Your weekly recap for Sports, Entertainment, Politics, Business, and Global Events.

Sports

• Los Angeles Lakers & Lebron James
  • During the broadcast of a Lakers game earlier this week, ESPN host Mark Van Gundy suggested the team trade away LeBron James. The move, while extremely unlikely, would be one of the most jaw-dropping moments in recent sports history. LeBron doesn’t get traded. LeBron decides were he goes.
• Gonzaga loses
  • Saint Mary’s beat Gonzaga in the final of the West Coast Conference. The No.1 seeded Bulldogs scored a lowly 47, and lost their game of the season. It remains likely that the Zags secure a No. 1 seed in the upcoming March Madness Tournament. It remains equally likely that the Zags bust millions of brackets when they lose to a nine seed in the second round.
• Odell Beckham Jr.
  • The diva wide receiver was traded from the Giants earlier this week. The move was not shocking. The diva went to the Browns. Now, that was shocking. So shocking, that a woman called 911 on a teenager celebrating. She mistook the celebration for something serious.
    • Prediction: Baker Mayfield enters his sophomore season with considerable pressure. He faces high expectations, as well as a league that has one year of tape on him. Expect drama from OBJ, and the stress to perform to derail this feel-good story. The Browns fall back into the cellar where they rightfully belong. Five wins.
• Nick Foles and Le’Veon Bell
  • Nick Foles, as expected, landed in Jacksonville. The Jaguars have an excellent supporting cast for the former Super Bowl MVP. Foles has not performed well outside Philly, but besides the Eagles, he’s never had a team like this around him. Look for the Jaguars to perform well, especially since Nick’s former QB coach is there running the offense.
    • Prediction: BDN leads the Jags to the AFC Championship against you know who … TB12
  • Le’Veon Bell landed in New York, but not with the Ginats. He is now a J-E-T, Jet! This is a good pickup for the Jets, and he likely fits in with their offense.
    • Prediction: Look for the Jets to grind out a wildcard berth this season, and then choke in classic Jets fashion.
• Russell Westbrook & Utah
  • The Oklahoma City point guard was livid at a fan during the first quarter of a game in Salt Lake City. He has had problems playing in Utah before, so he gets the benefit of the doubt here. Tough to discover the whole story, and Russ has said he is OK to move on. The blowup was pretty intense, nonetheless.

Entertainment

• Tucker CarlsonMedia Matters executed a carefully-calculated takedown of the controversial Fox News host. Tucker used to call into a shock jock (think Howard Stern) between the years 2006-2011. He would typically record an hour per week during the segment. Media Matters paid their staff to dig through every interview (about 300 hours), and of course found candid remarks. Tucker did not apologize, and remained defiant all week. Fox News backed him in the process. Look, any celebrity who communicates with a shock jock says stupid things. That is what happens. You’re not interviewing with Oprah.
• Captain Marvel
  • The film raked in serious cash on opening weekend. It exceeded expectations, despite a plethora of bad reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Chalk one up for the movie, and a loss for the trolls who tried to derail the film.
    • Speaking of Marvel, the final trailer for Avengers:Endgame was released.
• Judge Jeanine
  • Two Fox News hosts land in hot water in one week? Yes. Judge Jeanine made controversial remarks about Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN). Fox News publicly, and quickly rebuked the comments.
• Jay Leno
  • Miss Jay yet? Leno was on the Today Show and eloquently explained that it is hard to be a late night host these days. He mentioned viewers demand to know your side when commenting on politics. President Trump misinterpreted the quotes and used the video to attack left-wing comics, like Colbert and Kimmel. Al Roker quickly responded, and corrected Trump, but no response was given.
• Louis Tomlinson
  • The One Direction band member lost his eighteen year old sister because of a heart attack this week. The news is especially sad considering he lost his mother in December of 2016. He paid tribute to his mom with a touching song titled Two of Us a few months back.
• Cheating Scandal
  • The top story of the week was undoubtedly the cheating scandal. You can review the list of everyone charged here. A lot to digest with this. We’ll take a deeper dive into the topic early next week.

Politics

• Pelosi & Impeachment
  • Nancy Pelosi shocked everyone by publicly stating she does not intend to impeach Trump. She claims it is far too divisive. Pelosi stated that she would only move forward with impeachment if the information discovered was so bad that even Republicans joined the cause. The move demonstrates leadership. However, it also leads one to believe that an astute politician such as Pelosi is mindful of the upcoming Mueller report being a dud.
• Budget
  • The budget was released and no one cared. Our nation just keeps on digging further and further into debt.
• Trump & Daylight Savings Time
  • Trump tweeted out he supports an to end Daylight Savings Time. California recently joined Hawaii and Arizona abandoning DST . Therefore, it seems we may be nearing the end of this dreaded, outdated tradition.
• Wells Fargo’s CEO Tim Sloan
  • The embattled company’s CEO testified on Capitol Hill this week. The takeaway was two-fold. First, there remains a lot to be done within Wells Fargo until the government decides to give them back full autonomy. Second, the line of questions from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez nearly stumped the CEO because the questions were so outrageous. Take a look at this transcript:

“Mr. Sloan, why was the bank involved in the caging of children and financing the caging of children to begin with?” the freshman House Democrat and economics major asked Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan.

“Uh, I don’t know how to answer that question because we weren’t,” Sloan replied.

“Uh, so in finance — you, you were financing and involved in financing of debt of CoreCivic and Geo Group, correct?” she shot back.

To which Sloan replied: “For a period of time, we were involved in financing one of the firms — we’re not anymore and the other. I’m not familiar with the specific assertion that you’re making, but we weren’t directly involved in that.”

“OK, so these companies run private detention facilities run by ICE, which is involved in caging children, but I’ll move on,” AOC retorted.

• Beto
  • The darling of the Texas Democrats officially threw his hat into the ring and announced his Presidential run. The move adds another popular candidate into a very crowded field. Beto did exceptionally well in Texas against Ted Cruz. However, we have to wait a few months until we see him on the debate stage against political heavyweights like Warren, Sanders, and likely Biden.
  • Reuters put out a very interesting piece on Beto’s past. It seems as if he was hanging out with Kurt Cobain based on his grungy, weird 90s antics. The poems he wrote are some of the strangest things you’ll ever read.
    • Prediction: Beto’s toughest path is getting through the primary field loaded with fierce competition. He doesn’t have much of a track record, and his backstory certainly has areas his adversaries will target. He potentially has the best chance against Trump, but the toughest road within his own party. Take him seriously though, hand waving and all.
  • Trump gets his Emergency Declaration blocked by the SenateHere are the Republicans who helped aid Democrats in blocking the Emergency Declaration. Trump will most certainly keep this list on his desk.Few things to note
    • Clinton, 36 vetoes
    • Bush, 12 vetoes
    • Obama, 12 vetoes
    • This was Trump’s first veto
      • Republican Senators stood their ground and denounced this executive overreach. They fear Democrats will utilize this tactic in the future and further abuse government power, polarize the electorate, and disenfranchise the individual voter.

Business

• Powell on 60 Minutes
  • It seems like such a long time ago, but 60 Minutes had the current Fed Chairman on their program Sunday night. They also brought in the past two heads of the Fed, Bernanke and Yellen. It was a good show, but didn’t provide viewers, or traders, with much newsworthy content.
• Boeing
  • Shares fell 9% Monday following the second crash in six months involving their 737-MAX model, and roughly 10% for the week. The company likely weathers this storm. However, they certainly face challenges in the short-term.
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• US Stock Market
  • The bull market turned ten this week. Pretty amazing. Ten years ago this week all seemed lost in the world. The stock market was plunging, the recession had set in, and the flare from ‘Hope and Change’ was beginning to flame out. It was a scary moment in America, but we remained resilient and overcame the worst economic collapse since the Depression.
• Johnson and Johnson
  • A very intriguing link between the company known for bandaids and cancer causing baby powder has now been linked as the ‘King Pin’ in the opioid crisis.The company had countless lines of business in disguise funneling opioids into America. At one point, J&J said:It seems that a complete boycott of J&J may be necessary.
• Facebook’s BUSY week
  • Elizabeth Warren
    • The Democratic presidential hopeful called to break up ‘Big Tech’ including Facebook. Facebook decided to remove her political ads from their page calling for the break up. But, isn’t it Russia who meddled in American elections by using Facebook?
  • ZeroHedge
    • You likely haven’t heard of this site. It is a tremendously popular financial site offering countless articles from their staff who use the alias Tyler Durden. The site also posts a multitude of pieces from contributing authors. The site focuses on financial markets, and has a right-wing slant. Facebook unexpectedly banned the site this week and did not provide an answer. They stated it was an error 24-hours later and removed the ban.
  • Outage
    • Facebook and Instagram were both out for most of Wednesday this week. It provided the Internet the opportunity to poke fun at diehard Facebookers, and Instagram ‘models,’ but it remains to be seen how the outage happened. Russia!?
  • Lawsuit
    • A lawsuit was presented against the company for again mishandling information, but this time a tad more sinister. It appears Facebook went out of their way to gather info behind user’s backs.
  • Departure
    • Two top executives at the company abruptly announced their departure on Thursday night
• China’s New Silk Road
  • China has attempted to connect their empire with Europe through a new and modernized version of the Silk Road. Italy holds the key to finalizing this, and it appears they are likely getting on board. This is to the great dismay of the US
• Google
  • The company came under fire from America’s top general when he claimed that the company is helping China, their military, and government.

Global Events

• Americans & European visa requirements
  • Yes, it appears countries within the EU will soon require a visa before you leave the states, and there remains a chance that the entire EU makes this a priority.
• Brexit
  • The embattled referendum continues to breakdown. The leaders voted against another referendum and ‘hard’ Brexit, but still have yet to pass any resolution to finalize this long and winding road. The main problem is the Northern Ireland region and formulating a border around an incredibly difficult terrain.
• Venezuela blackouts
  • The country has been amiss with blackouts all week. Dictator Maduro cries foul and claims it is the US sabotaging him, whereas other leaders use this as ammo to finally oust the corrupt Socialist leader. The real problem is people are dying and the issue must be resolved sooner rather than later.
• Brazil’s shooting
  • A school shooting happened in Sao Paulo and one would hope that this was the worst display of violence around the world this week, but we were wrong.
• New Zealand
  • A horrific terrorist attack happened in Christchurch. One demented person killed 49 Muslims worshipping in two Mosques. He may be attached to three others. All four were taken alive and are in custody. The individual has a huge manifesto he released. The takeaways are an attempt at claiming Pewdiepie and Candace Owens radicalized him. He was also seen mentioning he hopes that this despicable display of violence would result in a Civil War in America because the left will abolish our 2nd Amendment. Finally, the deranged person spoke often about Muslims emigrating to Europe.

Honorable Mentions

• Navy Destroyer
  • A beautiful, and incredibly stealth Destroyer was commissioned by our US Navy this week. Here she is leaving San Diego.
• Virginia Lottery 30 time winner
  • A woman actually won the state lottery 30 times in one day. You cannot make this up
• Bomb Cyclone in Midwest
  • A serious storm ‘bombed’ out in the Midwest this week bringing blizzard conditions to Denver.
• Rat in the NYC Metro
  • A video of a rat inside a metro vending machine is trying to upstage NYC’s infamous pizza rat. You be the judge.

• New York
  • Speaking of NYC, this was spotted in NYC earlier this week. Some people take Spring Cleaning very seriously
  • Also, NYC officially opened Hudson Yards

• US Savings Rate
  • America is not saving enough.

‘Entirely Scientific’ Prediction Meter

Because, why not?

1. 1. Chance of Impeachment = 1% (Down 4% from last week)
   2. Chance the Mueller Report has a damning bombshell = 0.50% (Down 0.50% from last week)
   3. Chance Trump wins reelection in 2020 = 49% (Down 2% from last week)
   4. Most likely Democratic contender = Beto (Change from Kamala Harris last week)
   5. Chance Howard Schultz runs as an Independent? = 99% (Up 4% from last week)
   6. Chance the Golden State Warriors repeat = 20% (Up 5% from last week)
   7. Chance the Washington Capitals Repeat = 3% (Unchanged)
   8. NCAA March Madness Champ = Duke (Unchanged)
   9. Chance that Captain America dies in Avengers: Endgame = 99% (Unchanged)
   10. Chance of a US Recession in 2019 = 5% (Unchanged)

Our second president, John Adams: