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‘Panic Feeds Panic’: Mnuchin Spooks Markets With Pre-Christmas Message That Was Supposed to Inspire Confidence

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‘Today Could Be a Bloodbath’

Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, from his Mexico vacation in Cabo San Lucas as the federal government was shutdown, Sunday night issued a statement that was supposed to help calm jittery investors.

It did not. In fact, it did the opposite.

The Trump stock market has tumbled over the past weeks, losing all of its 2018 gains and more, pulling into bear market territory. Last week was the worst in a decade and the markets are tending to have the worst December since he Great Depression. Investors are worried and some average Americans, especially those with 401(k) retirement plans, are panicked.

When the markets first started to drop, despite what the Federal Reserve and others say is essentially a strong economy with low unemployment and low inflation, President Trump issued a statement, saying the market was just “taking a little pause.”

Since that October 30 claim, the markets have plunged.

Trump blames his hand-picked Federal Reserve Chief, Jerome Powell, who has been raising interest rates, costing the president personally big bucks – not to mention American taxpayers.

There are reports Trump has talked about firing him, which would be unprecedented. It’s unclear that he even has the authority to do so, something Mnuchin announced last week in an attempt to calm investors.

While that did little to help, Mnuchin’s Mexico message has spooked the markets.

Mnuchin announced in a statement posted to Twitter, that he had just spoken with the CEOs of several of the nation’s top banks, and they told him, “they have ample liquidity available for lending to consumer, business markets, and all other market operations.”

The Treasury Secretary went on to say, “they have not experienced any clearance or margin issues and that the markets continue to function properly.”

Well, that’s great news, but no one was worried about the stability of the banks.

Until Mnuchin mentioned it.

“Mnuchin startled financial analysts, bankers and economists,” The Washington Post reports, with his “unusual statement.”

Market economists denounced the move.

“Panic feeds panic and this looks like panic in the administration,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, told the Post. “Suggesting you might know something that no one else is worried about creates more unease.”

“It’s going to raise the question of whether Treasury and Mnuchin know something the markets don’t,” said Brian Gardner, Washington research director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. “Without clarifying further, it’s going to weigh on the markets.”

“If this weren’t the end of December, I would have thought it was April Fools,” added Jared Bernstein, former chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden. “The markets are already nervous enough. It’s like sending out a message saying our space shields can intercept incoming asteroids. Uh, I didn’t know there were any coming our way.”

Even Trump’s advisors know Mnuchin’s move was bad.

“No one thought we were at crisis level,” one of his advisors told the Post. “It’s going to create more of an issue than we had already.”

The Post’s Damian Paletta separately adds via Twitter, “today could be a bloodbath.”

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Image of SEc. Mnuchin: US Mint via Twitter

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Donald Trump Isn’t the First President to Try to Buy Greenland

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Incoming President Donald Trump is back on his quixotic plan to buy Greenland for the United States. But that’s not the first time the United States has expressed interest in buying the vast expanse of ice and tundra.

Trump’s most recent attempt to get the Denmark-owned self-governing territory is wrapped up in his announcement of Ken Howery as ambassador to Denmark. In 2019, Howery was named Trump’s ambassador to Sweden.

“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump said.

READ MORE: ‘America’s Dumbest Senator’: Ron Johnson Dragged for ‘Incredibly Ignorant’ Claim About How Greenland Got Its Name

Trump’s interest in Greenland started during his first term, when billionaire and former Estée Lauder chairman Ronald Lauder suggested the president buy the territory. In August 2018, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) met with Danish ambassador Lars Gert Lose on Trump’s behalf to float the proposal. At the time Cotton said that Greenland was “vital to our national security,” according to TalkBusiness.

Denmark refused offers, with Denmark’s foreign policy chair calling it a “terrible and grotesque thought,” according to the New York Times. Indeed, the proposal was first reported on as one of Trump’s jokes.

The most recent attempt is just as unpopular with the Danes and the Greenlandic people.

“Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom,” Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede told Reuters.

As strange as it may seem, Trump is not the only president to try to get Greenland. Nor is the idea quite as baffling as it initially sounds. Though the territory is mostly covered in ice—with areas of pure ice—it has lots of mineral resources, including stores of uranium, coal, gold and rare earth metals, not to mention oil and gas.

Greenland is also well positioned politically. There are a number of American military bases in the territory, and it boasts frequent visits from diplomats and military officials. It was even called “the most strategic location in the Arctic and perhaps the world” by Walter Berbrick of the U.S. Naval War College, who has urged the United States to increase ties to Greenland—and even called the purchase of the territory a “strategic option” that “deserves serious consideration.”

The first time the U.S. thought about buying Greenland was in 1867 when Secretary of State William Seward, under President Andrew Johnson, proposed buying it and Iceland from Denmark for $5.5 million in gold, or about $117.2 million in today’s money. The offer was never made to Denmark however. That same year, Seward negotiated the Alaska Purchase from Russia for $7.2 million ($129 million today).

In 1946, President Harry Truman’s Secretary of State Owen Brewster tried again. He offered $100 million (or about $1 billion in today’s money) in gold bullion. While the offer was popular in the American government, Denmark balked. The main reason cited was that Danes saw Greenland as part of Denmark’s cultural identity and a connection to the country’s history as Vikings, according to The Conversation.

That refusal appeared to settle things. America was happy to merely work with Denmark and Greenland without actually owning it until Trump stepped in. It remains unlikely that Denmark will ever sell—in fact, Greenlandic independence appears to be a surer bet. But one can only assume that Trump won’t stop trying.

Image via Shutterstock

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Lara Trump Thinks Microsoft Office Assistant ‘Clippy’ Is a Real Person Spying on Everything She Writes

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Fox host Lara Trump either has a new conspiracy theory, or she is very confused.

Hosting the 5 p.m. EST hour, Trump was ranting about Microsoft Word’s Clippy and the suggested changes to words like “postman” into “letter carrier” and “mankind” into “humankind.” It’s part of the right’s latest attack on “wokism,” which they define as anything done in polite society that makes them uncomfortable.

“Someone is reading this?! And assessing what I’m writing?” Trump said, assuming that a person was actually watching and reading what she was typing in Word instead of an AI programed into what they call “office assistant.” It was once named Clippy, and it was never a real person.

According to Trump, the “office assistant” is a lot like her fancy new car that doesn’t require a key, just a push-button to start it. She said that the car wouldn’t start if she didn’t jingle the keys around. That’s false. Push-button start cars use safety technology that requires your foot on the break, the car in park, and the key fob in the car with you. It’s essentially a small low-frequency transmitter. So if the car won’t start, it’s likely that you need to replace the batteries.

According to Microsoft, the assistant doesn’t have to be turned on.

“The checker can be turned on and off in a menu called ‘Grammar & Refinements’, which lists everything it checks: Age bias, Cultural bias, Ethnic slurs, Gender bias, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Gender-Specific Language, Racial Bias, Sexual Orientation Bias and Socioeconomic Bias,” said the statement.

See Lara Trump’s rant below:

 

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Trump Official Billed US for $456,000 in Private Jets Over Five Months: Report

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New information is coming out about the use of private jets by Tom Price, the former Georgia congressman who spent eight months as Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2017.

“Tom Price, the health and human services secretary, resigned under pressure… after racking up at least $400,000 in travel bills for chartered flights and undermining President Trump’s promise to drain the swamp of a corrupt and entitled capital,” The New York Timesreported at the time. “Already in trouble with Mr. Trump for months of unsuccessful efforts to repeal and replace President Barack Obama’s health care program, Mr. Price failed to defuse the president’s anger by offering regret and a partial reimbursement.”

A Freedom of Information Act request was filed by The Washington Post and the new emails the newspaper obtained shed light on how the scandal began.

It started in April of 2017, only four months after Price took over the department. Price’s staffers sought to fly him to Los Angeles after his Delta Air Lines flight was delayed due to bad weather.

“Officials quickly secured a $29,000 charter flight — which also had to be scuttled, as tornadoes plagued the D.C. region. But the day’s events left a scar on Price’s top aides, who vowed that the Trump Cabinet official would never again wait on a commercial airline’s schedule, and foreshadowed a five-month travel sprint in which the health department spent $456,000 in taxpayer money on Price’s charter flights across the United States,” the newspaper reported.

In one case, Price did not even need to fly at all, much less on a private jet.

“One of the final trips came in September 2017, when health officials chartered a jet for Price, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and their aides to fly round trip between Washington and Philadelphia — at a cost of $14,955 to taxpayers, according to government records,” The Post reported. “The department’s Office of Inspector General later concluded that Price’s flight to Philadelphia wasted more than $10,000 in taxpayer money compared with flying commercial, and that he could have made the trip by train.”

Prior to joining the Trump administration, Price spent a dozen years in Congress and chaired the House Budget Committee.

Read the full report.

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