Are you doing your weekend chores? Maybe you are strolling the aisles of your big DIY stores…the ones with the sausages out front. Whatever happened with the problem of people slipping on onions? Things are a little greener here and there are a few buds on various trees on parts of the coast. That means outside work…which is a good thing but it can interfere with trading research if you only have a few days to get it done. It’s ok though, sometimes natural interference can be a good thing.
Political and news junkies are wringing their hands as they wait for the Attorney General to deliver conclusions from the Office of Special Counsel’s newly released report. The AG wrote in his letter Friday that some basic information could come as early as this weekend. Many politicians are skeptical that the AG will be fully forthcoming with the crucial details that would provide context to any second hand interpretations. Given that we have one day left in our weekend that would mean tomorrow. After three formal essays and notes on the subject as it pertains to the equity markets, I am dissatisfied with all of them. One was titled Collusion vs Conspiracy. You get the picture. I will write a few words below anyway.
It’s understandable that there is little media commentary on how the market would react to a range of scenarios in the context and background of what happened during Friday’s equity and bond market session. That session made perfect sense to me while Thursday’s action seem awkward and forced. Futures turned red after the sour European manufacturing data at 04:30 ET, about three hours after ASX closed for the week. The rest can be seen in the chart below.
I am not holding my breath per outcomes and here are a few reasons why. There is a virtual and legal wall that exists within and between domestic law enforcement agencies and their nationally based counterparts that operate exclusively outside the country to ensure national security. That wall is there for many reasons.
Agencies tasked with overseas intelligence collection are very guarded with their product. Fragments of information acquired by diverse methods are secured, parsed, collated, matched with previously verified information and then pieced together to form a completed assessment that is not held to the same standards that govern the law of evidence. It is hard for some to believe that the Special Counsel’s office would be able to elicit perfectly proactive cooperation from people who don’t divulge information without explicit direction from above and coordination at multiple levels. Such coordination would have been in play in the present circumstance, but it is not easy to achieve. These individuals deal with issues of acute seriousness and they do not spend much time worrying over the whims of politicians.
They would provide services as required by law but only under clear directives. Some observers are naturally skeptical about OSC’s ability to achieve the virtual omniscience necessary to prove crimes of conspiracy. It is a hard task in itself to pressure witnesses to give up valuable information and they are very good at doing that, but that is only part of the challenge. The crime of interfering with the investigation might be much easier to zero in on, but that is also very amorphous, especially when dealing with people who have legal leeway beyond the ordinary citizen.
While it might be easy to identify things that fulfill the spirit of the DOJ’s order to Special Counsel, it would not be easy to turn raw or even prepared intelligence into something that would satisfy the elements of pertinent code violations. This is why members of the US Congress are right now working on ways to demand that all counterintelligence background to the report be made available to them. They will have a hard time doing this and they know it. They will face the same reticence that a criminal prosecutor would face from those who risk their lives and depend on stable, safe and unfettered platforms from which to obtain such material. Those intelligence and counterintelligence people are not like politicians. While they will work hard to provide what is required them by law, they are not historically prone to trusting those who could not pass the tests of trust that they have themselves endured. They are constantly under threat.
That is not an invitation to nihilism or to never-ending speculation of what went on during the 2016 elections. It is simply an argument that while one can observe malign transnational behavior patterns up close, it is quite a task to prove illegality -- especially when it involves highly placed political actors along with those outside national jurisdiction. It is not an impossible task but it is a very difficult one. And then there is the obvious and crucial distinction between what violates code and what should or cannot be tolerated from our politicians. It is likely that Congress and federal and state jurisdictions beyond the Special Counsel’s office are going to have to carry this forward.
(20min delay)
