The Russian economy is now smaller than Canada’s, but serves 4 times as many people. The average Russian has a lower income than China’s. Half of it goes for food, and meager pensions are being ravaged by food price inflation.
Yet Putin still squeezes money out for new weapons.
At the moment there is only one nuclear power in Europe, France.
However if NATO were to collapse, Germany might feel forced to acquire its own deterrent.
This is not the time for Trump to follow through on his idea of pulling the US out of NATO.
PS: I agree about nukes being our biggest threat. Reading about the H-bomb is fascinating/ horrifying.
When Oppenheimer was heading the Manhattan Project, to produce a fission bomb, he had to contend with a brilliant physicist, Teller, who kind of shirked on the fission project to work on the theory of a fusion bomb.
To give some idea of the difference- just as a conventional chemical explosive is the detonator for an A- bomb (fission) an A-bomb is the detonator for an H-bomb.
When it became clear that it would work- Oppenheimer proposed informing the Soviets, and agreeing that neither would produce them.
This was one of the things that cost Oppenheimer, the father of the A-bomb, his security clearance.
Today virtually all the nuclear weapons are thermonuclear ( fusion bombs) of the Teller-Ulam design.
There has never been a reduction in the amount of explosive power- there are fewer bombs of much greater power.
One depressing feature: the Vatican has given up on its early anti-nuke campaign due to lack of interest.
But there is an active group of US scientists, including some who have worked on nuke development, to prevent the use of the only weapon so far never used- the fusion bomb.
Exactly.
Under Hillary/Soros we were marching to war with Russia with great certainly. We have Russia surrounded with nukes and 300,000 troops – it’s hardly just for kicks.
Soros foresaw some election fallout from the massive rigging so he setup the MoveOn.org NGO to combat it. However as his rigging failed and Trump won anyway the MoveOn.org is now organising the protests and riots in Portland etc. It’s more of a ‘DontMoveOn.org’ action or a ‘MoveBack.org’ – but I guess he didn’t have time to change the name as he was caught be surprise.
So we’re now on Soros’s Plan B for the US – Color Revolution, which while it’s annoying and quite illegal at a deep level it’s much better than living with radioactive particles in everything and everywhere.
300. 000 troops? Details please. Surely you aren’t suggesting that Poland is going to invade Russia, and that the Polish armed forces are part of this force surrounding Russia?
It was Russia that joined Germany in the invasion of Poland in 1939.
The recent NATO rapid reaction force has 4000 combat effectives.
Germany that had thousands of tanks during the Cold War is down to a few hundred.
Why do all Russia’s neighbors fear Russia? Look up Katyn Forest.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=300%2C000+NATO+troops
Exactly- you are simply adding up all the members of all the NATO forces in Central Europe, an absurdity.
An invasion requires concentration of force, not a sprinkling over a thousand mile arc.
And of course, it wouldn’t be enough to invade Russia even if it was all in one place.
The largest force on paper involved would probably be Poland’s: where are the expansionist acts of Poland?
Again, and this has to be repeated: Russia’s neighbors can’t help where they are. Russia has the world’s largest land mass
and many neighbors. Most have had Russian- led Soviet troops om their soil- they don’t want them back.
To make this 300, 000 number go away they would have to disarm completely.
This casting of these mostly under-equipped defense forces, with many purely administrative and support numbers, as a potential invasion force is such clumsy agit-prop it is amazing it has any currency.
Note below from the piece you cite:
With Russia outnumbering Nato ground battalions by almost two to one, and possessing much heavier weaponry than the Baltic defence forces, some simulations had the capitals falling in as little as 36 hours from the start of hostilities.
“With Russia outnumbering Nato ground battalions by almost two to one, and possessing much heavier weaponry than the Baltic defence forces, some simulations had the capitals falling in as little as 36 hours from the start of hostilities.”
Height of the cold war, Russian tanks outnumbered NATO, basically 10 to 1.
They still didnt come.
Because the Nuclear retaliation on Moscow, comes from US submarines.
Belarus Ukraine and Moldova could be consumed, that’s about it.
Unless Putin can neutralize the US Nuclear Deterrence.
In the Baltic’s, Putin is doing to the west what the west did to Russia in Afghanistan, Making them spend money they dont want to. He must be careful as he dosent have much either.
You can vote for Sheila Bair as Treasury Secretary, we want folks in the cabinet who aren’t trying to sell us out for their own gain.
Vote here:
https://gop.com/survey/cabinet-survey/
Done, voted last night. Also nominating Ron Paul and David Stockman to positions. Thanks for the tip.
That is exactly why Trump was the better option regardless of what the future holds
It is time for everyone to just STOP.
Every President has been giver a 6 month ‘holiday’ and this President deserves the same.
assorted cry babies, give it up. We are not a banana republic…YET, but your actions will turn us into one pronto.
We ARE a Republic…’and to the Republic for which it stands, ONE nation, under GOD…..got that?
You want to REVOLT? MOVE, how about Venezuela, Brazil, the Congo…all waiting for your help to overthrow .
Let this new government have a good go in the country you appear to forsake.
All this hysterical crap….why did so many Hispanics vote for him? Mexicans included…
Comey gets a free pass now.
Which is why it wont stop.
Trump and the Republicans used every dirty trick in the book.
And didnt end up with the popular vote.
The Republican’s hounded Hillary Clinton her whole life. As payback for Nixon.
They were perfectly clear, they were not going to let up on her, if she was elected, for 1 second.
Now their boy is in office, you want it all to stop.
American politics dosent work like that under dump.
Get used to it.
d, whether Trump got the popular vote is debatable, but the Electoral Vote system has been around for rather a long time – and if the situation was reversed I suspect you’d not complain.
However the real irony of telling us that Hillary would have won if it was based on the popular vote is Null and Void, because the DNC used it’s rather similar delegate system to crush Bernie Sanders (the easy winner for president), and instead entered an ill, unpopular serial criminal instead.
If the popular vote was used properly Hillary would have come Third, Trump would have come Second and Bernie would now be your President Elect.
As for Comey, he needs to start investigating Hillary properly, she was feeding classified emails to Weiner (mossad), Huma (Saudi Arabia) and even got her Filipino maid to print them out at her home. The FBI estimates at least 5 different countries were reading her classified emails straight off her server. State Department level classified documents have to be looked after – this is gross negligence.
David Petraeus was fined for just showing his (SC) biographer some emails, Huma didn’t even HAVE SC (security Clearance).
That’s a clear 10 years in jail, then there’s Obstruction of Justice when she deleted 33,000+ emails after a congressional subpeona which is another 20 years inside.
Then there’s her constant ill health and the long term Parkinsons to look at, she spent the last few weeks on the campaign mainly asleep, her team ran around with a gurney and when she lost she couldn’t even be bothered to talk to her own supporters.
Did you seriously want to trust this woman, the butcher of Libya, to the nuclear codes?
We’ve all have a narrow escape – you too, even if you have yet to learn it :D
You havent escaped, you have jumped from the frying pan, to the fire.
Popular vote
I am not saying he should not have won, as he did not have it.
What I am saying is, HE HAS NO MANDATE, as he does not have it in any number at all.
Comey
BLATANTLY violated the hatch act, in the 60 day election window.
If he walks on that. America is worse, than Venezuela and Russia, end of story.
d,
In a democracy you don’t need a mandate. You need a majority of one.
There hasn’t been a President due to go on trial for three weeks after the election. And that’s just the Trump U fraud- it’s been grinding away through various stall tactics for 2 years. Time’s up.
On the back burner simmering nicely, are the upcoming cases re: The Trump charitable foundation, which we now find out was NOT EVEN A REGISTERED CHARITY!
It’s been soliciting contributions illegally for decades, and has been issued a cease order.
Some money spent directly on Trump include hundreds of thousands in his legal bills, a 6 ft high painting of The Founder and seven (7) dollars for his kid’s Scout membership.
But it has made external contributions. It gave 150 K to the Palm Beach Policemans’ Ball. a worthy cause.
They then ‘decided’ to hold this highbrow bash at Mar-a Lago for which Trump billed them 350 K.
Note: Foundation makes donation, Trump gets rent.
BTW: He personally solicited the contributions for this one, including one for 50 K. This donor was not mentioned in the 150 K from the T F.
A lawyer who does nothing but represent clients in trouble with the IRS says in more than 20 years, he’s never seen such blatant (illegal) self-dealing by a charity.
A lot of people wanted to spite the elites. How electing a guy whose wife goes shopping in a personal airliner does this is not clear, but one explanation is that there is more to socio-economic than money.
Trump, who has probably never read a book, is certainly not a social elitist.
Mexico is not the only place in trouble with this joker- the expression that comes to mind: ‘he cut off his nose to spite his face.’
Corruption is everywhere, under every stone turned.
There is now a massive temporary wall around him, Mexico should offer to purchase a permanent enclosure.
Does Catherine Austin Fitts estimate that around 25 trillion dollars have gone missing from the federal budget, mainly defense, since 1995 in ”undocumentable adjustables” or something… and many trillions gone through derivatives.. qualify as corruption?
Didn’t know that she’d gone that high in trillions. Saw something she was on with Greg Hunter. This is too depressing, sorry Branson, Missouri is all I’m taking in at the moment. Branson is just totally awesome, it’s like Hollywood for tobacco chompers and country folks who maybe don’t have all their toofers! Ya’ll jest don’t know w’at fun yor’ missin!
Been worth it to check out what JC is using his thinkolator on. Nobody gets everything right, but his stuff has turned out to be spot on more than not… the Trumpence begins
http://philosophyofmetrics.com/trumps-new-world-order-freepom/
This is very interesting, Charnin has three degrees in mathematics, two are masters. He has a perfect 3 for 3 at determining what the final vote total will be.
https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/author/richardcharnin/
Trump won the True Vote by 367-171
“General Election Fraud Run Down with Richard Charnin, What Happened Tuesday” (long video, but Debbie Lusignan rocks! I wondered what happened to Jill Stein)
https://youtu.be/UILyRSjxN8U
Do you think he might also be a murderer? I already know how he tends to conduct business through the court system but perhaps you weren’t aware?
https://www.washingtonian.com/2015/10/05/greatest-most-amazing-absolutely-huge-story-of-how-donald-trump-took-over-virginias-biggest-vineyard/
Hes been connected to the US and Russian mob’s, for a long time. So logic says it is possible.
For people like him. there are no rules, and the only crime you commit, is the one you get convicted of.
He knew and did business with Jon Gotti, Gottis fault was that he had an Ego bigger than new York, just like this creature has.
Gottis ego put him in jail.
Are you serious?
The Arkansas Grifters have gone way beyond 100 now and includes a Supreme Court Judge.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/THE%20CLINTON%20BODY%20COUNT.pdf
Oh God this is TOO funny- I went to the piece about the Arkansas Gang and guess what pops up?
‘After the Clinton’s got rich from their ‘White Water land flips..’
White Water was a disaster. McDougal a long time speculator got the Clinton’s into it just before the crash of the eighties, when everyone was anxious to make a buck in RE.
Even it hadn’t been a flop it- was such a two-bit deal it wouldn’t have made anyone rich if it had succeeded.
They built one very basic rancher in an unsuccessful attempt to stimulate interest. Governor Bill Clinton was furious when his name was in the paper when the property went up for tax sale.
The Clinton’s lost money in White Water.
This is the problem with the internet- you can ‘publish’ long stories about the moon landings being faked, etc.
Thank you for pointing that out. I was living in OK at that time. These schemes were everywhere. They offered me a silver “bar” if I went to see one of those wonderful properties.
I did make the drive to Arkansas. The Ozarks are beautiful, and it was time to take my 280Z out on some windy 2-lane roads. When I got there, there was nothing but a little sales building where they did their spiel. The surrounding area was thick brush. This was pretty far away from the next small town. I had to listen to hours of stuff from pushy salespeople before they finally gave me my silver “bar.” It was an eensie-weensie little thing with a hook to be attached to a necklace. The whole thing smelled of rip-off and the Clintons in their younger naive years at the time got wrapped up in one of those.
There are two independent charity watchdogs. (There are a lot of flaky charities although unlike Trump’s most are at least registered.)
They both give the Clinton Foundation their highest grade a 5.
Charity Watch reports that it gives out 90% of its donations, an unheard of ratio that puts to shame some very well- known TV fund raisers.
Again here we go, the story of owing debt in a world where currencies are unstable. They need their own guy who knows how to get things done as opposed to some guy across the border who can be bought.
The declining mexican peso has been in trend for a couple of years. Long before Trump was blowing his horn. Going through 20 was momentous, but has been in the works for quite a while. I travel to Mexico a couple of times a year and have for several decades. The improvements are very tangible…from roads to buildings and prosperity in general. USD debt will be a killer, but a declining peso will probably crank up their export sales to an even higher level. Their currency has such a terrible track record of holding value that most know to not use it for that.
Here we go….DXY pushing 99 and peso at 21.3. TGIF
“Their currency has such a terrible track record of holding value that most know to not use it for that.”
There was a time when Mexican silver dollars were one of the global reserve and trade currency’s, before America got in there, and destroyed Mexico and its currency.
Be careful, new POTUS dosent destroy the US $, as there are many willing it to be so.
They were eager to borrow well surprise surprise the piper always calls.
A Pepe crisis is about the hit Mexico.
Irony scenario. The Mexican peso crisis causes massive defaults and banks once again start playing hot potato as they all try to offload the debt, like in every crisis the dominos start falling and all debt becomes suspect triggering financial collapse 2.0 . Seems like the perfect ending for a year of contradictions.
So how to trade it, its F(*&*^ volatile putting it mildly and that much Volatility is dangerous.
The bankers will commit fraud but hopefully they’re placed in prison this time instead of shareholders fined as Mexico surely is a place where rule of law is more respected then the US has been.
Almost surprised the Mexican peso did not soar in this year of Bizarro world.
Wait for the Moody’s upgrade.
Well, I am too young to remember the fall of the French and British Empires, I do remember the fall of the Soviet Empire. What we are currently experiencing is probably a development phase of the fall of the American Empire ….
We can help you if you’re upset those irredeemables in flyover country might actually have a future:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw2KFl0XABYOVkB.jpg:large
I believe this is good news for Mexican farmers. They should ban all GMO corn / maize for starters.