Here’s The Real Reason Tesla Makes No Money

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Elon Musk bills Tesla as the pinnacle of “lean” manufacturing.  Just search for pictures of Tesla’s manufacturing plant and you’ll undoubtedly be served up futuristic looking images, like the one below, depicting 100’s of red robots building vehicles without a single employee in sight.

Tesla

 

But, if Tesla is truly the lean manufacturing powerhouse that it purports itself to be then we do wonder why it continues to burn through ~$600 million of cash every single quarter, or roughly $30,000 for every car that it sells?

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‘Madoff Whistleblower’ Harry Markopolous Has Uncovered A New Fraud

Authored by Robert Huebscher via Advisor Perspectives,

Harry Markopolos, the investigator who exposed the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, has uncovered a new fraud. The unfunded status of the pension fund of the Boston Transit Authority (the “MBTA”) is $500 million bigger than previously thought, according to Markopolos. This will have a significant impact on the municipal bond market, especially if it turns out that the MBTA’s problems are endemic among similar pension funds.

The unfunded status of a pension fund is the market value of the assets minus the present value of the liabilities, discounted at an actuarially determined interest rate. For most public pension plans, this number is negative; the liabilities exceed the assets and it is underfunded.

Although the full details are not yet known, Markopolos said the $500 gap is due to bad investments, fraudulent accounting and unrealistic actuarial assumptions.

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No Jail Time for Joe Biden’s Niece Over 100 Grand Credit Card Theft

Via Downtrend

 

As George Orwell famously put in his book Animal Farm, “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others” which perfectly describes the American political elite.

Just take a look at former vice president Joe Biden’s niece who managed to avoid doing jail time for grand larceny over credit card theft. This would have landed anybody else without the right political connections in the iron bar hotel for a very long time.

Caroline Biden cut a plea deal with a Manhattan judge to repay $110,810.04 and do community service.

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US Mint Releases New Fort Knox “Audit Documentation”: First Critical Observations

Submitted by Koos Jansen of BullionStar

 

US Mint Releases New Fort Knox “Audit Documentation”: First Critical Observations

In response to a FOIA request the US Mint has finally released reports drafted from 1993 through 2008 related to the physical audits of the US official gold reserves. However, the documents released are incomplete and reveal the audit procedures have not been executed proficiently. Moreover, because the Mint could not honor its promises in full the costs ($3,144.96 US dollars) of the FOIA request have been refunded.

Thanks to my readers that donated to the crowdfunding campaign I’ve been able to force the US Mint through a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request to hand over documents related to the physical audits of the US official gold reserves stored at the Mint; also referred to as Deep Storage gold. Although the PDF-package digitally sent to me is redacted, incomplete, includes pages copied twice and materials I didn’t ask for, it’s the closest thing that I’ve ever seen to physical audit documentation of gold at Fort Knox and the other Mint depositories drafted in between 1993 and 2008.

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California Senate Leader Admits: “Half Of My Family” In Country Illegally With “False Social Security Cards”

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In testimony provided before the California Senate’s Public Safety Committee, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) decided to admit that “half of his family” is residing in the United States illegally and with the possession of falsified Social Security Cards and green cards.  Lest you think we’re exaggerating, here is the exact quote:

“…I can tell you half of my family would be eligible for deportation under [President Donald Trump’s] executive order, because if they got a false Social Security card, if they got a false identification, if they got a false driver’s license prior to us passing AB60, if they got a false green card, and anyone who has family members, you know, who are undocumented knows that almost entirely everybody has secured some sort of false identification. That’s what you need to survive, to work. They are eligible for massive deportation.”

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Whistle-blower From NOAA Blows Open Global Warming Conspiracy

Guest Post by Martin Armstrong

Bates John J

NOAA_logoA whistle-blower, Dr John Bates, who was a top NOAA scientist, has has come forward with hard evidence that the paper rushed out by the NOAA to influence the Paris Global Warming Conference was intended to be misleading using faked evidence. The scientists hired by the UN reported that there was indeed a ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming that began when the energy output of the sun began to decline starting in 1998.

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Food-Stamp Recipients Can Order from Amazon, Other Online Retailers

Via Judicial Watch

Food-stamp recipients can use their taxpayer-funded benefit to order online from retailers like Amazon under a new Obama administration initiative that aims to facilitate the shopping experience for rural and urban residents. It marks the latest of many costly experiments by the administration to expand the fraud-infested program, which has seen a record-high number of beneficiaries under President Obama. To eliminate the welfare stigma, the administration renamed food stamps Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the rolls swelled to an astounding 46.5 million in 2016. This cost American taxpayers and eye-popping $70 billion, according to government figures.

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The Money Pit

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Tesla Motors just borrowed another half-billion. What was it the late great comic Sam Kinison used to say?

It never ends! Oh! Ohhhh!

Elon Musk’s electric car operation suffers from Lack of Profit. It is a problem for a business. Unless you have friends in government. Elon relies on these to fund his Iron Man fantasies, which encompass not only his electric cars – which are pretty and quick but preposterous as economic competition to internal combustion-powered cars – but also his very own privatized, for-his-profit NASA, SpaceX.

They make money in the same sense that the IRS has “customers.”

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The Non-Expert Problem and Climate Change Science

Guest Post by Scott Adams

Before I start, let me say as clearly as possible that I agree with the scientific consensus on climate change. If science says something is true – according to most scientists, and consistent with the scientific method – I accept their verdict.

I realize that science can change its mind, of course. Saying something is “true” in a scientific sense always leaves open the option of later reassessing that view if new evidence comes to light. Something can be “true” according to science while simultaneously being completely wrong. Science allows that odd situation to exist, at least temporarily, while we crawl toward truth.

So when I say I agree with the scientific consensus on climate change, I’m endorsing the scientific consensus for the same reason I endorsed Hillary Clinton for the first part of the election – as a strategy to protect myself. I endorse the scientific consensus on climate change to protect my career and reputation. To do otherwise would be dumb, at least in my situation.

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Oops! Jill Stein Cannot File Direct Request for Recount in Pennsylvania, Must Take It to Court

Via Gateway Pundit

Oops. Jill Stein forgot to mention to her donors that she cannot file a direct request for a recount in Pennsylvania.

Stein would have to present a case showing voter fraud took place.

Trump won Pennsylvania by 70 thousand votes.
Stein would have to prove that fraud was “probable.”
That does not seem likely. Then again, we are talking about the Clintons here.

The Inquisitr reported, via Free Republic:

Per Pennsylvania regulations, there is only one way remaining for Jill Stein to get a recount in Pennsylvania and it is a complicated process. BillyPenn reports that Stein would have to file for a court appeal and present a “prima facie case” showing that voter fraud took place. While prima facie has a lower burden of proof threshold than “beyond reasonable doubt,” it is still significant. Stein would have to prove in court that fraud was “probable.” This is going to be very difficult given that even the computer specialists recommending the recount say there is no proof of hacking or fraud.

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We Still Have A Word For It

Guest Post by The Zman

I’ve always been a skeptic of Facebook, mostly because I don’t understand how they make money. I mean, I know how they make money, but I don’t know why they make money. It’s just a crappy platform for the technologically inept to post pictures of their cat. Facebook charges companies a fee so they can put ads next to the picture of your cat, but why those companies do it is a mystery to me. The whole thing depends upon ordinary people being interesting and looking at those ads, which no one does.

You can’t cheat an honest man and the companies buying ads on Facebook are not Boy Scouts so it is no wonder that Mark Zuckerberg has been hustling them.

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Are They Planning to call The Election a Fraud if Trump Wins?

curtain-behind-1There is a very interesting rumor from behind the curtain. What they are concerned about is that Trump has raised more from small donors under $200 than any previous Republican in history. Even John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 collected less than $64 million. They are concerned that more small people are donating to Trump and that means it is the small people who vote, whereas hedge fund managers and bankers can give her millions, but one vote.

They are starting to set the stage for calling the entire election a FRAUD and pinning the blame on Putin. That’s right. They are saying already in preparation that Russia is hacking into the voting systems to make sure Trump wins. There have been rumors for years that Obama would declare Marshal Law and suspend the election process. Interestingly enough, now it is not the lunatic fringe who are starting to say that would be appropriate if Obama can claim the election was a FRAUD.

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Sucker Punch On Main Street—–Disturbing Facts About The Fed’s Phony Housing “Recovery”

Whether you think there has been a housing “recovery” or not is a matter of perspective. Sales are indeed up 117% since the 2010 low, but that low was literally the worst level in the history of this data (since 1963) as a percentage of population growth. It was the Great Depression of Housing, the only possible result of the greatest housing bubble since the 1920s, if not in history. While sales have rebounded since that low, the current sales rate has barely recovered to the levels seen at the recession lows of 1991 and 1982. This rebound is little more than a dead cat bounce after 6 years of recovery, and now it may be faltering.

Mainstream economists give the Fed credit for stimulating this “recovery.” But, in fact the Fed has created a Catch 22 with no way out. The only thing the Fed has stimulated is house price inflation while destroying interest income on savings for millions of ordinary Americans, especially former middle class retirees. With mortgage rates pushed down to all time lows, house prices have consequently inflated at a rate that offsets the buyer’s savings in the interest component of the mortgage. Meanwhile American savers have lost not only massive purchasing power, but also have been forced to consume principal. The Fed has not stimulated sales but it has succeeded in transferring wealth away from those who can least afford it to those who least deserve it.

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Wells Fargo or the Federal Reserve: Who’s the Bigger Fraud?

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The Wells Fargo bank account scandal took center stage in the news last week and in all likelihood will continue to make headlines for many weeks to come. What Wells Fargo employees did in opening bank accounts without customers’ authorization was obviously wrong, but in true Washington fashion the scandal is being used to deflect attention away from larger, more enduring, and more important scandals.

What Wells Fargo employees who opened these accounts engaged in was nothing more than fraud and theft, and they should be punished accordingly. But how much larger is the fraud perpetrated by the Federal Reserve System and why does the Fed continue to go unpunished? For over 100 years the Federal Reserve System has been devaluing the dollar, siphoning money from the wallets of savers into the pockets of debtors. Where is the outrage? Where are the hearings? Why isn’t Congress up in arms about the Fed’s malfeasance? It reminds me of the story of the pirate confronting Alexander the Great. When accused by Alexander of piracy, he replies “Because I do it with a small boat, I am called a pirate and a thief. You, with a great navy, molest the world and are called an emperor.”

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WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

As this vitriolic, unpredictable, outrageously entertaining presidential campaign enters its final stages I find myself pondering what happens next. I was reminded of the last scene in the 1972 movie, The Candidate. The movie is about a young untested non-politician candidate for U.S. Senator in California who puts his fate in the hands of a veteran political operative and overcomes a double digit polling deficit to win a huge upset victory. His entire focus during the campaign was to win. In the final scene of the movie he is standing among the celebrating campaign staffers and the fawning press corp. with a befuddled look on his face. He grabs his political consultant campaign manager and pulls him into a room. As the press break into the room he asks, “What do we do now?” The question goes unanswered and the movie ends.

The chattering class on the boob tube is enthralled and aghast at every seizure, collapse, and deplorable comment by the two most disliked presidential candidates in U.S. history. The establishment and their corporate media mouthpieces are perplexed and irate that Donald Trump has overcome their propaganda campaign to be leading in the polls with 51 days to go. He is a non-politician who was behind by double digits in the polls a month ago. He hired professional political operatives who have molded his message, while his opponent has been lying about her health, lying about selling access while Secretary of State, and denigrating blue collar middle class Americans in campaign speeches. The momentum is clearly in his favor and absent a major gaffe during the debates he could win an unlikely come from behind victory in November.

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“Clinton Foundation Is Charity Fraud Of Epic Proportions”, Analyst Charges In Stunning Takedown

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In early May, we introduced readers to Charles Ortel, a Wall Street analyst who uncovered financial discrepancies at General Electric before its stock crashed in 2008, and whom the Sunday Times of London described as “one of the finest analysts of financial statements on the planet” in a 2009 story detailing the troubles at AIG. Having moved on beyond simple corporate fraud, Ortel spent the past year and a half digging into something more relevant to the current US situation:”charities”, and specifically the Clinton Foundation’s public records, federal and state-level tax filings, and donor disclosures.

Four months ago, Ortel began releasing his preliminary findings in the first of a series of up to 40 planned reports on his website. His allegation was simple: “this is a charity fraud.”

To learn more about the Clinton Foundation, Ortel decided to “take it apart and see how it worked” and he has been doing that ever since February 2015.

“I decided, as I did with GE, let’s pick one that’s complicated,” said Ortel. “The Clinton Foundation is complicated, but it’s really very small compared to GE.”

When Ortel tried to match up the Clinton Foundation’s tax filings with the disclosure reports from its major donors, he said he started to find problems. That includes records from the foundation’s many offshoots—including the Clinton Health Access Initiative and the Clinton Global Initiative—as well as its foreign subsidiaries.

“I decided it would be fun to cross-check what their donors thought they did when they donated to the Clinton Foundation, and that’s when I got really irritated,” he said. “There are massive discrepancies between what some of the major donors say they gave to the Clinton Foundation to do, and what the Clinton Foundation said what they got from the donors and what they did with it.”

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