Jun 162023
 


Christopher Makos Andy Warhol piloting John Denver’s bi-plane 1977

 

US Demands Big Results From Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Soon – Politico (RT)
EU Rules Out NATO Troops Openly Fighting In Ukraine (RT)
Valery Zaluzhny, The Man Behind Ukraine’s Counter-Offensive (BBC)
The Government Keeps Lying to Us About Ukraine. Where Is the Outrage? (Tracey)
Biden Admin Weighs ‘Israel Model’ for Ukraine Instead of NATO Membership (Sp.)
Le Pen Says Crimea ‘Has Nothing To Do’ With Conflict In Ukraine (TASS)
A History of Ceasefires & Peace in Ukraine (Wright)
De-Dollarization ‘Could Happen Much Quicker Than Most Think’ (Sp.)
The Bidens ‘Coerced’ Burisma To Pay $10 Million In Bribes – CHS (Fed.)
Internet Ignites as Biden Laughs Off Bribery Question (Sp.)
The Biggest Coverup In Political History (GP)
Ex-Trump Attorney Claims He Witnessed 45 Instances of DOJ Misconduct (Med.)
Why Donald Trump Cannot Get a Top-Tier Lawyer (Dershowitz)
First Roger Waters, Now C.J. Hopkins (Matt Taibbi)
Joe Biden Announces By 2025 All Wildfires Must Be Electric (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Tucker ep 4

 

 

Rogan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669483009383202818
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669464834453143552

 

 

 

 

Comer

 

 

Seymour Hersh: Panic at the State Department over Victoria Nuland. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has resigned, and her last day in office will be June 30, noted journalist Seymour Hersh on his blog. “Her departure sent the State Department into near-panic over the person many fear will be her replacement: Victoria Nuland,” writes Hersh.

As he states, Nuland’s aggressive attitude towards Russia fits perfectly with the views of President Joseph Biden. The famous journalist cites a source with direct knowledge of the details of the situation, who says that various State Department bureaus are complaining that Nuland, currently the undersecretary for political affairs, is “going wild” while Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is on the road.

 

 

“I’m told that [the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Dam] was approved for demolition by Victoria Nuland. She’s been involved in everything happening in Ukraine for at least 14-15 years if not longer.” — Col. Douglas Macgregor

 

 

 

 

“..the Times wrote that “failure would look like a Ukrainian army that has not learned to fight, has lost the equipment given to them in recent months and gained no territory to show for that.”

US Demands Big Results From Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Soon – Politico (RT)

US officials are telling their Ukrainian counterparts that Washington’s support for their war effort hinges on the success of the ongoing counteroffensive against Russian forces, Politico reported on Thursday. The offensive has failed so far, with Ukrainian losses counted in the thousands. US President Joe Biden has repeatedly promised to back Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” However, when Ukrainian officials recently asked the US State Department and National Security Council whether they could count on this support to continue through next year’s election season and a potential change of power in the White House, they were told “let’s see how the counteroffensive goes,” Politico reported.

Ukraine’s former deputy prime minister, Ivanna Klimpush-Tsintsadze, told the US news site that these talks left her feeling anxious about the “continuation of the same level of US support to Ukraine after this financial year,” which ends in September. After months of mixed messages from Kiev – and reports of depleted stockpiles and general unreadiness in the Western media – Ukrainian forces launched their long-awaited counteroffensive against Russian forces almost two weeks ago. Attacking multiple sections of the frontline in Donetsk and Zaporozhye Regions, Ukraine has so far failed to penetrate Russia’s multi-layered labyrinth of defensive trenches, minefields, and anti-tank obstacles.

With Ukraine’s Western-provided air defense systems degraded by constant Russian missile and drone attacks, Russian air support has acted with impunity, inflicting devastating losses on the Ukrainian forces. As of Wednesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry counted 7,500 dead or wounded Ukrainian troops, not counting those hit by high-precision missiles and airstrikes deep behind the front lines Videos of wrecked Western tanks and armored vehicles have circulated online, and Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on Wednesday that Kiev has lost “at least 160 tanks and 360 armored vehicles.” The hardware destroyed by Russian troops accounts for between 25% and 30% of all Western military equipment supplied to Ukraine, the president estimated.

Publicly, Western officials have hedged their bets, leaving it up to Kiev to define what a victorious offensive would look like and downplaying expectations of a thrust to Crimea, as Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has promised. According to the New York Times, American and European officials would consider the offensive successful if Ukrainian forces cut off Russia’s land bridge with Crimea and managed to hold any territory seized in this direction. Citing European diplomats, the Times wrote that “failure would look like a Ukrainian army that has not learned to fight, has lost the equipment given to them in recent months and gained no territory to show for that.”

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Dead end.

EU Rules Out NATO Troops Openly Fighting In Ukraine (RT)

Western countries will not send their soldiers to fight Russia on behalf of Ukraine, Director General of the European Union Military Staff Vice Admiral Herve Blejean said on Wednesday. “To send ground troops to Ukraine is to be a party in a war, to be at war with Russia, and nobody wants that, neither the EU, nor NATO,” Blejean told the French TV channel LCI . “We are not at war with Russia. We are supporting a country attacked by Russia.” Blejean added that the ongoing Ukrainian offensive would “not be the end of the war, regardless of its results.” The French admiral’s remarks came after former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen suggested that individual members, such as Poland and the Baltic states, could ultimately decide to deploy soldiers to Ukraine.


Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, however, said last week that there would not be foreign boots on the ground “before the end of the armed conflict” with Russia. Volunteers from multiple NATO countries are already fighting on Kiev’s side, including Polish nationals who were involved in an armed incursion into Russia’s Belgorod Region earlier this month. Moscow, meanwhile, has long insisted that by supplying Ukraine with heavy weapons and sharing intelligence, NATO countries had made themselves de facto direct participants in the conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that NATO was “waging a war” against his country and that it was “ridiculous” to claim otherwise. Last month, the EU agreed to procure €1 billion ($1.08 billion) worth of artillery rounds and missiles for Ukraine. The US has committed more than $100 billion in aid to Kiev since Russia launched its operation in the neighboring state in February 2022.

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The BBC has this on Zaluzhny. Problem is, he hasn’t been seen in a long time. Maybe not that surprising given the state of the offensive, which he is “behind”.

Also: “The head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kirill Budanov, is in critical condition at a Bundeswehr hospital in Berlin after being wounded.”

Valery Zaluzhny, The Man Behind Ukraine’s Counter-Offensive (BBC)

Ukraine’s long-awaited attempt to take back the territories in the east and south of the country, occupied by Russia for the past 18 months, is now in full swing. A key figure in planning and executing this operation is Gen Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s 49-year-old commander-in-chief. Little known until recently, his popularity now rivals that of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Gen Zaluzhny, or “our Valera” as friends and old classmates like to call him, was appointed commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military in July 2021. Those who know him well say the appointment, pushed through personally by President Zelensky, came as a surprise to the general and many others too as his promotion involved climbing several steps on the career ladder.

Zaluzhny was already known as an ambitious and modern commander, but also an unpretentious man who liked to joke with his subordinates and didn’t put on airs. Within seven months he was leading Ukraine’s defence against full-scale invasion. By 26 February 2022 it was clear that Russian troops were failing to “take Kyiv in three days”, which had initially seemed a likely outcome. But the reality remained grim and Ukrainian authorities were calling on the public not to panic. Russian troops were advancing in the north, east and south of Ukraine and posed a considerable threat to the capital. One idea floating among Ukraine’s top officials was to start blowing up bridges near Kyiv over the vast Dnipro river, to prevent the Russians crossing from the eastern left bank to the western right bank, where, among other strategic objects, the government quarter was situated.

They phoned Gen Zaluzhny for his view. “Under no circumstances are we to do that,” he is reported to have replied, at the time sitting in a smoke-filled bunker with other top brass. “This will be a betrayal of both civilians and the military remaining on the eastern bank.” The BBC has heard matching accounts from two sources involved in the episode that indicate this is what happened. Many other crucial decisions followed and by early April 2022 Ukrainian troops pushed the Russian army back to the north and east of Kyiv. Born into the family of a Soviet serviceman, Valery Zaluzhny once said he was always committed to distancing himself from the excessive hierarchy of the Soviet Army. By the time he went to military school in the mid-1990s Ukraine was already an independent state.

While his textbooks at military college may have dated back to the Soviet era, he learnt about the reality of war first-hand. In 2014 he was appointed a deputy commander in an area of eastern Ukraine where the conflict with separatists, backed by the Russian army, was getting under way. Colleagues we spoke to say that from the onset of his career he was keen on building relationships of trust with his subordinates as well as delegating command decisions.

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How they’re trying to sneak in NATO troops:

“..a cross-coalition bill was submitted to the Polish parliament which would make it legal for Polish nationals to fight in the Armed Forces of Ukraine..”

The Government Keeps Lying to Us About Ukraine. Where Is the Outrage? (Tracey)

On June 4, a group referring to itself as the “Polish Volunteer Corps” issued a boastful announcement confirming its participation in a series of cross-border ground offensives into Russia. News of these audacious raids was jarring enough, given the many prior assurances of U.S. and Ukrainian war planners, who insisted no attacks would be carried out inside Russian territory. It was all the more conspicuous that the incursion units were apparently comprised of Polish soldiers. Poland, of course, is not only a NATO member state, but the NATO member state with which the U.S. has most assiduously aligned itself since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine (Polish government officials deny any formal connection to the “Polish Volunteer Corps”). So the raids raised an obvious, yet oft-neglected question: Just what the hell is U.S. policy in Ukraine?

If you turn on the TV, you’ll find pundits on every channel loyally reciting from memory the broad parameters of the U.S. mission—at least as it’s being conveyed in daily rhetorical flourishes by Biden Administration officials, assorted Congressional chest-thumpers, and brave think tank warriors. Freedom and autocracy are locked in a great cosmic battle of good versus evil, or so goes the usual storyline—most often narrated with a degree of moral complexity that can be generously compared to a lower-tier Marvel Movie. But apart from this steady stream of heavily recycled platitudes, was it ever plainly disclosed to Americans—the chief financial sponsors of the Ukraine war effort, after all—that the scope of the war effort they’ve found themselves subsidizing would eventually expand to include platoons of Polish soldiers marching straight into Russia?

Did anyone back in Washington, D.C. sign off on this, or was there ever an opportunity granted for public consideration of its potentially foreboding implications? At least in theory, the U.S. is treaty-bound to come to the defense of Poland in the event of armed attack. And while Poland may nominally disavow the Polish Volunteer Corps, a Polish journalist writing for Poland’s largest digital publication says he was in attendance at a founding organizational meeting in Kyiv this past February, during which the unit was established not as a ragtag group of untested amateurs, but as an elite “sabotage and reconnaissance” force—which from the get-go was “reporting directly to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.” Per this account, the unit was to consist of Poland’s “most experienced soldiers,” with notable imprecision as to where specifically those soldiers hailed from.

Then there’s the fact that shortly before the formation of the “Polish Volunteer Corps,” a cross-coalition bill was submitted to the Polish parliament which would make it legal for Polish nationals to fight in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The war against Russia was to be recognized as “a special situation from the point of view of the national security of the Republic of Poland,” the text reads, “requiring non-standard political and legislative actions on the part of the state.” The “Polish Volunteer Corps” has been conducting joint operations with the “Russian Volunteer Corps,” another fully integrated “special unit within the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine”—euphemistically referred to in “Western” media headlines with plausible-deniability monikers like “Pro-Ukraine group of partisans.”

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“..opponents of the initiative argue it would escalate the Ukraine conflict and confirm Russia’s justification for the special operation..”

Biden Admin Weighs ‘Israel Model’ for Ukraine Instead of NATO Membership (Sp.)

In 2008, Ukraine was denied membership to NATO, with opponents to Ukraine’s membership citing potential effects on Europe’s relationship with Russia as a major issue. The Biden administration is reportedly considering proposing an ‘Israel model’ for Ukraine in NATO, a deal that would be a limited commitment and not include a collective defense guarantee. US media reports have indicated the Biden White House would pledge to continue providing more military aid to Ukraine, regardless of the outcome of its ongoing counter-offensive. The deal would likely be for a shorter period than the commitment to Israel, which typically runs in 10-year intervals. Kiev and some European allies have been advocating for Ukraine’s full NATO membership, including a collective defense guarantee.

However, opponents of the initiative argue it would escalate the Ukraine conflict and confirm Russia’s justification for the special operation, one of which was NATO’s encroachment across Europe since the start of the century. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has reportedly threatened to boycott the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next month if he is not given a roadmap for Ukraine joining the military alliance as a full member. Last week, outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg reportedly suggested a “compromise” proposal when he spoke to US President Joe Biden. Part of that compromise stipulated a pledge to continue providing the Kiev regime with weapons, regardless of the level of success of its counter-offensive.

The deal would also ascend Ukraine to the council level in NATO, which is the status Russia maintained until 2014, when the relationship between Russia and the West collapsed. US media reported only Germany has so far sided with Biden in his plan for Ukraine; however, other members also have their doubts about Ukraine being ready to join the military bloc. Part of the Biden plan would be to commit the US to Ukraine for longer periods, limiting the amount of public debate in the US over Ukraine aid. Citing Biden administration officials, media reported the plan would “bleed some of the politics out of episodic debates about how much aid to commit to Ukraine in the next six months or a year.”

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“Residents in Crimea decided to join Russia. This position was also shared by former French Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Valery Giscard d’Estaing, and I stand with them, too, that this issue has nothing to do with today’s conflict in Ukraine..”

Le Pen Says Crimea ‘Has Nothing To Do’ With Conflict In Ukraine (TASS)

Crimea is an inseparable part of Russia and has nothing to do with today’s conflict in Ukraine, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the parliamentary faction of the National Rally party, told France Info radio on Thursday. “Crimea has nothing to do with the conflict in Ukraine,” she maintained. “Residents in Crimea decided to join Russia. This position was also shared by former French Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Valery Giscard d’Estaing, and I stand with them, too, that this issue has nothing to do with today’s conflict in Ukraine,” emphasized Le Pen, who was incumbent French leader Emmanuel Macron’s main rival in the presidential election in 2017 as well as last year. According to the parliamentarian, “the conflict in Ukraine is related to the Minsk agreements, which do not concern Crimea.”

Le Pen underlined that she views Crimea to be a part of Russia. “I have been saying this for 10 years already, and I have not changed my mind,” the far-right politician said. She insists that “the Donbass issue should be central at talks to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.” Taking questions from members of the lower chamber of the French parliament, the National Assembly, in late May, Le Pen said she considers Crimea a legitimate Russian territory. The politician said she had her own impressions from her trips to the peninsula, where she talked to Crimean residents and could see for herself that they are more inclined towards Russia.

Crimea was transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954 at the initiative of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. After a coup in Ukraine in February 2014, the governments of Crimea and Sevastopol held a referendum on the peninsula’s reunification with Russia. The overwhelming majority of voters supported reunification (96.7% in the Republic of Crimea and 95.6% in the City of Sevastopol, respectively), with turnout reaching 80%. Despite the convincing results of the referendum, Kiev and the EU have refused to recognize Crimea as being part of Russia.

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It’s been done before. Many times.

A History of Ceasefires & Peace in Ukraine (Wright)

Negotiations, ceasefires, armistices and peace agreements are as old as wars themselves. Every war ends with some version of one of them. Wars have been studied endlessly, but lessons learned on how to end the wars have generally been ignored by those conducting the world’s latest wars. To stop the killing in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, people of conscience must do everything they can to make negotiations for a ceasefire become a reality. That was the purpose of the International Summit for Peace in Ukraine held in Vienna last weekend. Over 300 persons from 32 countries attended the conference and participated in the robust program to discuss how to create conditions for a ceasefire and ultimately an agreement to stop the killing. The websites for the International Peace Bureau and the Peace in Ukraine summit were hacked the day after the conference but should be up and running soon.

[..] Using data from 48 conflicts between 1946 and 1997, political scientist Virginia Page Fortna has shown that strong agreements that arrange for demilitarized zones, third-party guarantees, peacekeeping, or joint commissions for dispute resolution and contain specific (versus vague) language produced more lasting cease-fires that provide conditions for dialogue for an armistice or agreement. Figuring out how to make the cease-fire be effective will be the key task. Despite its less-than-stellar track record, the U.S. as a co-belligerent should work with the Ukrainian government to figure out effective cease-fire measures. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already described any new negotiations as “Minsk 3,” a reference to the two cease-fire deals that were brokered with Russia in the Belarusian capital in 2014 and 2015, after its annexation of Crimea and fighting in the Donbass region.

The Minsk 1 and 2 agreements included no effective mechanisms for ensuring the parties’ compliance and failed to end the violence. Minsk 1 and 2 were later acknowledged by NATO and the European Union as a ploy for “buying time” for the West’s buildup of Ukrainian forces and equipment. Having been in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves for 29 years and working as a U.S. diplomat for 16 years, I can testify to the results of endless studies of the consequences of war. One example is the year-long U.S. Department of State Iraq Study Group, being ignored by U.S. politicians and policy makers, and lessons learned on how to end deadly conflicts being ignored by U.S. military and national security experts.

I suspect that few Ukrainian, Russian, U.S. and NATO policy makers know of the United Nations’ 18-page guide to the Do’s and Don’ts of Ceasefire Agreements, based on their experience in conflicts. Therefore, for the record, I want to mention the main points of the “Do’s and Don’ts of Ceasefire Agreements,” so no one can say, “We Didn’t Know” such work has been done already and the pitfalls of ceasefire agreements well identified.

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De-Dollarization is happening now. Just not in one big leap.

De-Dollarization ‘Could Happen Much Quicker Than Most Think’ (Sp.)

Sanctions and trade embargoes have accelerated the movement of many nations, including Russia, to boost efforts to shed reliance on the US dollar, which has been increasingly “weaponized” by the West. Recent moves by BRICS countries offer hope that the dominance of the greenback in the world economy will eventually be uprooted. De-dollarization could happen much quicker than most people think, Michael Goddard, president of the Netley Group, said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). SPIEF 2023 entered day two on Thursday, and the unique global economic and business event focused on de-dollarization – a buzzword of late among countries seeking to ditch the hegemony of the American greenback. The BRICS group of countries has been spearheading the movement.

A common currency is one of the bold steps being mulled over among other tools that the bloc, which unites the world’s largest developing economies — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, has at its disposal to escape the hegemony of the US-dominated economic order. As a number of other countries have expressed desire to join the bloc, including Argentina, Iran, Indonesia, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, the trend towards dumping the dollar is likely to grow even stronger. “A new BRICS currency that’s backed by some kind of asset, gold or a basket of assets, as they’re discussing, from a trade basis, if all the BRICS countries and BRICS+ and others trade that way [it] will almost immediately depress the amount of dollars that are used in trade. And over a period of a few years, that will accelerate greatly,” Michael Goddard told Sputnik.

However, he clarified that that if one nurtures hopes of ditching the dollar, which is the global reserve currency, you “actually need reserve.” The tremendous advantage of the dollar at the moment is the US bond market, Goddard said, adding “One of the ways for the BRICS to replicate that, and then displace it, is to link their bond markets, and the governments and the populace actually start to buy the bonds which are denominated in the new currency. And I believe that if they do that, de-dollarization could happen much quicker than most people think.”To all those skeptics of the BRICS currency who warn of the vast differences of the economies of member-states, Michael Goddard enumerated ways that this “divide” could be overcome successfully.

One way is for BRICS to create a currency “backed either by gold or a basket of commodities that are trusted,” and then “trade with 80 percent of the world.” “And I believe that most people who are not in America, the UK, or Europe, would like an alternative to the dollar, don’t want to be at risk from being sanctioned, their assets being frozen. And I think the momentum of that will actually allow the currency to take root and then grow,” Goddard concluded.

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“Zlochevsky allegedly told the CHS he was dismayed by Trump’s victory, fearing an investigation would reveal his payments to the Biden family..”

The Bidens ‘Coerced’ Burisma To Pay $10 Million In Bribes – CHS (Fed.)

The Bidens allegedly “coerced” a foreign national to pay them $10 million in bribes, according to individuals familiar with the investigation into the FBI’s handling of the FD-1023 confidential human source report. What, if anything, agents did to investigate these explosive claims remains unknown, however, with sources telling The Federalist the FBI continues to stonewall. On Monday, Sen. Chuck Grassley revealed a foreign national — identified by individuals with knowledge of the matter as Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky — allegedly possessed 17 recordings implicating the Bidens in a pay-to-play scandal. While 15 of the audio recordings consisted of phone calls between Zlochevsky and Hunter Biden, two were of calls the Ukrainian had with then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to the FD-1023.

The Federalist has now learned the FD-1023 reported the CHS saying the Bidens “coerced” Zlochevsky to pay the bribes. Sources familiar with the investigation also explained the context of Zlochevsky’s statements, and that context further bolsters the CHS’s reporting. In the FD-1023 from June 30, 2020, the confidential human source summarized earlier meetings he had with Zlochevsky. According to the CHS, in the 2015-2016 timeframe, the CHS, who was providing advice to Zlochevsky, told the Burisma owner to stay away from the Bidens. Then, after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential contest, the CHS asked Zlochevsky if he was upset Trump won.

Zlochevsky allegedly told the CHS he was dismayed by Trump’s victory, fearing an investigation would reveal his payments to the Biden family, which included a $5 million payment to Hunter Biden and a $5 million payment to Joe Biden. According to the CHS, the Burisma executive bemoaned the situation, claiming the Bidens had “coerced” him into paying the bribes. The CHS responded that he hoped Zlochevsky had taken precautions to protect himself. Zlochevsky then allegedly detailed the steps he had taken to avoid detection, stressing he had never paid the “Big Guy” directly and that it would take some 10 years to unravel the various money trails. It was only then that Zlochevsky mentioned the audio recordings he had made of the conversations he had with Hunter and Joe Biden, according to the CHS.

The broader context of this conversation adds to the plausibility of Zlochevsky’s claims that he possessed recordings implicating the Bidens. And we already know from Grassley and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer that the FBI considered the CHS, who relayed Zlochevsky’s claims to the FBI, a “highly credible” source. Further, according to individuals familiar with the investigation, the FBI admitted the CHS’s intel was unrelated to the information Rudy Giuliani had provided the Western District of Pennsylvania’s U.S. attorney’s office — the office then-Attorney General William Barr had tasked with reviewing any new information related to Ukraine. Sources told The Federalist that investigators out of the Pittsburgh office, in addition to reviewing Giuliani’s information, searched internal FBI databases and came across an earlier FD-1023 related to the CHS. That earlier FD-1023 then led to agents questioning the CHS on June 30, 2020, uncovering the details concerning Burisma’s alleged bribery of the Bidens.

[..] Biden family business. Those records provide concrete evidence of a pattern of public corruption involving foreign nationals, with Joe Biden at the helm. There are still more banking records to review, along with the many details recently discovered when the whistleblower came forward with the FD-1023. Apparently, Zlochevsky wasn’t far from the mark when he said it would take 10 years to unravel the complex payment path that led to Joe Biden.

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“Are there tapes that you accepted bribes, President Biden? Is that true?”

Internet Ignites as Biden Laughs Off Bribery Question (Sp.)

The US House Oversight Committee is investigating claims of a political bribery scheme involving a foreign national based on information provided to the FBI by a confidential source who alleges Joe Biden and his son Hunter received a total of $10Mln from Ukrainian energy company Burisma to help end an investigation into the entity. A host of internet critics have lambasted Joe Biden’s response to a question about the alleged bribery scandal in which he has been implicated. “Are there tapes that you accepted bribes, President Biden? Is that true?” a reporter asked the Democratic POTUS. The reporter was referring to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma bribery allegations dating to Biden’s time as vice-president, and the reported existence of audio recordings of his conversations with an executive proving the claims.

But the 80-year-old, who was on his way out of the White House East Room after an event with US diplomats, stopped, turned around, and smirked, while remaining silent. He then shook his head, and ambled down the hallway.
Columnist Miranda Devine tweeted that the president was “laughing in America’s face”. Others chimed in, deploring Biden’s “condescending” and “mocking” response. Republican Senator from Iowa, Chuck Grassley, revealed on Monday that a Burisma whistleblower who allegedly paid Joe Biden and his son Hunter retained 17 audio recordings of his conversations with them as an “insurance policy”. The senator cited the FBI’s unclassified 1023 form drafted in 2020 on the Biden family. The “foreign national” reportedly referred to Joe Biden as the “Big Guy”.

The US House Oversight Committee is investigating a possible political bribery scheme involving a foreign national. The investigation is based on information provided to the FBI by a confidential human source who alleges that Joe Biden and his son Hunter received a total of $10Mln from Ukrainian energy company Burisma to help end a probe into the entity. The president dismissed the allegations without elaborating on details. Earlier in the day, former President Donald Trump promised that if he were elected he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden, his family and others allegedly engaged in corruption that negatively affects the United States.

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While Trump was being impeached.

The Biggest Coverup In Political History (GP)

In 2019 One America News Network investigative journalist Chanel Rion released a three part made for TV series detailing Joe Biden and Hunter Biden’s criminal dealings in Ukraine. The evidence Chanel Rion and Rudy Giuliani brought forth was enough to start a corruption investigation into Joe Biden. Chanel traveled to Ukraine with Rudy Giuliani to investigate the money laundering schemes by the Biden Crime Family. What they came back with was a trough of evidence and documents that detailed bribes and payments to Hunter Biden for years and at least one bribe to Joe Biden for $900,000 from Ukrainian officials.


Chanel Rion and Rudy Giuliani interviewed several witnesses who destroyed Adam Schiff’s baseless impeachment case against President Trump. In the three part EXCLUSIVE report, Rudy Giuliani debunked the impeachment hoax and exposed Biden family corruption in Ukraine and Latvia. In the series Rudy and Chanel expose the numerous media lies told to the American public by the lemming media to protect Joe Biden The mainstream media is once again exposed as a very corrupt arm of the Democrat Party. Joe Biden should have been jailed years ago. Here is background material The Gateway Pundit published back in 2020 before the presidential election. The DOJ ignored this evidence against Joe Biden.

“Ukrainian Pariamentarian Andriy Derkach held a much publicized press conference last October in Ukraine. In his press conference Derkach revealed that Joe Biden was paid $900,000 for lobbying efforts from Burisma Holdings in Ukraine. Derkach even brought charts and images as proof during his presentation. This is the same organization that paid Hunter Biden over $50,000 a month to sit on their board in an obvious pay-for-play maneuver. Cristina Laila reported on this development back in October last year…” Former Vice President Joe Biden was personally paid $900,000 for lobbying activities from Burisma Holdings, according to Ukrainian MP Andriy Derkach.
Derkach publicized the documents at a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency Wednesday as he said the records, “describe the mechanism of getting money by Biden Sr.”


“This was the transfer of Burisma Group’s funds for lobbying activities, as investigators believe, personally to Joe Biden through a lobbying company. Funds in the amount of $900,000 were transferred to the U.S.-based company Rosemont Seneca Partners, which according to open sources, in particular, the New York Times, is affiliated with Biden. The payment reference was payment for consultative services,” Derkach said. During his press conference Derkach even displayed images and a timeline of Joe Biden’s nefarious dealings in the Ukraine. The entire press conference by Andriy Derkach was recorded and posted online. For some strange reason the liberal mainstream media had NO INTEREST in reporting on this story at the time. They totally ignored the information. In October 2020 Andrii Derkach announced a second laptop belonging to Hunter Biden’s business contacts in Ukraine has been seized by law enforcement. The Gateway Pundit is currently following up on this claim.

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“And I know, Andy, that you know, had it happened during a jury trial, it would be a mistrial, right there.”

Ex-Trump Attorney Claims He Witnessed 45 Instances of DOJ Misconduct (Med.)

Former Trump attorney Tim Parlatore argued on MSNBC Tuesday that “prosecutorial misconduct” could derail Donald Trump‘s federal trial. Parlatore claimed to a highly skeptical panel that he was in the room and witnessed misconduct during the grand jury proceedings. “What are the issues that you think would lead to this case never going to trial?” Andrew Weissmann asked during an MSNBC panel. “The biggest issue, of course, Andy, is prosecutorial misconduct,” Parlatore said, before laying out his accusations against the federal prosecutors. “This is a case where you have prosecutors who have consistently demonstrated lack of ethics and willingness to lie to federal judges in sealed proceedings.

Willingness to, in the grand jury, openly suggest to the jurors that they may take the invocation of constitutional rights as evidence of guilt. Willingness to meet with an attorney for one of the witnesses and suggest that his application for a judgeship is something that should be considered and is a reason to convince his client to change his mind. ” A skeptical Weissmann interjected to ask how Parlatore knew of the alleged misconduct since grand juries usually operate in secret. “Because I was in the room,” Parlatore said. “It happened right in front of me.” Parlatore was a witness before the grand jury considering the classified documents case against Trump. Weissmann then asked what Parlatore saw.

“Forty-five separate times — I know sounds like I made that number up — but 45 separate times they tried to get into attorney-client privileged information and frequently when the question was asked about conversations between attorney and client, they would turn to the grand jury and say, ‘so you’re refusing to provide that information to the grand jury?’ At a certain point, further exchange ensued where the prosecutor says, ‘well isn’t it possible to waive the privilege? And if President Trump is being so cooperative, why won’t he waive the privilege and allow you to tell the jury about his conversations with you?’ That’s totally improper. And I know, Andy, that you know, had it happened during a jury trial, it would be a mistrial, right there.”

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“..the threats to the lawyers are greater than at any time since McCarthyism. Nor is the comparison to McCarthyism a stretch.”

Why Donald Trump Cannot Get a Top-Tier Lawyer (Dershowitz)

Former President Donald Trump has now been arraigned and pleaded not guilty. He was represented by two lawyers, neither of whom he apparently wants to lead his defense at trial. He has been interviewing Florida lawyers, and several top ones have declined. I know, because I have spoken to them. There are disturbing suggestions that among the reasons lawyers are declining the case is because they fear legal and career reprisals. There is a nefarious group that calls itself The 65 Project that has as its goal to intimidate lawyers into not representing Trump or anyone associated with him. They have threatened to file bar charges against any such lawyers. When these threats first emerged, I wrote an op-ed offering to defend pro bono any lawyers that The 65 Project goes after.

So The 65 Project immediately went after me, and contrived a charge based on a case in which I was a constitutional consultant, but designed to send a message to potential Trump lawyers: if you defend Trump or anyone associated with him, we will target you and find something to charge you with. The lawyers to whom I spoke are fully aware of this threat — and they are taking it seriously. There may be other reasons as well for why lawyers are reluctant to defend Trump. He is not the easiest client, and he has turned against some of his previous lawyers, as some of his previous lawyers have turned against him. This will be a difficult case to defend and an unpopular one with many in the legal profession and in general population.

Good lawyers, however, generally welcome challenges, especially in high-profile cases. This case is different: the threats to the lawyers are greater than at any time since McCarthyism. Nor is the comparison to McCarthyism a stretch. I recall during the 1950s how civil liberties lawyers, many of whom despised communism, were cancelled, and attacked if they dared to represent people accused of being communists. Even civil liberties organizations stayed away from such cases, for fear that it would affect their fundraising and general standing in the community. It may even be worse today, as I can attest from my own personal experiences, having defended Trump against an unconstitutional impeachment in 2020. I was cancelled by my local library, community center and synagogue. Old friends refused to speak to me and threatened others who did. My wife, who disagreed with my decision to defend Trump, was also ostracized. There were physical threats to my safety.

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“disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.”

First Roger Waters, Now C.J. Hopkins (Matt Taibbi)

It’s become axiomatic that the United States “lags far behind” Europe when it comes to hate speech law. Everyone from Joe Biden to would-be disinformation Czarina Nina Jankowicz to New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger have suggested the United States needs to move more in Europe’s direction, toward stricter rules and “illegal hate speech,” which “you will have soon also in the U.S.,” as European Commission Vice President for Values Vera Jourova put it at the Davos conference this year. It makes sense. After all, who’s for hate speech? What possible downside can there be to disallowing expressions of racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, transphobia? C.J. Hopkins can answer that. Following a similar case involving Roger Waters, the American playwright, Substack contributor, and editor of Consent Factory has been placed under investigation by a Berlin prosecutor for tweeting an image of his book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich. A scathing criticism of global pandemic policy, his cover features a white mask with a white swastika you have to squint to see:

According to German authorities, the author through this image is “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.”] Here are some other books legally on sale in Germany:

As was the case with Waters, the Nazi imagery in C.J.’s book is used to make a satirical point. Unlike the Waters case, there’s absolutely nothing in C.J.’s outside-of-text history that even theoretically could be used to argue hidden/dangerous subtext. “It would take all of about 20 seconds of anyone looking at my actual work to see how absolutely opposed I am to anything resembling, totalitarianism, fascism, authoritarianism, anything,” he says. I first read C.J. at the outset of the Russiagate scandal, when from the amusing Statler-and-Waldorf remove of expat life he wrote witty columns about how far off the rocker America had fallen. A terrific comic prose stylist, he ripped our culture for obsessing over “Putin-Nazis,” noting the new Russophobia was just “a minor variation on the original War on Terror narrative we’ve been indoctrinated with since 2001.”


These columns are worth a re-read. C.J. was ahead of me, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, and others in seeing how Trump-era propaganda campaigns deranged the population. We had uncomfortable correspondence after Covid-19 hit, when I wasn’t so sure we were dealing with the same kinds of official lies this time, and worried about the wisdom, say, of writing “pandemic” in quotation marks. I rolled my eyes when I saw him cite an old quote from Hermann Goering, saying, “All you have to do is tell [people] they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” But he placed it astride this real quote from California State Senator Richard Pan, about “anti-vaxxers”: “These extremists have not yet been held accountable, so they continue to escalate violence against the body public… We must now summon the political will to demand that domestic terrorists face consequences for their words and actions.”

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“Electric wildfires could burn millions of acres of trees with far less efficiency for only 10 times the price.!”

Joe Biden Announces By 2025 All Wildfires Must Be Electric (BBee)

Speaking from the White House, President Biden announced his administration’s bold plan to require all wildfires be electric by 2025. “My administration is committed to fighting pancakes, I mean climate change, and today we announce our boldest initiative yet!” mumbled the President to a group of dolls gathered in his closet he mistook for reporters gathered on the White House lawn. “By 2025, all wildfires will be powered exclusively by clean, electric energy. Gotta do it, folks! Not a joke! I wonder what that redhead smells like!” The Biden team unveiled details of the plan, including new statutes mandating all wildfires obtain permits for electric usage before being allowed to burn down acres of forest land.

“Electric wildfires are the future of climate technology,” declared Mark Patterson, a representative from the Bureau of Land Management. “I’m thrilled to see our president take a powerful position against destructive, gas-powered wildfires. Electric wildfires could burn millions of acres of trees with far less efficiency for only 10 times the price.!” The Biden administration told reporters they’ve spoken with wildfires across the country and have nearly reached an agreement with the fires, which includes provisions to convert current wood-burning fires into electric-only in just three years. The President hailed the move as another major step forward in his administration’s ongoing commitment to spend as many federal dollars on completely normal, practical, common-sense climate initiatives as possible. Critics say the plan could use up precious cobalt meant for iPhones and Teslas.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Loudest bird
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669317438574415873

 

 

Komodo

 

 

Eagle ray
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669383386832486402

 

 

Young ‘uns

 

 

Owl’s ear
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669363135294078979

 

 

Sequoia
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669357721030914051

 

 

Fuxi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669391436557451267

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Apr 192022
 


Jean Metzinger The blue bird 1912-13

 

Thralldom and Its Uses (Jim Kunstler)
The Great Acquiescence — Glory to Ukraine (Patrick Lawrence)
The Importance of Ignorance in Info Wars (Lauria)
Ukraine and the Profits of War (TomD)
American Commissars (Chris Hedges)
Lockdown-Heavy States Had Some of the Worst Health Results (McMaken)
Second Global Covid-19 Summit Scheduled For May 12 (R.)
Hunter Biden’s China Business Deals Should Raise ‘Alarm Bells’ (ET)
Jack Dorsey Lashes Out At Twitter Board As Elon Musk Tries To Buy Company (DW)
Macron Should Prepare For A Brutal Shock After Latest Polls (Exp.)
EU’s 18 Year Old Embezzlement Charges to Derail Le Pen Presidential Bid (SN)
From Rachel Carson to Monsanto: The Silence of Spring (OffG)

 

 

Gonzalo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1515975497397661699

 

 

 

 

Maersheimer

 

 

Azov

 

 

 

 

“Collectively going crazy has been a luxury we can’t afford anymore.”

Thralldom and Its Uses (Jim Kunstler)

America has had enough of being in thrall, especially to figures and forces dedicated to our destruction. This spring is the beginning of a national life with less stuff, including, looks like, stuff to eat. That will sure enough put folks in touch with something real, and then they will naturally have to do something about it. Centralized control of the population via trackable digital money is the last thing that will avail in the face of hunger and desperation. In fact, that is just another set of empty wishes and promises. The reality is that centralized government, such as the one in Washington DC, is less and less in control of anything — except the manufactured pretense that it can fix the problems of less stuff and decaying money.

The federal government is increasingly impotent, unable to discharge its basic obligations to preserve public order and safety. Its previous attempt to fix something was the response to Covid-19, which has culminated in the fiasco of the mRNA vaccines, now pending and tending toward an astounding wave of early deaths among those in thrall to the transparently dishonest promises of officialdom (“safe and effective”). That’s the trouble with thrall. It narrows the field-of-vision so badly, you can’t see what’s coming at you indirectly, like: hardship and death. The country has been in serious trouble for more than a decade. Cavalcades of bad choices — and then lying to ourselves about these bad choices — has shoved us well over the edge of our cherished expectations. One way out, then, is to simply refuse to remain in thrall to officialdom and the manufactured bullshit that is its only product.

We are lately in thrall to the melodrama in Ukraine, largely engineered by figures and forces in our own government and for their own ends, which look suspiciously at odds with the nation’s actual interests (the nation being us, its people). Perhaps this illustrates the widening gulf between the slouching beast government has become and the people trying to operate their lives and destinies under it. No food for you, no fertilizers for future food for you, no spare parts for you, no free speech for you, no social or economic role for you, no health for you, and (watch it, now!) soon no life for you. Collectively going crazy has been a luxury we can’t afford anymore. You fell for RussiaGate and it kept you in thrall for years. You fell for the Adam Schiff orchestrated Ukraine phone call impeachment gambit. You fell for the Covid scare and the dangerously defective vaccines forced on you. You fell for the fraud-drenched election of the empty vessel known as “Joe Biden.” Don’t fall for the invitation to World War Three.

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“Whoever wins the war in Ukraine, the non–West will win. Whoever wins, the 21st century will win, burying the mostly awful 20th at last. As for Americans, we have already lost.”

The Great Acquiescence — Glory to Ukraine (Patrick Lawrence)

Since the Russiagate farrago overcame liberal America in 2016, there has been much debate as to whether our McCarthyesque circumstances are as bad as, similar to, or not as bad as things got during the Cold War decades. This no longer seems to me the useful question. In various important ways we have passed beyond even the worst of the Cold War’s many dreadful features. Our better reference is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, wherein the English novelist pictured a society of incubated beings — programmed from birth, hooked on a happiness-inducing drug called soma, devoid of everything we now consider human, wholly incapable of connection, of responsibility, and, indeed, desiring neither.

Infantile gratification is all that matters to those populating the World State Huxley imagined — such as anything matters. We are not there yet, let’s not exaggerate. But we ought to honor Huxley for his prescience, for we are heading in the direction of his unlivable world of mind-deprived children watched over by a small, chosen, diabolic elite. I am not surprised that it is Ukraine that brings us to what I consider a collective psychological crisis. After 30 years of post–Cold War triumphalism, Washington has decided to use Ukraine and its people in a go-for-broke attempt finally to subvert Russia. Stepping back for a better look, this is the decisive event in the imperium’s confrontation with the 21st century — its grand roll of the dice, its now-or-never moment.

Broke it will be when all this is over, however far in the future that will prove. A little like Cú Chulainn, the Irish hero who drowned swinging his sword in a rage against the incoming tide, we cannot win this one. And we are falling apart as the realization of our loss arrives subliminally among us. Whoever wins the war in Ukraine, the non–West will win. Whoever wins, the 21st century will win, burying the mostly awful 20th at last. As for Americans, we have already lost.

Putin on Ukraine

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“..the Soviet Union destroyed 80 percent of the Wehrmacht in WWII..”

“They do not know what a revival of Nazism means to the Russian people or even that there is a revival of Nazism in Ukraine..”

The Importance of Ignorance in Info Wars (Lauria)

There is fertile ground to wage information warfare in the U.S. on Ukraine. In all of America’s wars, ignorance of foreign affairs plays a big role. Americans’ lack of knowledge of other countries is compounded by the fact that the U.S. has never been invaded, except briefly by the British in 1812, and that the U.S. itself began as an invasion by Europeans in which they wiped out the indigenous population, and then later invaded Mexico and then Spanish possessions and frankly, have never stopped invading other nations. The lack of knowledge of this history makes Americans vulnerable to propaganda cloaking American expansionism. In the context of the Ukraine war this ignorance plays an important part in the susceptibility of the American public to war propaganda.

Americans generally don’t understand the psyche of Russia, which was invaded numerous times, particularly by the biggest European powers in the 19th and 20th centuries. They generally do not know, because they are never told, that the Soviet Union destroyed 80 percent of the Wehrmacht in WWII. They do not know what a revival of Nazism means to the Russian people or even that there is a revival of Nazism in Ukraine because it is whitewashed out of the corporate media story. Under the guise of respectability and objectivity, the news media of the U.S. and Europe, which is closely aligned with their governments, has played an important role in the information war by deliberately omitting three crucial facts from their Ukraine war narrative, which completely changes the picture.

Media is leaving out the role of U.S. in the 2014 coup in Kiev; that an 8-year civil war has been fought in the eastern Donbass region against Russian-speaking Ukrainians who resisted the coup (Russia’s help at the time was falsely portrayed as an invasion); and that Neo-Nazi fighters, now incorporated into the Ukrainian state military, played a big role in the coup, in the civil war and in the current fighting in the Russian invasion. There is abundant evidence that the U.S. was behind the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically-elected president in 2014, especially a leaked phone conversation between a high-ranking State Dept. official and the American ambassador in Kiev discussing weeks before the coup who would make up the new government. There is more than abundant evidence about the influence of neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

There was also little emphasis in the media’s information war on diplomatic moves that could have prevented the Russian invasion: namely the seven-year-old Minsk accords that could have ended the civil war if the U.S., Germany and France pressured Kiev to implement it.

Volnovakh
https://twitter.com/i/status/1516110852872679428

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Lucrative.

Ukraine and the Profits of War (TomD)

The war in Ukraine will indeed be a bonanza for the likes of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. First of all, there will be the contracts to resupply weapons like Raytheon’s Stinger anti-aircraft missile and the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin-produced Javelin anti-tank missile that Washington has already provided to Ukraine by the thousands. The bigger stream of profits, however, will come from assured post-conflict increases in national-security spending here and in Europe justified, at least in part, by the Russian invasion and the disaster that’s followed. Indeed, direct arms transfers to Ukraine already reflect only part of the extra money going to U.S. military contractors. This fiscal year alone, they are guaranteed to also reap significant benefits from the Pentagon’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) and the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, both of which finance the acquisition of American weaponry and other equipment, as well as military training.

These have, in fact, been the two primary channels for military aid to Ukraine from the moment the Russians invaded and seized Crimea in 2014. Since then, the United States has committed around $5 billion in security assistance to that country. According to the State Department, the United States has provided such military aid to help Ukraine “preserve its territorial integrity, secure its borders, and improve interoperability with NATO.” So, when Russian troops began to mass on the Ukrainian border last year, Washington quickly upped the ante. On March 31, 2021, the U.S. European Command declared a “potential imminent crisis,” given the estimated 100,000 Russian troops already along that border and within Crimea. As last year ended, the Biden administration had committed $650 million in weaponry to Ukraine, including anti-aircraft and anti-armor equipment like the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin Javelin anti-tank missile.

Despite such elevated levels of American military assistance, Russian troops did indeed invade Ukraine in February. Since then, according to Pentagon reports, the U.S. has committed to giving approximately $2.6 billion in military aid to that country, bringing the Biden administration total to more than $3.2 billion and still rising. Some of this assistance was included in a March emergency-spending package for Ukraine, which required the direct procurement of weapons from the defense industry, including drones, laser-guided rocket systems, machine guns, ammunition, and other supplies. The major military-industrial corporations will now seek Pentagon contracts to deliver that extra weaponry, even as they are gearing up to replenish Pentagon stocks already delivered to the Ukrainians.

On that front, in fact, military contractors have much to look forward to. More than half of the Pentagon’s $6.5 billion portion of the emergency-spending package for Ukraine is designated simply to replenish DoD inventories. In all, lawmakers allocated $3.5 billion to that effort, $1.75 billion more than the president even requested. They also boosted funding by $150 million for the State Department’s FMF program for Ukraine. And keep in mind that those figures don’t even include emergency financing for the Pentagon’s acquisition and maintenance costs, which are guaranteed to provide more revenue streams for the major weapons makers.

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Character assassination. Algorithms. Shadow banning. De-platforming.

American Commissars (Chris Hedges)

The ruling class, made up of the traditional elites that run the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, is employing draconian forms of censorship on its right-wing and left-wing critics in a desperate effort to cling to power. The traditional elites were discredited for pushing through a series of corporate assaults on workers, from deindustrialization to trade deals. They were unable to stem rising inflation, the looming economic crisis and the ecological emergency. They were incapable of carrying out significant social and political reform to ameliorate widespread suffering and refused to accept responsibility for two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East. And now they have launched a new and sophisticated McCarthyism. Character assassination. Algorithms. Shadow banning. De-platforming.

Censorship is the last resort of desperate and unpopular regimes. It magically appears to make a crisis go away. It comforts the powerful with the narrative they want to hear, one fed back to them by courtiers in the media, government agencies, think tanks and academia. The problem of Donald Trump is solved by censoring Donald Trump. The problem of left-wing critics, such as myself, is solved by censoring us. The result is a world of make-believe. YouTube disappeared six years of my RT show, “On Contact,” although not one episode dealt with Russia. It is not a secret as to why my show vanished. It gave a voice to writers and dissidents, including Noam Chomsky and Cornel West, as well as activists from Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter, third parties and the prison abolitionist movement.

It called out the Democratic Party for its subservience to corporate power. It excoriated the crimes of the apartheid state of Israel. It covered Julian Assange in numerous episodes. It gave a voice to military critics, many of them combat veterans, who condemned US war crimes. It no longer matters how prominent you are or how big a following you have. If you challenge power, you are at risk of being censored. Former British MP George Galloway detailed a similar experience during an April 15 panel organized by Consortium News in which I took part: “I have been threatened with travel restrictions were I to continue the television broadcast I had been doing for almost an entire decade. I have been stamped by the false label ‘Russian State Media,’ which I never had, by the way, when I was presenting a show on Russian state media. It was only given after I ceased to have a show on Russian state media, ceased because the government made it a crime for me to do so.”

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As will the most vaxxed states.

Lockdown-Heavy States Had Some of the Worst Health Results (McMaken)

As hard as it is to believe, the Chinese regime is still employing a “zero covid” strategy and claims it can eradicate covid entirely through lockdowns and vaccinations. China’s draconian, nightmarish, near-total lockdown policy—which is notably still “necessary” in spite of widespread vaccination—has recently been revived in Shanghai where residents are now struggling to find food. But the regime has only doubled down on the policy, with Chinese President Xi Jinping declaring that “persistence is victory.” This approach has no basis in any actual science, however, and contradicts decades of epidemiological research condemning lockdowns. Moreover, a 2021 joint study from USC and the Rand Corporation concluded “excess mortality increases” following “the implementation of SIP [shelter-in-place] policies.”

This week, a new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the states with the harshest lockdowns tended to perform the worst in a composite measure of mortality, economic performance, and education. The states that performed the best were in many cases states where lockdowns were weak or nonexistent, with Utah and Nebraska at the top of the list. The study, authored by Phil Kerpen, Stephen Moore, and Casey B. Mulligan, also concluded that antilockdown Florida, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Utah “were outliers” that performed unexpectedly well compared to their neighbors. Prolockdown California, Illinois, New Mexico, and Colorado, on the other hand, performed more poorly than their neighbors.

The chief value of the report is that it takes economic, educational, and health variables and normalizes them across states. For example, it’s difficult to meaningfully compare economies when some states are far more reliant on service industries than others. In this case, the authors find the “combined economic performance” for states taking the nature of each state’s economy into account. By this metric, the states that performed the best during the pandemic were lockdown-light states Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Idaho, and Utah. The states with the worst outcomes were lockdown-heavy Hawaii, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, and Illinois.

On the matter of education—which the authors note is closely tied to both economic performance and mortality in the longer term—the authors look at bans on in-person education, state by state, and presumed resulting “learning loss.” In this case, the best performers were Wyoming, Arkansas, Florida, South Dakota, and Utah. The worst performers were California, Oregon, Maryland, Washington, and Hawaii. Of course, if faced with statistics such as these, lockdown advocates are likely to admit that lost educational opportunities and lost economic prosperity are unfortunate. But, they will say education and property rights had to limited in the name of preventing mortality and protecting “public health.”

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Where the WHO will be awarded dictatorial powers.

Second Global Covid-19 Summit Scheduled For May 12 (R.)

A second Global Covid-19 Summit will be held virtually next month for countries to discuss efforts to end the pandemic and prepare for future health threats, according to a joint statement on Monday. “The emergence and spread of new variants, like Omicron, have reinforced the need for a strategy aimed at controlling Covid-19 worldwide,” the White House said in a news release with the Group of Seven and Group of 20 nations. The announcement comes amid a surge of Covid-19 cases in parts of the United States and around the world prompted by easily transmissible variants of the virus.


China’s most populous city, Shanghai, is trying to return to normal after a nearly three-week shutdown, which, along with wider China curbs, are taking a toll on the world’s No 2 economy. The summit will build on efforts and commitments made at the first global summit in September, including getting more people vaccinated, sending tests and treatments to highest-risk populations, expanding protections to health care workers and generating financing for pandemic preparedness, the statement said. “We know we must prepare now to build, sustain, and finance the global capacity we need, not only for emerging COVID-19 variants, but also future health crises,” it said.

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“We’re very clear that the Bidens got some $31 million..”

Hunter Biden’s China Business Deals Should Raise ‘Alarm Bells’ (ET)

“We’re very clear that the Bidens got some $31 million, based on the laptop, from a series of deals that happened beginning when Joe Biden was vice president of the United States. And those deals happened courtesy of four Chinese businessmen,” Schweizer said. All four Chinese businessmen were “directly linked” to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence, he added. The fact that these Chinese businessmen would want to talk to the Bidens was interesting, Schweizer said, since the latter did not bring any capital or investors to the table, something financial investment firms would do. Surely, the Chinese businessmen weren’t philanthropies either, he added, the question then became what they wanted in return.

“When you look at the cluster of who provided the funds to the Bidens, and the fact that the Bidens did not really provide anything tangible in return, this has all the markings of elite capture and of a Chinese intelligence operation,” he said. According to his book, one of the Chinese businessmen was a Chinese tycoon named Che Feng, who helped Hunter Biden and his associates secure a deal involving a Chinese investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). Schweizer said the deal netted him about $20 million. Rosemont Seneca Partners, a U.S. investment and advisory firm Hunter Biden co-founded, became one of the shareholders of BHR, which was incorporated in Shanghai in 2013. Hunter gained an unpaid board seat on BHR as a result. In October 2019, George Mesires, Hunter Biden’s attorney, issued a statement saying that the younger Biden had decided to resign from his seat on the BHR board of directors.

Hunter Biden held a 10 percent stake in BHR but divested as of November last year, his lawyer told The New York Times. Che was business partners with Ma Jian, who was then-vice minister of China’s MSS and was reportedly headed the ministry’s No. 8 bureau, which targeted foreigners with its counterintelligence apparatus, according to the book. Ma was vice minister of state security from 2006 until January 2015, when he was placed under Party investigation for corruption, amid a sweeping anti-corruption campaign initiated by Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2012. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2018, after being found guilty of accepting bribes, insider trading, and making “coercive” business deals.

Before his political downfall, Ma was a key member of a political faction loyal to former Chinese regime leader Jiang Zemin. The so-called Jiang faction is known for opposing Xi’s leadership. Che, who is also the son-in-law of Dai Xianlong, the former governor of China’s central bank, was also named in the 2017 Paradise Papers for making about $14.6 million in preferred stocks through his offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands between 2009 and 2013. According to Chinese media, Che was placed under investigation in June 2015. “[Che] would fade from the [BHR] deal after both he and Ma were arrested and charged with money laundering and bribery, respectively. But the partnership between Hunter and Chinese officials was off and running,” according to his book.

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“It’s a doomsday machine, it’s the atomic bomb, everyone gets wiped out — that’s the key.”

Jack Dorsey Lashes Out At Twitter Board As Elon Musk Tries To Buy Company (DW)

Former Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey slammed the company’s board of directors in a tweet over the weekend which comes as entrepreneur Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, offered $43 billion to buy the company outright last week. Dorsey was responding to the following tweet when he made his remark, “If look into the history of Twitter board, it’s intriguing as I was a witness on its early beginnings, mired in plots and coups, and particularly amongst Twitter’s founding members. I wish if it could be made into a Hollywood thriller one day.” Dorsey responded, “It’s consistently been the dysfunction of the company.”

Dorsey also said “big facts” in response to the following statement from venture capitalist Fred Destin: “What I do know for sure is that this old Silicon Valley proverb is grounded in age-old wisdom that still applies today: Good boards don’t create good companies, but a bad board will kill a company every time.” When later asked if he was allowed to speak like this publicly given the fact that he is still on the company’s board, Dorsey responded, “No.” Twitter has attempted to stop Musk from taking over the company by adopting a so-called “poison pill” that effectively allows all shareholders, except those trying to buy out the company, to purchase newly offered shares at a discounted price.

Musk would have to purchase the new shares at a higher price, which could end up being too much for him to afford, if he wanted to take over the company. Despite throwing a massive roadblock in Musk’s way, the adoption of the poison pill would not bar Musk from being able to buy the company, it would only make it harder. “A poison pill is a way to stave off someone until you can get a higher price. It makes it outrageously expensive for the person to buy it,” said Charles Elson, the founding director of the University of Delaware’s Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. “It’s a doomsday machine, it’s the atomic bomb, everyone gets wiped out — that’s the key.”

Mr. Wonderful

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Still can’t see him lose.

Macron Should Prepare For A Brutal Shock After Latest Polls (Exp.)

In 2017, Macron turned a comfortable second-round victory over Le Pen into an electoral route once he bested her on economic policy during their candidates’ debate. Five years ago, Macron was the pro-change candidate and his televised mastery of policy detail, in concert with his seemingly non-ideological, moderate prescriptions for French economic ills, ended Le Pen’s slim hopes. Ironically, perhaps, it is Macron’s stewardship of the economy that yet could see Le Pen victorious. Macron is seen by many as “the president of the rich,” and most say his economic reforms favour the affluent to the neglect of those on modest incomes. Hence, Le Pen’s healthy leads on issues such as inflation, jobs, and the economy. If most voters prioritise these issues when casting their ballots, Macron will be lucky to eke out a victory.


In a different political climate, Macron could have coasted home upon the support of those who care most about health care, climate change, education, and, of course, Ukraine. Unfortunately for Macron, only health policy matters a great deal to a good number of voters. Instead, a Macron victory will mirror Biden’s 2020 election over Donald Trump in one crucial aspect. It will be more about his opponent’s perceived failings than his own qualities as a candidate and officeholder. Just as most Biden voters cast a negative ballot – their vote was more against Trump than for Biden, himself – our poll finds that more Macron voters will be voting against Le Pen’s “far right” image than for Macron. And, there are certainly enough anti-Le Pen voters across France to hand Macron a second term. He may be the latest beneficiary of the cordon sanitaire, the convention that those on the moderate Left and the moderate Right vote for whichever mainstream candidate prevents the far-right candidate from winning.

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Her last name will seal her loss.

EU Uses 18 Year Old Embezzlement Charges to Derail Le Pen Presidential Bid (SN)

Presumably as part of a deliberate effort to derail her presidential chances, the European Union has exhumed 18-year-old embezzlement charges against Marine Le Pen. “The EU’s anti-fraud body has accused French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and associates of embezzling around 600,000 euros during their time as MEPs,” reports AFP. The National Rally leader is personally accused of embezzling “around 137,000 euros ($150,000) worth of public money from the Strasbourg parliament when she was an MEP between 2004 and 2017.” Le Pen’s lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut dismissed the charges, adding that the “timing” of them was suspicious. Noting that the report relates to “old facts more than ten years old,” Bosselut highlighted how Le Pen “has not been summoned by any French judicial authority” to answer the charges.


“I’m surprised by the timing of such a strong disclosure and the instrumentalisation,” said Bosselut. The EU has chosen to resurrect the old claims just days before the final round of the French presidential election, in which Le Pen will face off against incumbent Emmanuel Macron. Although still a long shot, recent polls had shown Le Pen closing the gap on Macron, causing consternation amongst globalist technocrats. Given the context, the EU dragging up old charges is clearly an act of election interference intended to tarnish Le Pen before this weekend’s vote. As we previously highlighted, after Hungary’s Viktor Orban won re-election in a landslide, the EU responded by slapping sanctions on the country as a form of punishment for the electorate exercising their democratic will.

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“After all, they were ‘just doing their job’ – and they would not want to feel harassed or burdened, would they?”

From Rachel Carson to Monsanto: The Silence of Spring (OffG)

In 2016, Rosemary Mason wrote an open letter to European Chemicals Agency Executive Director Geert Dancet: Open Letter to the ECHA about Scientific Fraud and Ecocide. More of an in-depth report than a letter, it can be accessed on the academia.edu site. In it, she explained how current EU legislation was originally set up to protect the pesticides industry and Monsanto and other agrochemical corporations helped the EU design the regulatory systems for their own products. She also drew Dancet’s attention to the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology and how, in 2016 Volume 46, Monsanto commissioned five reviews published in a supplement to the journal. Monsanto also funded them. Mason argues the aim was to cast serious doubts about the adverse effects of glyphosate by using junk science. Straight out of the Big Tobacco playbook.


Mason told Dancet: CEO Hugh Grant and the US EPA knew that glyphosate caused all of these problems. The corporation concealed the carcinogenic effects of PCBs on humans and animals for seven years. They have no plans to protect you and your families from the tsunami of sickness that is affecting us all in the UK and the US.” Meanwhile, on the US Right to Know site, the article Roundup Cancer Cases – Key Documents and Analysis sets out just why more than 100,000 cancer sufferers are attempting to hold Monsanto to account in US courts. In a just (and sane) world, CEOs would be held personally responsible for the products they peddle and earn millions from. But no doubt they would do their utmost to dodge culpability. After all, they were ‘just doing their job’ – and they would not want to feel harassed or burdened, would they?

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Australian pelican

 

 

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Apr 112022
 


Edward Hopper Le Bistro or The Wine Shop 1909

 

Austrian Chancellor To Meet Putin In Russia (G.)
Russia Threatens Legal Action If Forced Into Sovereign Debt Default (R.)
Finland Poised To Request NATO Membership As Early As May (Fox)
NATO to Engage in Asia-Pacific to Counter China (ET)
Biden Schedules Meeting With India Prime Minister (CTH)
Bioweapons Expert Speaks Out About US Biolabs in Ukraine (BIN)
Ukraine’s Crop Harvest Could Be Halved (ZH)
Rising Food Costs Push Arab World’s Vulnerable to Breaking Point (BBG)
Dems Ignore Food Crisis, Fixate On ‘Tesla Charging Stations’ – Cammack (JTN)
The Spike Protein Pathogenic Algorithm (Chesnut)
Fauci Admits Covid Won’t Be Eliminated, Advises People To Calculate Risk (JTN)
China Brutalizes Citizens In Quest To Achieve ‘Covid Zero’ (Mosher)
Macron To Face Off Against Marine Le Pen Again (JTN)

 

 

 

 

Dore Maté Zelensky NATO
https://twitter.com/i/status/1513210890908225541

 

 


..about 40% of Ukraine’s armed forces – 102,000 fighters – were Paramilitary, aka the far-right, Nazis, and foreign mercenaries..

 

 

 

 

Time for the Guardian’s main propagandist on everything from Assange to Putin. Here’s Luke Harding.

Austrian Chancellor To Meet Putin In Russia (G.)

Austria’s chancellor is set to meet Vladimir Putin on Monday, the Russian president’s first face-to-face meeting with an EU leader since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, amid warnings of a fresh offensive and shelling in the east. Karl Nehammer said the meeting would take place in Moscow and that Austria had a “clear position on the Russian war of aggression”, calling for humanitarian corridors, a ceasefire and full investigation of war crimes. On the ground, Russian forces pounded targets in eastern Ukraine with missiles and artillery on Sunday, and Ramzan Kadyrov, the powerful head of Russia’s republic of Chechnya, said there would be an offensive not only on the besieged southern port of Mariupol but also on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

“Luhansk and Donetsk – we will fully liberate in the first place … and then take Kyiv and all other cities,” Kadyrov said in a video posted on his Telegram channel. The US has warned that the appointment of a new general in command of Russia’s military campaign is likely to usher in a fresh round of “crimes and brutality” against civilians. Alexander Dvornikov, 60, came to prominence at the head of Russian troops in Syria in 2015-16, when there was particularly brutal bombardment of rebel-held areas, including civilian populations, in Aleppo. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser in Washington, said: “This particular general has a résumé that includes brutality against civilians in other theatres – in Syria – and we can expect more of the same” in Ukraine.

Nehammer met Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Saturday – the same day as the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, who promised to give Ukraine 120 armoured vehicles and anti-ship missile systems. Washington has also pledged to give Ukraine “the weapons it needs” to defend itself against a new Russian offensive. Russia has failed to take any major cities, but Ukraine says it has been gathering its forces in the east for a major assault and has urged people to flee. Russian forces fired rockets into Ukraine’s Luhansk and Dnipropetrovsk regions on Sunday, officials said. Missiles completely destroyed the airport in the city of Dnipro, said Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the central Dnipropetrovsk region. Russia’s defence ministry said high-precision missiles had destroyed the headquarters of Ukraine’s Dnipro battalion in the town of Zvonetsky.

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The one country that has very little foreign debt: “Russia faces its first sovereign external default in more than a century..”

Russia Threatens Legal Action If Forced Into Sovereign Debt Default (R.)

Russia will take legal action if the West tries to force it to default on its sovereign debt, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper on Monday, sharpening Moscow’s tone in its financial wrestle with the West. “Of course we will sue, because we have taken all the necessary steps to ensure that investors receive their payments,” Siluanov told the newspaper in an interview. “We will present in court our bills confirming our efforts to pay both in foreign currency and in roubles. It will not be an easy process. We will have to very actively prove our case, despite all the difficulties.” Siluanov did not elaborate on Russia’s legal options.

Russia faces its first sovereign external default in more than a century after it made arrangements to make an international bond repayment in roubles earlier this week, even though the payment was due in U.S. dollars. Last week, Siluanov said Russia will do everything possible to make sure its creditors are paid. “Russia tried in good faith to pay off external creditors,” Siluanov said on Monday. “Nevertheless, the deliberate policy of Western countries is to artificially create a man-made default by all means.” Siluanov said Russia’s external liabilities amount to about 20% of the total public debt, which stood at about 21 trillion roubles ($261.7 billion). Of that, about 4.5-4.7 trillion roubles were external liabilities.

Russia has not defaulted on its external debt since the aftermath of its 1917 revolution, but its bonds have now emerged as a flashpoint in its economic tussle with Western countries. A default was unimaginable until recently, with Russia rated as investment grade in the run up to its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special military operation” and which on Sunday intensified in eastern Ukraine. “If an economic and financial war is waged against our country, we are forced to react, while still fulfilling all our obligations,” Siluanov said. “If we are not allowed to do it in foreign currency, we do it in roubles.”

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Finland, Sweden, Austria?!

Finland Poised To Request NATO Membership As Early As May (Fox)

The Finnish government is poised to formally apply for NATO membership “before midsummer” and potentially as early as May. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin stated Friday that the country would vote “before midsummer” on sending an application to join NATO. Former Prime Minister Alexander Stubb says the vote will likely happen as early as May, according to Agence France-Presse. “We will have very careful discussions but not taking any more time than we have to,” Marin said during a press conference. “I think we will end the discussion before midsummer.” Stubb, however, was more specific in his prediction, telling the AFP on Saturday the government would likely vote on the issue before the end of May, just in time for NATO’s June summit in Madrid.

“The Finns think that if Putin can slaughter his sisters, brothers and cousins in Ukraine, as he is doing now, then there is nothing stopping him from doing it in Finland. We simply don’t want to be left alone again,” Stubb told AFP. While the Finnish public has traditionally been opposed to joining NATO, polls showed a seismic shift on the issue following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February. Finland shares an 830-mile border with Russia, and support for joining NATO jumped from 26% to 60% following the invasion. Finland has remained wary of its eastern neighbor since the Winter War of 1939, when Soviet forces attempted to invade at the start of World War II. Finish forces famously delivered a resounding defeat to the Soviets. Finland lost 26,000 soldiers compared at least 126,000 dead or missing for the USSR. NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg has stated that Finland would certainly be approved should it apply to join the alliance.

Some Russian lawmakers are already offering hostile language regarding a potential NATO-allied Finland. Russian lawmaker Vladimir Dzhabarov stated that joining the alliance would be a “strategic mistake” for Finland, adding that the country would “become a target.” “I think it [would be] a terrible tragedy for the entire Finnish people,” Dzhabarov said, adding that with such an action, “the Finns themselves will sign a card for the destruction of their country.”

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“North Asia-Pacific Treaty Organisation”?

NATO to Engage in Asia-Pacific to Counter China (ET)

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has announced that it will begin engaging in the Asia-Pacific region both practically and politically in light of Beijing’s growing influence and coercion and its unwillingness to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Speaking following the meetings of NATO Ministers of Foreign Affairs on April 7, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the global implications of the Ukrainian conflict had propelled the organisation to step up its engagement with Asia-Pacific partners for the first time. “We have seen that China is unwilling to condemn Russia’s aggression. And Beijing has joined Moscow in questioning the right of nations to choose their own path,” Stoltenberg said. “This is a serious challenge to us all. And it makes it even more important that we stand together to protect our values.”


NATO and its Asia-Pacific partners—Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea—met in Brussels to discuss international support for Ukraine. Stoltenberg said the gathered foreign ministers agreed that NATO’s next Strategic Concept briefing, expected to be finalised for the Madrid Summit in June, must deliver a response on how they relate to Russia in the future and how, for the first time, they take into account that their security is affected by China’s growing influence and coercive policies. “NATO and our Asia-Pacific partners have now agreed to step up our practical and political cooperation in several areas, including cyber, new technology, and countering disinformation,” he said. “We will also work more closely together in other areas such as maritime security, climate change, and resilience. Because global challenges demand global solutions.”

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‘Nice country of 1.5 billion hungry people you got there Modi. With all this talk of global famine going around, it’d be a shame if you couldn’t feed them.’

Biden Schedules Meeting With India Prime Minister (CTH)

Against the backdrop of increased Russia-India trade {link}, and the BRICS discussions about new trade payment mechanisms to avoid being shackled to the dollar {link}, it would appear the people behind the White House operation to create/maintain conflict with Russia are scheduling a stern conversation with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. WHITE HOUSE – ” President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will meet virtually with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India on Monday, April 11 to further deepen ties between our governments, economies, and our people. President Biden and Prime Minister Modi will discuss cooperation on a range of issues.” … “President Biden will continue our close consultations on the consequences of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine and mitigating its destabilizing impact on global food supply and commodity markets.”

The message from the White House will likely be akin to: ‘Nice country of 1.5 billion hungry people you got there Modi. With all this talk of global famine going around, it’d be a shame if you couldn’t feed them.’ Oh, and by the way, did you happen to catch what just rolled out in Pakistan? Imagine that – what with common borders and such… For those unfamiliar, it appears the DoS/CIA were up to their old tricks again, because Pakistan was favorable to the position of China and Russia in the Ukraine conflict and would not take sides with NATO and western allied leaders. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted through a majority parliamentary no-confidence vote early Sunday, that smells identical to the way Obama/Biden DoS/CIA ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

(VOA) – […] Khan is the first prime minister to be ousted by a no-confidence vote in Pakistan, but no democratically elected prime minister has served a full five-year term since the founding of the country in 1947. The repeatedly delayed no-confidence vote against Khan was held after the country’s Supreme Court ruled last week he had acted unconstitutionally when he previously blocked the no-confidence vote, and subsequently dissolved parliament. The embattled Pakistani leader had defended his blocking of the vote, alleging that the no-confidence motion was the result of the United States meddling in his country’s politics. Washington rejected the charges, saying there was “no truth” to them.

[..] (VIA ABC) – […] Khan has claimed the U.S. worked behind the scenes to bring him down, purportedly because of Washington’s displeasure over his independent foreign policy choices, which often favor China and Russia. He has occasionally defied America and stridently criticized America’s post 9/11 war on terror. Khan said America was deeply disturbed by his visit to Russia and his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24, the start of the devastating war in Ukraine. The U.S. State Department has denied his allegations.

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“The Pentagon does not do missionary work,” he says. “They kill people, and that’s why they are there.”

Bioweapons Expert Speaks Out About US Biolabs in Ukraine (BIN)

According to bioweapons expert Francis Boyle, Russia’s accusation that Ukraine is conducting U.S.-funded bioweapons research appears to be accurate If true, everyone involved is subject to life in prison under the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989. According to Boyle, the U.S. government and Pentagon have had a “comprehensive policy” to “surround Russia with biological warfare laboratories” and “preposition biological weapons” there for use against them The problem with trying to make a distinction between “biodefense” and “biowarfare” is that, basically, there is none. No biodefense research is purely defensive, because to do biodefense work, you’re automatically engaged in the creation of biological weapons, and all dual use research can be used for military purposes. SARS-CoV-2 may be the result of such dual use research

Boyle believes we can hold the culprits behind the SARS-CoV-2 bioweapon accountable by asking local prosecutors to convene a grand jury to seek the indictment of those responsible for the pandemic for murder and conspiracy to commit murder In the video above, “InfoWars” host Owen Shroyer interviews Francis Boyle, Ph.D., a Harvard educated lawyer and bioweapons expert with a Ph.D. in political science, about the biolabs in Ukraine, which Russia claims are engaged in U.S.-funded bioweapons research. For decades, Boyle has advocated against the development and use of bioweapons. In fact, he was the one who called for biowarfare legislation at the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972. He then went on to draft the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act, which was passed unanimously by both houses of Congress and signed into law by then-president George Bush Sr. in May 1989.

While the U.S. has vehemently denied Russia’s accusations, Boyle says that based on what he’s discovered so far, the labs in Ukraine are all conducting biological warfare research — including ethnic-specific biological weapons — at the behest of the U.S. Pentagon, just as Russian authorities are claiming. “The Pentagon does not do missionary work,” he says. “They kill people, and that’s why they are there.” He also points out that everyone involved is subject to life in prison under the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which explains the mad scramble to project these labs as something other than what they are.

DR FRANCIS BOYLE start at 5 min.

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2023 will be worse.

Ukraine’s Crop Harvest Could Be Halved (ZH)

Ukraine is one of the world’s top exporters of corn, sunflower oil, and wheat. Disruptions stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have stoked fears the war-torn country could experience a 50% decline in crop output this year, according to Bloomberg. Forecast data from ag expert UkrAgroConsult show Ukraine’s corn output could be as low as 19 million tons, about half of last year’s 41 million tons. UkrAgroConsult’s pessimistic outlook follows huge production uncertainties as farmers experience shortages of diesel and fertilizer and bombed-out infrastructure.

The outlooks of two other ag firms aren’t as gloomy. Black Sea research firm SovEcon expects Ukraine’s 2022 corn harvest to be 27.7 million tons, and Barva Invest’s outlook is 29.5 million tons. Both a far below 2021 totals. Maxigrain analyst Elena Neroba warned if farmers don’t have diesel, they “can’t plant huge hectares.” “Some farmers still don’t have access to seeds and fertilizers. Even if they already paid for them, the delivery supply chain doesn’t work as well as it should,” Neroba said. Regardless of how much the conflict impacts output, global food prices have never risen so fast and have never been so high in anticipation of food shortages worldwide. In March, global food prices jumped a stunning 12.64% MoM – almost double the previous record monthly surge…

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The CIA won’t mind another Arab Spring at all.

Rising Food Costs Push Arab World’s Vulnerable to Breaking Point (BBG)

Seated around the dining table, the family of four stares blankly at pictures of food sketched on the tablecloth. “Tonight,” the father says, “we’re coloring for dinner.” The scene in a cartoon in a Moroccan newspaper speaks to the predicament facing the kingdom’s 37 million people and their peers across North Africa as the Muslim world marks Ramadan. Normally characterized by abstention broken by plentiful sunset feasts, the holy month for many this year is a confrontation with painful economic reality. Global foods costs are up more than 50% from mid 2020 to a record and households worldwide are trying to cope with the strains on their budgets. In North Africa, the challenge is more acute because of a legacy of economic mismanagement, drought and social unrest that’s forcing governments to walk a political tightrope at a precarious time.

The Middle East and North Africa region’s net food and energy importers are especially vulnerable to shocks to commodity markets and supply chains resulting from Russia’s war on Ukraine, according to the International Monetary Fund. That’s in countries where the rising cost of living helped trigger the Arab Spring uprisings a little over a decade ago. “Just how much more do we have to take?” asked Ahmed Moustafa, a 35-year-old driver and father of three in Cairo. He already had to sell some appliances to keep food on the table and cover other expenses, he said. “We keep being asked to cut and cut and cut, but there’s not much left to cut from.”

Home to large, mainly urban populations and lacking oil wealth, governments in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia are struggling to maintain subsidies for food and fuel that have helped keep a lid on discontent. The World Food Programme has warned that people’s resilience is at “breaking point,” while the United Arab Emirates moved to help ally Egypt, the world’s largest buyer of wheat, to shore up its food security and ward off potential instability. Egypt is also seeking IMF help.

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“.. they will have missed an entire season. There will be no harvest next year.”

Dems Ignore Food Crisis, Fixate On ‘Tesla Charging Stations’ – Cammack (JTN)

Amid warnings of an upcoming food crisis, Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee are prioritizing the installation of “Tesla charging stations” in rural America, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) lamented this week. The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) released a report Monday titled “Unprecedented Needs Threaten a Hunger Catastrophe.” “The world cannot afford another conflict as is happening today in Ukraine,” the report warned. “The war is a catastrophe, compounding what is already a year of destructive hunger.” “Ukraine and Russia account for a third of the global wheat supply, and over half of WFP’s supply of the grain,” the report explains. “The crisis in the breadbasket of Europe is driving up the price of wheat as well as maize, sunflower oil and crude oil — with dramatic fallouts for food security worldwide.”

If the Russian invasion continues beyond April, “an additional 47 million people” will experience acute hunger, up “from a prewar baseline of 276 million people,” WFP noted in another report, released on Wednesday. “Altogether, this means that up to 323 million people could become acutely food insecure in 2022,” the report added. On Friday, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said the invasion of Ukraine is causing a 17.1% increase in prices for grain, which includes wheat, oats, barley and corn. On the John Solomon Reports podcast on Wednesday, Cammack warned of the approaching food crisis as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, preventing the latter country from planting crops.

“Ukraine should be planting right now,” she said. “They are not planting. So while this would be a typical growing season and a planting season, tractors are being used for the war effort, fuel is being used for the war effort — that is going to be a major, major issue as we move into the fall and the winter, because they will have missed an entire season. There will be no harvest next year.” There will be a “700% increase in fertilizer costs,” Cammack predicted. “And when you compound that with fuel prices — it was $5.19 a gallon for diesel in my district just this past weekend. You factor in the regulatory environment that is squeezing our producers to death. This administration has thrown more red tape on them and the threat of new taxes and regulations on producers, and then you basically put a bow on it with a pretty scarce labor market, it’s looking pretty grim.”

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“..spike protein inhibits DNA damage repair by hindering DNA repair protein recruitment..”

The Spike Protein Pathogenic Algorithm (Chesnut)

THE SPIKE PROTEIN PATHOGENIC ALGORITHM – DUAL PATHS TO TERMINAL SYSTEMIC FIBROSIS: IMMEDIATE FOR THOSE WITH SIGNIFICANT COMORBIDITIES, INDUCED FOR THOSE WITHOUT. The Spike Protein is inducing terminal systemic fibrosis of all organs, including the blood, via two principal mechanisms. The first is a direct, immediate path via binding to RGD-binding integrins, which includes several TGF-β-activating integrins. This activates Myofibroblasts which induces Fibrosis. Indeed, in autopsies of COVID-19 patients with advanced disease, 38% collagen deposition was found in their lungs. This is a rapid and certainly fatal circumstance. But, this is not limited to the lungs. In a series of cardiac autopsies conducted in Washington state, the most common changes observed were fibrosis in 14 (100%) patients and myocyte hypertrophy in 13 (93%) patients.

Let that sink in. In 100%. In EVERY SINGLE CARDIAC AUTOPSY, FIBROSIS WAS OBSERVED. The other mechanism is via DNA Double Strand Breaks and Impaired DNA Repair Mechanisms. This induces fatal systemic fibrosis in those who do not succumb to the initial assault. In mice that have their DNA Repair Mechanisms genetically deleted (this kind of mouse was developed to study Alzheimer’s) they experience The same level of DNA Damage as normal type mice. However, they accumlate DNA lesions faster due to their impaired DNA repair response. What is the effect of this? THEIR AGING IS ACCELERATED 6-FOLD OVER NORMAL TYPE MICE. What happens to these mice? They develop conditions common in elderly humans such as osteoporosis, pulmonary fibrosis, chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, muscle wasting, peripheral neuropathy, hepatic fibrosis, urinary incontinence, intervertebral disc degeneration, cognitive decline, and loss of hearing and vision.

Sounds like Long COVID, doesn’t it? How does this happen? SARS–CoV–2 full–length spike protein inhibits DNA damage repair by hindering DNA repair protein recruitment. Why should this happen in some faster than others? Let us look at Diabetics. Diabetes-induced, persistent DNA damage is associated with organ fibrosis. Non-diabetics are accumulating DNA damage lesions, which will result in terminal fibrosis, but Diabetics are accumulating them FASTER as they already experience HIGHER LEVELS OF DNA DAMAGE, WHICH IS ALSO NOT. BEING. REPAIRED.


Let us look at Obesity. Altered DNA repair; an early pathogenic pathway in Alzheimer’s disease and obesity. In an inverted mechanism to Diabetes, the Obese already have an impaired DNA Repair Response, so, their DNA Repair Response becomes DYSREGULATED INCREASINGLY FASTER than those without this common comorbidity. What is the ultimate point of the Spike Protein’s inhibition of DNA repair Loss of the DNA repair potential results in persistent DNA damage signaling, senescence, SASP, fibrosis, and organ failure.

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You’re on your own. But not really.

Fauci Admits Covid Won’t Be Eliminated, Advises People To Calculate Risk (JTN)

White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted on Sunday that COVID-19 will not be eliminated and that people will have to calculate their own level of risk that they are willing to take with the virus. “This is not going to be eradicated and it’s not going to be eliminated,” Fauci told Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week.” “What’s going to happen is that we’re going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take in going to indoor dinners and in going to functions, even within the realm of a green zone map of the country where you see everything looks green but it’s starting to tick up,” he said.


As of Sunday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has placed most of the United States at green, or at a “low” level of community transmission, and the 7-day moving average for cases sits at less than 27,000. “We’re going to have to live with some degree of virus in the community,” Fauci said, adding, “The best way to mitigate that, Jon, is to get vaccinated.” Fauci urged Americans ages 50 and older as well as immunocompromised people to get the fourth COVID-19 vaccine. He also warned that Americans could be required to mask-up again if cases rise. “We may need to revert back to being more careful and having more utilizations of masks indoors. But right now we’re watching it very, very carefully. And there is concern that it’s going up,” he said. “But hopefully we’re not going to see increased severity.”

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“Yet the homebound are the lucky ones.”

China Brutalizes Citizens In Quest To Achieve ‘Covid Zero’ (Mosher)

For over two weeks the financial capital of China, Shanghai, has been locked down tight. Some 26 million people languish in their apartments, staring at their now-empty refrigerators, unable to set foot outside to forage for food for fear of arrest and incarceration. Foreigners are in the same predicament, as one complained on Twitter: “Day 16 of our COVID lockdown in Shanghai today and food is the key thing on people’s minds. We aren’t allowed to leave home so delivery is the only way I was up at 6 am yesterday trying to get any kind of delivery but nothing was available all day. So far, same results today..” Yet the homebound are the lucky ones.

The unlucky ones are those who test positive for COVID each day, like the 17,077 Shanghainese who did on Wednesday. Symptomatic or not — and nine out of 10 show no signs of illness — they are hauled off to hastily erected quarantine camps. The Shanghai lockdown, the largest since the first Wuhan lockdown two years ago, is China’s latest attempt to achieve COVID Zero. An army of health care workers, some 38,000 in all, have been sent to Shanghai, with instructions to completely stamp out the coronavirus within the city. They are frantically testing and retesting everyone. Unable to protest their lock-up any other way, people have taken to venting their anger by yelling out of their apartment windows. Most of their complaints have to do with food. “We have no food to eat,” they scream. “We haven’t eaten in a very long time. We are starving to death.”

One starving lockdowner found a quieter way to protest his growling stomach. He rolled his refrigerator onto his balcony and opened its doors. The inside is completely empty. Other protests have taken more tragic forms. As they did in Wuhan two years ago, people are once again jumping off the balconies of high-rise apartment buildings. One video circulating in China shows a couple falling to their deaths. The husband was said to be distraught because the lockdown had cost him his business. Those desperate enough to venture outside in their search for food are hunted down by “Big Whites” — members of the security forces who owe their nickname to the white hazmat suits they wear. Patrolling the streets day and night, the “Big Whites” arrest and jail anyone caught breaking quarantine, who often get beaten in the process.

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He won’t lose.

Macron To Face Off Against Marine Le Pen Again (JTN)

French President Emmanuel Macron will face off against hard-right leader Marine Le Pen later this month in a runoff election. With 97% of the votes in, the incumbent Macron won 27.35% of the vote while Le Pen came in second at 23.97%, according to the French Interior Ministry. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist candidate, received less than 2% of the vote. Macron, of The Republic On the Move Party, has served as president since 2017. “Make no mistake, nothing is decided,” he told supporters on Sunday evening, according to the BBC. Le Pen celebrated Sunday’s results on Twitter. “I call on all French people, of all sensitivities, to join this great national and popular gathering that I am carrying!” she wrote.


Le Pen has surged in popularity following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the cost of living increased, the Financial Times reported. She has been accused of being far-right for her anti-Islam views. Le Pen has said that she would limit immigration and forbid the Muslim veil in public. “That’s not us,” Macron said. “Make no mistake. This contest is not finished, and the debate we’ll have in the next two weeks will be decisive for our country and for Europe … I want a France rooted in a strong Europe.” Le Pen has also been skeptical of the European Union and NATO. If she wins, the founder of the National Rally Party promised to restore France’s “prosperity and grandeur.” Left-wing Jean-Luc Melenchon, who came in third at less than 22%, urged his followers Sunday evening, “You must not give a single vote to Marine Le Pen,” according to the BBC. He did not, however, endorse the current president.

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George Webb Azov-Metabiota

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Apr 092022
 
 April 9, 2022  Posted by at 9:08 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  55 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Head and guitar 1927

 

“The Russians” Commit Yet Another “Atrocity” (Saker)
US Oil Imports From Russia Increase By 43% (AMD)
US Lawmakers Welcomed Georgian Warlord Who Boasts Of War Crimes In Ukraine (GZ)
Leviathan Floundering (Kunstler)
Worsening Food Price Increases Gain Global Attention (CTH)
833 Athlete Cardiac Arrests and Serious Issues, 540 Dead, Following Jab (DE)
Shanghai Reports 7th Day Of Record Cases
Billionaires Are Backing Bitcoin Over “Fiat Fraud” (ZH)
Durham Seeks to Force Clinton Campaign and DNC to Turn Over Evidence (Turley)
Hunter Biden Makes Watergate Look Like ‘Tiddlywinks’ – Rep. Tenney (NM)
French Elections: Marine Le Pen Gains Ground On ‘Feverish’ Macron (Exp.)
The Death of Representative Democracy (ITT)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These things have numbers written on them. Should be easy to find out.

“The Russians” Commit Yet Another “Atrocity” (Saker)

The big news today is that those evil Russkies have fired a Tochka-U missile with a cluster warhead at the city of Kramatorsk, killing scores of innocent civilians. The “entire civilized world” is disgusted and immediately announced even MORE sanctions, MORE condemnation and MORE anti-Russian virtue signalling. Minor problem: Russia does not have Tochka-U missiles, which are 30 year old Soviet missiles which have been far surpassed by modern Russian missiles (of which Russia has plenty enough). How do we know that it was Tochka-U which was used? Because of the tail section which separates from the warhead during the flight. Here it is:

No Russian tactical missile in service with such a tail section, and only the Ukrainian Tochka-U have.


Tochka-U tail and control surfaces

How much of a problem is that for the Empire of Hate and Lies? Very minor, really. Remember that their PSYOPS are directed at two kind of people: • Those with low intelligence • Those who don’t care about the truth. Russia did not have the old-model Buk which allegedly shot down MH-17 either, which did not stop the Empire of Hate and Lies to instantly blame the shooting down on Russia. And Russia has long liquidated her chemical weapons stores, unlike the US or the UK, by the way. But who cares about that when hating Russia and Russians is all which really matters? In fact, this is straight out of the western PSYOPs book:


• Execute a false flag, then • INSTANTLY blame Russia and lean on all your colonies to do the same in the name of western “solidarity” Thereby make absolutely certain that no real investigation can take place or, if it does, it will be so far down the road that nobody will care. So we have a major false flag in Bucha, and now we have that Tochka-U in Kramatorsk. What will come next? God only knows, but the goal is to associate “Russians” with “atrocities” in what is left of the mind of the eagerly scatophaging serfs in Zone A.

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When you weren’t looking….

US Oil Imports From Russia Increase By 43% (AMD)

According to the Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council Mikhail Popov on Sunday, the US increased its imports of Russian oil by 43% in the last week, totaling 100,000 barrels a day. Popov told Komsomolskaya Pravda news that “the US forced Europeans to introduce anti-Russian sanctions, while not only continuing to import oil from Russia but increasing volume of [oil] deliveries for the past week by 43% up to 100,000 barrels per day!” The Deputy Secretary also detailed that Washington imported fertilizers from Russia while listing them as essential goods. The US last month announced a ban on Russian oil, natural gas, and coal imports as a response to the Russian operation in Ukraine.


Former US colonel and Eurasia Center Vice President, Earl Rasmussen, said the European Union’s latest sanctions and economic retaliation against Russia will backfire and cause a massive recession in Europe. Rasmussen, who previously said that US troop deployment to Ukraine deters efforts to solve the conflict, said the European sanctions against Russia will throw Europe into a “historical recession”. The colonel stated that despite repeated assurances from Biden, Washington is in no condition to replace Russia’s plentiful and cheap supplies of natural gas to Europe with any alternative energy supply that is remotely comparable in either scale or cost.

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2017.

US Lawmakers Welcomed Georgian Warlord Who Boasts Of War Crimes In Ukraine (GZ)

Having taken up arms against Russia for a fifth time, Georgian Legion commander Mamuka Mamulashvili has bragged on video about his unit carrying out field executions of captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine. While Western media pundits howled about images of dead bodies in the city of Bucha, echoing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy’s accusation that Russia is guilty of “genocide,” they have largely overlooked the apparent admission of atrocities by an avowed ally of the United States who was welcomed on Capitol Hill by senior lawmakers overseeing congressional foreign policy committees.

Having fought in four wars against Russia, and despite allegations that he played a leading role in the massacre of 49 protesters in Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2014, Mamulashvili has taken multiple trips to the United States, where he received a warm welcome from members of Congress, the New York Police Department, and Ukrainian diaspora community. In an interview this April, Mamulashvili, was asked about a video showing Russian fighters who had been extrajudicially executed in Dmitrovka, a town just five miles from Bucha. Mamulashvili was candid about his unit’s take-no-prisoners tactics, though he has denied involvement in the specific crimes depicted.

“We will not take Russian soldiers, as well as Kadyrovites [Chechnyan fighters]; in any case, we will not take prisoners, not a single person will be captured,” Mamulashvili said, implying that his fighters execute POWs. “Yes, we tie their hands and feet sometimes. I speak for the Georgian Legion, we will never take Russian soldiers prisoner. Not a single one of them will be taken prisoner,” Mamulashvili emphasized Executions of enemy combatants are considered war crimes under the Geneva Convention. Western governments continue to block a Russian request for a United Nations investigation into alleged massacres in Bucha, where scores of corpses were photographed following the Russian withdrawal from the city, some with hands bound and shot execution style – as Mamulashvili described doing to prisoners.

While the events in Bucha have become a source of outrage and heated contention, a clear case of war crimes by Ukrainian forces which took place just five miles down the road on March 30 as Russian troops withdrew has received a more muted response despite coverage by the New York Times. The macabre footage shows Russian paratroopers dead or bleeding out in the road, some with their hands clearly bound — reportedly the handiwork of the Georgian Legion.

Zelensky Azov

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“..our broke-down Bretton Woods fiat money system becomes the new “barbarous relic” of global finance..”

Leviathan Floundering (Kunstler)

Is it true, as is hotly rumored now, that the mRNA shots lead uniformly to autoimmune deficiency syndrome? Ditto the alarming rise in cancer cases among the vaxxed… ditto heart damage, organ damage, grievous neurological damage? We’ll know a lot more about this in May and June, and it’s hard to imagine what the collective emotional reaction will be if all that turns out to be true. Never in history will so many face the prospect of an untimely death, and at the hands of such banal bureaucratic villainy. Will they just compliantly check out of this world, the same way they lined up for their vaxxes and boosters, or finally rage against that machine?

The latest venture in unreality these days spills out of Russia’s operation in Ukraine. The mind-fuckery over it sure seems advantageously amplified here as a cover for the tragic developments in the Covid-19 vaxx melodrama and other domestic torments. All the evidence suggests that our country’s leadership wanted this war to happen in the worst way. We set up the provocations in Donbas and let’er rip. Now we posture on the sidelines, crying crocodile tears, pretending to help while sabotaging peace talks. What’s followed in our attempts to punish The Evil Putin (the source of all our problems) is the most feckless fiasco of unanticipated consequences since Kaiser Wilhelm gave the go-ahead to Austria to punish Serbia over the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. Voila: a World War. Only in this case it’s looking more like a suicidal economic war by Western Civ on itself.

How are those sanctions working out? No fuel for German industry… no fertilizer for Iowa farmers… no nickel and other metals to make machine parts for Europe and America…. And suddenly, having kicked Russia out of the international trade payment clearing system (SWIFT), we’ve provoked them to resort to backing the ruble with gold, meaning that our broke-down Bretton Woods fiat money system becomes the new “barbarous relic” of global finance, leaving the West to pound sand down a rat hole, while the other two-thirds of the world do actual business for commodities that modern life can’t do without. The result of all that? America and its partners in Western Civ resign from modern life and go medieval. Everything about America is looking more and more medieval — our rough living conditions, our lawlessness, our violent entertainments, our Hobbesian racketeering, our occult sexual preoccupations, our depraved elites, our quack science. Our center has not been holding for so long that hardly anyone even remembers where the center used to be. And now the bottom is falling out.

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This is what topples governments.

Worsening Food Price Increases Gain Global Attention (CTH)

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported on Friday they are recording the highest Food Price Index since they started recording thirty years ago. With record highs in prices for cereals, vegetable oils, dairy and meats. This issue has been a slow burning fuse toward the biggest powder keg in modern history, and it is about to get very serious. We have been warning about it since last fall {Go Deep}. In the most deliberate and painstaking ways possible, we have been urging everyone to take this issue seriously. The background cause is complex and started with the 2020 government response to the pandemic. U.S. and international government intervention in the food supply process has been FUBAR from the beginning.


Every action taken since early 2020 has been one bad policy after another; building failure upon failure, crisis upon crisis, bad decision upon bad decision, bringing us to a precipice summed up by saying “the absence of food will change things.” Some will say the food prices we are about to experience –and the crisis it will create– was deliberate. Others will say this was the cumulative outcome of major failures on the part of the government. At this point the former makes more sense, and the latter looks like a justification and excuse, because if government entities were really serious about food prices and shortages, they would be taking pragmatic steps to mitigate the problem; they are not.

There are simple things government could do, such as helping farmers offset targeted fertilizer costs, providing relief for diesel fuel and energy costs, and taking other simple steps that would help the agricultural industry. Instead of responding with the urgency this would demand, the collective government action has been to ignore the problem (talk soundbites), and give speeches about using subsidies to offset the end result (consumers) – without ever addressing the root cause. All this while fueling conflict in Ukraine and chasing radical energy policies under the guise of global climate change.


The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) keeps track of food prices and projections using a global index. What they are calculating, and what they are projecting based on the current calculations, is a major increase in food prices combined with a major increase in food scarcity due to the unaffordability of food products. The baseline of 100 is the monthly rate of change for a basket of food products using the period from 2014 to 2016. The current rate of change is indexing at 159.3, meaning the monthly increases in price are almost 60% higher than the base period. Trying to chart this rate of index is almost impossible, as it seems literally exponential. (red line in graphic) In 2020, the monthly rate of change increased to an index of around 110. In 2021, the monthly rate of increase went from 110 to around 135. In the first three months of 2022, the index has jumped from 135 to almost 160 (in three months), and there is no end in sight.

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“We’re doing this anonymously because we’ve seen people viciously attacked and threatened for doing things like this, so we’re not going to open ourselves or any of our contacts to that.”

833 Athlete Cardiac Arrests and Serious Issues, 540 Dead, Following Jab (DE)

A total of 15 players were unable to finish the Miami Open 2022 tennis tournament, including the male and female favourites. All of the players must be “fully vaccinated” to compete, the Liberty Daily wrote, “just as we’ve noted for several months, most major sports have been hit with ‘inexplicable’ medical conditions popping up in young and otherwise healthy athletes, including our report that three cyclists fell in March alone.” The so-called health professionals running the Covid “vaccine” programs around the world keep repeating that “the Covid vaccine is a normal vaccine and it is safe and effective.” But as of the end of last month, Good Sciencing has recorded 833 athletes, worldwide, who have had cardiac arrests or other serious issues, with 540 dead, post-Covid injection.

Post-vaccination injuries in athletes include cardiac arrest; blood clots or thrombosis; stroke; irregular heartbeat; arrhythmia; neuropathy; and, death. With most of the post-injection injuries being cardiac arrests. Good Sciencing is a small team of investigators, news editors, journalists, and truth seekers. They state on their website: “It doesn’t really matter who we are. What really matters is that we care carrying on an investigation and we’re presenting the evidence we’ve found, almost all of it documented in mainstream media publications. We’re doing this anonymously because we’ve seen people viciously attacked and threatened for doing things like this, so we’re not going to open ourselves or any of our contacts to that.”


As well as receiving new cases and updates from alert readers, they note that they are also receiving hate mail and death threats. Good Sciencing has a non-exhaustive and continuously growing list of mainly young athletes who had major medical issues in 2021/2022 after receiving one or more Covid injections. You can view the list HERE. “Initially, many of these were not reported. We know that many people were told not to tell anyone about their adverse reactions and the media was not reporting them. They started happening and ramping up after the first Covid vaccinations. The mainstream media still are not reporting most, but sports news cannot ignore the fact that soccer players and other stars collapse in the middle of a game due to a sudden cardiac arrest. Many of those die – more than 50%.

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“..the city reported more cases on Thursday than the entire country saw earlier in the week.”

Shanghai Reports 7th Day Of Record Cases

The better part of a week has passed since local authorities announced on Monday that they would be extending the lockdown in Shanghai “indefinitely”. But despite authorities’ best efforts (or perhaps, because of them) COVID case numbers have continued to climb at a record pace, with Shanghai recording another 20K+ COVID cases on Thursday, topping the 20K mark for the second day in a row. Authorities reported 21,222 new cases in Shanghai alone on Thursday, marking a 7th straight daily record. For context, the city reported more cases on Thursday than the entire country saw earlier in the week. The number of symptomatic cases has also increased substantially. Shanghai, the new epicenter of China’s latest coronavirus outbreak, has recorded more than 131,000 cases since the flare-up started on March 1.


According to the latest developments reported by the SCMP, the city has converted conference centers and public facilities into temporary quarantine and treatment facilities with tens of thousands of bunks, adding to the 77,000 hospital beds already set aside in the city of 25 million residents. Meanwhile, rumors have emerged on social media – sourced from unwittingly leaked military documents – that the military is taking over the city……and that the lockdown will persist at least until May. Should the lockdown persist for the entirety of April, China’s GDP could suffer a hit of more than one percentage point, as Goldman analysts determined that every four weeks of lockdown in the city would shave 1 percentage point off the country’s GDP, given Shanghai’s importance to the Chinese economy.

The city has recorded more than 131,000 COVID cases since the flare-up began on March 1. Health authorities are taking no chances, even if the vast majority of the infections – daily symptomatic cases were in triple digits – showed no symptoms, and there had been no fatality in the current wave. “The battle against the outbreak is still very tough,” according to a Thursday speech by Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan, who had been overseeing the anti-pandemic work in Shanghai since last weekend. “Any sign of relaxation or complacency is unacceptable.”

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“Unfortunately, it’s curtains for the US. Sell your shitcoins, and buy bitcoin.”

Billionaires Are Backing Bitcoin Over “Fiat Fraud” (ZH)

[..] while many crypto enthusiasts belong to the younger generation, millennials and Gen X, billionaires like Mexico’s third-richest man, Ricardo Salinas, have visceral memories of the failures of fiat – namely, hyper-inflation. And they shared this experience with his audience. “I have a big grudge against fiat, I call it the fiat fraud,” Salinas, the owner of Mexico’s Banco Azteca, said on Thursday. He then shared a story about how his salary as a young business school graduate in Mexico during the 1980s declined from around $2,000 a month to just $20 during a period of six years. “That’s hyperinflation,” he said. Echoing Peter Thiel’s controversial comments, Salinas also spoke to the religiosity of its high priests in his keynote address.

“This fiat religion has its high priests, and you can see them right there. And their religion is not tolerant,” Salinas explained. “They hate anyone who is a heretic. There’s a lot of heretics in this room right now.” Closing his thoughts, Salinas warned the crowd of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). “If the CBDC is issued these people will have full control over how you can spend your money,” he cautioned. Why does Salinas think they are so bad? Because you lose all sovereignty in the use of your funds. “They think it’s a bad idea, they close your capacity to spend your money,” Salinas predicted. That being said, Salinas noted that not all crypto is created equal: “Unfortunately, it’s curtains for the US. Sell your shitcoins, and buy bitcoin.”

Salinas added that 60% of his investment portfolio is now in bitcoin or bitcoin-linked equities. According to Bitcoin Magazine, that’s up from 10% in 2020. Salinas also denounced bonds as toxic and a “terrible investment” that he wouldn’t “touch with a 10-foot pole.” Of course, he’s not the only high-profile investor to say as much about bonds in the era of inflation (short-dated Treasuries just endured one of the rockiest first quarters in modern history).

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“..using attorney-client privilege to withhold evidence in a case where the former partner is accused of using his status of counsel to conceal information from the government.”

Durham Seeks to Force Clinton Campaign and DNC to Turn Over Evidence (Turley)

It is always good to have a “lawyer acquaintance” when things get tough. In “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the character Stanley Kowalski famously assures to Blanche DuBois that he has “a lawyer acquaintance” who will protect her. The same appears to be true for the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC. Special Counsel John Durham is fighting to get access to evidence related to his prosecution of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. The documents are being withheld by the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Fusion GPS, and Perkins Coie. There are 1,455 withheld documents, but only 18 reportedly involved a lawyer. However, they are arguing that their “lawyer acquaintances” shield their communications from disclosure to the Special Counsel.

Sussmann’s defense recently took a body blow from Durham after the Special Counsel revealed that Sussmann did not just conceal the role of the Clinton campaign in pushing a debunked Russian collusion allegation but put that same alleged lie into writing. In both a text message and the later meeting, Sussmann is accused of lying about not representing any client despite billing the time to the campaign. Sussmann faces a single charge under 18 U.S.C. 1001 for lying to the FBI in a meeting with the then-FBI General Counsel James Baker. In the indictment, Sussmann is accused of “mak[ing] a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement or representation” in conversations with Baker. Durham argued that “the defendant provided the FBI General Counsel with purported data and ‘white papers’ that allegedly demonstrated a covert communications channel between the Trump Organization and a Russia-based bank.”

That institution was Alfa Bank and Sussmann’s effort paralleled the work of his partner at the law firm Perkins Coie, Marc Elias, in pushing the Steele Dossier in a separate debunked collusion claim. The Federal Election Commission recently fined the Clinton Campaign and the DNC for hiding the funding of the dossier as a legal cost by Elias at Perkins Coie. The Clinton Campaign’s Alfa Bank conspiracy was found to be baseless but the FBI did not know that it was being offered by someone being paid by the campaign to spread the claim. Had they known, Durham alleges the department might have been able to avoid the investigation costs and effort spent on the Alfa matter.

Durham told the court that these sources (and tech executive Rodney Joffe) have refused to turn over documents as protected by attorney-client or work product privilege. Durham can use the crime/fraud exception to compel disclosure but he is first asking the court to review the documents in camera. Attorney-client privilege is generally raised by clients but can be raised in some circumstances by third parties under some circumstances. However, the exchange must be “for the purpose of obtaining legal advice from the lawyer.” Likewise, the work product doctrine protects documents that were “prepared in anticipation of litigation or for trial” by third parties on behalf of the client.

[..] the campaign and Perkins Coie are using attorney-client privilege to withhold evidence in a case where the former partner is accused of using his status of counsel to conceal information from the government.

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“This is about the president of the United States potentially being involved in money laundering and RICO claims..”

Hunter Biden Makes Watergate Look Like ‘Tiddlywinks’ – Rep. Tenney (NM)

The revelations coming out about President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, reveal a pattern of corruption that makes “Watergate look like a game of tiddlywinks,” and censorship of the story by Big Tech and the mainstream media cost former President Donald Trump the 2020 election, Rep. Claudia Tenney said in a Newsmax interview Friday. “This is about the president of the United States potentially being involved in money laundering and RICO claims,” the New York Republican said on Newsmax’s “National Report.” “[He is] the ‘big guy’ as is defined in some of these authenticated emails, even by The New York Times.”

“Even Tony Bobulinski, who was a partner with the Bidens, said this is who it is, the big guy,” she added, referring to a story in The New York Post in 2020 when Bobulinski called Biden a liar and said he was the “big guy” referred to in one of his son’s emails that discussed payments. “Joe Biden got 10% laundered through his son,” Tenney maintained. “[That] was millions of dollars held by Hunter Biden so that they wouldn’t implicate Joe Biden, the president of the United States, the leader of the free world. This has to come out.” Biden has denied that his son has done anything wrong, and the White House is standing behind him on that claim, reports The Hill.

Meanwhile, Tenney on Friday said that after The New York Post broke the news of Hunter Biden’s laptop, where the incriminating emails were discovered, Facebook and Twitter censored the story, which came out shortly before the 2020 election. “Incredibly 51 former intelligence agents, people who are involved in inside information with our federal government, claimed that this was a clear case of rushing this information and they signed a letter saying that this should not be put out for public consumption, which is a bit of a form of censorship,” said Tenney. She added that, according to a Media Research Center poll, at least 10% of Biden’s supporters had said they would not have voted for him had they known about the allegations about his son.

“This election came down to about 42,000 votes when you look at the key swing states,” she said. “Big Tech oligarch Mark Zuckerberg put over $419 million in key swing state areas to prime the pump to move voters in the direction of Joe Biden enough to change the results of this election.” It’s critically important, she added, that such censorship not be allowed to happen through “Big Tech and Big Tech oligarchs like Mark Zuckerberg to prevent us from knowing the truth before we get to an election as critical as 2020 was.”

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First round on Sunday.

French Elections: Marine Le Pen Gains Ground On ‘Feverish’ Macron (Exp.)

Voters in France will go to the polls on Sunday to elect a president for the next five years with the election taking place over two rounds. On the last day of campaigning before voters go to the ballot boxes, a poll had Marine Le Pen just two points behind Emmanuel Macron. Ms Le Pen was runner-up to Emmanuel Macron in 2017, and this time, she is once again his closest rival. There are 12 candidates taking part in Sunday’s election, eight men and four women. Of the six main contenders, three are from the right of French politics and two are from the left. A month ago, Marine Le Pen was trailing President Macron by 10 points and fighting for a place in the second round against him.


Now she’s seen as the clear favourite to challenge him for the presidency ahead of Sunday’s first round. If she does make it through to the 24 April run-off, opinion polls suggest for the first time that a Le Pen victory is within the margin of error. “Nothing is impossible,” President Macron has warned, as polls suggest his far-right rival is closer than ever before to winning the presidency. On Friday, Ms Le Pen took to the streets in Narbonne as she completed the final leg of campaigning. When asked by The Telegraph what she thought of her main rival Emmanuel Macron likening the chance of her victory to Brexit, the 53-year old nationalist reiterated a mantra from her final rally the previous night: “When the people vote, the people win.”

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History lesson.

The Death of Representative Democracy (ITT)

Democracy has nothing to do with voting to elect representatives. Democracy does not require that citizens are represented by anyone because the people make all political decisions themselves. Many national governments pretend that they value democratic principles. They often claim a right to defend democracy or promote democracy in other countries. None of the governments that make such claims are democratic. Their pretensions often result in war. Democracy isn’t currently practised in any nation state. Instead, we suffer something called “representative democracy.” In a democracy the people are the government and protect themselves, from their own potential errors and excesses, through the checks and balances inherent to the rule of law, which again, is judged solely by the people.

In a representative democracy the government claims the authority to “govern” the people, forming autocratic states. So-called representative government “allows” the people to select their political leaders once every 4 or 5 years. In the intervening years this tiny group of “representatives” exercise executive power and rule over everyone else. This is called an oligarchy and it is the antithesis of a democracy. Nonetheless, the people have been “educated” to believe that the oligarchy is a democracy and have become attached to the idea. The oligarchy, or “representative government,” supposedly honours some foundational principles which are, in and of themselves, worthy. These are often referred to as democratic ideals.

Democratic ideals have been shaped, over thousands of years, by political leaders, reformists and philosophers. In their modern form they were described by the British sociologist T. H. Marshall in his 1949 essay Citizenship and Social Class. Marshall described these ideals as a functioning system of rights. While democratic ideals are far from an adequate substitute for democracy, in a representative democracy they do at least suggest some protection for the citizen from the whims of the oligarchy they are permitted to elect.

Democratic ideals include the right to liberty, to free speech, freedom of thought and expression, the right to peaceful protest, to justice and equal opportunities. Apparently, these rights are essential because, without them, representative democracy cannot function. The oligarchs govern to protect and promote the interests of the establishment. This ensures that the wealthiest individuals and families, the multinational corporations they own, the non-governmental organisations they fund and the banks they control can rule.

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Callender

 

 

Pilots

 

 

 

 

Elon Musk

 

 

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Sep 222018
 
 September 22, 2018  Posted by at 9:21 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


René Magritte Memory of a voyage 1955

 

Rosenstein Proposed Secretly Recording Trump, Invoking 25th Amendment (ZH)
NY Times, McCabe Give Trump Perfect Cover To Fire Rosenstein, Sessions (Hill)
Grassley Extends Deadline On Kavanaugh Accuser’s Decision To Testify (Pol.)
Ding Dong…. (Jim Kunstler)
Theresa May Demands European Leaders Show UK Respect (Ind.)
Legal Action To Revoke Article 50 Referred To European Court Of Justice (G.)
UK PM May Facing Ministerial Resignations Over Brexit Plan (R.)
Russia, Turkey Agree Borders Of Syria Demilitarised Zone (AFP)
Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans To Track Search Users In China (IC)
French Court Orders Psychiatric Assessment of Marine Le Pen (Sp.)
Russia’s Secret Plan To Help Julian Assange Escape From UK (G.)
Ecuador Pledged to Not Kick Out Assange – Lawyer (RT)
Ecuador Reportedly Mulled Sending Assange As A Diplomat To Russia (RT)

 

 

The New York Times now helps Trump, or do they think this hurts him?

Rosenstein Proposed Secretly Recording Trump, Invoking 25th Amendment (ZH)

[..] the NYT recounted on Friday an aborted mutiny attempt organized by Rosenstein, who allegedly tried to organize members of Trump’s cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment to oust Trump from office. In an attempt to persuade the clearly reluctant members of Trump’s cabinet, Rosenstein suggested that he or other officials should secretly tape Trump “to expose the chaos” he said was engulfing the West Wing. According to NYT, the sources were either briefed on Rosenstein’s plans, or learned about it from the files of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired after being disgraced by an inspector general investigation. ABC News, which also reported the story, cited sources familiar with McCabe’s files. A grand jury is also weighing whether to press charges against McCabe for allegedly misleading the inspector general.

“Mr. Rosenstein made the remarks about secretly recording Mr. Trump and about the 25th Amendment in meetings and conversations with other Justice Department and F.B.I. officials. Several people described the episodes, insisting on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The people were briefed either on the events themselves or on memos written by F.B.I. officials, including Andrew G. McCabe, then the acting bureau director, that documented Mr. Rosenstein’s actions and comments. None of Mr. Rosenstein’s proposals apparently came to fruition. It is not clear how determined he was about seeing them through, though he did tell Mr. McCabe that he might be able to persuade Attorney General Jeff Sessions and John F. Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security and now the White House chief of staff, to mount an effort to invoke the 25th Amendment.”

[..] Mr. Rosenstein disputed this account. “The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect,” he said in a statement. “I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda. But let me be clear about this: Based on my personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.”

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Yeah, strange things are happening…

NY Times, McCabe Give Trump Perfect Cover To Fire Rosenstein, Sessions (Hill)

It has been a year of ironies: President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, once said he would take a bullet for Trump and now seeks to destroy him (and to do so pro bono). Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) once denounced Trump for suggesting Cruz’s father was a presidential assassin but now politically relies on and praises the man who called him “Lying Ted.” The greatest irony of all, however, could be how the newspaper that Trump loves to call “the failing New York Times” succeeded in delivering to him what he has long wanted: a clean shot at firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and then installing a new AG to oversee special counsel Robert Mueller.

To make this more bizarre, Trump could rely for all this on the man he publicly called on to be fired and possibly prosecuted — former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe. The Times dropped a bombshell story late Friday that Rosenstein discussed secretly recording Trump and seeking cabinet support to force him out of office as being incapacitated under the 25h Amendment. Rosenstein denies the story as “inaccurate and factually incorrect,” insisting “there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.” However, McCabe reportedly wrote memos stating that Rosenstein did discuss the possibility of taping and entrapping the president. Trump has previously referred to McCabe’s memos as “fake.”

At least one source has said the comments about secret taping were made in jest. Of course, joking about secretly taping your boss or forcing him from office is not a huge improvement, particularly when you are technically controlling a special counsel’s investigation of the president. Even in jest, it fulfills Trump’s long narrative of a Justice Department set against him from the outset. So how could the Times clear the way for Trump to clean house at Justice and end up with Mueller directly controlled by an attorney general of his choosing? Simple.

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The Kavanaugh story tries hard to be even more absurd than the Rosenstein one.

Grassley Extends Deadline On Kavanaugh Accuser’s Decision To Testify (Pol.)

[..] late Friday, Grassley tweeted: “Five times now we hv granted extension for Dr Ford to decide if she wants to proceed w her desire stated one wk ago that she wants to tell senate her story Dr Ford if u changed ur mind say so so we can move on I want to hear ur testimony. Come to us or we to u.” Minutes later, he added: “Judge Kavanaugh I just granted another extension to Dr Ford to decide if she wants to proceed w the statement she made last week to testify to the senate She shld decide so we can move on I want to hear her. I hope u understand. It’s not my normal approach to b indecisive.”

Grassley followed with a candid lament that he was being outmaneuvered by Democrats: “With all the extensions we give Dr Ford to decide if she still wants to testify to the Senate I feel like I’m playing 2nd trombone in the judiciary orchestra and [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer is the conductor.” Grassley and other Republicans want Ford to appear on Wednesday, though Ford has requested a Thursday appearance. They accepted some of Ford’s requests after holding a conference call on Friday morning such as allowing one camera in the room, making sure Kavanaugh and Ford aren’t in the same hearing room at the same time and giving Ford breaks during testimony as well as security from the U.S. Capitol Police.

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“Fourth Turning horror show with whipped cream and a cherry on top…”

Ding Dong…. (Jim Kunstler)

This might come as a shock to readers, but the time is not far off when the remaining not-insane cohort of adult Americans gets good and goddamn sick of political sex bombing. Especially given this case of shuck-and-jive. Consider that the same CNN this week produced an entire segment about the shape and size of the President’s generative organ (as reported by an expert in these matters, the porn star and prostitute known as Stormy Daniels). It must be a subject of extraordinary interest to CNN’s Anderson Cooper. On the other flank of the news this week is the much more perilous showdown between the Department of Justice (and the FBI), and Mr. Trump, the cis-hetero-white Golem who happens to be president.

He has ordered these agencies to produce a set of un-redacted documents pertaining to the long-running Russia investigation, set into motion by personnel at these very places. It’s his prerogative under the constitution to do that. In turn, these agencies are being egged on by possibly culpable characters in this melodrama, such as former CIA Director John Brennan and Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Cal), to stonewall the Golem. If I were president — and I may get there yet — I’d send federal marshals into Rod Rosenstein’s office to seize these documents before they are mysteriously “lost.” A tremendous tension hangs over this transaction. Imagine the awful possibility that Mr. Trump may have to declare some kind of martial law to roust out these seditious rascals and clean up their departments. There’s your Fourth Turning horror show with whipped cream and a cherry on top.

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There are plenty other plans. She just doesn’t like them.

Theresa May Demands European Leaders Show UK Respect (Ind.)

Theresa May has demanded EU leaders show Britain respect, branding their public rejection of her Brexit proposals “not acceptable”. In a statement at Downing Street, the prime minister hit out at the way European Council President Donald Tusk discarded her plans without giving a detailed explanation or offering alternatives. Ms May said neither of the options previously offered by the EU were acceptable, stated that talks are now at an “impasse” and underlined her willingness to walk away if needs be – finishing with the words “we stand ready”. But the prime minister also made a new pledge to guarantee the rights of EU citizens living and working in the UK, even in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Her intervention won approval from cabinet Brexiteers and to an extent from MPs on Conservative benches, steadying a volatile political situation which hours earlier had seen critics predicting the collapse of her strategy. Mr Tusk had surprised British officials by making an unexpectedly strong statement at the end of a summit in Salzburg this week, saying Ms May’s proposals for Brexit “will not work” and following it up with a social media post mocking her negotiating strategy. With pressure mounting, Ms May acknowledged from inside No.10 that Mr Tusk said the UK proposals would undermine the single market, but added: “He didn’t explain how in any detail or make any counter-proposal. So we are at an impasse.”

She said: “Throughout this process, I have treated the EU with nothing but respect. The UK expects the same. A good relationship at the end of this process depends on it. “At this late stage in the negotiations, it is not acceptable to simply reject the other side’s proposals without a detailed explanation and counter proposals. “So we now need to hear from the EU what the real issues are and what their alternative is so that we can discuss them. Until we do, we cannot make progress.”

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Someone in Scotland’s been digging into the law.

Legal Action To Revoke Article 50 Referred To European Court Of Justice (G.)

A legal action to establish whether the UK can unilaterally stop Brexit has been referred to the European court of justice by the court of session in Edinburgh. The case was brought by a cross-party group of six Scottish MPs, MEPs and MSPs, who want the ECJ to offer a definitive ruling on whether the UK can halt the article 50 process without needing the approval of all other 27 EU member states. Rejecting the argument put forward by lawyers for the UK government, that ministers have repeatedly made it clear they have no intention of stopping the Brexit process, even if there were no deal with the EU, Scotland’s most senior judge, Lord Carloway, said: “It seems neither academic nor premature to ask whether it is legally competent to revoke the notification and thus to remain in the EU.”

Carloway, one of three judges to consider the case on appeal after it was initially rejected in June as “academic and hypothetical”, noted that the Commons would be required to vote on whether to ratify any Brexit deal before 29 March 2019, “a date which is looming up”, and that a judgment from the ECJ would “have the effect of clarifying the options open to MPs in the lead-up to what is now an inevitable vote”. Lord Menzies said: “There will have to be a vote, and it appears to me to be legitimate for those who are involved in that vote to know, by means of a judicial ruling, the proper legal meaning of article 50, and in particular whether a member state which has given notification of its intention to withdraw from the EU may revoke that notification of intention unilaterally before the expiry of two years after the notification.”

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Monday could be good. New plans are demanded, but there’s no time for them.

UK PM May Facing Ministerial Resignations Over Brexit Plan (R.)

Some of British Prime Minister Theresa May’s ministers will demand a “Plan B” on her Brexit proposal next week and could quit if she does not change course, the Telegraph newspaper reported late on Friday, citing unnamed sources. Ministers will demand an alternative plan to her “Chequers” proposal at a Cabinet meeting on Monday, the Telegraph said. That plan had already been savaged by European Union leaders in Salzburg earlier in the week, prompting May to defiantly challenge leaders of the bloc to come up with its own plans. Pro-Brexit members of May’s party on Friday had welcomed her defiant tone, but her Chequers proposal has many domestic critics, too.

The Telegraph said there was “speculation” that work and pensions minister Esther McVey might walk out of Monday’s meeting if no new proposal was presented, while international development minister Penny Mordaunt was also tipped as a possible resignation candidate, though the newspaper said friends denied she would resign. Earlier on Friday, Mordaunt said that the EU’s attitude was increasing support within Britain for an exit from the bloc, even if it meant leaving without a deal. .

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Let’s hope Russia got this one right.

Russia, Turkey Agree Borders Of Syria Demilitarised Zone (AFP)

Russia and Turkey have agreed on borders of a demilitarised zone in northern Syria, Russia’s top diplomat said Friday, part of a deal that could check an assault on the last rebel enclave in Idlib. “Just yesterday or the day before, the militaries of Russia and Turkey agreed the concrete frontiers of the demilitarised zone,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after talks with his Bosnian counterpart Igor Crnadak. Moscow says the demilitarised zone would help stop attacks from Idlib on Syrian army positions and Russia’s military bases in the region. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed the establishment of the 15 to 20 kilometre (9.3-12 miles) buffer zone on Monday after talks that lasted more than four hours.

Security in the zone, which includes parts of Idlib and neighbouring provinces including the city of Aleppo, will be overseen by Turkish contingents and Russian military police. The agreement will prevent military action against the city of Idlib, Russia’s defence minister said. “It’s an intermediate step… but a necessary step,” Lavrov said of the zone. “By mid-October, all (fighters of the Al-Nusra Front) must leave this demilitarised zone, and all heavy military equipment must be pulled out of there,” he said.

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Practising for the west?

Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans To Track Search Users In China (IC)

Google bosses have forced employees to delete a confidential memo circulating inside the company that revealed explosive details about a plan to launch a censored search engine in China, The Intercept has learned. The memo, authored by a Google engineer who was asked to work on the project, disclosed that the search system, codenamed Dragonfly, would require users to log in to perform searches, track their location — and share the resulting history with a Chinese partner who would have “unilateral access” to the data. The memo was shared earlier this month among a group of Google employees who have been organizing internal protests over the censored search system, which has been designed to remove content that China’s authoritarian Communist Party regime views as sensitive, such as information about democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest.

According to three sources familiar with the incident, Google leadership discovered the memo and were furious that secret details about the China censorship were being passed between employees who were not supposed to have any knowledge about it. Subsequently, Google human resources personnel emailed employees who were believed to have accessed or saved copies of the memo and ordered them to immediately delete it from their computers. Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained “pixel trackers” that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined.

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For posting ISIS execution pictures.

French Court Orders Psychiatric Assessment of Marine Le Pen (Sp.)

The request is connected with a series of images she posted on Twitter showing Daesh* executions. France’s National Rally party leader Marine Le Pen took to Twitter to express her anger with the court order. “I thought I had been through it all: well, no! For denouncing the horrors of Daesh (Isis) with tweets, the “justice system” has referred me for a psychiatric assessment. How far will they go?!” she said. “This regime is really starting to be frightening,” Le Pen added. Le Pen noted that, contrary to French media reports, the procedure was not customary. According to a decision made on September 11, which Le Pen posted on Twitter, the purpose of the psychiatric assessment was to answer the question: “Can she [Le Pen] understand the statements and answer the questions.”

In the list of questions given to the experts, there were eight points, among which were: “whether she acted under the influence of forces or circumstances of force majeure” as well as “is she in a dangerous state from the standpoint of psychiatry or forensic science, and what is the forecast,” among others. The National Assembly (lower house of parliament) of France in November 2017, at the request of the Nanteré Prosecutor’s Office, deprived Le Pen of parliamentary immunity in connection with the publication on Twitter. If the French court finds her guilty, the leader of the party may face up to three years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros.

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More Guardian smear, sources that are known have long been discredited, Mueller’s allegations have been keelhauled, anonymous sources are suspect.

Russia’s Secret Plan To Help Julian Assange Escape From UK (G.)

Russian diplomats held secret talks in London last year with people close to Julian Assange to assess whether they could help him flee the UK, the Guardian has learned. A tentative plan was devised that would have seen the WikiLeaks founder smuggled out of Ecuador’s London embassy in a diplomatic vehicle and transported to another country. One ultimate destination, multiple sources have said, was Russia, where Assange would not be at risk of extradition to the US. The plan was abandoned after it was deemed too risky. The operation to extract Assange was provisionally scheduled for Christmas Eve in 2017, one source claimed, and was linked to an unsuccessful attempt by Ecuador to give Assange formal diplomatic status.

The involvement of Russian officials in hatching what was described as a “basic” plan raises new questions about Assange’s ties to the Kremlin. The WikiLeaks editor is a key figure in the ongoing US criminal investigation into Russia’s attempts to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Robert Mueller, the special counsel conducting the investigation, filed criminal charges in July against a dozen Russian GRU military intelligence officers who allegedly hacked Democratic party servers during the presidential campaign. The indictment claims the hackers sent emails that embarrassed Hillary Clinton to WikiLeaks. The circumstances of the handover are still under investigation. According to Mueller, WikiLeaks published “over 50,000 documents” stolen by Russian spies. The first tranche arrived on 14 July 2016 as an encrypted attachment. Assange has denied receiving the stolen emails from Russia.

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Very promising.

Ecuador Pledged to Not Kick Out Assange – Lawyer (RT)

Despite widespread speculation a few months ago that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may be kicked out of the Ecuadorian embassy by the country’s new leadership, his asylum seems to be safe for now, his lawyer told RT. In July, there were numerous reports that Ecuador’s president, Lenin Moreno, may revoke the political asylum given to Assange by his predecessor, Rafael Correa, as part of an effort to establish closer ties with the US. The threat never materialized, but his long-time lawyer said “anything could happen at any time.” “Ecuador has made it clear in the past few months – after this wide-spread speculation that he would be forced to leave – that they will respect the asylum,” she said.

Assange remains cut off from all communications and kept in what is effectively solitary confinement with no access to outdoor areas. His health is deteriorating, and the UK authorities have made sure that he won’t get treatment without leaving the embassy, she said. Assange was granted asylum in August 2012, skipping bail in the UK justice system. At that time, he was fighting extradition to Sweden, where he faced prosecution over a now-closed case over alleged sex offenses. He said he had to seek Ecuador’s protection because if forced to go to Sweden, he could be extradited to the US and face serious charges over his actions as WikiLeaks founder.

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Would have been a good solution.

Ecuador Reportedly Mulled Sending Assange As A Diplomat To Russia (RT)

London refused to grant WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange diplomatic immunity so he could escape the confinement of the Ecuadorian embassy in the UK and relocate to Russia, Reuters reports, citing government communications. The persona of Julian Assange has become a thorn in Ecuador’s president Lenin Moreno’s side and, ever since assuming office in May of last year, Moreno has made every effort to make sure the Australian’s stay at Ecuador’s embassy in London comes to an end as soon as possible. To shift the responsibility for Assange’s protection against US persecution, Ecuador allegedly mulled offering the WikiLeaks founder a diplomatic post in Russia, which the country hoped would enable him –protected by diplomatic immunity– to finally leave the embassy after six years of arbitrary detention.

London, however, refused to honor Moreno’s move to authorize “special designation” for 47-year-old to carry out diplomatic functions in Moscow, and declined to grant the whistleblower a free passage out of the country, Reuters reports, citing a letter by Ecuador’s foreign ministry to opposition legislator Paola Vintimilla. According to the letter, Quito abandoned its idea to relocate the whistleblower to Moscow after the UK Foreign Office refused to recognize Assange’s special status, or any privileges and immunities awarded under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The “special designation” status awarded by the Ecuadorian president would allow Assange to hold diplomatic posts abroad even if the whistleblower is not career diplomat. However, under English law, the 47 year-old can only enjoy diplomatic privileges, such as immunity, only if his credentials are accepted by the Foreign Office.

[..] Citing at least four, traditionally anonymous, sources, the Guardian wrote that Moscow was plotting to smuggle Assange out of London on Christmas eve last year, but dropped the plan because it was “deemed too risky.” The paper, claimed that Ecuador’s former London consul, Fidel Narvaez, was in talks with Russian diplomats and in constant contact with a ‘Russian businessman’ who coordinated the proposed operation with the Kremlin. It took the newspaper a mere five paragraphs of its 1,000-word report to bring up “questions about Assange’s ties to the Kremlin” in the context of the notorious Mueller probe and alleged ‘Russian hacking’ of the US elections.

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May 082017
 
 May 8, 2017  Posted by at 9:32 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  1 Response »


RCA TV test pattern 1939

 

Macron Banks On De Gaulle’s ‘Majority Amplifier’ To Govern (R.)
In France, The Run Of Macron’s Life Starts Monday (Pol.)
Euro Gives Up Gains As Investors Look To Post-Election France (G.)
US Economy Can’t Even Match the “Sclerotic Statism” of France (CEPR)
Expect Dramatically Lower Stock Market Returns Over Next Decade (CNBC)
UK Consumer Spending Weakens With Sharp Slowdown in April (BBG)
Brexit Boom Gives Britain More Billionaires, Inequality Than Ever (G.)
China Tycoons Are Setting Up Shop In The US (BBG)
Hedge Funds Bail Just Before OPEC-Driven Oil Rally Vanishes (BBG)
Warning For Boomers: Your Gen X Kids Are Coming Back Home – For Good (MW)
Australia To Hold New Inquiry Into ‘Big Four’ Banks (R.)
How Zombie Companies Stop Productivity Growth (BBG)
German Army To Search All Barracks After Nazi Memorabilia Found (R.)
Greek PM Tsipras Rushes To Get Bailout Deal To Parliament With Eye On QE (K.)
1 Million Child Refugees Flee South Sudan’s Civil War (BBG)
Growing Numbers of Refugees In Northern Syria in Urgent Need of Aid (Kom)

 

 

Anyone would have won against Le Pen.

Macron Banks On De Gaulle’s ‘Majority Amplifier’ To Govern (R.)

Unknown just three years ago, and with a party only 12 months old, Emmanuel Macron has seized the presidency against all the odds. His challenge now is to govern. To do that he must build a parliamentary majority that supports his election pledges in June legislative elections, when France’s two established parties will put their huge machines to work. Macron has at least one thing in his favor: the “majority amplifier” effect of an electoral system designed by post-war leader Charles de Gaulle specifically to maximize presidential independence from parliament. Last week, the first opinion survey for the legislative elections showed Macron’s new movement “En Marche!” could win between 249 and 286 mainland France seats in the lower house. Even a figure at the bottom of that range would be a good outcome for him.

He only needs 289 for an absolute majority, and the poll excluded 42 seats in Corsica and overseas. It foresaw centrist and conservative parties winning around 200-210 mainland seats, the far-right National Front 15-25 and the Socialists 28-43. “In the lowest-case scenario, En Marche would still be the largest political grouping, which would be enough to try to constitute a majority. The question would then be how and with whom,” said OpinionWay’s Bruno Jeanbart, who directed the poll. En Marche is only a year old and has never fielded candidates before. Only 14 have been named so far, and at first glance a majority looks unlikely. But that reckons without de Gaulle’s amplifier – known as the “fait majoritaire” by French political scientists. [..] The last legislative vote in 2012 also showed the “fait majoritaire” in action.

Socialist Francois Hollande garnered less than 30% in the first rounds of both the presidentials and the legislatives, yet came away with over 40% of the second-round legislative vote and, with help from 17 Green party MPs, governed with a comfortable majority. “Macron can totally have an extremely solid majority of at least 350 MPs,” said Xavier Chinaud, an electoral expert. He added that to reach that number, the president would have to employ tactics like poaching popular MPs from other parties. The old parties will put up a fight, especially the conservative Republicans [..] Now led by Francois Baroin, they hope for enough seats to force Macron into France’s fourth “cohabitation” since 1958. Cohabitation does not have to mean paralysis, but rather that the prime minister and his camp in parliament have the upper hand over the president.

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“En Marche doesn’t have the money to finance a full-blown parliamentary run. It must ask its candidates to invest not only their time but also their money in the upcoming blitz campaign.”

In France, The Run Of Macron’s Life Starts Monday (Pol.)

Winning the presidency now looks like the easy bit. If Emmanuel Macron makes his way to the Élysée Palace, as expected, in the second round of France’s presidential election Sunday, another bruising political battle is looming. To be able to govern and not be sidelined by a hostile parliament, Macron’s nascent political movement En Marche will have to cobble together a majority in the National Assembly in an election beginning on June 11. And unlike in the second round of the presidential ballot — in which parties from across the political spectrum have urged their supporters to vote for him over his far-right opponent Marine Le Pen — Macron’s rivals will be devoting all their energies to defeating him.

The 39-year-old former economy minister will be counting on his army of 250,000 En Marche volunteers, and a crew made up mostly of political novices. And while Macron hopes that a victory in the presidential election will draw others to his banner, for a movement that was launched a little over a year ago, winning control of parliament looks like a tall order. The stakes are high. If Macron can’t clinch a majority, he won’t be able to appoint a prime minister of his liking. He’ll spend his term largely as a figurehead, his dreams of reforming France all but sunk. Macron needs 289 deputies to be ensured of an absolute majority in the lower house of parliament. So far, En Marche, the movement he still refuses to call a party, has endorsed 14.

True to form, Macron exudes a sense of confidence that the momentum of his election will carry over to the parliamentary polls, allowing him to clinch a majority just six weeks later. This may not be out of reach. A survey conducted this week by OpinionWay, although preliminary, indicated that En Marche could well obtain more than half the seats in the National Assembly. By weaving in electoral results from past elections with a recent poll, OpinionWay estimates that the next Parliament would be dominated by En Marche and the conservative Républicains party. The ruling Socialist Party would be decimated, and Le Pen’s National Front would obtain 25 MPs at most – due to France’s electoral system.

Sill, obstacles abound. En Marche will be facing an energized right. Both the mainstream center-right Républicains party and Le Pen’s National Front will emerge from the presidential election feeling that Macron has robbed them of a victory they at some point considered theirs. François Fillon’s failed campaign has left deep wounds in the Républicains, but one way to try to heal them could be to make Macron their common target in June. [..] En Marche doesn’t have the money to finance a full-blown parliamentary run. It must ask its candidates to invest not only their time but also their money in the upcoming blitz campaign. Political parties in France are provided with public funding according to their performance in previous elections. En Marche, founded a little over a year ago, has never put up a candidate for office before.

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Not THAT much trust perhaps.

Euro Gives Up Gains As Investors Look To Post-Election France (G.)

The euro rose to a six-month high in the wake of Emmanuel Macron’s convincing victory in the French election but the upside for the single currency could be short-lived, analysts warned. In Asian trading on Monday, the euro rose as high as $1.1024 , its highest since 9 November, and also jumped to a one-year high of 124.58 yen against its Japanese counterpart. But it had slipped almost 0.3% to $1.096 against the dollar by 5.30am GMT and lost a similar amount to the yen with traders remarking that gains had already been largely priced in thanks to Macron’s strong showing in the first round of voting two weeks ago. “The market already priced in the victory of Macron,” said Masafumi Yamamoto, chief currency strategist for Mizuho Securities in Tokyo.

“We saw some additional rise of the euro this morning, but considering the difficulty for Macron’s party to get a majority in the national assembly election, he may not bring higher growth.” Looking at positioning in the euro, he said, “the market has squared its short positions, but there are no fresh reasons to take long positions, as there will likely be no new positive developments, and limited scope for upside for the euro”. The muted analysis was partly based on an acknowledgment of the problems facing Macron, a 39-year-old former banker who has never held elected office. He was economy minister under outgoing president François Hollande but failed to turn around the fortunes of the beleaguered government. He has pledged to reform the country’s rigid labour laws – long seen by pro-market economists as a hindrance to growth – but such change was beyond the Hollande administration, despite a lengthy struggle.

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Reality check.

US Economy Can’t Even Match the “Sclerotic Statism” of France (CEPR)

The Washington Post has long pushed the view that a dollar (or euro) that is in the pocket of a middle class person is a dollar that should be in the pockets of the rich. (They are okay with crumbs for the poor.) In keeping with this position, in its lead editorial today the Post complained about the “sclerotic statism” of the French economy. It then called for increasing employment, “through reforms of the labor code, not by protectionism or restriction of immigration.” It is worth bringing a little bit of data to the fact free zone of the Washington Post opinion pages. France actually has consistently had a higher employment rate for its prime age workers (ages 25 to 54) than the United States.

As can be seen, the employment rate for prime age workers in France was roughly 2 percentage points higher in 2003. The gap expanded to almost 7 percentage points following the downturn, but it has in more recent years narrowed again to just under 2 percentage points. France does have much lower employment rates among younger and older workers than the United States, but this is due to policy choices. College is largely free in France and students get stipends from the government. Therefore many fewer young people work. France also makes it much easier for people to retire in their early sixties than in the United States, with largely free health care and earlier pensions. The merits of these policies can be debated, but they are not evidence of a sclerotic economy.

It is also not clear that the Washington Post’s desire to weaken protections for workers (euphemistically described as “reforms of the labor code”) will have a significant effect in reducing unemployment or raising employment. Extensive research has shown there is little relationship between worker protections and employment. It is also worth noting that the Post denounced protectionism in this editorial, but it is fine with protectionism in the form of ever longer and stronger copyright and patent protection, which benefit people it likes.

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Expect losses.

Expect Dramatically Lower Stock Market Returns Over Next Decade (CNBC)

Enjoy the stock indexes riding at record highs for now, but get ready for much stingier markets in the years to come. That’s the message consistently conveyed these days by investment counselors and finance scholars, who argue that with today’s starting equity valuations and low interest rates, the coming decade should produce dramatically lower returns than the historical average. The leaders of Vanguard Group, overseers of some $4 trillion in client assets, have been advising investors to expect a typical 60% stocks/40% bonds portfolio to deliver two- to- three percentage points less in nominal annual returns than its long-term norm. (Since 1926, such an asset mix has returned better than 8.5% annualized.)

Other forecasts are even less generous. Research Affiliates, a quantitative and “smart beta” fund manager, projects that U.S. stocks might only offer one% a year for the next decade, after inflation. This is based largely on the so-called Shiller P/E, a ratio of the S&P 500 index to its trailing ten-year average earnings, which is now above 29 and higher than any period aside from the run-up to the 1929 and 2000 market peaks. Jeremy Grantham of institutional value manager GMO has, by his admission, been wrong for years in assuming that corporate profit margins and equity valuations would revert to their pre-1990s trend levels. Yet even accounting for some more permanent upward shift in these gauges, he sees real (after inflation) returns of 2-3% a year looking out two decades.

And a simple plot of the market’s forward P/E ratio against subsequent market returns shows that, since 1978, when starting at today’s multiple of around 17.5 forecast earnings, ensuing seven- and 15-year nominal returns (before inflation) have been clustered in the mid- to low-single digits. These forward-return calculations vary in their approach and assumptions, but all are anchored on today’s stock valuations, long-term norms in corporate-profit growth and current interest rates. Stocks, even during the depths of the last bear market, never got dramatically cheap compared to prior cycles and certainly didn’t stay inexpensive for very long. And with risk-free 10-year government debt yielding a skimpy 2.3% in the U.S. and far less elsewhere, all other financial assets have repriced for skimpier future returns as well.

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The consumer is toast.

UK Consumer Spending Weakens With Sharp Slowdown in April (BBG)

U.K. consumer-spending growth slowed in April and is forecast to remain weak in the coming months, according to a report from Visa. Its index showed spending rose an annual 0.5% in April, down from 1% in March and marking one of the slowest rates of growth in the past three years. Weaker household demand is also taking a toll on retailers. A separate report from the Institute for Chartered Accountants in England and Wales showed while there was a jump in business confidence this quarter, retailing was the laggard among nine sectors covered. “The trend of relatively modest expenditure growth is likely to extend in to the coming months, as consumers are squeezed by both rising living costs and relatively lackluster wage growth,” said Annabel Fiddes, an economist at IHS Markit, which compiles the consumer index.

Inflation was at 2.3% last month and is forecast to keep accelerating through this year, outpacing wage increases and leaving workers facing a drop in real incomes. The Bank of England may raise its forecast for consumer-price growth this week, which could indicate an even bigger squeeze on households. The overall business sentiment gauge by the ICAEW jumped the highest in almost a year this quarter. Yet despite firms being more confident, the report showed they are still reluctant to make long-term commitments. While Brexit is dominating the agenda in the buildup to the U.K. election on June 8, the institute said all parties must spell out how they will “address the problem of business investment head-on.”

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No wonder consumer spending’s down.

Brexit Boom Gives Britain More Billionaires, Inequality Than Ever (G.)

Britain has more billionaires than ever in what equality campaigners said was a clear sign the UK economy is only working for the few at the top. There are now 134 billionaires based in the UK according to this year’s Sunday Times Rich List, 14 more than the previous highest total, as the super-rich reap the benefits of a “Brexit boom”. Fifteen years ago, there were 21. The annual rich list showed that the wealthiest 1,000 individuals and families in Britain have combined wealth of £658bn, up from £575bn last year, despite fears that the Brexit vote last June would plunge the economy into a fresh turmoil. The Equality Trust said the £83bn increase in wealth among the richest 1,000 people over the past year could pay the energy bills of all UK households for two and a half years and would be enough for the grocery bills for all food bank users for 56 years.

Wanda Wyporska, the executive director of the trust, said that an elite was sitting on mountains of wealth in the fifth largest economy of the world. “The super-rich continue to streak away from the rest of us, while the poorest see their wealth shrink. This is an economy working for the few, not the many,” she said. “Record numbers of people visited food banks last year, millions are locked out of a decent home and two-thirds of children in poverty are in working households. “We know that inequality damages our economy and society, and makes it harder for ordinary people and their children to get on. With the general election fast approaching, our politicians need to decide the sort of country they want to build. One where we can all prosper or one where we’re picking crumbs from the super-rich’s table.”

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China Shadow Banking Assets Estimated at 64.5t Yuan or 87% of GDP: Moody’s.

China Tycoons Are Setting Up Shop In The US (BBG)

When a new hedge fund opened in Mountainside, New Jersey, a leafy suburb that still holds an annual little-league parade, few would have guessed where much of its funding came from: Chinese billionaire Cai Kui. The credit hedge fund, Westfield Investment, was founded by former Goldman Sachs Managing Director Renyuan Gao and managed $139 million as of January. It’s part of a new crop of asset management firms that are expanding China’s reach on Wall Street as money has poured into the U.S. from the world’s second-biggest economy. China’s marquee names are among those setting up shop in the U.S. Chen Feng, who controls the HNA Group airline and hotel conglomerate, has opened a U.S. money management firm. China Vanke, the mainland’s second-largest residential developer, has indirectly taken a major stake in a manager.

All told, about 324 firms with financial ties to the mainland and Hong Kong had registered with regulators by last year, more than double the number in 2012, filings show. They are riding the wave of capital that left China on concerns about bank debt, a real estate bubble and the yuan, which plummeted about 11% against the dollar in the last two years. The currency flight was reflected in balance of payments data where capital outflows tripled to $220 billion last year from $70 billion in 2014, according to Derek Scissors, a China economist at the American Enterprise Institute. “There is so much Chinese money floating around the U.S. now,” Scissors said. “If you’re a Chinese money manager, why wouldn’t you come here?” The migration comes amid a Chinese shopping spree for an array of U.S. companies, including financial firms like New York’s Cowen Group and the Chicago Stock Exchange.

Chongqing Casin Enterprise led the purchase of the exchange, which was founded in 1882. The deal was reviewed by a U.S. panel on national security grounds and eventually cleared in December. In another deal with political overtones, a subsidiary of Chen’s HNA Group agreed in January to buy a stake in Anthony Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital, a New York fund of hedge funds firm. The announcement came after reports that Scaramucci had been tapped for a top job in the White House, stirring speculation that HNA’s motives were partly political. The registration of the China-linked firms with the SEC hasn’t drawn such scrutiny. The SEC began requiring hedge funds and buyout firms to sign up with the agency in 2012 as a result of the Dodd-Frank Act. About 30% of the Chinese firms that registered by 2016 are full-fledged money managers. The rest filed as exempt advisers that operate in the U.S. on a more limited basis.

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OPEC is fast losing what remained of its credibility.

Hedge Funds Bail Just Before OPEC-Driven Oil Rally Vanishes (BBG)

Hedge funds jumped out of the oil market just in time. Before West Texas Intermediate crude nosedived on Thursday, wiping out the rally driven by OPEC’s deal, money managers slashed bets on rising prices by 20%, according to U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data. Now they may soon be well poised to start betting on the next rally. “We are moving toward a positioning where these money managers are no longer over-invested,” Tim Evans at Citi Futures Perspective in New York, said. “This opens up the potential for them to start buying again.” Oil collapsed Thursday amid concerns that OPEC has failed to ease a supply glut as U.S. shale drillers ramp up output. Shares of U.S.-based producers got crushed as investors worry they might be repeating the same pattern that led to the market crash in 2014.

Earlier this year, billionaire wildcatter Harold Hamm urged colleagues to take a “measured” approach to lifting production, or risk a new glut. In a gamble that things could get worse, about $7 million worth of options changed hands Friday that will pay off if WTI falls beneath $39 a barrel by mid-July, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Hedge funds decreased their net-long position, or the difference between bets on a price increase and wagers on a drop, to 203,104 futures and options in the week ended May 2, the CFTC data show. Longs fell about 7%, while shorts surged 37%, following a 26% jump a week earlier. [..] Oil’s tumble to a five-month low was driven purely by technical trading and supply is still getting tighter, according to Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. The current price plunge began when WTI broke through its 200-day moving average. Once that gave way, another key technical indicator called a Fibonacci retracement was breached, paving the way to the low of the year and then $45 a barrel.

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Multigenerational households are the model of the past and the future. Come look in Greece.

Warning For Boomers: Your Gen X Kids Are Coming Back Home – For Good (MW)

Remove the door knockers. Pull down the shutters. Pretend no one’s home. Your adult children are coming back – for good. One-in-nine baby boomer parents said their adult children returned home within the last year, according to a new report from financial services firm Fidelity Investments and Stanford Center on Longevity, which surveyed 9,000 employees.The adult children save money on rent and household goods, but their parents are the ones who appear to be suffering: 68% said they were more stressed, 53% said they were less happy and another 53% said they had less leisure time after the return of their “boomerang kids.” More than three-quarters (76%) said they took on higher expenses, too. Even people who are now in their 40s and 50s are considering mom and dad an option.

Older millennials are 2.7 times more likely to live in their parents’ home than people under 55 years old than in 1999, while Generation-Xers, who are now in their mid-30s to early 50s, were 2.2 times as likely to live with their parents, according to separate data released last week by real estate site Trulia. “No parent is going to want to say no to a child who needs help, but certainly being realistic about the financial situation is important,” said Katie Taylor at Fidelity. More American adults are living with their parents and grandparents than ever before — 19% of the U.S. population (or nearly 61 million people) lived in a multigenerational household, up from 17% (42 million) in 2009 and 12% (27.5 million) in 1980, according to the Pew Research Center, nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C.

But not all millennials are as “lazy” or “entitled,” as they are often accused of being. About one in four 25- to 34-year-olds who live at home and are not working or going to school do so because of a health-related reason or because they are acting as caregivers to their family members. And more than a third of Americans, including millennials, expect to financially help their parents within the next few years, another survey found. Some are even making efforts to help their parents save for retirement.

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Wow, great timing! We’re coming to you live from the barn, and there’s not a horse in sight.

Australia To Hold New Inquiry Into ‘Big Four’ Banks (R.)

Australia will hold an inquiry into competition in the country’s financial system, following a series of scandals in the banking sector and public allegations against the “Big Four” banks of abuse of market power. The latest inquiry is part of a number of government measures since last year aimed at alleviating public concerns about the power of the big banks, after revelations of misconduct in the industry. Australia’s four major lenders – Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Westpac, ANZ and National Australia Bank – have come under fire recently following several scams involving misleading financial advice, insurance fraud and interest-rate rigging, as well as for refusing to pass on official interest rate cuts in full. The four together control 80% of Australia’s lending market and have posted record profits for years.

Westpac, NAB and ANZ all reported a rise in half-yearly cash profits this month, taking their total to about A$8.5 billion. CBA will report limited third-quarter figures on Tuesday. “The high concentration and degree of vertical integration in some parts of the Australian financial system has the potential to limit the benefits of competition…and should be proactively monitored over time,” Treasurer Scott Morrison said in a statement on Monday. “The Government is committed to ensuring that Australia’s financial system is competitive and innovative. That is why I have tasked the Productivity Commission to hold an inquiry into competition in Australia’s financial system.” The inquiry will consider the degree of concentration in key segments of the financial system, examine barriers to innovation in the system and look into competition in personal deposits and mortgages for households and small businesses.

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The benefits of ZIRP.

How Zombie Companies Stop Productivity Growth (BBG)

The global economy is picking up steam, but that’s deceptive. The foundations of expansion are soft, marked by weak productivity growth and inequality. The two are related. The productivity problem confronting the world’s advanced economies predates the financial crisis more than a decade ago. When we look beyond the headline statistics, patterns emerge. Advanced economies have become less dynamic and are at risk of becoming sclerotic unless the ambition for reform is revived. It’s essential that we understand three sources of the current productivity slump in particular, and identify the key reforms necessary to address them. First, the productivity slowdown masks a widening performance gap between more productive and less productive firms, as the chart below shows (the picture for service sector firms is even worse).

This divergence is not just driven by firms at the frontiers of their industry, pushing the technological boundaries, but also by stagnating productivity growth at what can be called laggard companies that have failed to adopt the leaders’ best practices. This is also bad news for inclusiveness, since rising wage inequality can be largely traced to the growing differentials in average wages paid across companies, with high-productivity ones paying high wages and low-productivity businesses paying low wages. Second, in well-functioning markets we would expect strong incentives for productive companies to aggressively expand and drive out less productive ones. The opposite has happened. The propensity for high-productivity companies to expand and low-productivity companies to downsize or exit the market has declined over time.

This pattern is evident in the U. S. and is particularly stark in southern Europe, where scarce capital has been increasingly misallocated to low-productivity firms. Third, across the 35 countries in the OECD, we are seeing a drop in the dynamism of the business sector. Not only has the share of recent entrants into the market declined, but marginal companies, which would typically exit or be restructured in a competitive market, are more likely to remain. At the same time, the average productivity of these marginal businesses has fallen. In other words, it has become easier for weak companies that do not adopt the latest technologies to survive. The survival of weak companies drags down average productivity, but the consequences for growth are even worse. Since such firms take up scarce resources, their prolonged survival (or their delayed restructuring) inflates wages relative to productivity, depresses market prices and undermines investment – all of which deters the expansion of productive companies, particularly startups, and amplifies the mismatch of skills.

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They’ve known about this for decades.

German Army To Search All Barracks After Nazi Memorabilia Found (R.)

The head of Germany’s armed forces has called for an inspection of all army barracks after investigators discovered Nazi-era military memorabilia in a garrison, broadening a scandal about right-wing extremism among soldiers. The discovery at a barracks in Donaueschingen, in southwest Germany, was made in an investigation that began after similar Nazi-era items were found in the garrison of an army officer arrested on suspicion of planning a racially motivated attack. As a result, General Inspector Volker Wieker ordered a wider search of barracks. “The General Inspector has instructed that all properties be inspected to see whether rules on dealing with heritage with regard to the Wehrmacht and National Socialism are being observed,” a Defence Ministry spokesman said. Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said the military must root out right-wing extremism.

“We must now investigate with all due rigor and with all candor in the armed forces,” the minister told broadcaster ARD on Sunday evening. “The process is starting now, and more is sure to come out. We are not through the worst of it yet.” Displaying Nazi items such as swastikas is punishable under German law, although possession of regular Wehrmacht items is not. Von der Leyen said last week, however, she would not tolerate the veneration of the Wehrmacht in today’s army, the Bundeswehr. Von der Leyen said the arrested officer – who had falsely registered as a Syrian refugee – had likely worked with others to squirrel away 1,000 rounds of ammunition, but the chief federal prosecutor was still investigating the matter. The suspect’s goal, she said, had likely been to carry out an attack and then pin the blame on migrants.

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Don’t hold your breath.

Greek PM Tsipras Rushes To Get Bailout Deal To Parliament With Eye On QE (K.)

After rallying his ministers, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras must now get coalition MPs behind him for a new multi-bill of austerity measures that is set to go to Parliament this coming week. Although some lawmakers have expressed reservations about the deal, which foresees further cuts to pensions and more tax increases, along with changes to the energy and labor markets, it is widely expected that Tsipras will get the support he needs to push the bill into law. A raft of so-called countermeasures – social welfare interventions that will come into effect in 2019 if the government meets budget targets – will be voted on separately and is sure to get the support of coalition MPs. The government has also appealed to the main political opposition New Democracy to back the offsetting measures but ND has refused to oblige.

According to government sources, Tsipras is already looking beyond the vote, expected on May 15 or 16, and beyond a scheduled Eurogroup summit on May 22 where the agreement between Greece and its creditors is expected to be rubber-stumped. Aides to the prime minister said he is considering a cabinet reshuffle to give his government a lift and inspire investors as talks on lightening Greece’s debt and the inclusion of Greek bonds in the ECB’s QE program are next on the agenda. It remains unclear whether Tsipras is considering a “cosmetic” shake-up or a radical overhaul, or whether key cabinet members such as Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos would keep their posts. But it appears that the government is keen to send out a message that it is turning a page following the completion of a tough bailout review that dragged on for months.

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Our times, and our very selves, are defined by refugees and famine more than anything else. But we don’t like to look at what defines us.

1 Million Child Refugees Flee South Sudan’s Civil War (BBG)

More than 1 million children have fled South Sudan’s civil war, two United Nations agencies said Monday, part of the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis. Another 1 million South Sudanese children are displaced within the country, having fled their homes due to the civil war, said the U.N.’s child and refugee agencies in a statement Monday. “The future of a generation is truly on the brink,” said Leila Pakkala, UNICEF’s Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa. “The horrifying fact that nearly one in five children in South Sudan has been forced to flee their home illustrates how devastating this conflict has been for the country’s most vulnerable.”

Roughly 62% of refugees from South Sudan are children, according to the U.N. statement, and more than 75,000 children are alone or without their families. Roughly 1.8 million people have fled South Sudan in total. “No refugee crisis today worries me more than South Sudan,” said Valentin Tapsoba, UNHCR’s Africa Bureau Director. “That refugee children are becoming the defining face of this emergency is incredibly troubling.” For children still living in South Sudan, the situation is still grim. Nearly three quarters of children are out of school, according to the U.N. statement, which is the highest out-of-school population in the world. An official famine was declared in two counties of South Sudan in February, and hundreds of thousands of children are at risk of starvation in the absence of food aid, according to the U.N.

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Why Russia’s safety zones make sense.

Growing Numbers of Refugees In Northern Syria in Urgent Need of Aid (Kom)

The co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), Ilham Ehmed, said that the operations to push out the Islamic State (IS) has resulted in refugee flows into the northern parts of Syria controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and that the displaced people are in urgent need of aid. “We have gathered the refugees that came recently in two camps,” Ehmed said to ANF. “In one of the camps, 50 thousand refugees are living. A number of aid organisations are present but there are no serious aid efforts. Many of the organisations receive funding from Europe but they still don’t help,” she said. “One can’t help wondering if they want Syrians to die, if there is a plan to kill them first with war and then with hunger. And if that fails from the heat and the cold. That’s the sad conclusion one draws from the situation.”

The SDC co-chair said they had discussed the urgent needs of food, housing and health with the US-led coalition without any results. “This is not acceptable, they should at least provide support for the refugee camps,” she said, stressing that preparations must be made as the operation to evict IS from Raqqa will give rise to many more refugees. “38 refugees coming from Raqqa have already died, some were children. It’s a tragedy. The European countries and the coalition must take their responsability.” Ehmad stressed the need of mediaction, clinics and doctors in the camps. “This is really urgent. Some will be able to return after the area has been liberated but those who lost their homes will stay, so we must make preparations.”

Ehmad also criticized Europe for giving in to what she called Turkey’s “blackmailing.” “There is an approach to the issue which goes something like this: ‘Let’s give them [Turkey] money so that no refugees will come here’. But everyone knows that the refugees are remaining in our region [Syria] at the moment.” Last year, the United Nations estimated that more than 6 million were internally displaced within Syria, and over 4,8 million were refugees outside of the country.

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May 072017
 


Rembrandt Old Man Sitting 1631

 

The Great Productivity Slowdown (WSJ)
Take Away Finance, and Britain’s Foreign Investment Figures Collapse (Econ.)
Round 2 Of French Presidential Elections Held Amid State Of Emergency (RT)
Charles Gave Expects “Total Mayhem” In France Even If Macron Is Elected (ZH)
Angry Merkel Slaps Down Juncker For Inflaming Brexit Talks (DM)
Far-Right ‘Terror Plot’ Rocks The German Army (AFP)
World Bank Warns Of China Debt Risk From Backdoor Local Borrowing (AFR)
Spain’s Government Presses Property-Bubble Rewind Button (DQ)
We Are On The Edge Of The Abyss But We Ignore It (G.)
The End of Wild Elephants: Africa To Become One Giant Food Farm (G.)
IMF Wants Greek Opposition To Promise Not To Reverse Agreed Measures (K.)
Greece Can Never Pay Its Debts. So Why Not Admit It? (Worstall)
EU’s Moscovici: Macron Will Be Greece’s Ally (Ana)
Bangladesh Now Single Biggest Country of Origin for EU-Bound Migrants (Ind.)

 

 

One thing nobody seems to be able to figure out. And one more thing that everyone thinks should keep on growing.

The Great Productivity Slowdown (WSJ)

Equity markets have hit multiyear highs and consumer sentiment is buoyant. Yet economic productivity remains lackluster. The Labor Department announced Thursday that worker productivity fell 0.6% since January, a much bigger drop than expected. This is neither a statistical illusion nor a hangover from the Great Recession. The productivity slowdown began long before the financial crisis, and it has worsened markedly in the past six years. The drop-off extends to wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, construction, utilities and a host of private and public services. Industries that consume and produce information technology and communications are not immune to the slowdown. From 1950 to 1970, U.S. productivity grew on average by 2.6% annually. From 1970 to 1990 it fell to 1.5%.

The information technology boom of the ’90s interrupted the slide, but since 2010 U.S. productivity growth has been in free fall. It is now roughly 0.6% a year. No wonder Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen recently called low productivity a “significant problem.” Various estimates suggest that had U.S. productivity growth not slowed, GDP would be about $3 trillion higher than it is today. How is this happening during a technological revolution? Some think the data are wrong. Economist Joel Mokyr explained in 2014 that metrics devised for a “steel-and-wheat economy” fail to capture adequately transformative advances in information technology, communications and the biosciences. Technology has reduced the cost of information, expanded consumer choice, and provided customization and better price comparison.

This progress has been mostly missed in current statistics. GDP also does not fully capture metrics like time saved from shopping online. Nor does it include the value of leisure and the well-being that technology provides its users. Many economists contend that properly counting free digital services from companies like Google and Facebook would substantially boost productivity and GDP growth. One of the highest estimates, calculated by economists Austan Goolsbee and Peter Klenow, stands at $800 billion. That’s a big number, but not big enough to fill a $3 trillion hole.

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Talking about reasons productivity is not growing…

Take Away Finance, and Britain’s Foreign Investment Figures Collapse (Econ.)

Here is a riddle. Britain, for now at least, is loved by foreign investors. The stock of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in Britain’s assets and shares is larger than anywhere except America and Hong Kong. In the past decade overseas investors have splurged some £600bn ($772bn), equivalent to a third of British GDP, to acquire over 2,000 British firms. The textbooks say that foreign investments make a country more productive. The new arrivals should bring with them cutting-edge capital assets and best-practice management. So why over the past decade has Britain’s productivity barely improved? The question matters for all Britons. If productivity growth is low, then wage growth will be too. Many factors determine Britain’s weak productivity growth, including creaky infrastructure. But new official data suggest that foreign investors are doing a lot less to improve the economy than commonly assumed.

The figures classify FDI flows into around 100 industries. In 2015 financial services accounted for an astonishing 95% of net inflows. This could include, for instance, foreign funding for Britain’s burgeoning financial-technology sector. Finance was unusually dominant in 2015, though even in 2012-14 the industry made up around 60% of the net figure. Remove financial services, and overall in 2015 a tiny amount of net foreign investment flowed into Britain—a few billion pounds at best. Many industries saw “negative inflows”, suggesting that foreigners were actually disinvesting, selling assets they had acquired back to British firms, for instance. In 2015 they pulled around £20bn from the oil-and-gas sector. Perhaps £1.5bn drained from manufacturing. Finance aside, investors seem to see few profitable opportunities in Britain.

What foreign investment does flow into the “real” economy may make surprisingly little difference. Much of it seems to be about one big company horizontally acquiring another, perhaps with the aim of eliminating overlapping marketing costs (such as in the Kraft-Cadbury deal of 2010) or of acquiring a trophy asset (such as the Tata-Corus steelmaker deal of 2007). A chunk of investment in Britain, meanwhile, is a statistical by-product of big firms moving headquarters for tax purposes rather than anything meaningful. As Britain begins the process of leaving the EU, interest from foreign investors is only likely to shrink. If so, the prospects for the kind of foreign investment that lifts productivity will start to look even gloomier.

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Democracy and emergency. Odd pair.

Round 2 Of French Presidential Elections Held Amid State Of Emergency (RT)

French voters are heading to the polls to choose France’s next president. The presidential runoff between centrist Emmanuel Macron and right-wing Marine le Pen is the first to take place amid an ongoing state of emergency, introduced in the country after 2015 terrorist attacks. French authorities have introduced extra security measures for the poll. This time “more than 50,000 policemen, gendarmes will be deployed [across the country] on Sunday”, French interior ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told AFP on Thursday.Soldiers from Operation Sentinel will also “ensure security around polling stations and [will be able] to intervene immediately in case of any incident,” he added. Operation Sentinel was launched by the French Army in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack in January of 2015 and the subsequent Paris strikes.

Paris police promised that at least 12,000 soldiers and police were to be drafted to Paris and its surrounding suburbs on Sunday, with 5,000 of securing polling stations and guaranteeing public order, as cited by AFP. People on social media have been calling for protests on May 7, regardless of the election result. The hashtags #nimacronnilepen (neither Macron, nor Le Pen) and #SansMoiLe7Mai (May 7 without me) was launched after the first round of the elections on April 23. Macron won the first round by securing 24.01 percent of the votes to le Pen’s 21.3 percent. Demonstrations have rocked France following the 1st round vote with people rallying against both candidates. “Neither fatherland, nor the boss, neither le Pen nor Macron,” banners held by protesters read. The rallies have often resulted in violence with protesters throwing stones and smoke grenades and police and officers responding with tear gas.

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“..since they knew they were going to lose the election, they created a guy in a hologram that would run for them and prevent them from losing power.”

Charles Gave Expects “Total Mayhem” In France Even If Macron Is Elected (ZH)

Venerable French investor Charles Gave has been managing money and researching markets for over 40 years; as such France’s elder statesman of asset allocation perhaps best captures the mood ahead of the most crucial Presidential election in a generation. In conversation with Dr. Pippa Malmgren, Charles breaks down national politics to understand why voters have rejected the establishment and the market impact of both outcomes, and what to expect from tomorrow’s election. First, Gave, who says “I’m not so sure that Macron will win”, is asked by Malmgren to walk RealVision viewers through what Macron’s agenda would look like in case of a victory. Gave is unable to do so for several simple reasons:

“Well, first, nobody knows. Because during the whole campaign, all these talks were on one hand, on the other. I’m in favor of apple pie, and motherhood, you see. Basically he has, to my knowledge, very little program. So he’s running. That is what Hollande said. That he was going to make some fundamental changes without hurting people. And so Macron is a big, empty suit. That’s what he is. You did the right curriculum vitae, he went to the right schools. And you have the feeling that the guy never had an original idea in his life. He was always a good student.

And moreover, there is a strong suspicion that he’s a kind of golem created by Hollande and all these guys. So since they knew they were going to lose the election, they created a guy in a hologram that would run for them and prevent them from losing power. So to a certain extent, the French political system has been captured by what you can call the Technocratic class. And whether from the left or the right, it didn’t make any difference. And this Technocratic class is presenting Macron as a brand new fellow. He is nothing brand new. These guys have been in power for 50 years for God’s sakes. So this is basically nothing.

If Le Pen wins, it’s pretty simple. The bond market in France, Italy, Spain cannot open on Monday morning. And I suppose the euro is dead in the following week. And then you have to buy Europe like crazy. Southern Europe. Why Southern Europe? Because it is Germany’s markets that would bear the brunt of the selloff, as the dissolution of the euro and European Union would effectively bring about the end of Germany’s economic hegemony (while at the same time benefitting France). The Germans have made a colossal mistake, which is that they have all the production in Germany. So they’re extremely efficient, well-organized, and they have developed massive current account surpluses. Half of that surplus is in cars. The margin on cars is around 4%. Imagine that the euro breaks down.

The deutschmark comes back. The deutschmark goes up 15, 20%. And the whole German industry, all the production base in Germany, becomes bankrupt in no time at all. Compare that to France. France we have magnificent big companies that have been intelligent enough to produce everywhere in the world, to operate from everywhere in the world, and be totally independent from what’s happening in France. What they have in France is their headquarters. And that’s about it. So if Europe breaks, you should be long France on the stock market, and short Germany. Big time.”

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Good cop bad cop. Or should I say: here’s how you can tell who’s the boss in Europe?!

Angry Merkel Slaps Down Juncker For Inflaming Brexit Talks (DM)

A rift emerged between Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker last night after she reportedly accused him of ‘inflaming’ Brexit talks by leaking details of his row with Theresa May. The German Chancellor’s relations with the EU Commission president are said to have ‘soured’ after Mr Juncker described Mrs May as living in ‘another galaxy’ following a recent dinner. According to German newspaper Der Spiegel, which has close links with Merkel’s government, she believes the leaking of private conversations – blamed on Juncker – ‘is not helpful in heating up the mood in this way’. The Der Spiegel article, headlined ‘Merkel angered by Juncker at Brexit dinner’, said it had made her mood ‘sour’ towards him. Juncker’s ‘another galaxy’ comment was made in a telephone call with Mrs Merkel after he clashed with Mrs May over dinner in Downing Street 11 days ago.

Juncker reportedly told Mrs Merkel: ‘It went very badly. She is in a different galaxy.’ The leak was blamed on Mr Juncker or his formidable German chief of staff, Martin Selmayr. In remarks clearly aimed at Mr Juncker, a furious Mrs May responded to the leaks last week by accusing ‘the bureaucrats of Brussels’ of trying to influence the General Election. But a defiant Mr Juncker took another swipe at Britain on Friday by claiming at a European Union summit in Italy that the English language was already ‘losing its importance in Europe’. The Der Spiegel article echoed public comments made by Mrs Merkel on Friday in which she struck a markedly more conciliatory tone towards Mrs May than outspoken Mr Juncker. She stressed that she would approach Brexit negotiations ‘fairly and constructively’. Mrs Merkel denied she aimed to cause trouble in the Brexit talks and said she wanted ‘clarity and security as quickly as possible’ for EU residents in Britain, including about 100,000 Germans.

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Germany’s much less serene than it seems.

Far-Right ‘Terror Plot’ Rocks The German Army (AFP)

The bizarre case of a racist soldier allegedly plotting an attack while posing as a Syrian refugee and several abuse scandals have sparked a war of words between Germany’s defence minister and the military. It is a dangerous political battle for Ursula von der Leyen, the first woman in charge of the armed forces, who is often mentioned as a potential successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel. The mother-of-seven has sternly criticised military “attitude and leadership problems”, highlighted by the case of the soldier and by recent sexual abuse and hazing scandals. This in turn has made her a target of chastened rank-and-file soldiers who charge she is tarring them all while dodging personal responsibility after more than three years on the job.

The escalating conflict started with the arrest a week ago of 28-year-old army lieutenant Franco Albrecht, who was stationed at a Franco-German base near Strasbourg. He came to the notice of the authorities after Austrian police caught him with a loaded handgun at the Vienna airport in February. The subsequent investigation found that, amid Germany’s 2015 mass influx of refugees, he had created a fake identity as a Damascus fruit seller called “David Benjamin”. Incredibly, the German who speaks no Arabic managed to gain political asylum, a spot in a refugee shelter and monthly state benefits for his fictitious alter ego. Prosecutors charge that Albrecht harboured far-right views and, with at least one co-conspirator, plotted an attack with the apparent aim of discrediting foreigners.

Media reports say he kept “death lists” with the names of top politicians, including former president Joachim Gauck, some cabinet ministers and left-leaning, anti-fascist MPs. It has since emerged that the lieutenant had expressed rightwing extremist views in a master’s thesis he submitted in 2014, in which he theorised about the end of Western civilisation through immigration. In the paper seen by AFP, he argued that immigration was causing a “genocide” in western Europe, adding that “this is a mathematical certainty”. However, the paper was buried, without disciplinary action – something the minister attributed to a “misunderstood esprit de corps” and superior officers who “looked the other way”.

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I’ve mentioned the power of Chinese shadow banking a thousand times. That power is still growing.

World Bank Warns Of China Debt Risk From Backdoor Local Borrowing (AFR)

The World Bank has warned that Chinese local governments remain addicted to off-budget borrowing, despite Beijing’s efforts to impose fiscal discipline on localities and curb ballooning debt. Runaway growth of local government debt is widely seen as a huge risk for China’s economy and financial system. Provinces, cities and counties borrowed heavily to spend on infrastructure to keep economic growth humming after the 2008 financial crisis. But the practice has continued and economists warn that returns on new investment are falling and white elephants are common. Many projects do not produce enough cash flow to service their debt. In 2014 China moved to eliminate borrowing through special-purpose vehicles, which local officials had used to circumvent a legal ban on direct borrowing.

Under the moniker of “close the back door, open the front door”, China’s parliament ended the legal ban, enabling localities to borrow within clear limits set by Beijing. Meanwhile, local government finance vehicles were ordered to cease disguised fiscal borrowing. To deal with legacy debt, Rmb8tn ($US1.2tn) in outstanding local government funding vehicle (LGFV) borrowing was converted into on-budget provincial debt through a bond swap. But growth of LGFV debt has actually accelerated since 2015, the World Bank warned in a confidential March presentation obtained by the Financial Times. Despite the swap programme, “LGFVs continued to borrow and increase their liabilities at a very rapid pace” in 2015-16, the bank’s lead China economist John Litwack and analyst Luan Zhao said.

Local governments and their LGFVs account for “the vast majority of public expenditures and public investment”, they noted, adding that “government and LGFV finances [are] intertwined in complicated ways, making separation difficult in practice”. Growth of LGFV liabilities accelerated from 22% in 2014 to 25% in 2015 and stayed high at 22% in the first half of 2016, the authors found. The presentation noted that Beijing’s effort to stop the use of LGFVs as quasi-fiscal entities may have unintentionally encouraged them to increase borrowing. Local fiscal authorities are now forbidden from officially monitoring LGFV finances, since to do so would imply that the government stands behind their debt. “Instructions to no longer even monitor finances of LGFVs can give a dangerous impression of ‘free money’,” the presentation warned.

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Especially in euro countries, governments need mortgage loans for money/credit creation. Their governments and central banks lost that ability.

Spain’s Government Presses Property-Bubble Rewind Button (DQ)

After spending the last few years groggily getting back onto its feet following the collapse of one of the most spectacular — and destructive — real estate bubbles of this century, Spain’s economy is once again being primed for another property boom. In the last quarter prices registered a year-on-year rise of 4.5%. Rents are also surging, though the country is still home to over half a million vacant properties. The cost of renting in Madrid and Barcelona, which between them account for 16% of those vacant properties, has reached historic highs, according to a new study by the online real estate market place Idealista. In Madrid, rents have risen on average by 27% since 2013; in Barcelona they’ve surged over 50%.

This trend is being driven by two main factors: the recent explosion in tourist rentals, as well as a general shift in consumer behavior as more and more people choose (or have little choice but) to rent rather than buy property. While rents soar, Spain’s mortgage market, the biggest source of profits for the nation’s banks, is also showing signs of life. In 2016 the number of mortgages issued rose by just over 10% to 281,328. But that’s merely a fraction of the 1,324,522 mortgages signed in 2006, just before the bubble burst. The banks would like nothing better than to issue more and bigger mortgages, but even with interest rates at their lowest point in history, most people either can’t afford the current prices or don’t want to take on more debt. Spain’s fragile coalition government is determined to change that.

In its latest budget announcement it revealed plans to set aside billions of euros in 2018 for publicly funded mortgage subsidies. Young people under the age of 35 who are earning gross incomes of less than €1,600 per month will be eligible for payments of up to €10,800 to help them buy their first home. There will also be rental subsidies for people under the age of 35, for up to half the price of the rent. [..] In Spain today there are roughly two million fewer people under the age of 40 in full-time employment than there were in 2006, due to a variety of factors: demographics (i.e. there are now fewer people under the age of 40), rampant job destruction, and the mass exodus of young Spaniards to greener pastures. Even for many of those that chose to stay behind and actually found work, the reality is still alarmingly bleak.

According to the Spanish daily ABC, of the 1.7 million job contracts signed in December last year, over 92% were for temporary jobs. Since the Financial Crisis, precarity has become the ubiquitous reality for most young Spaniards. Many end up earning so little in jobs that offer scant, if any, financial security that they have little choice but to stay at home with their parents, sometimes well into their thirties. According to data released this week by Eurostat, the average Spaniard does not move out of the family residence until they are 29 years old. If Spain’s new, dwindling generation of “workers” cannot afford to leave home, who will buy or rent the properties sitting idle on the balance sheets of the banks, “bad bank” Sareb, and the global private equity firms that piled into the market a few years ago?

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We are designed to ignore distant danger, so we can better prepare for what’s near.

We Are On The Edge Of The Abyss But We Ignore It (G.)

[..] the evidence tells us that so powerful have humans become that we have entered this new and dangerous geological epoch, which is defined by the fact that the human imprint on the global environment has now become so large and active that it rivals some of the great forces of nature in its impact on the functioning of the Earth system. This bizarre situation, in which we have become potent enough to change the course of the Earth yet seem unable to regulate ourselves, contradicts every modern belief about the kind of creature the human being is. So for some it is absurd to suggest that humankind could break out of the boundaries of history and inscribe itself as a geological force in deep time. Humans are too puny to change the climate, they insist, so it is outlandish to suggest we could change the geological time scale.

Others assign the Earth and its evolution to the divine realm, so that it is not merely impertinence to suggest that humans can overrule the almighty, but blasphemy. Many intellectuals in the social sciences and humanities do not concede that Earth scientists have anything to say that could impinge on their understanding of the world, because the “world” consists only of humans engaging with humans, with nature no more than a passive backdrop to draw on as we please. The “humans-only” orientation of the social sciences and humanities is reinforced by our total absorption in representations of reality derived from media, encouraging us to view the ecological crisis as a spectacle that takes place outside the bubble of our existence.

It is true that grasping the scale of what is happening requires not only breaking the bubble but also making the cognitive leap to “Earth system thinking” – that is, conceiving of the Earth as a single, complex, dynamic system. It is one thing to accept that human influence has spread across the landscape, the oceans and the atmosphere, but quite another to make the jump to understanding that human activities are disrupting the functioning of the Earth as a complex, dynamic, ever-evolving totality comprised of myriad interlocking processes.

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China is a major factor in this, as much as growing population is.

The End of Wild Elephants: Africa To Become One Giant Food Farm (G.)

Elephants are in big trouble. Even if we beat poaching and illegal trade, their potential doom has been sealed in projections for population growth, and has already been priced into the commonly accepted solutions to how we humans plan to feed ourselves well into the century – by looking to Africa to be our next big breadbasket. Africa is home to 1.2 billion people, but by 2050 that number is likely to double, and may well double again by the end of the century to reach well over 4 billion. Globally, we may exceed 11 billion souls. This is of course a cause for celebration and a testament to the huge strides we’ve made in public health. We’ve all but beaten polio and yellow fever, mother and child mortality has plummeted, and we’re making headway in the fight against malaria.

Another cause for celebration is the confidence, energy and entrepreneurship in many parts of the African continent – a spirit that is unmatched anywhere in the world. It’s easy to see we’re on the cusp of enormous positive change. The obvious flipside is the environmental disaster waiting to happen. This has been compounded by number crunchers who are leaving the future of our planet’s fragile ecosystems out of the equation as they try to come up with answers about how to fill billions of bellies. Several scenarios for cropland expansion – many of them focusing on Africa’s so-called “spare land” – have already effectively written off its elephants from having a future in the wild. These projections have earmarked a huge swathe of land spanning from Nigeria to South Sudan for farming, or parts of west Africa for conversion to palm oil plantations.

Economies are already being structured for the future, and are locking us into an unsustainable path to the tune of Feed the World – but with Africa providing the food. Some models suggest that 29% of the existing elephant range is affected by infrastructure development, human population growth and rapid urban and agricultural expansion; that may rise to 63% by 2050. If we continue like this, elephants will see more of their migration routes become narrow corridors before being eventually severed. Inevitably, as competitors for space, elephants will fight it out with us. But being the dominant species on this planet, we will win. And Africa will become a giant farm.

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ROund 2 of democracy and emergency.

IMF Wants Greek Opposition To Promise Not To Reverse Agreed Measures (K.)

The European Commission will bring down its 2017 growth estimate for Greece next week, a eurozone official said on Friday, adding that the IMF wants main opposition New Democracy to make a commitment not to reverse the reforms that the government has agreed to in the context of the bailout review should it come to power. “This is important for them,” the official said of the IMF’s demand, while adding that the eurozone has not asked for such a commitment, although it agrees it is always better to have consensus on the reforms applied. The same official said that the Commission will reduce its estimate for the Greek economic recovery this year from 2.7% “to around 2%” on May 11.

Sources say that a downward revision by the Commission of its forecast to 1.9% would not lead to a shift in its general estimate regarding Greece’s fiscal course, so it does not entail the risk of any new measures. The latest IMF forecast regarding the Greek economy was for a 2.2% expansion. If all goes well, the disbursement of the next bailout tranche will take place just before the July repayment deadline, when Greece must pay €7.4 billion to its creditors. As the European official said, if there is a final agreement at the May 22 Eurogroup, which is the optimum scenario, it will take four to five weeks for the tranche payment to clear the parliaments of eurozone member-states where necessary.

If one also takes into account the time needed for the approval by the IMF council, it will take up to six weeks, which means early July. The amount of the tranche will come to about 7 billion euros, plus the funds needed for the state to pay off its expired debts to suppliers and taxpayers until the next review comes up. The disbursement will be paid in a lump sum, but only after all prior actions have been ratified by Greece. The second review had no fewer than 140 prior actions required, of which 40 have been satisfied. Of the remainder there are about 80 that either require new legislation or presidential decrees.

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“..what should have happened was the standard IMF programme: a haircut on the debt, devalue the currency and a bit of a loan to tide things over until growth returned.”

Greece Can Never Pay Its Debts. So Why Not Admit It? (Worstall)

Peace, sweetness and light break out in the Balkans as we’re told that the EU, the eurogroup, the IMF, Greece, the ECB and Uncle Tom Cobley agree over a Greek debt deal. Except, of course, that agreement hasn’t been reached, because the major point at issue is still being glossed over. That major point being that Greece simply isn’t going to repay all of that debt. So we still need to work out who is going to lose money, and when. Debts which cannot be repaid will not be repaid. That’s why we have bankruptcy in the first place. Or, when it comes to sovereign nations, we have debt rescheduling and IMF programmes instead of bankruptcy. When the Greek crisis first blew up, what should have happened was the standard IMF programme: a haircut on the debt, devalue the currency and a bit of a loan to tide things over until growth returned.

This is similar to the approach taken by Iceland – which has already recovered while Greece languishes – and is what the IMF has been doing for decades in other places. The one thing standing between Greece and this approach was the euro. In order to protect the integrity of the single currency, debts to the private sector banks were refinanced by public money from varying combinations of the EU itself, the ECB, the eurogroup (the group of eurozone finance ministers), the IMF and so on. This is the crucial point. There are no private sector capitalists left. If there were, we could simply say “you lost your money, better luck next time”. Instead there are only official creditors, run by politicians, who have their voters wondering what has happened or will happen to their money. For it is still true that Greece cannot repay those debts, and therefore Greece will not repay them.

All that can change is who will lose money and when. Unsurprisingly, politicians are keen to delay the inevitable until they have retired and are collecting their pensions. That the Greeks have to see theirs cut in the interim is just bad luck. This may sound terribly cynical but allow me explain the thinking. There are the true federalists happy to sacrifice a country on the altar of the euro and ever closer union, as long as the losses – losses of their own voters’ money – come to light later.

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But Merkel will not, and that’s what counts.

EU’s Moscovici: Macron Will Be Greece’s Ally (Ana)

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron will support Greece and be Athens’ ally if he is elected, European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Pierre Moscovici told the Athens-Macedonian News Agency in an exclusive statement, one day before the second round of the elections in France. “I have no doubt that with Emmanuel Macron as President, yes, Greece will continue to have a friend in France, a president friend and a government friend, and this is why these elections are also important for the Greeks,” Moscovici said, adding he has worked with Macron in the past for the Greek program.

“I know Emmanuel Macron very well. We worked together when I was finance minister, when he was deputy secretary-general next to Francois Hollande, to find positive positions concerning Greece, for Greece. France is a country who’s a friend of Greece. It will remain [a friend]” he continued. Moscovici said that being friend of Greece means, on the one hand, to encourage and follow the efforts for reforms until the end but it also means solidarity from its partners.

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Europe must find an actual response to this, or face a lot of struggle. There are too many people living in all these countries.

Bangladesh Now Single Biggest Country of Origin for EU-Bound Migrants (Ind.)

As the refugee crisis enters its fourth year, the demographics of the men, women and children arriving on Europe’s shores are undergoing an unprecedented shift. Syrians have so far made up the largest group of migrants attempting treacherous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea, followed by Afghans, Iraqis, Eritreans and sub-Saharan Africans. But as smugglers in Libya continue to expand their ruthless human trade, their counterparts in Asia are seeing an opportunity. In the first three months of last year just one Bangladeshi arrived in Italy, but the number for 2017 stands at more than 2,800, making the country the largest single origin of migrants currently arriving on European shores.

Those rescued in the Mediterranean Sea have told aid workers they paid more than $10,000 each to be taken from Dhaka to Dubai or Turkey and onwards to Libya, where the violence and chaos engulfing the fractured country is fuelling powerful smuggling networks. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said the emerging route had dramatically changed the demographics of asylum seekers arriving in Italy, who until now have largely hailed from sub-Saharan Africa. “The thing that’s really changing is the main nationality of the migrants, and the number coming from Bangladesh,” IOM’s Flavio di Giacomo told The Independent.

“By the end of March last year only one Bangladeshi had arrived in Italy – and this year the number is more than 2,831 for the same period.” Some migrants taken ashore in Sicily and Apulia said their trip to Libya was organised by an “agency” that provided them with a working visa for between $3,000 and $4,000. “From Bangladesh, they first travelled to Dubai and Turkey, and finally reached Libya by plane,” an IOM spokesperson said. “At the airport, an ‘employer’ met them and took their documents.”

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May 062017
 
 May 6, 2017  Posted by at 9:24 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


Edouard Boubat Paris 1950

 

Think Like a Surfer in the Largest Stock Market Bubble Since 1983 (Dent)
US Student, Auto Loans Hit New All Time High Of $2.6 Trillion (ZH)
China’s War on Debt: Stocks Drop, Bond Yields Shoot Up and Defaults Rise (WSJ)
This Is Not a Bill (Jim Kunstler)
Review of Steve Keen’s Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis? (R.)
France and Greece Heavily Disadvantaged by Euro as Germany Benefits (WE)
How the Eurozone Damaged French Politics – And The Election (Nation)
Macron Team Blasts ‘Massive Hacking Attack’ (R.)
Macron Personifies The Very Europe Whose Failure Feeds Le Pen (Zizek)
The English Language Is Losing Importance In Europe – Juncker (G.)
Germany Says No Debt Relief Being Prepared For Greece (R.)
The Forgotten History of Cinco de Mayo (IC)
Rescuers Pick Up 560 Migrants Off Libyan Coast On Thursday (R.)

 

 

Disasters as opportunities.

Think Like a Surfer in the Largest Stock Market Bubble Since 1983 (Dent)

I took up surfing in my early 30s. It didn’t last long. But I learned a tremendous amount from the experience (least of which is that I suck at surfing). Well, it’s time to think like a surfer. Your sole focus is to catch the wave. The best surfers can see the waves building, just like we can in the markets, but they only care about where the biggest, best waves will crash. That’s where you get the ride. And if you catch the biggest wave in the right place, you get the ride of a lifetime. Look at this fourth and largest wave building in the stock market. It’s the wave of a lifetime for investors, and it’s rolling onto our shores right about now… Remember, all the action comes when the wave crashes, not as it’s building. As the swell grows around you, you can go with the flow and harness the energy of the wave with little effort.

That’s when you become one with the universe, sitting there on your board, surrounded by dark water, rolling up and down as the power builds beneath you. That’s why surfers get addicted. Then, at the perfect moment, all the wave’s pent up energy releases in a roaring spray of water and power. That’s where we want YOU to be when the greatest market wave of your lifetime comes crashing to shore! That’s when the greatest profits come. That’s when the greatest innovations spring up. The smartest people (I include surfers in this group) and the greatest innovators understand this. They don’t look at a good economy as the best opportunity for success. Seeds of radical innovation only grow in the most challenging conditions.

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Private debt is far more dangerous than public debt.

US Student, Auto Loans Hit New All Time High Of $2.6 Trillion (ZH)

One month after we, and every other financial media, reported that US credit card debt had risen back over $1 trillion for the first time since January 2017, the Fed demonstrated just how meaningless such reports are when in its latest consumer credit report it revised the total stock of revolving debt back under $1 trillion for the month of March, while boosting December’s amount to $1,000.1 billion, meaning that all those “$1 trillion in credit card” debt headlines were about 4 months late. Fed screwing around with the financial reporters aside, the latest monthly report showed that total consumer credit rose by $16.4 billion, more than the $14 billion expected, an increase which was offset by a downward revision to the February consumer credit number from $15.2 billion to $13.8 billion. Revolving credit accounted for $2 billion of the increase with the rest, or $14.4 billion, in the form of auto and student loans.

And speaking of student and auto loans, the Fed also released its latest quarterly estimate for the two series as of March 31, and as one would expect, the numbers rose to new all time highs, and as of the end of the first quarter, US consumers owed $1.44 trillion in student loans, an increase of $32 billion for the quarter and $80 billion for the year, as well as $1.12 trillion in auto loans, an increase of $8 billion Q/Q and $73 billion Q/Q. This means that as of March 31, Americans owed two and a half times as much on their auto and student loans, as on their credit cards, a new all time high.

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“..since these products aren’t logged as loans or other assets on their balance sheets, banks have to set aside little or nothing for potential losses associated with them..”

China’s War on Debt: Stocks Drop, Bond Yields Shoot Up and Defaults Rise (WSJ)

A wave of regulations aimed at cutting risk in China’s financial system is rippling through the country’s markets and sending banks and companies scrambling for funds. During the past month, Chinese shares have fallen nearly 5%, draining almost half a trillion dollars out of the country’s markets. Bond yields have shot up to their highest levels in two years, and bond defaults hover at record levels. The uncertainty has also weighed on metals and commodity prices, already hurt by doubts around China’s growth momentum. The price of iron ore plunged 8% on Thursday, the daily trading limit. Investors blame the volatility on a host of measures Chinese authorities have rolled out to curb runaway debt levels, from raising the cost of short-term funds to measures that are prompting banks to unwind hidden loans and securities.

A particular target is high-risk, high-yielding investment products that banks have used to boost returns, but that regulators say may conceal dangerous amounts of risky lending. Regulators are responding to prodding from Chinese President Xi Jinping, who issued a call for financial stability ahead of a major power reshuffle later this year, and just last week warned finance officials not to miss “a single risk” or “hidden danger.” The market turbulence will test Beijing’s resolve in tackling China’s snowballing debt, especially if it looks like regulators’ crackdown is jeopardizing short-term growth. If they can withstand the short-term squeeze and continue to push it through, the effort will help put China’s economy on a sounder footing longer-term. Banks—especially small and midsize lenders—sell the risky investment products to Chinese savers, then lend the funds to outside asset managers who invest them in bonds, stocks and loans.

The lenders make money from the difference between what they pay their investment clients and what they get from the outside managers. But since these products aren’t logged as loans or other assets on their balance sheets, banks have to set aside little or nothing for potential losses associated with them. That leaves banks more exposed to risk and shows their financial position as stronger than it really is. The maneuvering also encourages leveraged purchases of securities by asset managers and enables banks to continue funding troubled customers, such as property developers with excess inventory and bloated steelmakers. Such grey-area investments reached nearly 20 trillion yuan ($2.8 trillion) at the end of last year, says Fitch Ratings, or about 26% of China’s GDP in 2016, up from less than 10% three years earlier. They now represent an average of 19% of small and midsize banks’ total assets, compared with about 1% for big state banks, according to Fitch.

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America’s unsolvable problem has been solved in dozens of countries.

This Is Not a Bill (Jim Kunstler)

The way it works now, the so-called “providers” (doctors, hospitals) refuse to post the cost of any service, and then charge whatever they feel they can extract, subject to an abstruse and dishonest ceremonial “negotiation” with the insurance company. The result: hospital and insurance executives get paid multi-million dollar salaries, doctors get to drive fine German cars, and the patient gets financially ass-raped, kicked to the curb, and eventually stuffed into the bankruptcy courts. ObamaCare did nothing to fix this. It just added more victims to the rolls and upped the price of admission for a personal financial ass-raping, so that an insured individual could go to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy and end up getting dunned for thousands of dollars — or even more if one of the hosptial’s favorite cute scams is applied, such as calling in an out-of-network anesthesiologist to knock you unconscious (in which state you are unlikely to inquire whether he/she/zhe is in-network or out).

Under the current system, a hospital can bill you $5,999 to stitch up a cut finger, mitigate a bee-sting, or wind an Ace bandage around a sprained ankle, and you’re sure not to learn the cost-of-treatment until the postman drops off the incomprehensible “explanation of benefits” from the insurance company that states in bold print on top “This Is Not a Bill,” but actually is a report of your own incipient financial ass-raping. But judging from the news reports this day, none of these issues is actually on the table in the congressional debate. I don’t believe the editors of The New York Times are necessarily “in bed” with the overpaid hospital CEOs and the insurance company fraudsters. They are simply putting up a defense of their previous psychological investment in Democratic Party ideology — in the shibboleth that ObamaCare was unquestionably a great thing because it was created under the magically empowered 44th president.

I can believe that both Democratic and Republican law-makers are not only in bed with the medical fraudsters of all categories, but are performing a particularly odious form of sadomasochistic bondage-and-discipline sex in exchange for payoffs. Note, too, that none of the aforementioned major media have reported what the medical and insurance lobbyists have paid to their rent-boys and doxies in the US capitol. Wouldn’t you like to know?

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“Money is seen as a “veil” placed over the activities of the real economy, a mere contrivance to get around the inconveniences of barter.”

Review of Steve Keen’s Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis? (R.)

The preference for high theory and abstruse mathematical modeling meant that mainstream economics had come to rest on a number of gloriously improbable assumptions. In their models, millions of households were reduced to a single “representative agent,” a God-like being, omniscient and immortal. This unreal creature inhabited a world where peace – or equilibrium – ruled. Crises were impossible in such an Eden, unless a mischievous serpent entered from abroad. But such an outcome was naturally impossible to predict. Both Romer and Keen agree that the most serious error of modern macroeconomics is that it ignores finance. Money is seen as a “veil” placed over the activities of the real economy, a mere contrivance to get around the inconveniences of barter.

Minsky, by contrast, saw capitalism as a financial system in which millions of balance sheets and cash flows were intertwined in a highly complex fashion. Money and credit are the essence of capitalism: economic transactions can only take place after financing. The trouble is that credit is inherently unstable, prone to expand excessively and to inflate asset price bubbles, which in time collapse, causing a cascade of defaults throughout the economy. In Minsky’s world, the tail of finance wags the real economy dog. Anyone who paid serious attention to credit, as Keen did prior to 2008, could hardly have failed to notice that something was amiss. After all, credit was growing very rapidly in the United States, in Australia and across much of Europe. Keen’s own contribution at the time was to point out that it wouldn’t take a collapse of credit to cause a serious economic downturn – a mere slowdown in the rate of lending would do the job.

This prediction was vindicated in 2008, when credit growth slowed sharply but remained positive, sending the U.S. economy into a tailspin. Keen is now calling for the dominant macroeconomic models to be jettisoned and replaced by ones that take account of credit. In his book, he develops a simple credit-based macro model. The economists at the Bank for International Settlements have constructed a “financial cycle” model along similar lines. In the end, the money-free macro models appear doomed. Yet progress has been painfully slow to date. As Max Planck said, science advances one funeral at a time – failing death, retirement would do the trick.

So what of the next crisis? With his eye on credit growth, Keen sees China as a terminal case. The People’s Republic has expanded credit at an annualized rate of around 25 per cent for years on end. Private-sector debt exceeds 200 per cent of GDP, making China resemble the over-indebted economies of Ireland and Spain prior to 2008, but obviously far more significant to the global economy. “This bubble has to burst,” writes Keen unequivocally.

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Untenable, but zero movement towards addressing the issue.

France and Greece Heavily Disadvantaged by Euro as Germany Benefits (WE)

It is now incontestable that Germany benefits greatly from the Euro. The weaker members of the Euro drag down the external value of the Euro compared with the US Dollar making German exports far more competitive than they would otherwise be. Despite the relative value of the Euro being lower than would be the case if the Euro was the currency of Germany alone, the Euro’s value relative to the Dollar is still significantly higher than would be the case were the Euro the currency of an independent Greece or France.

In Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms the Euro in Germany is some 32% undervalued compared with the Greek Euro, greatly benefiting German exporters, but imposing a burden on Greek exporters that they must find impossible to cope with. Conversely the overvaluation facing French companies is now a clear 20% compared with German companies.

 

Brazil and Argentina suffer from overvalued currencies against the US Dollar, suggesting one reason for the serious recession suffered by South America’s biggest economies over the past year. In contrast Canada, Russia, China, Mexico, Turkey and India all have currencies between 15% and 44% undervalued against the US Dollar, suggesting that at least some of Mr Trump’s rhetoric is justified. Over time these fundamental disparities have not shrunk, they have in fact widened. The charts to the upper right show the trend of German undervaluation against the French and Greek Euro’s in Purchasing power terms.

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“Although the major Western media portrays the EU authorities’ policies as the only sensible course, in economic terms, it is anything but.”

How the Eurozone Damaged French Politics – And The Election (Nation)

[..] there is a structural problem in the eurozone, and in the EU. The ECB, the European Commission, and the IMF (which is not an independent entity but generally answers to its European directors for decisions affecting Europe), are the European authorities that have increasingly constrained the economic decision-making of European governments. We can also include the eurogroup of finance ministers, which has tormented poor Greece and helped prolong that country’s interminable economic crisis. These people have shown that they are committed to creating a different kind of Europe. This can be seen in a paper trail of thousands of pages of documents, called Article IV consultations, where the IMF and EU government finance ministries hammer out their views on economic policies. These documents represent an elite consensus which can differ greatly from public opinion within the countries.

A review of 67 of these agreements for the four years 2008 through 2011, for 27 EU countries, showed a clear pattern of policy choices: cutting government spending, including on health care and pensions; increasing labor supply; reducing public sector employment; and changes in labor law that would reduce the scope of collective bargaining. This is the economic program that any politician or political party who does not want to be labeled as “anti-Europe” must adhere to, and it can be seen in the most recent (July 2016) IMF Article IV consultation for France, as well as the Stability Program that France has agreed to with the EU. These documents see France as freezing real spending, and committing to reducing its budget deficit to zero by 2021. These commitments imply that the French government can do nothing to reduce mass unemployment, which has averaged about 10% over the past year.

Although the major Western media portrays the EU authorities’ policies as the only sensible course, in economic terms, it is anything but. With France’s real borrowing costs near zero and inflation well below target, it makes sense for France to implement an economic stimulus, for example by increasing public investment. Fears of increasing the French public debt are unfounded; annual interest payments on that debt are currently at about 1.7% of GDP, a modest burden by any historical or international comparison.

[..] Since the 2008–09 world financial crisis and recession, the project of the eurozone, and to some extent of the EU, has created a destructive feedback loop that leads directly to the kind of dysfunctional politics now unfolding in France. It is one thing to give up some national sovereignty for a common project that can raise common living standards; it is quite another to surrender a country’s most important macroeconomic decision-making (monetary, exchange rate, and increasingly fiscal policy) to unaccountable authorities who have demonstrated their commitment to a regressive agenda. The Center Left’s collaboration with this program, e.g., President Hollande’s in France, has given the Far Right opportunities not seen since the 1930s.

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Good thing everybody already knows it’s Putin again. No reasoning needed.

Macron Team Blasts ‘Massive Hacking Attack’ (R.)

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign team says it has been the victim of a massive and coordinated hacking operation. A large trove of emails from the campaign of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron was posted online late on Friday, 1-1/2 days before voters go to the polls to choose the country’s next president in a run-off against far-right rival Marine Le Pen. Some nine gigabytes of data were posted by a user called EMLEAKS to Pastebin, a document-sharing site that allows anonymous posting. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for posting the data or whether the emails were genuine. In a statement, Macron’s political movement En Marche! (Onwards!) confirmed that it had been hacked.

“The En Marche! Movement has been the victim of a massive and co-ordinated hack this evening which has given rise to the diffusion on social media of various internal information,” the statement said. An interior ministry official declined to comment, citing French rules which forbid any commentary liable to influence an election, and which took effect at midnight French time on Friday (2200 GMT). Comments about the email dump began to appear on Friday evening just hours before the official ban on campaigning began. The ban is due to stay in place until the last polling stations close on Sunday at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT).

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Perhaps the failure of the EU is not clear enough yet everywhere.

Macron Personifies The Very Europe Whose Failure Feeds Le Pen (Zizek)

The title of a comment piece which appeared in The Guardian, the UK voice of the anti-Assange-pro-Hillary liberal left, says it all: “Le Pen is a far-right Holocaust revisionist. Macron isn’t. Hard choice?” Predictably, the text proper begins with: “Is being an investment banker analogous with being a Holocaust revisionist? Is neoliberalism on a par with neofascism?” and mockingly dismisses even the conditional leftist support for the second-round Macron vote, the stance of: “I’d now vote Macron – VERY reluctantly.” This is liberal blackmail at its worst: one should support Macron unconditionally; it doesn’t matter that he is a neoliberal centrist, just that he is against Le Pen. It’s the old story of Hillary versus Trump: in the face of the fascist threat, we should all gather around her banner (and conveniently forget how her side brutally outmanoeuvred Sanders and thus contributed to losing the election).

Are we not allowed at least to raise the question: yes, Macron is pro-European – but what kind of Europe does he personify? The very Europe whose failure feeds Le Pen populism, the anonymous Europe in the service of neoliberalism. This is the crux of the affair: yes, Le Pen is a threat, but if we throw all our support behind Macron, do we not get caught into a kind of circle and fight the effect by way of supporting its cause? This brings to mind a chocolate laxative available in the US. It is publicised with the paradoxical injunction: “Do you have constipation? Eat more of this chocolate!” – in other words, eat the very thing that causes constipation in order to be cured of it. In this sense, Macron is the chocolate-laxative candidate, offering us as a cure for the very thing that caused the illness.

[..] In the hopeless situation we are in, facing a false choice, we should gather the courage and simply abstain from voting. Abstain, and begin to think. The commonplace “enough talking, let’s act” is deeply deceiving – now, we should say precisely the opposite: enough of the pressure to do something, let’s begin to talk seriously, ie, to think! And by this I mean we should also leave behind the radical leftist self-complacency of endlessly repeating how the choices we are offered in the political space are false, and how only a renewed radical left can save us – yes, in a way, but why, then, does this left not emerge? What vision has the left to offer that would be strong enough to mobilise people? We should never forget that the ultimate cause of the act that we are caught into – the vicious cycle of Le Pen and Macron – is the disappearance of the viable leftist alternative.

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Sharp thinking. Make literally everyone incapable of understanding anything that’s said.

The English Language Is Losing Importance In Europe – Juncker (G.)

The English language is losing importance in Europe, the president of the European commission has said amid simmering tensions over the Brexit negotiations. Speaking to an audience of European diplomats and experts in Florence, Jean-Claude Juncker also described the UK’s decision to leave the EU as a tragedy. “Slowly but surely English is losing importance in Europe,” Juncker said, to applause from his audience. “The French will have elections on Sunday and I would like them to understand what I am saying.” After these opening remarks in English, he switched to French for the rest of the speech. Making a stout defence of the EU, Juncker said the UK had voted to leave the project despite historic successes and a recent uptick in economic growth. “Our British friends decided to leave the EU, which is a tragedy,” he said.

[..] It is not the first time the English language has been caught in the crossfire of the Brexit negotiations. At a recent EU summit May slapped down reports that Brexit negotiations would be conducted in French, and after the June referendum EU officials made it known they planned to downgrade the use of English in the corridors of Brussels. In reality, the Brexit talks are most likely to be conducted in French and English with simultaneous interpretation. Barnier, a former French EU commissioner who clashed with the City of London, speaks English but wants the right to negotiate in his native tongue. English is also highly unlikely to disappear as a dominant language in the EU any time soon. Not only is it an official language for the Irish and Maltese governments, but many diplomats prefer to use English as a common second language rather than French.”

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2018 at the earliest. Then again, debt relief would make Greece less of a slave, so maybe much longer or not at all.

Germany Says No Debt Relief Being Prepared For Greece (R.)

No debt relief measures are being readied for Greece, Germany’s Finance Ministry said on Thursday after the Handelsblatt business daily reported measures were under consideration. The implementation of reforms that Greece agreed to in return for aid would help ensure the sustainability of the country’s debt, the ministry said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters. “No debt relief is being prepared,” it added. Regarding possible debt measures, a clear agreement was reached in a statement by the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers last May. “According to that, after the full implementation of the adjustment program, there will be an assessment of whether debt measures are necessary. That still applies,” it said. Earlier, Handelsblatt reported that Greece’s international lenders were preparing possible debt relief for Athens for discussion by the finance ministers.

The European Commission, the ESM eurozone rescue fund, the ECB and the IMF had prepared various debt measures in a document to be sent to the Eurogroup for further discussion, it said, citing people familiar with the document. One option was for the ESM to take over loans paid out by the IMF. The advantage would be lower interest rates charged by the ESM. Others included extending debt maturities and having the ECB and national central banks send profits made on Greek bonds to Athens through national governments, Handelsblatt reported. An EU source told Reuters the document was originally a paper by the ESM, not all four institutions, and had been modified on the way to the version Handelsblatt saw.

“It lays down several options for the restructuring of Greek debt and specifies possibilities which were given by the Eurogroup last May. One of the options still is that ESM would take debt from IMF,” the source said. “It is not clear yet if the IMF would agree on that.” Separately, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in Durban, South Africa that the EU needed to “exert pressure on national governments to implement … much-needed reforms.” “Those countries which received help under European assistance programmes, and therefore had to actually implement unpleasant reforms, and those countries which have kept to the agreed rules are among the most successful countries in the EU today,” he said. “The problem is therefore not with the rules, but with the lack of implementation of them.

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Warfare, financial or otherwise.

The Forgotten History of Cinco de Mayo (IC)

Cinco de Mayo celebrates the victory of Mexican troops over the invading French army at the Battle of Puebla southeast of Mexico City on May 5, 1862. Because the Mexican soldiers were badly outnumbered and outgunned, the unexpected triumph was a watershed in forging the country’s national identity. (Militarily it wasn’t that significant — the next year France captured the Mexican capital and installed a member of the Austrian nobility as Maximillian I, “Emperor of Mexico.”) But here’s important part for everyone else to remember today: France was invading Mexico essentially because Mexico owed France money. Mexico had borrowed enormous amounts from Europe during the Mexican-American War from 1846-8 and in a civil war from 1858-61.

By 1862 it was impossible for the government to make timely payments on the loans without starving the country, and Mexican president Benito Juárez declared that all payments on foreign debt would be suspended for two years. Getting into unsustainable debt is not something unique to Mexico; countries have done so over and over throughout history, particularly during wars. The U.S. borrowed more than we could ever repay from France and the Netherlands during the Revolutionary War, and the U.K. borrowed far beyond its means from the U.S. during World War I. When this happens, it’s far better for both the debtors and creditors to organize some kind of default rather than forcing the debtors to pay all the money back on the original terms. The advantage for debtors is obvious.

More intelligent creditors understand it’s also good for them, because they generally don’t have a choice between getting all or just some of their money back. Instead, it’s a choice between getting some of it back or much less. To understand why, imagine loaning too much money to a software engineer. If you demand that the engineer sell all their computers to make interest payments, you’re unlikely to get much more money after that. And indeed both the U.S. and U.K. defaulted to varying degrees after their wars. Likewise, in 1862 the U.K. and Spain agreed to accept less than they were formally owed by Mexico. France, however, invaded Mexico in an attempt to get all its money back, which is why French troops were there for the Battle of Puebla on May 5.

In a sense, the invasion was admirably honest. International relations are often like organized crime on a gigantic scale, but people pretend otherwise. Here there was no pretense: The loanshark’s enforcers beat the crap out of an entire country. By contrast, creditors today have institutions like the IMF, which has often functioned as a creditors’ cartel — squeezing countries until they pay back their debts. This often involves lots of people dying … but in quiet ways, without armies involved.

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The EU isn’t only giving us Le Pen, it’s presenting us with this too.

Rescuers Pick Up 560 Migrants Off Libyan Coast On Thursday (R.)

Rescuers picked up 560 migrants from unsafe boats off the coast of Libya on Thursday, Italy’s Coast Guard said, including the body of a young man who the migrants said had been shot by smugglers on the beach for his baseball cap. Italian Navy and Coast Guard boats participated in the rescues together with two humanitarian vessels, a spokesman said. The migrants were traveling on board two large rubber boats and five small wooden ones, he added. The Phoenix, a rescue ship operated by the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), took 422 on board, plus the body of the allegedly murdered young Gambian. “According to eyewitnesses, the deceased teenager was killed by human traffickers because they wanted his baseball hat. What cruelty,” MOAS co-founder Chris Catrambone said.

“The medical team onboard the Phoenix have confirmed that the deceased teenager died from gunshot wound,” he added. MOAS doctors are also caring for another teenage boy who has a gunshot wound to the stomach, but is stable. German NGO Jugend Rettet also helped with the rescues. Separately, Doctors Without Borders said its rescue ship Prudence would arrive in the Sicilian port of Catania early on Friday with the corpses of six migrants, including five women, who it had picked up in the Mediterranean in recent days. There had been a pause of boat departures from Libya, where smugglers operate with impunity, since Easter, because of bad weather and sea conditions. But boat migrant arrivals in Italy are still up 30 percent so far this year from 2016, when a record 181,000 arrived.

Humanitarian rescue ships have come in for criticism in Italy in recent months, with Catania chief prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro opening a fact-finding investigation into possible ties between NGOs and people-smugglers. The NGOs have strongly denied the accusations, including representatives from MOAS who testified in Italy’s parliament earlier on Thursday. They say their only mission is to save lives. Zuccaro has yet to present any evidence of illicit activities and has not opened a criminal investigation.

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May 032017
 


Leonardo da Vinci A Copse of Trees 1508

 

Trump: US “Needs A Good Shutdown In September To Fix This Mess” (ZH)
Home Capital Fails to Draw Buyout Interest From Canada Banks (BBG)
Hot Air Hisses Out of US Auto Bubble (WS)
May’s Election Fighting Talk Fuels Brexit War of Words With EU (BBG)
Le Pen Wants A French National Currency Within Two Years After Election (R.)
Macron Victory Could Mark The Start Of Political Upheaval For France (CNBC)
Italy Is Europe’s Next Big Problem (BBG)
Soros At it Again – Trying to Overthrow Polish Government? (Martin Armstrong)
In Tense Encounter, Merkel Tells Putin Sanctions Must Remain (BBG)
‘It’s Very Important We Hear What Putin Has To Say’ – Oliver Stone (RT)
Adults in the Room – One Of The Greatest Political Memoirs Ever (Mason)
Greece, Creditors To Discuss Options For Debt Restructuring (CNBC)
Greece Will Avoid Default After Bailout Deal – But Faces More Austerity (G.)
Greek Poverty Deepens During Seven Years Of Austerity (AP)

 

 

September’s a long way away.

Trump: US “Needs A Good Shutdown In September To Fix This Mess” (ZH)

With Congress poised this week to approve a deal to fund the government through September, the first major bipartisan legislation of Trump’s presidency, after lengthy negotiations (which have appeared to signal numerous ‘folds’ by President Trump), apparently frustrated by the lack of tryannical powers that a simple majority grants him, President Trump has lashed out this morning at disagreeable Democrats, and in particular Senate Democrats. As a reminder, the proposed government funding deal does not include funding for Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border or include language stripping federal money from so-called sanctuary cities, both of which the White House demanded at the outset of negotiations. In fact, as we reported yesterday, the bill has been seen widely as a victory for Democrats, something which has been panned by the conservative press.

While the White House also backed off a threat to withhold ObamaCare subsidy payments to insurance companies, Trump did secure increased military spending in the 2017 budget deal. According to the Hill, the comments are likely irk top Republican lawmakers, who have been frustrated by Trump’s repeated attempts to intervene in the legislative process. The businessman-turned-president, in turn, has vented frustration with the slow pace of work on Capitol Hill. “I’m disappointed that it doesn’t go quicker,” Trump told Fox News last week when asked about the Republican effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare. Commenting on Trump’s tweets, Citi asks rhetorically whether “this could be a case of cutting one’s nose to spit one’s face? – Potentially problematic when the nose in question is attached to the current administration… It seems counterintuitive that a sitting president would want a shutdown, unless he was to blame it on the opposition in order to force through reform/encourage a voter backlash.”

Bloomberg reports that “The message appeared to encourage the Republican-controlled Senate to change rules that now require 60 votes to end a filibuster of legislation. Republicans reduced the threshold to 51 votes for Supreme Court nominees this year and could do the same for legislation with a simple majority vote.” USD does not seem to have reacted to the President’s tweet (it can’t every time, after all), which may just be more political manoeuvring rather than a signal of intent. In any case, we’re not so sure there is such a thing as a “good” shutdown of the US government – and with what will be over $20 trillion in debt and a declining GDP by that time, one wonders which ratings agency will have the balls to downgrade the world’s reserve currency this time?

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“Someone will buy it for a dollar because they want to get the loan book [..] it goes for a lot less than it’s trading at today.”

Home Capital Fails to Draw Buyout Interest From Canada Banks (BBG)

Canadian banks and financial firms are so far showing little interest in buying Home Capital, vindicating short-sellers who say the embattled mortgage lender could be sold off piecemeal, driving the stock down further. “People in the industry would rather see these guys go out of business because the loans aren’t worth the risk, and they’re so leveraged,” said Marc Cohodes, a private investor and part-time chicken farmer in California who has been shorting the stock, or betting on declines, for more than two years. Home Capital’s rival Equitable joined a list of companies that have said they aren’t interested in taking over the struggling mortgage lender, which hired investment banks last week for a possible sale after the stock plunged by two-thirds amid a regulatory probe.

“The bottom line is no,” Equitable Chief Executive Officer Andrew Moor said on Monday. “We have some concerns based on what we’ve read about how they underwrote their loans and their internal controls.” Other banks have indicated that they aren’t interested. Canadian Western Bank CEO Chris Fowler said his Edmonton, Alberta-based lender, which has an alternative mortgage business, would not be a buyer for all of Home Capital. He added the bank will consider “selectively” acquiring loan portfolios. A Laurentian Bank of Canada spokeswoman said that for the lender to be interested in an acquisition it needs to be financially sound and a good strategic fit. Laurentian is active in the alternative lending space.

Canada’s biggest commercial banks, meanwhile, are unlikely to be interested because Home Capital’s mortgages are with customers who wouldn’t qualify for a loan with them, said Sumit Malhotra, an analyst at Bank of Nova Scotia, in a research note. They might be interested in the loan book, he added. [,,] Other short sellers agree with Cohodes. Jerome Hass at Lightwater in Toronto, said he wonders why anybody would buy Home Capital when they could just pick up the mortgages. “It’s got all this litigation against it, it’s going to have all these liabilities against it, so why not just take their loan book off their hands?” Hass said in an interview. “Someone will buy it for a dollar because they want to get the loan book, but I don’t see it going for much, and it goes for a lot less than it’s trading at today.”

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No purchasing power.

Hot Air Hisses out of US Auto Bubble (WS)

A 4.7% drop in sales, bad as it is, wouldn’t qualify for #carmageddon. These things happen. But here’s the thing: Automakers had shelled out $3,465 in incentives per new vehicle sold, on average, according to TrueCar estimates. A record for the month of April. It beat the prior record of $3,393, set in April 2009. It amounts to about 10% of suggested retail price, similar to March. The last period when incentive spending was at this level of MSRP was in 2009 as the industry and sales were collapsing. The #carmageddon point to watch: despite the 13.4% year-over-year surge in incentive spending to nearly $5 billion, total vehicle sales fell 4.7%! When these massive incentives fail to even slow the sales decline, serious problems lurk beneath the surface. This table shows the largest automakers, their year-over-year sales performance – the sea of red ink – along with average per-unit incentive spending and total incentive spending:

GM shelled out the most incentives on average per vehicle, in total $1.23 billion. In March, it had spent about $1.3 billion. At this rate, GM is spending just under $4 billion per quarter in incentives. By comparison, in its Q1 earnings, GM reported “North America” revenue of $29.3 billion. At this rate, it is spending about 13% of its North American revenues on US incentives. But it’s just not working out. Total sales dropped nearly 5.9%, to 244,200 units, with car sales plunging 12.5% and even truck sales falling 3.2%. A gruesome detail: Silverado-C/K pickup sales plunged 20% to 40,154 units. Total retail sales (not including fleet sales) fell 4% to 191,911 vehicles. GM ended the month with 100 days’ supply, up from the nail-biter level of 98 days at the end of March.

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The UK is so divided along multiple fault lines that May has nothing, unless she’s prepared to walk away.

May’s Election Fighting Talk Fuels Brexit War of Words With EU (BBG)

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May vowed she won’t be pushed around in Brexit talks with the European Union as her war of words with Brussels escalates before negotiations even begin. The premier said European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is learning she can be “bloody difficult” after leaked details of a dinner meeting between the leaders alleged he was shocked by her approach to negotiating Brexit. May won a measure of support from several European government officials, who distanced themselves from Juncker’s apparent skepticism about the chances of a Brexit deal. The row blew up after details of the allegedly disastrous meal Juncker attended at May’s London residence last week were reported by a German newspaper.

“What we’ve seen recently is that at times these negotiations are going to be tough,” May told BBC television in an interview Tuesday. “During the Conservative Party leadership campaign, I was described by one of my colleagues as a bloody difficult woman. And I said at the time the next person to find that out will be Jean-Claude Juncker.” The clash between London and the European Commission comes as May seeks re-election on June 8 in a campaign defined by Brexit, and the argument won’t necessarily hurt her chances. While EU officials are concerned about such a public dispute ahead of negotiations, it could help May’s Tories convince voters the U.K. needs what she calls her “strong and stable leadership” for the Brexit talks.

May claims her main rival for power, opposition Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, would be too “weak” to succeed at the negotiating table. Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper said on Sunday that Juncker left a dinner on April 26 “10 times more skeptical” of reaching a Brexit deal. In her interview on the campaign trail, May told the BBC she hopes to agree an accord that works for the U.K. and the EU, saying there’s “a lot of similarity” between her proposals and the bloc’s negotiating guidelines.

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Can a national currency exist alongside a European one?

Le Pen Wants A French National Currency Within Two Years After Election (R.)

Far-right presidential challenger Marine Le Pen said capital controls could be used if she won the election and there was a run on banks as she negotiated France’s exit from the European Union, but stressed they were unlikely to be needed. In an interview with Reuters ahead of Sunday’s decisive second round, Le Pen reaffirmed she wanted to take France out of the euro and said she hoped the French people would have a national currency in their pockets within two years. Le Pen said she wanted to replace the EU single currency with another, looser type of cooperation in the form of the ECU basket of currencies that preceded the euro. That would exist alongside a national currency.

“The objective is to transform the euro ‘single currency’ into a euro ‘common currency’, going back to the ancestor of the euro, the ECU, which was an accounting unit that did not stop each country from having each its own currency,” Le Pen said. Calling the euro a deadweight on the French economy, the National Front candidate said a new national currency would better protect French people’s savings. She accused the “establishment” of wanting to “frighten” voters into thinking otherwise. “I am convinced there won’t be any banking crisis,” Le Pen said when asked if French negotiations to quit the EU could trigger a run on French banks.

Asked if she would impose capital controls if savers nevertheless did rush to take their money out of banks, she said: “If there’s a run on banks, we could very well imagine such a solution for a few days, but I’m telling you it won’t happen.” Le Pen said she would launch negotiations over reforms of the EU immediately after winning, saying this would allow France to regain national sovereignty. The talks would include ditching the euro as well as regaining control of France’s borders and being able to decide French legislation alone, she said. Those negotiations could last six to eight months, she said, after which France would hold a referendum on its EU membership.

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Whatever happens in Sunday’s 2nd round, a mess is certain.

Macron Victory Could Mark The Start Of Political Upheaval For France (CNBC)

France’s political course is likely to remain far from certain even with a win for presumed victor Emmanuel Macron, as his inability to form a parliamentary majority threatens to undermine his authority both domestically and across Europe, political analysts have suggested. Sunday’s second round runoff will mark the start of a period of tension for the country as the successful candidate waits to see if they can garner a large enough parliamentary majority in June’s legislative election to enact change, Dominique Reynié, professor of political science at the Sciences Po institute in Paris, told CNBC Tuesday. “I’m not worried about Macron’s ability to win, but the question surrounds what kind of turnout he will achieve and what his ability to gain a majority in the June election will be,” explained Reynié.

Polls are currently pitching centrist Macron to gain anywhere from a 59% to a 64% lead on his far-right opponent Marine Le Pen. However, this lead will do little to boost Macron’s authority in government, Reynié suggests. The independent will have to gain significant support from other parties if he is to form a majority when France once again heads to the polls on June 11 and June 18 to elect the 577 members of its National Assembly. “It will all depend on his margin of victory. A 55 to 45% win for Macron would be a disaster. Even 60 to 40 is not at all a triumph; a 20% margin would be very difficult. “It would be a crisis. It is not normal and would be a problem both on the streets of France and for Europe,” said Reynié.

In the first round of voting, Macron’s En Marche!, or Onwards! party, achieved a majority in 240 constituencies versus Le Pen’s 216. However, Reynié says this is simply not enough. “The smaller Macron’s majority the harder it will be for him to win the general election in June. He needs support; it is not possible to have power as President without support. “This could cause parliament to be largely fragmented like in the first round, with discussions taking place in fractured groups. Macron will have to negotiate with MPs and will be fragile and unpopular.”

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Has been for years.

Italy Is Europe’s Next Big Problem (BBG)

Emmanuel Macron looks on course to become France’s new president, ending the threat of a euroskeptic at the Elysee. Even if Macron wins, though, it’ll be too soon to celebrate a new phase of stability in the euro zone. Across the Alps, an economic and political storm is brewing – and there’s no sign anyone can stop it. Italy’s economic problems are in many ways worse than France’s. Public debt stands at nearly 133% of gross domestic product; in France, it’s 96%. The last time Italy grew faster than France was in 1995. Both countries have struggled to stay competitive internationally – but French productivity has risen by roughly 15% since 2001, whereas Italy’s has stagnated.

Meanwhile Italian politics goes from bad to worse. The Five Star Movement, a populist force that wants to hold a referendum on Italy’s membership of the euro system, is riding high in the polls and currently neck and neck with the center-left Democratic Party. The general election, scheduled for next spring, is unlikely to produce a clear winner – and there’s even a small chance it may result in a Eurosceptic government, if the Five Stars were to win enough votes and form an alliance with the fiercely anti-euro Northern League. Europhiles in Italy are busily looking for an Italian Macron – someone who could offer a liberal remedy for Italy’s economic woes while fighting off the threat of “It-exit.” Investors would like that. In the autumn, the European Central Bank looks set to slow its purchases of government debt. The prospect of political instability in Rome could spook investors, raising doubts over the sustainability of Italy’s debt.

In many ways, Matteo Renzi, Italy’s former prime minister, who resigned after a heavy defeat in December’s constitutional referendum, would be the obvious choice. At 42, he is only three years older than Macron. He too has sought to modernize the left, even though he preferred to climb through the ranks of his party, rather than set up a new one as Macron did. The trouble is that Renzi looks increasingly like a spent force. He has just obtained a fresh mandate as party leader, but many Italians doubt his promises because he reneged on a pledge to quit politics if he lost the referendum. His message has also become muddled. He claims to be pro-EU, but never misses a chance to bash Brussels – for imposing fiscal austerity, especially. Why should voters opt for Renzi’s half-hearted euroskepticism when they can have the real thing?

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“Money does not give you the right to fund revolutions to recast the world in your image.”

Soros At it Again – Trying to Overthrow Polish Government? (Martin Armstrong)

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, I attended your March 1999 conference in Tokyo when I worked for ___ bank. I remember you called out Soros and crew and said they were trying to manipulate the yen for fiscal year end. You warned the Japanese how to defeat the Club. If I remember, he and his crew lost $1 billion when everyone in Tokyo followed your advice. Many assumed what they did to you 6 months later was retribution. Now he is at it in Poland funneling money he made from such trading in through Norway to create political unrest. What is it with this guy? Why does he play God?

ANSWER: Oh yes. I remember that event very clearly. That’s why they started calling me Mr. Yen because it was me and our clients against the Club and the Club lost. They were trying to push the yen down for the fiscal year-end roll of March 31st and then run it up into April 1st. They had our clients lock it in and that forced the manipulators out. That was a wild day – 3 big figures in a single day in an outside-reversal was a big move back then. I know the rumor was that Soros was in on that and the Club lost $1 billion. Not sure how much they lost on that one. It was the good-old fun days of confrontations. The Polish government wants to stop the distribution of Norwegian money flowing into Poland coming from Soros’ funded Batory Foundation, which manages over 800 million euros with a target of overthrowing the Polish government by 2020.

Since 2014, the Batory Foundation has distributed some 130 million zlotys (around 31.7 million euros) to various associations and organizations within Poland to change the government. According to Bloomberg, this includes organizations for the promotion of parliamentary democracy , but only if it agrees with Soros agenda. Effectively, Soros is trying to defeat ‘Catholic values’ in Poland which are supported by the population and government. [..] Soros has publicly stated he does not believe in God. Many who worked for him said they think he believes he is a god with the right to reshape the world in his image. So have many throughout history and they are responsible for the murder of countless millions. Money does not give you the right to fund revolutions to recast the world in your image.

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Merkel knows Putin can’t give in on Ukraine. Useless rhetoric.

In Tense Encounter, Merkel Tells Putin Sanctions Must Remain (BBG)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told President Vladimir Putin that EU sanctions will have to remain on Russia as the two leaders clashed over Ukraine, human rights and election meddling at a chilly encounter in the Black Sea city of Sochi. Addressing a joint press conference with Putin after about two hours of talks on Tuesday, Merkel raised concerns about the rights of homosexuals in Chechnya and Russia’s role in the war in Syria. She devoted much of her time to the lack of progress in resolving the three-year-old conflict in Ukraine. While Putin sought to lay the blame on the Ukrainian government, the chancellor said that a cease-fire is required as part of the “arduous” so-called Minsk process for restoring peace in eastern Ukraine and appealed to him to make it happen.

“My goal remains to get to the point where we can lift EU sanctions, but there’s a link here,” Merkel told reporters on her first visit to Russia since May 2015. The peace process is “moving very slowly, we only make progress in small steps and constantly have setbacks.” Merkel, who met with President Donald Trump at the White House in March, is visiting Putin in her capacity as holder of the presidency of the Group of 20 nations. As well as Ukraine, Merkel and Putin discussed the civil war in Syria and the G-20 summit in Hamburg in July, when the Russian and U.S. presidents are scheduled to meet for the first time. Ukraine was the main flashpoint, with Putin reiterating his stance that the Russian-backed breakaway regions in southeastern Ukraine split off because of a “coup d’etat, an unconstitutional change of power in Kiev.”

Merkel noted the two leaders’ “different opinions” about the origins of the conflict in Ukraine, which spiraled after protests over a scrapped accord with the EU triggered the downfall of the Russian-backed government in 2014. “We don’t share this view,” Merkel said in the briefing, which dispensed with the usual pleasantries or leaders’ banter. “We think that the Ukrainian government came to power through democratic means.” Although she’s among Putin’s sternest critics, Merkel has sought to keep a channel open to the Russian leader even as she holds the line on EU sanctions, which are a response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and backing for Ukrainian separatists. Hours before Putin was scheduled to speak by phone with Trump on Tuesday, he responded again to allegations of electoral interference, saying “we never interfere in the political life of other countries.”

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There are people with less bias on Putin. Just not in US or EU politics.

‘It’s Very Important We Hear What Putin Has To Say’ – Oliver Stone (RT)

The man behind three films about American presidents, Oliver Stone, says his upcoming feature about Russian President Vladimir Putin “opens up a whole viewpoint that we as Americans haven’t heard,” and could help prevent “a dangerous situation – on the brink of war.” Academy Award-winning director and revered documentary filmmaker Stone said in interview with the Sydney Morning Herald that his new film about Putin will be released soon. “It’s not a documentary as much as a question and answer session,” he said. “Mr. Putin is one of the most important leaders in the world and in so far as the United States has declared him an enemy – a great enemy – I think it’s very important we hear what he has to say.” The film will present Putin’s viewpoint of political events since he was first elected president of Russia in March 2000.

“It opens up a whole viewpoint that we as Americans haven’t heard,” Stone told the newspaper, adding that his crew went to see the indefatigable Russian leader four times over the course of two years. “I talked to him originally about the Snowden affair, which is in the film. And out of that grew, I think, a trust that he knew that I would not edit it so much,” he said, adding that Putin “talks pretty straight.” “I think we did him the justice of putting [his comments] into a Western narrative that could explain their viewpoint in the hopes that it will prevent continued misunderstanding and a dangerous situation – on the brink of war.” The 70-year-old director also commented the accusations of Russian influence on the US presidential elections.

“That’s a path that leads nowhere to my mind. That’s an internal war of politics in the US in which the Democratic Party has taken a suicide pact or something to blow him up; in other words, to completely de-legitimize him and in so doing blow up the US essentially. “What they’re doing is destroying the trust that exists between people and government. It’s a very dangerous position to make accusations you cannot prove,” he added. Stone also said he does not believe claims circulating in the mainstream media that Moscow allegedly passed some classified documents to WikiLeaks in a bid to influence the November US elections. “I hold Assange [WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange] in high regard in many issues of state. I take very seriously his statement that he received no information from Russia or any state actors,” Stone said.

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“.. it is French and German taxpayers who will pay the price when the Greek debt is inevitably written off.”

I should get the book later this week.

Adults in the Room – One Of The Greatest Political Memoirs Ever (Mason)

Varoufakis began on the outside – both of elite politics and the Greek far left – swerved to the inside, and then abruptly abandoned it, after he was sacked by his former ally, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras, in July 2015. He dramatises his intent throughout the crisis with a telling anecdote. He’s in Washington for a meeting with Larry Summers, the former US treasury secretary and Obama confidant. Summers asks him point blank: do you want to be on the inside or the outside? “Outsiders prioritise their freedom to speak their version of the truth. The price is that they are ignored by the insiders, who make the important decisions,” Summers warns. Elected politicians have little power; Wall Street and a network of hedge funds, billionaires and media owners have the real power, and the art of being in politics is to recognise this as a fact of life and achieve what you can without disrupting the system.

That was the offer. Varoufakis not only rejected it – by describing it in frank detail now, he is arming us against the stupidity of the left’s occasional fantasies that the system built by neoliberalism can somehow bend or compromise to our desire for social justice. In this book, then, Varoufakis gives one of the most accurate and detailed descriptions of modern power ever written – an achievement that outweighs his desire for self-justification during the Greek crisis. He explains, with a weariness born of nights in soulless hotels and harsh-lit briefing rooms, how the modern power network is built. Aris gets a loan from Zorba’s bank; Zorba writes off the loan but Zorba’s construction company gets a contract from Aris’s ministry. Aris’s son gets a job at Zorba’s TV station, which for some reason is always bankrupt and so can never pay tax – and so on.

“The key to such power networks is exclusion and opacity,” Varoufakis writes. As sensitive information is bartered, “two-person alliances forge links with other such alliances … involving conspirators who conspire de facto without being conscious conspirators”. In the process of telling this story, Varoufakis not only spills the beans but beans of the kind the Greeks call gigantes – fat ones, full of juice. The first revelation is that not only was Greece bankrupt in 2010 when the EU bailed it out, and that the bailout was designed to save the French and German banks, but that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy knew this; and they knew it would be a disaster.

This charge is not new – it was levelled at the financial elite at the time by leftwing activists and rightwing economists. But Varoufakis substantiates it with quotes – some gleaned from the tapes of conversations and phone calls he was, unbeknown to the participants, making at the time. Even now, two years after the last Greek election, this is of more than academic interest. Greece remains burdened by billions of euros of debt it cannot pay. Because of the actions taken in 2010-11 – saving private banks by saddling north European states with massive debts – it is French and German taxpayers who will pay the price when the Greek debt is inevitably written off.

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Not going to happen until after the German fall election.

Greece, Creditors To Discuss Options For Debt Restructuring (CNBC)

Greece and its creditors are expected to discuss ways to restructure the country’s debt ahead of a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on May 22, a European official told CNBC on Tuesday. Athens agreed on Tuesday to introduce new laws on labor, energy reforms, pension cuts, and tax rises. This paves the way for a fresh disbursement of money from creditors in mid-June, but above all it allows Greece, its European creditors, and the IMF to consider how they will restructure the country’s debt. A European official who follows the bailout talks told CNBC that there isn’t a specific date for a solution to Greece’s debt but the first discussions on this issue will start soon. “From now until the Eurogroup meeting of May 22 there will be discussions to consider options for debt relief,” the official said.

Greece has to legislate the new reforms within two weeks. However, these new laws won’t take effect until 2019 and 2020 and will be dependent on the country’s economic performance. For example, among the new measures is the promise to cut pensions in 2019 and cut the tax-free threshold in 2020 to produce savings worth 2% of GDP. But if Athens exceeds its targets, it is allowed to offset the austerity measures and reduce taxes. During the first stages of talks on debt restructuring, the European Stability Mechanism, which is the euro zone’s permanent bailout fund, will produce a new debt sustainability analysis. Current economic forecasts indicate that Greece’s public debt stood at about 180% of GDP in 2016. The IMF will also be doing its debt sustainability analysis to include the recently-agreed measures.

The Fund wants an agreement on measures to make Greece’s debt more sustainable before deciding whether it is participating with its own money in the Greek bailout program. Dimitris Tzanakopoulos, spokesperson to the Greek government told reporters last month, that the IMF will make a “small” funding contribution that will not last for more than one year, so it ends at the same time as the current European program, which runs out in August of 2018. The IMF’s participation in the third bailout program to Greece is key for many euro countries, which perceive the fund’s involvement as giving credibility to the reform process in Greece. One of these countries is Germany, but the upcoming federal election might reduce Berlin’s room to restructure Greece’s debt.

“We will get some IMF participation, but no significant number,” Johannes Mayr, head of economic research at Bayern LB ,told CNBC via email. On the debt issue, “we need a compromise between the IMF and the EU/ESM (European Stability Mechanism), he said, “and this is realistic only after the German elections.” Neil Dwane, global strategist at Allianz Global Investors, added: “National governments, like Germany, would lose popularity if they wrote off Greek debt.” “I would expect more extend and pretend from the EU and the IMF,” he said via email.

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No Greek default, but nothing else either: again, until after the German fall election. And even then.

Greece Will Avoid Default After Bailout Deal – But Faces More Austerity (G.)

The long road to Greece emerging from its worst financial crisis in modern times reached another milestone on Tuesday as the country concluded a crucial compliance review that will allow it to avert default in July. At the cost of yet more painful austerity – in the form of extra pension cuts and tax increases – international creditors agreed to disburse €7.5bn (£6.3bn) in emergency loans to enable Athens to honour maturing debt repayments. More importantly, lenders accepted to set talks in motion on making Greece’s debt mountain more manageable – vital if the country is to gain access to the capital markets from which it has been almost completely exiled since 2009. [..] The deal ends more than six months of intense wrangling over the fiscal and structural reforms that Athens must implement in exchange for loans from its third, €86bn bailout programme.

Although the programme was outlined in 2015 when Greece came closest to crashing out of the eurozone and reverting to the drachma, the conditions attached to the lifeline remained open to negotiation. Discord most recently had focused on labour reforms and pensions – two issues that Tsakalotos, a British-trained Marxist economics professor, had felt especially strongly about. Under the agreement, the leftist-led government undertook to further slash pensions by 18% as of 2019. Pension payments have now been reduced 12 times since the start of the crisis, and cut by 40% in the past six years. With poorer out-of-work families often depending on them, news of a further drop was met with fury by union leaders, who immediately announced industrial action.

The two-party coalition led by the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, also agreed to broaden the tax-free threshold by effectively dispensing with tax breaks as of 2020. Both measures are expected to produce savings worth €3.6bn or 2% of GDP. “It will be a very hot spring,” Odysseus Trivalas, acting president of the union of public sector employees, told the Guardian. “We have yet to see the details of this agreement but what we know is that it will mean further cuts. There will be a lot of strikes and a general 24-hour lockdown when the measures are brought to parliament for vote.”

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“On a corner of Monastiraki Square full of tourists and passers-by, a group of volunteers from the soup kitchen O Allos Anthropos (The Fellow Man) cook chicken with rice. In less than 20 minutes, 230 hot meals are delivered to people who waited more than an hour to get them.”

Greek Poverty Deepens During Seven Years Of Austerity (AP)

Over the past seven years, austerity has left visible scars in Greece’s capital. A walk around Athens reveals more homeless people than ever despite some signs of a rosier economic outlook. Thousands of shops, mostly small businesses, are shuttered here and across the country. In what used to be a busy shopping arcade, closed stores are padlocked against a backdrop of hanging Greek flags. Whole families can be seen lining up for free meals at a growing number of soup kitchens. “Every day we feed 400 to 500 people, and this number has increased even more in the past two years,” says Evangelia Konsta, organizer and sponsor of the meals offered by the Church of Greece in a run-down neighborhood in central Athens.

Yesterday, IMF and European negotiators bailout negotiators reached an agreement with Greece’s government to continue rescue funding in return for a painful new round of cuts and higher taxes over the next three years. High unemployment and a steady decline of living standards for most Greeks for seven consecutive years have had lasting effects. Greece has survived on international rescue loans since 2010, granted by the IMF and other countries using the euro currency in exchange for drastic cuts in public spending and benefits. Greece is now in its third bailout. A few steps away from the Church-run soup kitchen is a homeless shelter also run by the Church. Guests in its tiny rooms include one family with their young children and a retired nurse suffering from cancer who is still waiting to get her pension application approved.

Another shelter, the “Shelter of Love and Solidarity,” has a great view of the ancient Acropolis that’s barely noticed by the hundreds of homeless and poor who come twice a week to wash their clothes and take a hot bath. “The shelter is the best option for us because the government doesn’t really do anything for us,” says Ilias Kosmidis, 38, who has been sleeping on the street for the past two years. While waiting to wash their clothes, people at the shelter have developed friendships, and catch up on the news, including the French presidential election. Sofia Vitalaki and her husband Costas, both retired civil servants, have run the shelter since 1991. “It’s not just the food,” she says. “Most people want their dignity back and here we try to support them.”

On a corner of Monastiraki Square full of tourists and passers-by, a group of volunteers from the soup kitchen O Allos Anthropos (The Fellow Man) cook chicken with rice. In less than 20 minutes, 230 hot meals are delivered to people who waited more than an hour to get them. At the end of every month, it’s become a familiar sight outside banks: pensioners waiting in huge lines to collect their monthly checks. Few know how to use ATMs. While in line, they fret over how to make ends meet after years of cuts to their earnings, worrying about more austerity being planned. They won’t have long to wait till the next round of cuts. The government on Tuesday finalized its agreement with bailout lenders to ax pensions further, starting on January 1, 2019.

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Apr 292017
 
 April 29, 2017  Posted by at 10:03 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  2 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Self portrait 1972

 

US Q1 Growth Weakest In Three Years As Consumer Spending Falters (R.)
Don’t Show President Trump This Chart (ZH)
Just Five Companies Account For 28% Of The S&P’s 2017 Returns (ZH)
Germany Knew Austerity Would Destroy Greece, Says Varoufakis (Tel.)
EU Deletes UK from Official Map – Two Years Before Brexit (BT)
These Americans Will Never Get Social Security Benefits (MW)
Julian Assange Speaks Out: The War On The Truth (Ron Paul)
US Spy Agency Abandons Controversial Surveillance Technique (R.)
Russian Economy Has Grown Immune to Western Sanctions – UN (Sp.)
California Enacts $52 Billion Fuel Tax Hike For Road, Bridge Repairs (R.)
Melenchon Attacks Macron as Le Pen Fights to Win His Supporters (BBG)
US Troops Deploy Along Syria-Turkish Border (AP)
Tensions Escalate Between Kurdish Forces, Turkish Troops in North Syria (ARA)
‘Europe’s Dirty Secret’: Officials On Chios Scramble To Cope With Rising Tensions (G.)

 

 

Consumption growth lowest since 2009.

US Q1 Growth Weakest In Three Years As Consumer Spending Falters (R.)

The U.S. economy grew at its weakest pace in three years in the first quarter as consumer spending almost stalled, but a surge in business investment and wage growth suggested activity would regain momentum as the year progresses. The soft patch at the start of the year is bad news for the Trump administration’s ambitions to significantly boost growth. “It marks a rough start to the administration’s high hopes of achieving 3% or better growth; this is not the kind of news it was looking for to cap its first 100 days in office,” said Sal Guatieri, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto. GDP increased at a 0.7% annual rate also as the government further cut defense spending and businesses spent less on inventories, the Commerce Department said on Friday in its advance estimate.

That was the weakest performance since the first quarter of 2014. The pedestrian first-quarter growth pace is, however, not a true picture of the economy’s health. Wage growth in the first quarter was the fastest in 10 years as the labor market nears full employment and business investment on equipment was the strongest since the third quarter of 2015. Also underscoring the economy’s underlying strength, consumer and business confidence are near multi-year highs. First-quarter GDP tends to underperform because of difficulties with the calculation of data that the government has acknowledged and is working to rectify.

[..] Growth in consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, braked to a 0.3% rate, the slowest pace since the fourth quarter of 2009. That followed the fourth quarter’s robust 3.5% growth rate. A mild winter undercut demand for heating and utilities production. Higher inflation, with the personal consumption expenditures price index averaging 2.4% – the highest since the second quarter of 2011 – was also a drag.

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Anti-Trump rally?!

Don’t Show President Trump This Chart (ZH)

It's been (almost) 100 days and stocks are higher, hype is at its peak, hope remains higher-ish… there's just one problem, real economic data is collapsing…

 

As today's Q1 GDP proved, relying on 'hope' and 'soft' data to lift a 'real' economy is simply a false narrative…

 

How will that translate into Making America Great Again?

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Bubble. But their power is real. And scary.

Just Five Companies Account For 28% Of The S&P’s 2017 Returns (ZH)

On the last day of the busiest earnings week in a decade, here is a striking statistic from Goldman Sachs, showing just how dominant a handful of large cap companies have become in terms of both overall profitability and market impact: “Year to date the top 10 contributors have combined to account for 37% of the S&P 500 index return (more than double their market cap representation of 17%). The concentration among the top five is even greater, with those firms – AAPL, FB, AMZN, GOOGL, and MSFT – accounting for 28% of the return and 12% of market cap.” Some further perspective, courtesy of the WSJ, which notes that the combined market capitalization of AMZN, MSFT, INTC and GOOG makes up about 8% of the Index’s total.

Throwing in Apple and Facebook puts about 13% of the S&P 500’s combined market cap into the hands of just six companies. This wasn’t always the case. “Ten years ago, Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Intel made up just 5% of the S&P 500’s market cap, while Facebook was four years away from becoming a public company. The newfound prominence of big tech companies now can be chalked up to a few factors. One is that most big tech companies are profit machines—unlike many of their smaller peers that are still losing money. Alphabet, Microsoft, Intel and Amazon reported a combined $16.8 billion in operating income for the March quarter on Thursday. That is about 7% of the total projected for the S&P 500. ”

“Amazon looks like an outlier with a rather thin operating margin of 2.8% for the quarter, but even that is a notable gain from its average of just 1.5% over the last five years. But the other, even bigger factor is that demand for technology products and services keeps increasing, even as some market segments like PCs have declined. That has allowed several big tech companies to pivot into new segments with the help of strong cash flows generated by their original businesses. Amazon, Microsoft and Google have built large cloud services used by businesses shifting from more traditional computing setups.”

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New book, series in the Telegraph.

Germany Knew Austerity Would Destroy Greece, Says Varoufakis (Tel.)

Greece was forced to sign up to crippling austerity policies even though the German finance minister privately admitted he would not have endorsed the deal. The extraordinary admission by Wolfgang Schauble was made to Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, whose new memoir is serialised in The Telegraph all this weekend. In a frank private exchange, Mr Varoufakis asked Mr Schauble if he personally would sign up to the EU-ordered austerity plan which saw billions cut from Greek budgets and many Greeks lose their jobs. “As a patriot, no. It’s bad for your people,” the German minister replied. The Germans are also accused in the book of blocking a Chinese rescue deal for Greece and of repeatedly going back on promises and pledges made by other senior European figures as the EU battled to hold the eurozone together.

In a 500-page insider’s account of nearly six months of encounters with the leading political figures of Europe, Mr Varoufakis exposes the lengths to which Germany will go to maintain the EU and single currency. The minister secretly recorded many of his conversations with senior global figures and today exposes the gulf between private conversations and public pronouncements. In an interview today, Mr ≠Varoufakis says his experience contains dark warnings for Britain’s coming Brexit negotiations with a German-dominated EU. Angela Merkel warned this week that Britain should have no illusions about the coming talks and the EU yesterday put the ( issue of Irish reunification on the Brexit negotiating table. He warns that Theresa May must prepare an alternative deal as the EU will use dubious negotiating tactics to block reasonable discussion and potential solutions.

My advice to Theresa May is to avoid negotiation at all costs. If she doesn’t do that she will fall into the trap of [Greek prime minister] Alexis Tsipras, and it will end in capitulation, he told The Daily Telegraph. The parallel with Brexit is the tactic of stalling negotiations. They will get you on the sequencing. First there is the price of divorce to sort out before they will talk about free trade in the future, he added. In his book, Mr Varoufakis recounts how Germany used its political and financial muscle to impose austerity on Greece, despite widespread acknowledgement in other EU capitals that the policy was self-defeating and unsustainable. He reveals private encounters -many recorded secretly- with leading figures including Barack Obama, George Osborne and ( Emmanuel Macron, who polls say is almost certain to become the next president of France. In one conversation at the White House Mr Obama readily agrees that ‘austerity sucks’ but can do nothing to deflect the German agenda.

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Almost funny.

EU Deletes UK from Official Map – Two Years Before Brexit (BT)

This could be the first official map produced by the European Union to exclude the UK. But it is also an inaccurate one: the UK is still a member state of the EU. Brexit means Brexit: on 29 March, British Prime Minister Theresa May officially notified EU Council President Donald Tusk of Britain’s intention to leave the European Union. But Britain hasn’t left yet. By invoking Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon, May triggered a process that gives both sides two years to reach an agreement. Meaning that Britain is scheduled to leave the EU on 29 March 2019. Until that time, the United Kingdom remains a full member of the European Union.

It is no secret that hardline brexiteers would rather leave today than tomorrow, and ‘crash out’ of the EU, even if that means falling back on the most rudimentary of agreements for trade and cooperation with ‘EU27’ – shorthand for the EU minus the UK. Now it seems that sentiment is reciprocated in the highest circles of the EU bureaucracy in Brussels. The map shows the unemployment rates of the member states – and the stark differences for those rates between member states in the north and south of the Union. But the eye is immediately drawn to the land mass of the United Kingdom: coloured not in the blues or oranges that indicate unemployment rates in the EU, but the grey of the non-member states that dot the map.

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Giving the news to you bite size.

These Americans Will Never Get Social Security Benefits (MW)

Today’s young people fear that they will never see Social Security benefits. The reality is, 3% of elderly Americans already don’t. The three main groups of people who never receive Social Security benefits include infrequent workers (44.3%) who do not have sufficient earnings to qualify for the benefits, immigrants who arrived in the US at 50 or older (37.3%) and therefore haven’t worked long enough to qualify for the benefits, and non-covered workers (11.4%), such as state and local government employees. A little less than 7% of “never beneficiaries” were individuals who were expected to get Social Security benefits, but died before receiving them, according to a 2015 Social Security Administration report.

What’s worse, most Americans may not realize how much they will – or will not – receive in Social Security benefits, said Bill Meyer, chief executive of Social Security Solutions, a software provider that strategizes how to claim Social Security. Social Security benefits are based on earnings history from the past 35 years – “The onus is on the individual retiree that the Social Security Administration has the right information,” Meyer said. Social Security benefits are hotly contested, specifically how — or even whether — those benefits will be distributed in the future. Young Americans say they’re not confident they’ll ever collect Social Security benefits (81% of millennials didn’t think so, at least, according to a recent Investopedia survey) but current near retirees may also be at risk.

In December, the House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee introduced a bill that would “save” Social Security by cutting benefits for above-average earners, eliminating the cost-of-living adjustment for individuals who make more than $85,000 (and $170,000 for couples), and increasing the full retirement age to 69 from 66.

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Vault7 the largest ever publication?

Julian Assange Speaks Out: The War On The Truth (Ron Paul)

Wikileaks Founder and Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange joins the Liberty Report to discuss the latest push by the Trump Administration to bring charges against him and his organization for publishing US Government documents. How will they get around the First Amendment and the Espionage Act? The US government and the mainstream media – some of which gladly publish Wikileaks documents – are pushing to demonize Assange in the court of public opinion.

Tyler Durden: Having blasted the Trump administration for their hyprocritical flip-flop from “loving WikiLeaks” to “arrest Assange,” Ron Paul made his feelings very clear on what this signals: “If we allow this president to declare war on those who tell the truth, we have only ourselves to blame.” Today he sits down with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for a live interview…

“The CIA has been deeply humiliated as a result of our ongoing publications so this is a preemptive move by the CIA to try and discredit our publications and create a new category for Wikileaks and other national security reporters to strip them of First Amendment protections,” Assange said in a preview clip from the interview below…:

 

Full interview below… 

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US intelligence has gone bonkers, and it may well be too late to rein it in.

US Spy Agency Abandons Controversial Surveillance Technique (R.)

The U.S. National Security Agency said on Friday it had stopped a form of surveillance that allowed it to collect without a warrant the digital communications of Americans who mentioned a foreign intelligence target in their messages, marking an unexpected triumph for privacy advocates long critical of the practice. The decision to stop the once-secret activity, which involved messages sent to or received from people believed to be living overseas, came despite the insistence of U.S. officials in recent years that it was both lawful and vital to national security. The halt is among the most substantial changes to U.S. surveillance policy in years and comes as digital privacy remains a contentious issue across the globe following the 2013 disclosures of broad NSA spying activity by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

“NSA will no longer collect certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target,” the agency said in a statement. “Instead, NSA will limit such collection to internet communications that are sent directly to or from a foreign target.” NSA also said it would delete the “vast majority” of internet data collected under the surveillance program “to further protect the privacy of U.S. person communications.” The decision is an effort to remedy privacy compliance issues raised in 2011 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret tribunal that rules on the legality of intelligence operations. [..] The NSA is not permitted to conduct surveillance within the United States. The so-called “about” collection went after messages that mentioned a surveillance target, even if the message was neither to nor from that person. That type of collection sometimes resulted in surveillance of emails, texts and other communications that were wholly domestic.

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Unintended consequences.

Russian Economy Has Grown Immune to Western Sanctions – UN (Sp.)

Maintaining the sanctions imposed by Western states will not negatively affect Russia’s economy, which has adapted to these restrictive measures, UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures Idriss Jazairy said Thursday. Jazairy stressed that the economy is adaptive to sanctions and the policies of its main trade partners, and thus the introduction of sanctions mostly harms the effectiveness of international trade, but not the country itself for which the sanctions were aimed against. Jazairy expressed his view on the anti-Russian sanctions during a meeting with the Russian upper house Council of the Federation Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State-Building chairman Andrei Klishas in Moscow.

Since 2014, relations between Russia and the European Union and the United States, deteriorated amid the crisis in Ukraine. Brussels, Washington and their allies introduced several rounds of sanctions against Russia on the pretext of its alleged involvement in the Ukrainian conflict, which Moscow has repeatedly denied. In response to the restrictive measures, Russia has imposed a food embargo on some products originating in countries that have targeted it with sanctions. On April 18, the IMF said in its World Economic Outlook report that Russian economic growth is expected to pick up in 2017 – 2018 and will reach 1.4% for both years.

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There are too many cars. That’s the only real problem. But no-one dares touch it.

California Enacts $52 Billion Fuel Tax Hike For Road, Bridge Repairs (R.)

California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law on Friday a bill to raise gasoline taxes and other transportation-related fees for the first time in decades in an ambitious $52 billion plan to repair the state’s long-neglected roads and bridges. The measure, increasing excise taxes on gasoline by 12 cents per gallon, from the current rate of $0.28 a gallon, and on diesel fuel by 20 cents per gallon over the next 10 years, goes into effect in November. It cleared the state legislature three weeks ago, on the strength of a two-thirds super-majority the Democrats wield in both houses that allows them to pass new taxes with little or no Republican support. Republicans condemned the increases, saying the state’s transportation taxes and fees are already among the highest in the nation. They call the newly enacted measure the largest gasoline tax in California’s history.

The average motorist in California, a state renowned for its car culture, will see transportation costs rise by about $10 a month under the measure, according to Brown, a Democrat who has governed largely as a fiscal moderate. He has refused to back any transportation overall plans that involved borrowing money. Supporters say the measure is needed to address a mounting backlog of crumbling infrastructure projects, including more than 500 bridges statewide requiring major repair, most of them considered structurally deficient. The fuel tax increases, together with higher vehicle licensing fees and a new $100 annual fee on owners of electric-only vehicles, would raise $5.2 billion a year, all earmarked for road, highway and bridge repairs and anti-congestion projects.

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Too many people are too sure Le Pen has no chance.

Melenchon Attacks Macron as Le Pen Fights to Win His Supporters (BBG)

The left-wing populist Jean-Luc Melenchon, who was eliminated from France’s presidential election this week, declined to endorse centrist front-runner Emmanuel Macron as he looked to keep hold of his 7.1 million voters ahead of a parliamentary ballot in June. Melenchon, who came fourth in Sunday’s first-round vote, said he won’t vote for the anti-euro nationalist Marine Le Pen in the runoff on the May 7 in a 32-minute video posted on his official YouTube channel late Friday. But he also aimed criticism at the centrist Macron who has won endorsements from most of his mainstream rivals, as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “We can’t really call this a choice,” Melenchon said. “The nature of the two candidates makes it impossible to come out of this with stability.”

“One because he’s the extreme of finance, the other because she’s the extreme right,” he added, saying his party, France Unbowed, will reach the second round in 450 of the 577 constituencies up for grabs in the lower chamber of parliament in June and Macron sees him as a “threat.” Politicians and observers across the European Union have been transfixed by the French election with Le Pen promising to pull out of the euro and erect barriers to trade with the rest of the bloc while Macron has vowed to revive the Franco-German partnership to begin a new era of continental cooperation. Le Pen is fighting to win over Melenchon’s supporters as she seeks to close a gap of some 20 %age points on her rival.

Despite the personal antipathy between Melenchon and Le Pen, their protectionist, anti-European platforms had lots in common. In a speech in Arras on Wednesday, Macron praised Melenchon’s “panache” and the wave of support he created in the campaign. Le Pen said on France 2 television on Monday that they had “very similar” economic ideas and her team acclaimed his “noble” act to hold back an endorsement. Surveys show that Melenchon voters are increasingly likely to abstain rather than back Macron on May 7. An OpinionWay polled Friday showed that 45% of Melenchon supporters plan to abstain in the second round, up from 23% at the start of the week. Macron’s support among that group fell to 40% from 55%, while Le Pen’s dropped to 15% from 22%.

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Looks like a positive development.

US Troops Deploy Along Syria-Turkish Border (AP)

US armoured vehicles are deploying in areas in northern Syria along the tense border with Turkey, a few days after a Turkish airstrike that killed 20 US-backed Kurdish fighters, a Syrian war monitor and Kurdish activists said Friday. Footage posted by Syrian activists online showed a convoy of US armoured vehicles driving on a rural road in the village of Darbasiyah, a few hundred meters from the Turkish border. Clashes in the area were reported between Turkish and Kurdish forces Wednesday a day after the Turkish airstrike which also destroyed a Kurdish command headquarters. The Turkish airstrikes, which also wounded 18 members of the US-backed People’s Protection Units, or YPG, in Syria were criticized by both the US and Russia.

The YPG is a close US ally in the fight against Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL, but is seen by Ankara as a terrorist group because of its ties to Turkey’s Kurdish rebels. Further clashes between Turkish and Kurdish forces in Syria could potentially undermine the US-led war on Daesh. A senior Kurdish official, Ilham Ahmad told AP that American forces began carrying out patrols along the border Thursday along with reconnaissance flights in the area. She said the deployment was in principle temporary, but may become more permanent. A Kurdish activist in the area, Mustafa Bali, said the deployment began Friday afternoon and is ongoing. He said deployment stretches from the Iraqi border to areas past Darbasiyah in the largely Kurdish part of eastern Syria.

“The US role has now become more like a buffer force between us and the Turks on all front lines,” he said. He said US forces will also deploy as a separation force in areas where the Turkish-backed Syrian fighting forces and the Kurdish forces meet. It is a message of reassurance for the Kurds and almost a “warning message” to the Turks, he said. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, did not dispute that U.S. troops are operating with elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) along the Turkish border, but he would not get into specifics. The SDF is a Kurdish-dominated alliance fighting Daesh that includes Arab fighters. “We have U.S. forces that are there throughout the entirety of northern Syria that operate with our Syrian Democratic Force partners,” Davis said. “The border is among the areas where they operate.”

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Here’s why there are US tropps in the region.

Tensions Escalate Between Kurdish Forces, Turkish Troops in North Syria (ARA)

Clashes continued for the third consecutive day between Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Turkey’s military in several areas in northern Syria, military sources reported on Friday. The Turkish Army bombed several villages in the Kurdish Afrin district, including Panerak, Shankila, Midan Akbas and Rajo. “The Turkish artillery bombarded YPG security checkpoints and residential buildings in Afrin countryside, killing and wounding dozens, most of them civilians,” a spokesperson for the YPG told ARA News. The bombardment led to clashes between the Kurdish units and Turkish military forces in the sub-districts of Rajo and Shiya. “Our units responded to the Turkish offensive by hitting the positions of the Turkish troops near Susk hill in Afrin. At least three military vehicles were destroyed by YPG fire,” the Kurdish official said.

The YPG also released a video showing the destruction of a Turkish base in northwestern Aleppo. “At least 17 Turkish soldiers were killed and three others were wounded under heavy bombardment by the YPG,” a member of the YPG media office in Afrin told ARA News. The source added that the clashes between the YPG and Turkey’s military are still ongoing in the Shiya and Rajo sub-districts. Clashes broke out on Wednesday between the Syrian Kurdish forces and Turkish troops after the latter targeted the Kurdish town of Derbassiye in Syria’s northeastern Hasakah province with heavy artillery, shutting down the road between Derbassiye and Serikaniye. This coincided with similar clashes between the YPG and Turkish troops in Afrin. This comes after the Turkish jets killed over 25 Kurdish fighters in Iraq and Syria on Tuesday.

The US-led coalition expressed concerns over the Turkish attacks against the Kurdish fighters who are in war with ISIS in northern Syria. “We call on all forces to remain focused on the fight to defeat ISIS, which is the greatest threat to regional and worldwide peace, security,” said Air Force Col John L. Dorrian, Spokesman for the US-led coalition against ISIS. “Turkish strikes were conducted without proper coordination with the Coalition or the Government of Iraq,” he said. “Our partner forces have been killed by Turkey strike, they have made many sacrifices to defeat ISIS,” the American Colonel said. “We are troubled by Turkey airstrikes on SDF and Kurdish forces,” he added.

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This will not go quiet for much longer.

‘Europe’s Dirty Secret’: Officials On Chios Scramble To Cope With Rising Tensions (G.)

On a clear day the channel dividing Chios from the Turkish coast does not look like a channel at all. The nooks and crevices of Turkey’s western shores, its wind turbines and summer homes could, to the naked eye, be a promontory of the Greek island itself. For the men, women and children who almost daily make the crossing in dinghies and other smuggler craft, it is a God-given proximity, the gateway to Europe that continues to lure. Samuel Aneke crossed the sea almost a year ago on 1 June. Like those before him, and doubtless those who will follow, he saw the five-mile stretch as the last hurdle to freedom. “You could say geography brought me here,” said the Nigerian, a broad smile momentarily dousing his otherwise dour demeanour. “But it was not supposed to keep me prisoner.”

Refugee flows via Greece were meant to stop when the EU and Turkey announced what was seen as a pioneering agreement to stem the influx in March 2016. In Chios, like other Aegean isles, residents initially welcomed the accord. It was short-lived. The influx – one that saw more than 850,000 refugees arrive into the country in 2015 – was soon replaced by a steady flow, with asylum seekers arriving in groups that were sometimes small, sometimes large, but always propelled by the same ambition: to reach Europe by way of its southern shores. On Chios, more than 825 asylum seekers, the vast majority Syrians, arrived from Turkey in March. This month almost 600 have come. With at least 3,000, according to authorities, housed in two overcrowded camps – one makeshift, the other a razor-wire topped detention centre in a former factory known as Vial – it is anger that hangs in the air.

Greece’s Aegean isles have become de facto detention facilities – a dumpling ground for nearly 14,000 stranded souls, unable to move until permits are processed and fearful of what lies ahead. “Anything could happen because everything is hanging by a thread,” says Makis Mylonas, a policy adviser at the town hall. “Chios, Samos, Lesvos, Kos, Leros were sacrificed in the name of Europe’s fixation to keep immigrants out,” he claims, listing the isles that continue to bear the brunt of the flows.

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