slaughter Archives - The Automatic Earth

Debt Rattle February 21 2023

Feb 212023

February 21, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:12 am Finance Tagged with: Biden, food additives, Germany, Jan6, Kiev, NATO, offensive, slaughter, Trump, Veritas 53 Responses »

Pierre Dumonstier II The right hand of Artemisia Gentileschi holding a brush 1625

• Recognizing The War Is Lost The ‘West’ Seeks An Exit (MoA)

• Between That Rock and The Hard Place (Kunstler)

• Trump Reveals How He Would End Ukraine Conflict (RT)

• Biden’s Visit To Ukraine Aimed To Encourage Kiev To Start Offensive Soon (TASS)

• Medvedev Says Biden Received Security Guarantees Before Going To Kiev (TASS)

• Kiev Must Send People To Slaughter As Part Of Biden Election Campaign (TASS)

• Joe Biden Is Making Europe Great Again – For The US (Marsden)

• Merkel Confirms Minsk Agreements Were Meant To Give Ukraine ‘More Time’ (TASS)

• American Projects Against Background Of Biden’s Kiev Visit – Zakharova (TASS)

• Germany Comments On Fighter Jet Supplies For Ukraine (RT)

• Kevin McCarthy Gives Tucker Carlson 41,000 Hours Of Jan. 6 Footage (ZH)

• James O’Keefe Out At Project Veritas (ZH)

• US Food Additives Banned In Europe (CBS)

Macgregor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1627835225442226176

Hersh
https://twitter.com/i/status/1627630558334398464

Benny Johnson

We took all our social media revenue and gave it to the people most affected by the toxic explosion in East Palestine.

These reactions say it all.

We don’t need to wait for the government to help out our fellow Americans in need.

Please watch… pic.twitter.com/ngjDDXl0ji

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 20, 2023

Donbass
https://twitter.com/i/status/1627890489247539200

“.. the short period of U.S. global hegemony has ended. The time for multi-polarity has come..”

“..if Russia would seem to lose the war China would have to intervene. It would otherwise become the very next country that the U.S. would try to obliterate.”

• Recognizing The War Is Lost The ‘West’ Seeks An Exit (MoA)

U.S. President Joe Biden is in Kiev today to rescue his lunatic project of destroying Russia by proxy war. But there is no good way to do that. A review of ‘western’ media shows that the inevitable outcome of the war is now recognized. The only still open alternatives are to risk a large nuclear war or to retreat from ‘western’ dreams of its permanent hegemony. Few ‘western’ officials will admit that the war is lost, that Russia has won in Ukraine. But it has. It had won the war when it successfully trapped the Ukrainian army into a war of attrition. As the Russian commentator Sacha Rogers writes (in Russian, machine translation):

“This war has already been won (moreover, what is most offensive for various “unrecognized geniuses”, without their participation and contrary to their foolish ideas of how it should be won). It was won at the moment when, instead of a highly maneuverable war, our General Staff imposed a positional “standing” with an attrition war on the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Strictly by the textbook: Attrition warfare is a military strategy consisting of belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and material.” Ukraine has already lost two armies and it is begging for a third one. But the ‘West’ is unable to deliver it:

“Less than a quarter of the modern battle tanks the West has promised to Ukraine are likely to arrive in time to counter an anticipated Russian spring offensive. Kyiv is expecting its supporters to send up to 320 western tanks in total but estimates suggest barely 50 will reach the front lines by the start of April, prompting concerns they will not be enough to have a substantial impact on the fighting. The recognition that the Ukraine has lost the war is creating a panic in those quarters that are committed to ‘western’ uni-polarity.

[..] On the one side of the current discussion you have those, see above, who think of the outcome of the war in absolute terms. The U.S. must win in the proxy war it has caused, no matter what. But there are alternatives. They will require to acknowledge that the short period of U.S. global hegemony has ended. The time for multi-polarity has come. Count Secretary of State Anthony Blinken as one who is unwilling to admit that As soon as China ‘threatened’ to negotiate peace in Ukraine did he accuse it -without evidence- of aiding Russia in the war: “In his interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” which was taped on Saturday night for broadcast on Sunday, Mr. Blinken said the United States would soon be offering new information to demonstrate Beijing was “strongly considering providing lethal assistance to Russia.”
…
“Mr. Wang has been using the conference in Munich as a platform to tell European leaders and diplomats that China is ready to bolster ties with them and to try to play a role in ending the war in Ukraine. In his public remarks on Saturday, he said that China would soon offer a peace proposal to stop the fighting. But Mr. Blinken warned in a separate event against the allure of cease-fires that Russia might exploit to regroup for new offensives.” China has not yet supported Russia in the war. But if Russia would seem to lose the war China would have to intervene. It would otherwise become the very next country that the U.S. would try to obliterate.

“..It leaves our country to stew in its own rancid economic and financial juices in abject isolation from, basically, the rest of the world..”

• Between That Rock and The Hard Place (Kunstler)

One must conclude that NATO is looking for a way out of this. But there is no way out except to declare by word or deed, directly or otherwise, that NATO has outlived the reason for its existence. Any sane analysis by Europeans would arrive at the unnerving realization that the USA has become the enemy of NATO, not Russia. If all that is so, then a seismic shift is underway that will leave America hung out to dry on the Ukraine project. Germany will have to make a deal with Russia to rebuild the Nord Streams. What could the US do about that? Impose sanctions on Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the rest of the bunch? Where does that leave Western Civ?

I’ll tell you: it leaves Western Civ diminished. It leaves our country to stew in its own rancid economic and financial juices in abject isolation from, basically, the rest of the world. (Fare-the-well hegemonic dream; hello multi-polarity!) It leaves Ukraine neutralized and no longer a problem… It leaves Russia able to feel secure in its borders and free to get on with being a normal nation… and it leaves Europe the hope that it can resume modern life a while longer with the familiar comforts and conveniences. The end of the Ukraine conflict also exposes the rotten web of Globalist schemers who planted their operators in every niche of American life and all around Western Civ — George Soros’s empire of meddling NGOs, Bill Gates’s World Health Org puppet show, the ridiculous World Economic Forum’s network of stooges in high places from Justin Trudeau to BlackRock’s Larry Fink.

The end of the Ukraine conflict reveals the submission of the Democratic Party to nefarious interests intent on wrecking this country. Even the most benign end to the Ukraine conflict — such as, by default, Europe and Russia settling-up on their own to stop the fighting — will be another humiliation for “Joe Biden” and the crew behind him, as bad as the last days in Kabul. Their other crimes await full disclosure, everything from treasonous bribery to the fraud and genocide around Covid-19. There will have to be a severe political realignment in America. But before that can happen, expect many seasons of terrible disorder.

“I’ll tell one guy this, and I’ll tell one guy that… We would have a deal made in 24 hours..”

• Trump Reveals How He Would End Ukraine Conflict (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump claims he would end the Ukraine conflict within hours, if he wins the presidential election in 2024, by directly appealing to the presidents of Russia and Ukraine. Speaking at a rally in Florida on Monday, Trump was asked what he would do to put an end to the hostilities, and replied that he would spring into action even before being sworn into office. “I would literally start calling, not from the day I took over, but from the night I won. And I’ll call two people… [Russian President Vladimir] Putin… and [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky. And I’ll say we’re going to meet. I guarantee I could work that out.” “I’ll tell one guy this, and I’ll tell one guy that… We would have a deal made in 24 hours,” he said.

Trump went on to say that “continuing to pour money in” Ukraine is delaying a peaceful settlement and “getting a lot of people killed.” In recent months, Trump has repeatedly called for the US to lead the way in negotiating a peace settlement in Ukraine, while blasting the way President Joe Biden has handled the conflict. In late January, he claimed that his successor “has brought us to the brink of World War III” through “weakness and incompetence.” He also condemned the US’ decision to send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, saying the move could bring about a nuclear war. Trump’s comments come as Biden made a surprise visit to Kiev on Monday to personally meet with Zelensky, while promising another $500 million in security assistance to Ukraine, including more artillery ammunition, rockets, and anti-armor systems.

Tucker Trump

The President of the United States is personally visiting a corrupt foreign country to announce a half billion dollars in new spending. Meanwhile you have a mushroom cloud over East Palestine, Ohio; the animals are dying and the water is glowing. pic.twitter.com/daJCd3nF3d

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) February 21, 2023

Politico: “CIA warned Zelensky that the West can cut military aid if there is no progress on the Ukrainian side”.

• Biden’s Visit To Ukraine Aimed To Encourage Kiev To Start Offensive Soon (TASS)

Dmitry Suslov, a deputy director of the Comprehensive European and International Studies at the Higher School of Economics, on Monday said that US President Joe Biden’s visit to Ukraine was designed to encourage Kiev to start a counteroffensive as soon as possible. The analyst told TASS that Biden’s visit was meant to underscore the importance of the current moment and reaffirm Washington’s commitment to support Ukraine over a long term. “The United States has recently been constantly saying that the military conflict in Ukraine has reached a pivotal phase and a turning point. Therefore, the West transfers to Ukraine a much larger number of weapons at the moment than it did last year.

Quantitatively, the supply of weapons at the beginning of this year has increased significantly, and they have also increased qualitatively: tanks are now being transferred, and there’s talk of long-range missiles. The United States constantly says that right here and now, no later than the beginning of spring, no later than March, the Ukrainian armed forces should start a decisive counteroffensive,” he said. “I think Biden’s visit is designed to stimulate Kiev to go on the offensive earlier. Second, to signal the United States’ commitment to protecting and supporting Ukraine in the medium and long term,” Suslov added. The analyst said it’s possible that some “sensitive issues” were discussed during the visit, such as providing planes by third countries and donations of longer-range missiles. Suslov also said there’s a chance the sides discussed political and diplomatic settlement.

According to the analyst, supplies of long-range missiles are more important than supplies of aircraft. “With aircraft, it’s necessary to train pilots, and that’s a long process. Ukraine doesn’t have the appropriate infrastructure to accommodate and maintaining these aircraft. There’s a lot of technical issues. I think there may be an announcement of aircraft supplies, but after the end of the conflict. And as for long-range missiles, some decisions can be made. At least they tend to think in Kiev that the conditions for the decision about tanks and Washington’s agreement to provide Ukraine with tanks occurred during the visit of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to Washington, and that during Biden’s visit to Kiev now there’s also potential to make serious progress with respect to long-range missiles,” the analyst said.

“to ensure deconfliction.”

• Medvedev Says Biden Received Security Guarantees Before Going To Kiev (TASS)

US President Joe Biden has received security guarantees before his trip to Ukraine, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said, without specifying who gave the American leader these guarantees. “Biden, having previously received security guarantees, finally went to Kiev. He promised many weapons and swore allegiance to the neo-Nazi regime to the grave,” Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel on Monday, “And, of course, there were mutual incantations of victory, which will come with new weapons and courageous people.”

Medvedev noted that Western countries are “quite faithfully” supplying Kiev with arms and money. “In huge quantities, allowing the military-industrial complex of NATO countries to make money and steal weapons to sell to terrorists all over the world,” he specified. Biden visited Kiev on Monday, February 20, to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky and express support for Kiev. The Associated Press earlier reported, citing the White House, that Washington had been in contact with Moscow shortly before Biden’s visit to Ukraine “to ensure deconfliction.”

“..the show “Biden in Kiev” ended without incidents and without surprises, “despite the decorative air alarm over the center of Kiev, designed to give the whole action a much-needed shade.”

• Kiev Must Send People To Slaughter As Part Of Biden Election Campaign (TASS)

Federation Council Deputy Speaker Konstantin Kosachev on Monday said the outcome of US President Joe Biden’s visit to Ukraine showed Kiev officials had no choice but to send people to the “senseless slaughter” as part of the US president’s reelection campaign. “The bottom line of the visit: Kiev has been left with no choice but to try and rush people to the senseless slaughter as part of Biden’s election campaign; Europe is paralyzed and totally deprived of initiative; and Biden in the role of a hero is going to Poland to show where that center of the European Union is, which is more desired by Washington. Not much. If you don’t count Biden’s ‘the Ukrainians helped us to get the meaning of democracy,’” the lawmaker said on Telegram.

According to the Russian politician, the show “Biden in Kiev” ended without incidents and without surprises, “despite the decorative air alarm over the center of Kiev, designed to give the whole action a much-needed shade.” Kosachev noted that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky “rushed to convert the arrival of the main sponsor into another encouraging comments for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, promising Biden that the results of the negotiations would significantly affect the situation on the battlefield.” “And this means that he correctly caught the signal, with which the US president came to Kiev: Show some achievements, and quickly,” the lawmaker said.

He said that the demand for “Ukrainian combat success” coming from Washington occurs in the context of statistics that show that less than half of Americans (48%) approve the supplies of American weapons to Ukraine, 29% are against them, and 22% remain undecided. Kosachev said that “in America, foreign policy is traditionally subordinated to domestic policy,” and Biden in Kiev launched his election campaign “in the most heroic surroundings in order to prove to everyone that he can still ‘do it just like in the good old days’,” the lawmaker said. He added that if Ukraine still doesn’t support Biden’s campaign with triumphs on the battlefields, then the current US president “still has more options for further actions that can then be presented as wisdom and flexibility, compared to Brussels or Berlin, which were forced to burn all bridges to Russia.”

Making Europe Great Again = MEGA.

• Joe Biden Is Making Europe Great Again – For The US (Marsden)

When Russia finally drew the line and the conflict went red hot, Biden was quick to hightail it over to Brussels to take that dirty authoritarian Russian gas off Europe’s hands and replace it with molecules of freedom. Captain America was going to save the day, and European bureaucrats ignored the fact that US-branded freedom has a price tag. For starters, it has ended up costing Europe an amount several times the typical domestic market price paid for US liquified natural gas. American gas exports to Europe have spiked 148% year on year. Biden also pushed Europe to go green as yet another reason not to ever again turn back to Russian gas. “Today we’ve agreed on a joint game plan toward that goal while accelerating our progress toward a secure clean energy future. This initiative focuses on two core issues: One, helping Europe reduce its dependency on Russian gas as quickly as possible. And, secondly, reducing Europe’s demand for gas overall,” Biden said last March during his EU visit.

However, now the US President has changed his tune. “We’re still going to need oil and gas for a while,” Biden declared, going off script to say the quiet part aloud in his State of the Union address. “We’re going to need oil for another decade. And beyond that.” Oh wow, in that case, maybe Europe should be turning the Nord Stream pipeline of cheap Russian gas back on so that European governments can stop shoveling cash out the door in an attempt to keep their industry and economy – not to mention consumers – from being crushed by exorbitant energy costs. Whoops, the pipelines were mysteriously blown up. “If Russia invades – that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine – then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it,” Biden said last February.

A new report by Pulitzer and Polk Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh now attributes the terrorist act to a covert American operation in cooperation with Norway, whose sales of gas to Europe have risen from $27 billion in 2021 to $109 billion last year, with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki accusing Oslo of war profiteering. Both countries have denied the accusations. But even without cheap gas, as Biden sees it, Europe has a bright future. “Time and again, Democrats and Republicans came together…to defend a stronger and safer Europe,” he said in his annual address. Maybe share that with French and German economic ministers who were just in Washington to tell big bipartisan Team America to lay off Europe and to stop shutting out European imports under the new Inflation Reduction Act favoring “made in America” products – particularly green ones. Screwing over the EU because, hey, “business is business” is one of the very rare concepts on which both Democrats and Republicans seem to agree.

Brussels could have at least stopped sanctioning its own natural resource supplies from Russia if it had realized, as Biden just admitted, that fossil fuels were here for the foreseeable future. But that would mean not being able to pretend to stick it to Russian President Vladimir Putin. If the EU’s commitment to its green energy fantasies to the detriment of its own economy has proven anything, it’s that blind ideology is the first and foremost criteria for decision making in the EU. So, the EU is staying the course while the US actively works to seduce its industry to relocate across the pond where energy is still plentiful because, unlike Europe, the US is not dumb enough to actually align reality with their lofty rhetoric if it’s going to be economically suicidal.

There’s no doubt that Europe is doing better than ever as far as US interests are concerned. Washington planted the idea of a divorce from Russia in Brussel’s ear, and then rushed in to take Moscow’s place before the ink was even dry. Europe is hardly more free than it was when it at least had the option to play the field between the two geopolitical spheres. Now it’s totally dependent on Washington with European citizens subsidizing American greatness and freedom at the expense of their own.

Everyone talks to the pranksters…

• Merkel Confirms Minsk Agreements Were Meant To Give Ukraine ‘More Time’ (TASS)

The signing of the Minsk agreements gave Ukraine time to develop between 2014 and 2021 and served to ensure that the West be able to furnish the necessary support to Kiev, Germany’s ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a conversation made public by Russian pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov (Vovan) and Alexei Stolyarov (Lexus) on Monday. The pranksters telephoned the ex-chancellor on behalf Ukraine’s former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko. Being certain that she was talking to a former Ukrainian leader, Merkel said that now there was no point in “digging into 2014.” “Then (in 2014 – TASS), in order to prevent even worse things, everyone signed this agreement. Was it possible to stop the war then?

This question is no longer relevant. I believe that the Minsk agreements gave Ukraine more time to develop between 2014 and 2021. Now Ukraine can both make a response and also to get the necessary support,” she said. In an interview with the German daily Die Zeit, published on December 7, 2022, Merkel stated that the 2014 Minsk agreements were an attempt to let Ukraine gain time. She said “it was clear to everyone” that the conflict had been frozen and the problem had not been resolved. Russian President Vladimir Putin later said that he found Merkel’s statement completely unexpected and disappointing.

“The fate of Saakashvili, the fate of [Venezuelan oppositionist Juan] Guaido – this is what awaits all those who have sold their souls to the Americans..”

• American Projects Against Background Of Biden’s Kiev Visit – Zakharova (TASS)

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called to mind “the fate of American projects” in comments on US President Joe Biden’s visit to Kiev and his meeting with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. “Looking at today’s footage of Biden with his ward Zelensky from Kiev, do not forget the fate of all previous American projects,” the diplomat wrote on her Telegram channel on Monday. In this context, Zakharova mentioned former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, pointing out that the politician “is paying a steep price to be remembered in the West.” “The fate of Saakashvili, the fate of [Venezuelan oppositionist Juan] Guaido – this is what awaits all those who have sold their souls to the Americans: damned by their own people, needed by no one, forced to spend lavishly the money earned in America from betraying their countries on American lawyers,” she added.

“..Earlier in February, Secretary of Defence Ben Wallace told Sky News that the UK would not send warplanes to Kiev anytime soon..”

• Germany Comments On Fighter Jet Supplies For Ukraine (RT)

Germany can hardly meet Kiev’s requests for fighter jets since its Armed Forces do not possess the relevant aircraft types, its defense minister Boris Pistorius told journalists on Monday. When asked about potential aircraft deliveries to Ukraine, Pistorius said that, so far, the discussions about potential fighter jet deliveries have only covered the “fighter jet types that the Bundeswehr does not possess.” “That is a question for other nations rather than Germany,” the minister said. He did not rule out potential aircraft deliveries, though. “The military actions in Ukraine is something where one can never absolutely rule out anything,” he said, adding, though, that this idea hardly applies to German military aircraft right now. The German Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr, currently mostly relies on Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets.

Its Air Force, the Luftwaffe, has over 140 such aircraft, according to a 2021 report by Airbus. Produced since the early 1990s, these fourth-generation jet fighters are produced jointly by the UK’s BAE Systems, Airbus and Italy’s Leonardo. Apart from Typhoons, the German Air Force also has almost 90 older Panavia Tornado jets developed back in the 1970s. In January, Pistorius outright ruled out the idea of Germany sending fighter jets to Ukraine, saying it was “out of the question.” He also called such a move too risky, saying that it would “venture into dimensions that I would currently warn against.” Ukraine repeatedly called on its Western backers to supply it with heavier weapons like tanks and warplanes amid the ongoing military conflict with Russia. Kiev was mostly focused, however, on US-made F-16 jets.

Ukrainian officials recently expressed their optimism about overcoming Western reluctance to donate fighter jets. Last week, Financial Times reported that the US might still consider sending F-16 fighter jets to Kiev, or greenlighting their re-export from other nations that have them. On Monday, Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper also reported that Rome might consider sending five warplanes to Kiev. The deal could involve old AMX Ghibli fighter-bombers that the Italian Air Force plans to retire by the end of the year, the paper said, adding that Italy would only agree to send the jets to Ukraine if other nations provide it with Western-made military aircraft first. The UK, which otherwise spearheaded the Western-made tank delivery campaign for Ukraine, has so far ruled out sending jets to Kiev. Earlier in February, Secretary of Defence Ben Wallace told Sky News that the UK would not send warplanes to Kiev anytime soon.

Now Tucker has to deliver.

• Kevin McCarthy Gives Tucker Carlson 41,000 Hours Of Jan. 6 Footage (ZH)

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has given Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from January 6th, 2021, according to Axios, which reports that excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks. Last week, Carlson’s producers were on Capitol Hill to begin reviewing the trove – which includes various camera angles from around the Capitol complex. The archive was previously reported at ‘just’ 14,000 hours. “[T]here was never any legitimate reason for this footage to remain secret,” Carlson told Axios. “If there was ever a question that’s in the public’s interest to know, it’s what actually happened on January 6. By definition, this video will reveal it. It’s impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that.”

According to the report, the process to give Carlson access began in early February, according to a communication between the show and a McCarthy aide shown to Axios. In January, McCarthy told reporters in Statuary Hall that he thinks “the American public should actually see all [that] happened instead of a report that’s written [on] a political basis.” Carlson, meanwhile, railed against Washington’s “regime of secrecy and deceit.” Will the new footage shed light on whoever unlocked the doors and encouraged protesters to come inside the Capitol? Or what Ray Epps was up to during the entire day? Only time will tell…

BREAKING: Tucker Carlson says the Jan 6 footage he has seen directly contradicts what we’ve been told.

It was all a lie.pic.twitter.com/1XMmRy5mE5

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 21, 2023

Brought to you by Pfizer.

• James O’Keefe Out At Project Veritas (ZH)

Project Veritas founder and CEO James O’Keefe is exiting the organization. O’Keefe announced to his staff Monday that he was leaving over a conflict in vision between himself and the board in an poignant 15-minute video. “Throughout my 13 years doing this my mission has evolved,” O’Keefe said in his announcement. “Over the last few weeks I have felt a lot of despair and seen a lot of evil and felt overcome with various emotions.” A clearly emotional O’Keefe expressed gratitude for his employees, but noted that: “The external threats and pressure inflicted upon myself has been unimaginable,” O’Keefe continued. Employees had been dissatisfied by O’Keefe’s management and alleged he wasted money and was “outright cruel” to his staff, according to the The Daily Beast.

O’Keefe

BREAKING VIDEO: James O'Keefe addresses Project Veritas staff as he exits from the organization he founded following a high-profile board dispute. "Our mission continues on. I'm not done. The mission will perhaps take on a new name…" pic.twitter.com/0fZov5AXa3

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) February 20, 2023

Speculation has been rampant about the timing of this debacle as O’Keefe points out: “A few days after the Pfizer story, I was informed by an officer of Project Veritas that he would resign unless I step down as CEO. We’ve been having a conflict of vision over fundraising, there were tactical disagreements about the boldness of approach soliciting donations.” As The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber reports, O’Keefe said he confronted one executive at a meeting on Feb. 2 and said that if the person would not follow his lead, he would have to exit the group. O’Keefe then fired the man. Later that same day, a different officer informed O’Keefe he was going to the Project Veritas board to restructure the company.

O’Keefe said he received an agenda for the board meeting as he was set to depart on a flight, and that the meeting was scheduled for the moment he was due to land. “It became clear to me in that moment [that] I would be removed from my position at Project Veritas,” O’Keefe said.

Bannon PV
https://twitter.com/i/status/1627797517617479680

“Titanium dioxide (also known as E171); Brominated vegetable oil (BVO) (E443); Potassium bromate (E924); Azodicarbonamide (E927a) and Propylparaben (E217)”

• US Food Additives Banned In Europe (CBS)

From baguettes to focaccia, Europe is famous for its bread. But there’s one ingredient conspicuously missing: Potassium bromate. It’s a suspected carcinogen that’s banned for human consumption in Europe, China and India, but not in the United States. In the U.S., the chemical compound is used by some food makers, usually in the form of fine crystals or powder, to strengthen dough. It is estimated to be present in more than 100 products. “There is evidence that it may be toxic to human consumers, that it may even either initiate or promote the development of tumors,” professor Erik Millstone, an expert on food additives at England’s University of Sussex, told CBS News. He said European regulators take a much more cautious approach to food safety than their U.S. counterparts.

Asked if it can be said with certainty that differences in regulations mean people in the U.S. have developed cancers that they would not have developed if they’d been eating exclusively in Europe, Millstone said that was “almost certainly the conclusion that we could reach.” It’s not just potassium bromate. A range of other chemicals and substances banned in Europe over health concerns are also permitted in the U.S., including Titanium dioxide (also known as E171); Brominated vegetable oil (BVO) (E443); Potassium bromate (E924); Azodicarbonamide (E927a) and Propylparaben (E217). Millstone, who’s spent almost half a century researching food and agriculture science, said most Americans were likely completely unaware that they were being exposed on a daily basis to substances in their food viewed as dangerous in Europe.

“They probably just think, ‘Well, if it’s available or it’s in the store, it’s probably fine,'” he said. In a statement to CBS News, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said all food additives require “pre-market evaluation” and “regulations require evidence that each substance is safe at its intended level of use before it may be added to foods.” “Post-approval, our scientists continue to review relevant new information to determine whether there are safety questions and whether the use of such substance is no longer safe,” the agency added. [..] In a statement to CBS News, the FDA said that when used properly, potassium bromate converts into a harmless substance during food production. The FDA acknowledged, however, that not all of the compound used in any given recipe may convert during the production process, but that control measures were utilized to minimize the amount in final products.

Great white

On January, 15th, 2019, Ocean Ramsey and her team encountered what is possibly the largest great white shark ever recorded, approximately 6 meters long (~ 20 feet)

[full video + read more: https://t.co/UeFVrws9xO]pic.twitter.com/qkA1XqqqiG

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 20, 2023

Green Turtle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1627672910960766977

Brain wash

Tonight while you sleep, you'll be kind of 'brain washed'. Blood will flow out of your head, a watery liquid called cerebrospinal fluid will flow in, washing through your brain in rhythmic, pulsing waves

[read more: https://t.co/yyUZDrZffT]pic.twitter.com/kCnhLzR8fk

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 20, 2023

Humming

The sword-billed hummingbird has a beak longer than the rest of its body, excluding the tail. It drinks nectar from flowers with long corollas and has coevolved with the Passion flower species Passiflora mixtapic.twitter.com/hFyzvWfTNo

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) February 20, 2023

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

Debt Rattle August 18 2016

Aug 182016

August 18, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:51 am Finance Tagged with: buybacks, carnage, central bankers, genocide, Japan, nukes, oil, pilots, refugees, slaughter, TPP, Yemen 2 Responses »

NPC George W. Cochran & Co., 709 14th Street NW, Washington DC 1920

• Japanese Imports Drop -24.7%, Exports Crash -14.1% (ZH)

• A Physics Lesson for Central Bankers (BBG)

• The Idea Of The Fed Raising The Inflation Target Is Outrageous (Boockvar)

• On The Impossibility Of Helicopter Money And Why The Casino Will Crash (DS)

• US Buyback Announcements Tumble to a 2012 Low (BBG)

• Oil Drillers Have Slashed Spending For 2015-2020 By $1 Trillion

• Only 37% Of Borrowers Are Paying Down Their Student Loans (WSJ)

• Chinese Airlines Need To Hire 100 Pilots A Week For The Next 20 Years (BBG)

• Hillary Clinton Picks TPP and Fracking Advocate To Set Up Her White House (IC)

• Is US Moving Nuclear Weapons From Turkey to Romania? (EurA)

• America Is Complicit in the Carnage in Yemen (NYT Editorial Board)

• California Slaughter: The State-Sanctioned Genocide of Native Americans (NW)

• Uncovering The Brutal Truth About The British Empire (G.)

• Greek Villagers Rescued Refugees. Now They Are the Ones Suffering. (NYT)

Apparently Kuroda doesn’t buy enough yet.

• Japanese Imports Drop -24.7%, Exports Crash -14.1% (ZH)

For the 19th month in a row, Japanese Imports plunged – dropping 24.7% YoY (worse than expected), the biggest drop since Oct 2009. Exports were just as dismal, also missing expectations, plunging 14.1% YoY – worst since Oct 2009. The biggest driver of the collapse of Japanese trade was a 44% crash in the Chinese trade balance. There’s no lipstick to put on this pig… it’s a disaster.. and worse still Yen is strengthening back below 100 against the USD.

Why not simply admit that central bankers and economists alike have no idea what they’re doing?! Even if they ever had a clue, we’re now 8 years into ‘uncharted territory’, and it’s all anyone‘s guess. That’s what ‘uncharted territory’ means.

Moreover, central bankers and economists come in with dogmatic school book theories that don’t apply in ‘uncharted territory’, and those school book educations make sure they’re the very last candidates for finding creative solutions. Comparing economics to actual science does not help one bit.

• A Physics Lesson for Central Bankers (BBG)

The world is braced for the discovery of a fifth fundamental forces of nature – the four known ones being electromagnetism, gravity, and strong and weak nuclear forces – that subverts the so-called standard model of particle physics. Given the lackluster outlook for global growth, maybe economics needs a similar revolution. Quantitative easing’s failure to quash the threat of deflation is finance’s equivalent of the bump in the data that alerted physicists to the possibility of a new boson. The mismatch between economic theory and the real-world outcome of zero interest rates poses a direct challenge to the current orthodoxy that puts a 2% inflation target at the heart of monetary policy in most of the developed world.

Figures earlier this week showed inflation running at an annual pace of just 0.8% in the U.S. and 0.6% in the U.K. Consumer prices in the euro zone are rising by about 0.2% a year; in Japan, prices dropped by 0.4% in June. The consensus forecast among economists surveyed by Bloomberg News is for none of the four central banks in those regions to meet their targets in 2016, and for the ECB and the BOJ to continue falling short for at least the next year:

Years of pumping trillions of dollars, euros, yen and pounds into the economy by buying government debt and other securities hasn’t produced the rebound in inflation that economics textbooks predicted. Record low borrowing costs haven’t led to a surge in investment and spending that would lead to higher prices. That’s the kind of empirical evidence that should produce a reconsideration of what Rothschild Investment Trust Chairman Jacob Rothschild this week called “the greatest experiment in monetary policy in the history of the world.” Neil Grossman, director of Florida-based bank C1 Financial and former chief investment officer at TKNG Capital Partners, likens the need to abandon the current economic orthodoxy with the impact of quantum physics on science in the last century.

“There is no science to this 2% number, it is all art.”

• The Idea Of The Fed Raising The Inflation Target Is Outrageous (Boockvar)

I can’t let an opportunity go by without criticizing a Fed official. I believe their feet should be held to the fire after creating a huge asset price bubble and culture of debt that is dragging down economic growth. Fed President John Williams comments yesterday really got me angry. First, he suggested possibly raising the Fed’s 2% inflation target. This reflects an amazing cluelessness of the damage this would do if realized. We are in an epic bond bubble globally where higher inflation would be kryptonite. With the bond monster central bankers have created, the last thing they should want is higher inflation. Also, many U.S. citizens are literally living paycheck to paycheck and a higher cost of living without a corresponding increase in wages or any interest income would damage the largest component of the U.S. economy and the lives of millions.

Second, he said, “Conventional monetary policy has less room to stimulate the economy during an economic downturn.” This we know is true. But he then added, “This will necessitate a greater reliance on unconventional tools like central bank balance sheets, forward guidance, and potentially even negative policy rates.” This last sentence proves he’s blind to the negative consequences of what unconventional tools have wrought and he believes in negative rates even in the face of all the evidence of how damaging the idea is. Let me expand on the first issue of inflation. Central banks in the U.S., Eurozone, UK and in Japan have tethered their monetary policy decisions on growth certainly but also the desire for 2% annual inflation. There is no science to this 2% number, it is all art.

The reason for this target and desire for this level of inflation is a matter of control. While they like to keep interest rates artificially low, they also understand the need to have them higher than they are in order to respond to any economic challenges. The fallacy with this theory that higher inflation is good and deflation is bad, is inflation is just a symptom of underlying supply and demand and technological improvements, and thus shouldn’t be manipulated.

Stockman: “..earnings had fallen by 19% since then, even as the stock market moved from 1950 to nearly 2200 or 13% higher..”

• On The Impossibility Of Helicopter Money And Why The Casino Will Crash (DS)

[..] .. the S&P 500 companies posted Q2 2016 earnings for the latest 12 month period at $86.66 per share. So at the August bubble high the market was being valued at a lunatic 25.1X. Even in a healthy, growing economy that valuation level is on the extreme end of sanity. But actual circumstances are currently more nearly the opposite. That is, earnings have now been falling for six straight quarters in line with GDP growth that has slumped to what amounts to stall speed. In fact, reported earnings for the S&P 500 peaked at $106 per share in the 12 months ended in September 2014. That means that earnings had fallen by 19% since then, even as the stock market moved from 1950 to nearly 2200 or 13% higher.

This is called multiple expansion in the parlance of Wall Street, but it’s hard to find a more bubblicious example. Two years ago the market was trading at just 18.4X, meaning that on the back of sharply falling earnings the PE multiple had risen by 36%! Valuation multiples are supposed to go up only when the economic and profits outlook is improving, not when it’s unmistakably deteriorating as at present. But during the spring-summer melt-up these faltering fundamentals were blithely ignored on the hopes of a second half growth spurt and, failing the latter, that the Fed would again pull the market’s chestnuts out of the fire.

Time for Yellen to buy those stocks? Buybacks were the no. 1 reason the S&P looked good till now. Better find something to replace them, or else…

• US Buyback Announcements Tumble to a 2012 Low (BBG)

Stock buybacks appear to be slowing down, suggesting either corporate America’s outlook has dimmed, stock valuations have become prohibitively high or, most optimistically, that companies are starting to listen to investors and put funds toward other uses. Buybacks announced for the second quarter’s earnings season between July 8 and August 15 totaled an average of $1.8 billion a day, the lowest volume in an earnings season since the summer of 2012, according to TrimTabs Investment Research.
Share repurchases have been a key driver of this year’s stock market rally, despite a notable deceleration relative to to the same period in 2015. In the first seven months of 2016, buybacks totaled $376.5 billion, according to TrimTabs.

That’s down 21% from $478.4 billion in the first seven months of last year. Equity buybacks last week totaled just $2.6 billion, while record highs in U.S. stocks triggered an increase in new equity offerings. “The reluctance to pull the trigger on share repurchases suggests corporate leaders are becoming less enthusiastic about what they see ahead,” David Santschi, chief executive officer of TrimTabs, said in a press release on Tuesday. That means “buybacks aren’t likely to provide as much fuel for the stock market as they have in the recent past.” According to TrimTabs, just five companies have announced buybacks of more-than $3 billion this earnings season: Biogen ($5 billion), Visa ($5 billion), CBS ($5 billion), AIG ($3 billion), and 21st Century Fox ($3 billion).

Hard to admit to something that will cost you your livelihood. They all keep hoping for rising prices.

• Oil Drillers Have Slashed Spending For 2015-2020 By $1 Trillion

Mad Dog, BP’s drilling project deep in the Gulf of Mexico, could be Exhibit A in the oil industry’s war on cost. When the British oil giant announced the project’s second phase in 2011, it put the price at $20 billion. Last month, after simplifying plans and benefiting from a sharp drop in everything from steel to drilling services, Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley said he could do the job for $9 billion.

Across the industry, companies have taken a chainsaw to expenses, slashing spending for the 2015-to-2020 period by $1 trillion through cutting staff, delaying projects, changing drilling techniques and squeezing outside contractors, according to consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. That’s cushioned businesses as oil prices plunged 60% since 2014. Now producers seek to show they can make the savings stick, while service providers try to reverse their losses. Industry costs “may be the defining issue of the next six to 12 months,” said J. David Anderson, a Barclays analyst in New York. “As you start ramping up, the fact is you’re going to need more services and they’re going to have to come in at a higher price.”

Someone will come with an across the board forgiveness plan. But it’ll be contentious.

• Only 37% Of Borrowers Are Paying Down Their Student Loans (WSJ)

A largely overlooked report released in February by the Government Accountability Office suggests that the Obama administration’s policies have exacerbated student debt, which equals nearly a quarter of annual federal borrowing. With only 37% of borrowers actually paying down their loans, the federal student-loan program more closely resembles the payday-lending industry than a benevolent source of funds for college. As this newspaper reported in April, “43% of the roughly 22 million Americans with federal student loans weren’t making payments as of Jan. 1,” and a staggering “1 in 6 borrowers, or 3.6 million, were in default on $56 billion in student debt.”

If student debt continues to skyrocket, the federal government may have to deal with as much as a $500 billion write-down when future defaults and loan-forgiveness programs are factored in. In 2010, the Obama administration dispensed with the private intermediaries that had administered federal loans since the 1960s. It put in their place Direct Lending, a program administered by the Education Department. At the time, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Direct Lending would save $62 billion from 2010 to 2020. That didn’t happen. The program’s advocates failed to anticipate how two other Obama-backed college affordability initiatives—Income-Driven Repayment and loan forgiveness—would create a cataclysmic hit to the federal student-loan program’s finances.

There are more than 20 Income-Driven Repayment programs, but they all work essentially the same way. Students struggling financially can defer their payments. When no or limited payments are made, their balances grow. Today, over 20 million borrowers are watching their loan balances increase thanks to these programs. The average balance ballooned to approximately $25,000 in 2014 from $15,000 in 2004, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and has grown still larger since then.

In their dreams.

• Chinese Airlines Need To Hire 100 Pilots A Week For The Next 20 Years (BBG)

Chinese airlines need to hire almost 100 pilots a week for the next 20 years to meet skyrocketing travel demand. Facing a shortage of candidates at home, carriers are dangling lucrative pay packages at foreigners with cockpit experience. Giacomo Palombo, a former United Airlines pilot, said he’s being bombarded every week with offers to fly Airbus A320s in China. Regional carrier Qingdao Airlines promises as much as $318,000 a year. Sichuan Airlines, which flies to Canada and Australia, is pitching $302,000. Both airlines say they’ll also cover his income tax bill in China. “When the time to go back to flying comes, I’ll definitely have the Chinese airlines on my radar,” said Palombo, 32, now an Atlanta-based consultant for McKinsey. “The financials are attractive.”

Air traffic over China is set to almost quadruple in the next two decades, making it the world’s busiest market, according to Airbus Group SE. Startup carriers barely known abroad are paying about 50% more than what some senior captains earn at Delta Air Lines, and they’re giving recruiters from the U.S. to New Zealand free rein to fill their captains’ chairs. With some offers reaching $26,000 a month in net pay, pilots from emerging markets including Brazil and Russia can quadruple their salaries in China, said Dave Ross, Las Vegas-based president of Wasinc International. Wasinc is recruiting for more than a dozen mainland carriers, including Chengdu Airlines, Qingdao Airlines and Ruili Airlines. “When we ask an airline, ‘How many pilots do you need?,’ they say, ‘Oh, we can take as many as you bring,”’ Ross said. “It’s almost unlimited.”

Incredible, but he really said it: “..there’s not a single case where hydraulic fracking has created an environmental problem for anyone..”

• Hillary Clinton Picks TPP and Fracking Advocate To Set Up Her White House (IC)

Two big issues dogged Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary: the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement (TPP) and fracking. She had a long history of supporting both. Under fire from Bernie Sanders, she came out against the TPP and took a more critical position on fracking. But critics wondered if this was a sincere conversion or simply campaign rhetoric. Now, in two of the most significant personnel moves she will ever make, she has signaled a lack of sincerity. She chose as her vice presidential running mate Tim Kaine, who voted to authorize fast-track powers for the TPP and praised the agreement just two days before he was chosen.

And now she has named former Colorado Democratic Senator and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to be the chair of her presidential transition team — the group tasked with helping set up the new administration should she win in November. That includes identifying, selecting, and vetting candidates for over 4,000 presidential appointments. As a senator, Salazar was widely considered a reliable friend to the oil, gas, ranching and mining industries. As interior secretary, he opened the Arctic Ocean for oil drilling, and oversaw the botched response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Since returning to the private sector, he has been an ardent supporter of the TPP, while pushing back against curbs on fracking.

The TPP would enhance the ability of corporations to sue to overturn environmental regulations, but Salazar helped a pro-TPP front group, the “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs,” argue the opposite. In a November 2015 USA Today op-ed that Salazar co-wrote with Bruce Babbitt, the two men argued that the TPP would be the “the greenest trade deal ever” by promoting sustainable energy. Both Salazar and Babbitt cited their former positions as interior secretaries to boost their credibility. The following month, Salazar authored a Denver Post op-ed with two former Colorado governors also affiliated with PCAJ, arguing that the agreement would protect the state’s scenic beauty: “And as a state rich with natural wonder and a long history of conservation, Colorado can be proud that the TPP includes the highest environmental standards of any trade agreement in history.”

Shortly after leaving his post at the Obama administration, Salazar appeared at an oil and gas industry conference to argue in favor of fracking. “We know that, from everything we’ve seen, there’s not a single case where hydraulic fracking has created an environmental problem for anyone,” Salazar told the attendees, who included the vice president of BP America, another keynote speaker at the conference. “We need to make sure that story is told.”

Not confirmed. But moving them out of Turkey seems logical. Not exactly a safe third country these days.

• Is US Moving Nuclear Weapons From Turkey to Romania? (EurA)

Two independent sources told EurActiv.com that the US has started transferring nuclear weapons stationed in Turkey to Romania, against the background of worsening relations between Washington and Ankara. According to one of the sources, the transfer has been very challenging in technical and political terms. “It’s not easy to move 20+ nukes,” said the source, on conditions of anonymity. According to a recent report by the Simson Center, since the Cold War, some 50 US tactical nuclear weapons have been stationed at Turkey’s Incirlik air base, approximately 100 kilometres from the Syrian border.

During the failed coup in Turkey in July, Incirlik’s power was cut, and the Turkish government prohibited US aircraft from flying in or out. Eventually, the base commander was arrested and implicated in the coup. Whether the US could have maintained control of the weapons in the event of a protracted civil conflict in Turkey is an unanswerable question, the report says. Another source told EurActiv.com that the US-Turkey relations had deteriorated so much following the coup that Washington no longer trusted Ankara to host the weapons. The American weapons are being moved to the Deveselu air base in Romania, the source said. Deveselu, near the city of Caracal, is the new home of the US missile shield, which has infuriated Russia.

It doesn’t sit well with me at all that the NYT editors are saying this. Far too much blood on those hands. It doesn’t feel right one bit.

• America Is Complicit in the Carnage in Yemen (NYT Editorial Board)

A hospital associated with Doctors Without Borders. A school. A potato chip factory. Under international law, those facilities in Yemen are not legitimate military targets. Yet all were bombed in recent days by warplanes belonging to a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, killing more than 40 civilians. The United States is complicit in this carnage. It has enabled the coalition in many ways, including selling arms to the Saudis to mollify them after the nuclear deal with Iran. Congress should put the arms sales on hold and President Obama should quietly inform Riyadh that the United States will withdraw crucial assistance if the Saudis do not stop targeting civilians and agree to negotiate peace.

The airstrikes are further evidence that the Saudis have escalated their bombing campaign against Houthi militias, which control the capital, Sana, since peace talks were suspended on Aug. 6, ending a cease-fire that was declared more than four months ago. They also suggest one of two unpleasant possibilities. One is that the Saudis and their coalition of mostly Sunni Arab partners have yet to learn how to identify permissible military targets. The other is that they simply do not care about killing innocent civilians. The bombing of the hospital, which alone killed 15 people, was the fourth attack on a facility supported by Doctors Without Borders in the past year even though all parties to the conflict were told exactly where the hospitals were located.

In all, the war has killed more than 6,500 people, displaced more than 2.5 million others and pushed one of the world’s poorest countries from deprivation to devastation. A recent United Nations report blamed the coalition for 60% of the deaths and injuries to children last year. Human rights groups and the United Nations have suggested that war crimes may have been committed.

Today Yemen, yesterday California. Maybe if we stop trying to hide the past, we’re less likely to repeat it?!

• California Slaughter: The State-Sanctioned Genocide of Native Americans (NW)

The tally is relentlessly grim: a whole settlement wiped out in Trinity County “excepting a few children”; an Indian girl raped and left to die somewhere near Mendocino; as many as 50 killed at Goose Lake; and, two months later, as many as 257 murdered at Grouse Creek, scores of them women and children. There were the four white ranchers who tracked down a band of Yana to a cave, butchering 30. “In the cave with the meat were some Indian children,” reported a chronicle published later. One of the whites “could not bear to kill these children with his 56-calibre Spencer rifle. ‘It tore them up so bad.’ So he did it with his 38-calibre Smith and Wesson revolver.”

We might as well stop speaking about western ‘civilization’.

• Uncovering The Brutal Truth About The British Empire (G.)

Help us sue the British government for torture. That was the request Caroline Elkins, a Harvard historian, received in 2008. The idea was both legally improbable and professionally risky. Improbable because the case, then being assembled by human rights lawyers in London, would attempt to hold Britain accountable for atrocities perpetrated 50 years earlier, in pre-independence Kenya. Risky because investigating those misdeeds had already earned Elkins heaps of abuse. Elkins had come to prominence in 2005 with a book that exhumed one of the nastiest chapters of British imperial history: the suppression of Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion. Her study, Britain’s Gulag, chronicled how the British had battled this anticolonial uprising by confining some 1.5 million Kenyans to a network of detention camps and heavily patrolled villages.

It was a tale of systematic violence and high-level cover-ups. It was also an unconventional first book for a junior scholar. Elkins framed the story as a personal journey of discovery. Her prose seethed with outrage. Britain’s Gulag, titled Imperial Reckoning in the US, earned Elkins a great deal of attention and a Pulitzer prize. But the book polarised scholars. Some praised Elkins for breaking the “code of silence” that had squelched discussion of British imperial violence. Others branded her a self-aggrandising crusader whose overstated findings had relied on sloppy methods and dubious oral testimonies. By 2008, Elkins’s job was on the line. Her case for tenure, once on the fast track, had been delayed in response to criticism of her work.

To secure a permanent position, she needed to make progress on her second book. This would be an ambitious study of violence at the end of the British empire, one that would take her far beyond the controversy that had engulfed her Mau Mau work. That’s when the phone rang, pulling her back in. A London law firm was preparing to file a reparations claim on behalf of elderly Kenyans who had been tortured in detention camps during the Mau Mau revolt. Elkins’s research had made the suit possible. Now the lawyer running the case wanted her to sign on as an expert witness. Elkins was in the top-floor study of her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when the call came. She looked at the file boxes around her. “I was supposed to be working on this next book,” she says. “Keep my head down and be an academic. Don’t go out and be on the front page of the paper.”

She said yes. She wanted to rectify injustice. And she stood behind her work. “I was kind of like a dog with a bone,” she says. “I knew I was right.” What she didn’t know was that the lawsuit would expose a secret: a vast colonial archive that had been hidden for half a century. The files within would be a reminder to historians of just how far a government would go to sanitise its past. And the story Elkins would tell about those papers would once again plunge her into controversy.

But not everyone has lost it: “If it happens again, everyone will do the exact same thing: We will help.”

• Greek Villagers Rescued Refugees. Now They Are the Ones Suffering. (NYT)

Stratis Valamios revved the motor on his small white boat and steered under a thumbnail moon out of the harbor of this fishing village, perched on the northern tip of Lesbos, Greece’s third-largest island. Skies were clear enough to see the purple mountains of Turkey a short distance across the Aegean Sea. It would be easy on this tranquil evening to catch calamari. These days, he needed a good haul to make ends meet. A year ago, he and other fishermen in the tiny village, Skala Sikaminias, were making a more unusual catch: thousands of sea-drenched asylum seekers who streamed across the Aegean to escape conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

As one of the landfalls in Greece that is closest to Turkey, Skala Sikaminias, with its 100 residents, fast became ground zero for the crisis, the first stop in Europe for people trying to reach Germany in a desperate bid to start new lives. “I’d be in the middle of the sea, and I would see 50 boats zigzagging toward me,” Mr. Valamios said, gazing across the narrow channel. “I would speed toward them, and they would throw their children into my boat to be saved.” Today the migrants have mostly stopped coming. The coastline, once littered with orange life vests and wrecked boats, has been cleaned to a near-spotless white. But the human drama has left an imprint here, and across all of Lesbos, in ways that have only begun to play out.

The village is nearly empty of tourists this year as Germans, Swedes and other visitors who had long flocked to the crystalline waters of Lesbos go elsewhere, wary of spending their vacations in a place now associated with human desperation. Business at the island’s hotels and tavernas has slumped around 80%, especially along the 7.5-mile stretch between Skala Sikaminias and the vacation town of Molyvos, where many of the more than 800,000 migrants who survived the crossing last year washed ashore. Mr. Valamios used to supplement his income as a fisherman by working five months of the year at Myrivilis’ Mulberry taverna, facing the bucolic port where fishermen mend yellow nets beneath oleanders and village cats prowl for fish. This year, he was asked to work just one month amid a dearth of customers. Nearly 1,000 Greeks in the area have lost seasonal employment.

[..] The villagers no longer experience the sea in the same way. When they look at the horizon, some say they think for a split second that another refugee boat is coming. “We have to be ready,” Mr. Valamios said. “If it happens again, everyone will do the exact same thing: We will help.”

Debt Rattle June 19 2016

Jun 192016

June 19, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Brazil, Brexit, end game, Ethereum, EU, Fannie, slaughter Comments Off

Harris&Ewing Car interior. Washington & Old Dominion R.R. 1930

• Tracing The Global Market Thread That Could Be Unraveled By Brexit (R.)

• Britain’s Rival EU Campaigns Restart (R.)

• Hogs to Slaughter (HFarmer)

• The Dumbest Monetary Experimental End Game In History (Bohm-Bawerk)

• A Palace For Fannie (Mae) – Why The Imperial City Must Be Sacked (Stockman)

• Over $50 Million Hacked Dashes Hopes in the World of Virtual Currency (NYT)

• Assange Starts 5th Year Cooped In London Embassy (AFP)

• Rome Set To Elect First Female Mayor (AFP)

• Brazil’s Temer Goverment on Fire, 4th Minister Could Resign (TeleSur)

• EU Trying To Bury Report On Turkey Migrant Returns (EUO)

Decentralization.

• Tracing The Global Market Thread That Could Be Unraveled By Brexit (R.)

If Britons vote to take their country out of the European Union on June 23, no corner of the global financial market complex will emerge unscathed. The invisible thread that links assets as diverse as gold, bank stocks, the Japanese yen and government bonds would be yanked sharply by Brexit, an event the Bank of England said on Thursday risks “adverse spill-overs to the global economy”. With global interest rates and bond yields the lowest on record, central banks running low on crisis-fighting tools and the post-2008 economic recovery flagging, that thread could quickly unravel, with serious consequences for all markets. So why will the will of one country’s people in one referendum have such a profound impact on global markets?

The answer is partly how interconnected global markets are, and partly timing – the world economic cycle is already very long in the tooth and central banks have far fewer options open to them after nearly a decade of extraordinary policy support. Global interest rates are their lowest for 5,000 years, according to Bank of America, but central banks could still cut them further. That could mean the U.S. Federal Reserve reversing its slow-starting tightening cycle, and ECB and Bank of Japan rates going deeper into negative territory. Lower rates would also depress bond yields even further, tightening the screw on central and commercial banks. Over $8 trillion worth of sovereign bonds already carry a negative yield, according to JPMorgan.

This means holders of Japanese, German and Swiss debt are paying these governments for the privilege of lending to them, in some cases out to 20 years. They are willing to accept they will not get all their money back. Even deeper negative yields would increase these losses, raising further doubt that these are truly “safe haven” assets. But the immediate economic and political uncertainty after a Brexit vote would likely be so great that demand for these bonds would rise anyway, pulling yields even lower. Yield curves, the difference between short- and longer-dated bond borrowing costs, would flatten further. They are already their flattest for years around the developed world, meaning the premium investors expect for holding longer-dated bonds is shrinking.

This is often an ominous signal of low inflation or deflation, and slowing economic growth or possibly recession. If “core” bond yields would likely fall, yields on lower-rated and riskier bonds would likely rise, widening the spread between the two. This would increase the financing pressure on a wide range of companies around the world and governments in euro zone “periphery” countries like Greece, Italy and Spain. Flat yield curves are bad news for banks, who make money from borrowing short-term at low rates and lending longer-term at higher rates. Financial stocks have been hit hard this year as the curve flattening has accelerated. Euro zone banks are down 30% this year, Japanese banks 35%, UK banks 20%, and U.S. banks 10%.

Various polls contradict each other so much it’s hilarious.

• Britain’s Rival EU Campaigns Restart (R.)

The campaign to decide Britain’s membership of the European Union restarted on Sunday after a three-day hiatus following the killing of lawmaker Jo Cox, with Prime Minister David Cameron warning that Britons faced an “existential choice” on Thursday. Campaigning activities ahead of the June 23 EU referendum resumed as two opinion polls showed the ‘Remain’ camp recovering some momentum, although the overall picture remains one of an evenly split electorate. With five days left until Britons cast their ballots, the rival campaigns returned with a raft of interviews and articles in Sunday’s newspapers, covering the familiar immigration versus economy debate that has defined the campaign so far.

Cameron, who leads the campaign to stay in the EU, urged voters to consider the economic impact that leaving the 28-member bloc would have. “We face an existential choice on Thursday,” he wrote in the Sunday Telegraph. “So ask yourself: have I really heard anything – anything at all – to convince me that leaving would be the best thing for the economic security of my family?” Michael Gove, a senior spokesman for the rival ‘Leave’ campaign, played down the role of the referendum in the future of the economy, and said that leaving would actually improve Britain’s economic position. “I can’t foretell the future but I don’t believe that the act of leaving the European Union would make our economic position worse, I think it would make it better,” he said in an interview with the same newspaper.

“.. generations of fatherless children at every level raising up children who have no connection to anything that isn’t coming from a glowing screen..”

• Hogs to Slaughter (HFarmer)

America is a third world country, it’s just not ready to accept that reality yet. Politically it is thoroughly corrupted, economically it is too deeply indebted to ever extricate itself, morally it is without direction, rudderless in dangerous seas and heading for the rocks.

The divides between the wealthy and the impoverished too wide to ever cross, the races and generations set against one another deliberately, provoked hourly by the very people who should be doing everything possible to unite them, armed to the teeth, seething with rage, neutered or enraged by pharmaceuticals, depending upon the age and gender, divided by sex, generations of fatherless children at every level raising up children who have no connection to anything that isn’t coming from a glowing screen- and all the while deliberately it seems, provoking hostility with every nation, every race, every people and persuasion in order to stir up a seething cauldron of slights and revenge for the coming reckoning.

[..] Last night I had a dream. One of the last things I did before I called it quits just after dark was to feed the hogs. I stood on the tailgate of the truck and emptied bags of watermelon rinds and soft mangoes, wilted heads of lettuce, bunches of carrots, apples, sweet yellow hothouse peppers imported from Holland, strawberries by the gallon, string beans, potatoes, cabbages and onions. The sows stood up on the fence rails and lifted their snouts to me to pet, their way of thanking me for the meal although they’d waited all day long for it.

When I finished I broke down the cardboard boxes and rolled up the empty plastic bags and then filled their troughs with fifty gallons of fresh, cool water. The Moon wasn’t quite full and Mars just beneath it, glowing like a jewel, and in the distance the large thunderheads were tipped pink from the last rays of the distant Sun, barn swallows streaking across the top of the orchard feasting on the mosquitoes that came to life in the cooling air.

I thought about these hogs, always hungry, always anticipating the next feeding and how easy they have become to manage since I discovered that simple secret. They will sit patiently waiting for me to bring them food rather than try and escape and find something to eat on their own. They are spoiled by their good fortune, fattening themselves on the food I bring them until they produce the things we require of them- piglets to sell and sausage and bacon to eat. I cannot imagine that the people who have managed to gain control of the levers of power in this world have not only learned from these kinds of lessons, but perfected the intricacies of human manipulation; psychological, pharmaceutical, social and spiritual.

I dreamed that the reasons that government checks and benefits were doled out monthly was no different than the reason I feed the pigs only once a day in large quantities. They grow dependent upon it, it is just large enough to make them feel for the moment like they have something substantial and to be excited about it and so remain close to the source of that disbursement, but it is not enough for them to ever be able to put away for the future so they might have the chance to escape that perpetual bondage, and by the end of their waiting there is only the hunger for the next allotment. No one would choose to live that way voluntarily and so they are led there, like the farmer with his bucket of slops, tapping the edge with a stick as he walks back to the enclosure, every head tilted in his direction, every eye glued to the pail.

“The US mortgaged their future to foreigners willing to fund this consumption spree. ”

• The Dumbest Monetary Experimental End Game In History (Bohm-Bawerk)

Whenever we try to explain the reasons behind the crisis, such as the build-up in non-productive and counterproductive debt (see here, here and here for more details) people ask us why did this happened now, and not earlier? It is a fair question that we have thought about and believe have one simple answer. Bottom line, the world economy is running on a system with no natural correcting mechanisms. As we are never tired of pointing out, the Soviet Union only had one recession, the one in 1989. The system was stable, until it was not. A system that does not correct internal imbalances grows just like a parasitic cancer, eventually killing its host. If unsustainable capital allocations are allowed to continue unchecked, the pool of real savings will at some point be depleted.

At that point recession hits because the structure of production is too capital intensive relative to the level of real saving available. A quick look at US saving and investment rates since the 1950s confirms what we all know to be true; saving and investments are not keeping up with GDP growth. That the trend broke after Nixon took the dollar of gold in 1971 is not a coincidence. Real funding for economic activity were slowly substituted from proper saving towards “forced” saving through fiat money expansion. The inevitable result from such a policy has been the massive increase in debt and drop in the US balance versus the rest of the world. No matter what political leaning the country had, debt kept on rising and its mirror image, the current account balance, kept on falling.

The US mortgaged their future to foreigners willing to fund this consumption spree. No one seemed to care that the US did not build up a productive capital base that could service all this debt in the future. The US, issuer of the world reserve currency, was good as gold. At least that was what the world assumed, and surprisingly enough still do.

Real estate prices WILL be reset, globally. But the resistance againt the reset is fierce; it will rob too many of their powers and comfort zones.

• A Palace For Fannie (Mae) – Why The Imperial City Must Be Sacked (Stockman)

To hear the establishment media tell it, you would think that Attila the Hun was fixing to sack the Imperial City. Would that Donald Trump were that bold or dangerous. Then again, he is a showman of no mean talents. So if there is a maquette of Fannie Mae’s planned new $770 million headquarters somewhere around Washington DC, he could start the sacking right there. Hopefully, he would not hesitate to shatter it with a fusillade of tweets – or even take a jackhammer to it while wearing a Trump hard hat. Fannie Mae is surely a monument to crony capitalist corruption, and living proof that massive state intervention in credit markets is a recipe for disaster. But rather than shut it down after it helped bring the nation’s financial system to the edge of ruin, the beltway pols have come up with an altogether different idea.

To wit, they plan to move Fannie from her already luxurious NW Washington headquarters to this hideous new glass palace to be built in the heart of Washington DC. Could there be a bigger insult to the 15 million families who lost their homes to foreclosure owing to the crash of the giant housing bubble that Fannie Mae and the crony capitalist crooks who ran it helped perpetuate? And that’s to say nothing of the $180 billion of taxpayer money that was pumped into Fannie Mae and the other GSE’s after the house of cards came tumbling down in August 2008. In fact, while the politicians on Capitol Hill have dawdled for eight years without any statutory changes or mandates for even minor reforms, Fannie Mae’s management and its phalanx of K-Street lobbies showed exactly who rules in the Imperial City.

It is the larcenous rule of these syndicates of beltway racketeers, in fact, that has put Donald Trump’s name on the Presidential ballot. So let it be granted that his manners and policy knowledge appear to be on the meager side. Yet it is malodorous tales like that of Fannie Mae’s swank new palace which demonstrate why a disrupter on horseback is exactly what the Imperial City deserves.

The weakest link is a feature.

• Over $50 Million Hacked Dashes Hopes in the World of Virtual Currency (NYT)

A hacker on Friday siphoned more than $50 million of digital money away from an experimental virtual currency project that had been billed as the most successful crowdfunding venture ever — taking with him not just a third of the venture’s money but also the hopes and dreams of thousands of participants who wanted to prove the safety and security of digital currency. The attack most likely puts an end to the project, known as the Decentralized Autonomous Organization, which had raised $160 million in the form of Ether, an alternative to the digital currency Bitcoin. While the computer scientists involved in the project are aiming to tweak the code that underpins Ether in a way that will recover the money, the theft is nevertheless prompting a bigger debate about the viability and principles of virtual currencies like Bitcoin and Ether.

“This is one of the nightmare scenarios everyone was worried about: Someone exploited a weakness in the code of the D.A.O. to empty out a large sum,” Emin Gün Sirer, a computer science professor at Cornell who co-wrote a paper pointing out problems with the project, said on Friday. Central banks and financial firms have been exploring how to use the technology underlying virtual currencies — known as blockchain — to improve their own internal systems. The technology is considered to have advantages in terms of transparency and security. Just last week, Janet L. Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, told central bankers at a trade industry conference that they should accelerate their efforts to explore blockchain.

But the incident on Friday provided another reminder of how the code can be just as vulnerable to human greed and mistakes as paper bills. The D.A.O. was meant to be a standard-bearer for online currency ventures. It was funded by investors from around the world using Ether, which has become popular over the last year. But just before the project stopped raising money in late May, computer scientists pointed out several vulnerabilities in its underlying code — effectively warning that what happened to the experimental consortium would be possible or even likely. “The D.A.O. is being attacked,” Griff Green, a community organizer with the company that wrote the project’s software, Slock.it, wrote on a chat channel for the project Friday morning. “This is not a drill.”

Julian deserves much more support from all of us.

• Assange Starts 5th Year Cooped In London Embassy (AFP)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange starts his fifth year camped out in the Ecuadoran embassy in London on Sunday, an occasion his supporters intend to mark with events celebrating whistleblowers. Supporters said they were planning to stage songs, speeches and readings in several European cities. Assange, 44, is wanted for questioning over a 2010 rape allegation in Sweden but has been inside Ecuador’s UK mission for four full years in a bid to avoid extradition. The anti-secrecy campaigner, who denies the allegation, walked into the embassy of his own free will on June 18, 2012, with Britain on the brink of sending him to Stockholm, and has not left since. His lawyers say he is angry that Swedish prosecutors are still maintaining the European arrest warrant against him.

This would make my day. “Opposition to Italy’s endemic cronyism and sleaze..”

• Rome Set To Elect First Female Mayor (AFP)

Voters in the Italian capital went to the polls Sunday with all signs indicating that they will elect Virginia Raggi as the first female mayor of the Eternal City. Raggi, a 37-year-old lawyer and local councillor, has leapt from anonymity to become one of the best-known faces in Italian politics in the space of only a few months on the campaign trail. The telegenic brunette, whose victory would be a blow for Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, is the rising star of the populist Five Star movement (M5S), the anti-establishment party founded by comedian Beppe Grillo. More than nine million voters are eligible to take part in Sunday’s second round election in 126 communes, including Rome, Milan, Naples, Turin and Bologna.

But all eyes are on Five Star which has emerged as the best-supported opposition to the centre left, Democratic Party (PD)-led coalition of Prime Minister Renzi, and the stakes are extremely high for a movement that was only founded in 2009. With the ebullient Renzi’s star waning slightly, success in Rome could provide a platform for a tilt at national power in general elections due in 2018. The PD also faces defeat in Italy’s financial capital Milan and a tough challenge in Turin. “We are witnessing a historic moment,” Raggi said after the June 5 first round of voting, from which she emerged with 35% of the vote, well ahead of her run-off rival, Roberto Giachetti (24%). It was a remarkable achievement for a party with a very limited organisational apparatus and also for a woman who only entered politics five years ago.

That was a move, she recently told AFP, triggered by the birth of her son Matteo and her determination that he should not grow up in a city beset by the intertwined problems of failing public services and endemic corruption. Opposition to Italy’s endemic cronyism and sleaze is the foundation of M5S’s appeal to voters and the Roman electorate have had their fill of those in recent years. Dozens of local businessmen, officials and politicians are currently on trial for their involvement in a criminal network that ripped off the city to the tune of tens – if not hundreds – of millions. From stealing the funds allocated to get ethnic Roma children to school out of isolated camps, to paving the city’s streets with wafer-thin surfaces, scams abounded for years, according to prosecutors, in what is known as the Mafia Capitale scandal.

Let’s try and guess how many will be left when the Olympics start.

• Brazil’s Temer Goverment on Fire, 4th Minister Could Resign (TeleSur)

Brazil’s current Minister of Education is the latest public official in the Michel Temer administration to be implicated in the country’s political corruption scandal. Brazil’s coup imposed Education Minister Mendonca Filho is being investigated for allegedly receiving an illegal bribe of $29,000 for the purpose of financing his 2014 re-election campaign, Brazil’s General Prosecutor Rodrigo Janot announced Friday, making him the latest official in Temer’s administration who could be forced to stand down. During a Supreme Court hearing Friday, General Prosecutor Janot argued that “evidence of possible bribes for his [Mendonca Filho’s] political campaign” would result in the court having jurisdiction to investigate potential criminal practices.

The allegations stem from records and documents obtained by Brazilian authorities belonging to the former financial director of UTC, Walmir Pinheiro, who last year agreed to a plea bargain testimony. The owner of UTC, Ricardo Pessoa, was also arrested last November after previously admitting to acts of corruption. [..] If convicted the Minister of Education would probably be pressured to resign from his current post, making him the fourth public official to resign or quit since the Temer administration came to power earlier this year.

The level of “un-democracy” in the EU rises to alarming levels.

• EU Trying To Bury Report On Turkey Migrant Returns (EUO)

The European Commission and some member states want to bury a report by an EU agency that is likely to say Turkey is unfit for asylum seekers, EUobserver understands. People sitting on the management board of the Malta-based European Asylum Support Office (EASO), including EU commission staff from the home affairs department, DG Home, are unhappy with EASO’s efforts to determine if Turkey is a safe third country. The management board also includes representatives from all 28 EU member states. “The subject is a sensitive one indeed and so obviously there can be some members of the management which have concerns,” Jean-Pierre Schembri, EASO’s spokesperson told this website on Wednesday (15 June).

The EU’s big migrant swap deal with Ankara largely hinges on designating Turkey as safe enough to send back rejected and unwanted asylum seekers from Greece to Turkey. Signed off in mid-March, the deal aims to stop people from leaving Turkey to seek international protection in the EU. The Greek islands now has on average dozens of new arrivals per day, down from the thousands at the height of the crisis last year. And the EU wants to keep it that way. But the EASO probe could knock a big legal hole in the plan, adding to the chorus of human rights defenders who say it is illegal. EASO management board members are also unhappy because the agency appears to have diverted from its original mandate. The team was supposed to compile a so-called country of origin report for Turkey but then it also started looking into the safe third country issue following a mission to Turkey some two weeks ago.