Nov 092016
 
 November 9, 2016  Posted by at 10:29 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,


Javier Juén 2016

Donald Trump Wins White House in Astonishing Victory (AP)
Global Markets Roiled as Trump Election Win Upends Forecasts (BBG)
Putin Congratulates Trump, Hopes To Work On International Issues (RT)
World Leaders Brace Themselves For Trump Presidency (G.)
Canada Immigration Website Crashes As Trump’s US Election Lead Grows (G.)
Donald Trump’s Victory Is Nothing Short Of A Revolution (G.)
Toronto Million-Dollar Homes Pushing Demand to Nearby Cities (BBG)
India Abolishes Larger Banknotes In Fight Against Graft, ‘Black Money’ (CNBC)
Spanish Philosopher Marina: ‘We Have Lost The Idea Of Europe’ (EurActiv)
The True Scandal Of 2016 Was The Torture Of Chelsea Manning (Scahill)
Geoffrey Pyatt: Greece An Island Of Stability, Owes Its Success To EU (Kath.)

 

 

 

The media are not yet ready to cover something they opinionated so frantically against.

Donald Trump Wins White House in Astonishing Victory

Donald Trump has been elected the next president of the United States — a remarkable showing by the celebrity businessman and political novice who upended American politics with his bombastic rhetoric. Trump rode an astonishing wave of support from voters seeking sweeping change, capitalizing on voters’ economic anxieties, taking advantage of racial tensions and overcoming a string of sexual assault allegations on his way to the White House. His triumph over Hillary Clinton will end eight years of Democratic dominance of the White House and threatens to undo major achievements of President Barack Obama. He’s pledged to act quickly to repeal Obama’s landmark health-care law, revoke the nuclear agreement with Iran and rewrite important trade deals with other countries, particularly Mexico and Canada.

The Republican blasted through Democrats’ longstanding firewall, carrying Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states that hadn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since the 1980s. He needed to win nearly all of the competitive battleground states, and he did just that, claiming Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and others. Global stock markets and U.S. stock futures plunged deeply, reflecting investor alarm over what a Trump presidency might mean for the economy and trade. Trump will take office with Congress expected to be fully under Republican control. Republican Senate candidates fended off Democratic challengers in key states and appeared poised to maintain the majority. Republicans also maintained their grip on the House. Senate control means Trump will have great leeway in appointing Supreme Court justices, which could mean a major change to the right that could last for decades.

Trump upended years of political convention on his way to the White House, levelling harshly personal insults on his rivals, deeming Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers, and vowing to temporarily suspend Muslim immigration to the U.S. He never released his tax returns, breaking with decades of campaign tradition, and eschewed the kind of robust data and field efforts that helped Obama win two terms in the White House, relying instead on his large, free-wheeling rallies to energize supporters. His campaign was frequently in chaos, and he cycled through three campaign managers this year. His final campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, touted the team’s accomplishments as the final results rolled in, writing on Twitter that “rally crowds matter” and “we expanded the map.”

Read more …

Shocks are wearing off already.

Global Markets Roiled as Trump Election Win Upends Forecasts (BBG)

Global markets were thrown into disarray as Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, shocking traders after recent polls indicated that Hillary Clinton would be the victor. Futures on the S&P 500 Index plunged by a 5% limit that triggers trading curbs and European equities sank the most since the aftermath of Britain’s shock vote to leave the European Union. Gold advanced with haven assets including the yen and sovereign bonds. Mexico’s peso tumbled the most since 2008 amid concern U.S. trade policies will become more protectionist under Trump. The dollar pared losses and Treasuries trimmed gains after Trump appeared before supporters.

Trump was projected to be the winner early Wednesday by the AP and television networks after Wisconsin pushed him over the 270 Electoral College vote threshold needed to become president-elect. The Republicans also retained control of Congress. A Trump victory had been portrayed by analysts as having the potential to unhinge markets that were banking on a continuation of policies that coincided with the second-longest bull market in S&P 500 history. Brexit was the last major political shock and led to the U.S. equity gauge sliding 5.3% in two days. “A Trump win is expected to damage trade,” said James Butterfill, head of research and investment strategy at ETF Securities in London. “Traders are already expressing their worries through a depreciating dollar, which is bad news for European companies.”

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I’m sure you’d rather have seen war with Russia.

Putin Congratulates Trump, Hopes To Work On International Issues (RT)

In a message to Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed confidence that the dialogue between Moscow and Washington, in keeping with each other’s views, meets the interests of both Russia and the US. Putin also expressed hope over the joint efforts on bringing Russian-American relations out of their current crisis. The Russian leader noted in the message that he hopes to address some “burning issues that are currently on the international agenda, and search for effective responses to the challenges of the global security,” RIA Novosti reported. On top of it, Putin has expressed confidence that “building a constructive dialogue between Moscow and Washington, based on principles of equality, mutual respect and each other’s positions, meets the interests of the peoples of our countries and of the entire international community.”

According to many observers, US-Russia relations are now at their lowest point since the Cold War. Putin has repeatedly noted that the worsening of Russia’s relations with the US “was not our choice,” however. For things to improve between Moscow and Washington, the US should first and foremost start acting like an equal partner and respect Russia’s interests rather than try to dictate terms, Putin said last month. “We are concerned with the deterioration of Russian-American relations, but that was not our choice, we never wanted that. On the contrary, we want to have friendly relations with the US, a great country and a leading economy,” Putin said at an economic forum in Moscow. The US will have to negotiate with Russia on finding solutions to international issues as no state is now able to act alone, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week, adding that problems in bilateral relations began to mount long before the Ukrainian crisis broke out in 2014.

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Brussels is full of puppets who won’t feel all that easy today, having ridiculed and vilified Trump for a long time.

World Leaders Brace Themselves For Trump Presidency (G.)

At midnight in Washington, as Donald Trump’s victory became inevitable, the French ambassador to the US sent out a tweet. “It is the end of an era,” he declared, “that of neoliberalism.” “It remains to be seen what will succeed it,” Gérard Araud added. “After Brexit and this election, everything is now possible. A world is collapsing before our eyes.” Those sweeping observations were later deleted, but the underlying sentiment will be widely shared in western capitals. Overnight, the world entered uncharted territory. President-elect Trump spent the campaign threatening to upend what has been called the existing order, the network of treaties and multilateral institutions that govern much of global relations.

He has said he would tear up and renegotiate trade treaties, and he has even called into question America’s commitment to the Nato alliance. With a completely different kind of leader preparing to enter the Oval Office, it is already looking like a world turned upside down. There is a caveat to the direst predictions. Trump will have to work with Congress, including establishment foreign policy Republicans. And he will have to find people to staff the top positions in his administration. It is possible that he will simply enjoy his victory and his new home in the White House and delegate foreign policy to Republican insiders such as Stephen Hadley, George W Bush’s national security adviser who is rumoured to be interested in reprising his role. That Bush administration seemed radical at the time, but no longer in relation to Trump’s stated agenda.

On balance, it seems more likely that he means what he has said all along about US relations with the rest of the world, and intends to turn his ideas into policy under his personal leadership. Long-negotiated multilateral trade deals, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Europe, will be the first to be halted. Opposition to those deals were a cornerstone of the Trump campaign. In their place, Trump has said he will negotiate bilateral deals that would be more favourable for US manufacturing. But he would face hostile trading partners, irritated at the dumping of major agreements. A constant theme of his campaign was to denigrate Chinese trading practices and to promise to claw back American advantage. China will not make concessions easily. Trump’s America could easily face a trade backlash.

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Time for Trump to get deeper into Canadian real estate.

Canada Immigration Website Crashes As Trump’s US Election Lead Grows (G.)

Canada’s main immigration website appeared to suffer repeated outages on Tuesday night as Trump took the lead in several major states and his prospects for winning the US presidency turned markedly higher. Some users in the United States, Canada and Asia saw an internal server error message when trying to access the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website. When the Guardian clicked on the page it would not load and a “this page isn’t working” error message came up. Officials for the ministry could not immediately be reached for comment, but the website’s problems were noted by many on Twitter.

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There’ll be a lot of opinions like this one: “boy, were we wrong, but really, we’re so right we just gotta wear shades.”

Donald Trump’s Victory Is Nothing Short Of A Revolution (G.)

We may as well call this what it is: a revolution. Because nothing else comes close to capturing the political revolt – and the chaos that surely follows – from Donald Trump’s stunning victory in 2016. We were all wrong. So badly wrong. The polls, the pundits, the press. The elites, the allies, the business leaders. Trump’s victory makes the upset of Brexit look like a quaint tiff over a round of golf. America and its relationship to the world has fundamentally changed overnight. An era that stretches back to Franklin D Roosevelt just came to an abrupt and ugly end. Instead of being an expansive, outward-looking, globalist power, the United States has definitively turned inward, shutting its borders to Mexicans, Muslims and any number of other perceived enemies of Trump’s demagogic imagination.

At the same time, America itself has been redefined. The bond between its president and its constitution will be strained, if Trump pursues a fraction of what he so clearly promised through this extraordinary election. His political enemies – notably Hillary Clinton – can expect prosecution led by an FBI that previously found no grounds for legal action over her private email server. The Trump Department of Justice will seek prison time for Clinton, and the only barrier to this punishment is the third and independent branch of government: the judiciary. Trump promised a deportation force to round up hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of undocumented immigrants starting on his inauguration day in January. His transition to government will surely be dominated by plans to rip through the Latino communities of America’s largest cities.

There will be no judicial restraint in these immigration cases. Amid the political upheaval, we can expect massive economic dislocation. The financial markets will now be calculating the price of uncertainty in global trade flows as they contemplate Trump’s promises to impose huge tariffs on China, restrict international investment by US companies, and force an epic diplomatic breach with Mexico over his beloved wall. Taken together, Trump’s victory ushers in the most tumultuous period of American history since the Great Depression and the start of world war two. It will challenge the core concepts of American identity and global security as we have known them for generations.

Overnight, Russia has moved from perennial rival to trusted friend, while Nato’s future is in peril. Allies can now expect to pay for their security umbrella, as the US military effectively turns into a mercenary force. Many countries may find cheaper options and break with the US entirely.

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Vancouver stifled this; TO should too.

Toronto Million-Dollar Homes Pushing Demand to Nearby Cities (BBG)

Toronto’s hot housing market is driving residents to seek more affordable options outside Canada’s largest city, pushing demand for new properties to new highs in these outlying towns. Residential permits in Hamilton, a city of about 500,000 people an hour’s drive from Toronto, more than doubled to a record C$204 million ($153 million) in September, according to Statistics Canada. That’s the largest jump in more than six years for the area reliant on manufacturing and steel production. The value of permits in St. Catharines, in the wine-growing Niagara region, jumped to the second highest on record to C$66 million in the month. The surge in new housing demand in outlying regions of Toronto comes amid escalating prices and all-time-high sales in Canada’s financial capital.

The average price of a detached house in downtown Toronto jumped 22% in October from the prior year to C$1.3 million amid a record number of sales, according to the city’s real estate board. The more affordable condominiums are also facing growing demand and escalating costs, with sales up 20% and the average price up 13%, nearing half-a-million dollars. Hamilton-Burlington is already feeling the effects of the pent-up housing demand. Sales of all housing types rose to a record high for the month of October as listings dropped 3.2% and properties were snapped up within a month of listing. The average price of a freehold home increased 15% to C$540,250, still less than half the cost of a Toronto property.

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In a society of over a billion people who trade mostly in cash.

India Abolishes Larger Banknotes In Fight Against Graft, ‘Black Money’ (CNBC)

Consumers in the world’s biggest democracy just got a big surprise. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced that 500 and 1,000 rupee banknotes would be withdrawn from circulation at midnight, saying it was part of a crackdown on rampant corruption and counterfeit currency. India is hampered by so-called black money that is undeclared, untaxed or under the table, said Sasha Riser-Kositsky at research firm Eurasia Group. The unexpected step appears designed to bring billions of dollars worth of cash in unaccounted wealth into the mainstream economy, as well as hit the finances of Islamist militants who target India and are suspected of using fake 500 rupee notes to fund operations. “The move to restrict the circulation of large-denomination currency notes represents a major step in the government’s fight against black money,” Riser-Kositsky said.

Speaking in an address to the nation, Modi said that black money “and corruption are the biggest obstacles in eradicating poverty.” New 500 and 2,000 rupee denomination notes will be issued at a later date, he added. Those notes are worth roughly $7.53 and $30.14, respectively, but they represent very large-denomination bills in the country. The average daily income in India was 272.19 rupees in 2014, or about $4.09 at today’s conversion rate, according to the country’s Labor Bureau. “It shows resolve on the part of the government to do something about black money, which I like a lot,” a hedge fund investor who is active in India but requested anonymity told CNBC. The investor added, however, that “I do think there’s going to be a backlash. A lot of the economy is still cash-driven, and this will inconvenience a lot of people and transactions.”

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Yeah. Many years ago.

Spanish Philosopher Marina: ‘We Have Lost The Idea Of Europe’ (EurA)

Philosopher José Antonio Marina told EurActiv Spain that the idea of Europe has been lost and called on the EU to undertake a period of “quiet” reflection in order to relaunch a project imbued with “intellectual, political and economic vigour”. “The idea that we have about Europe has a direct impact,” which means that the European Union “needs to enter a much more reflective period in order to find solutions to problems that were unimaginable before”, warned philosopher José Antonio Marina. As an example, the Spaniard cited Brexit, and the issue of activating Article 50, which for an exclusive club only accustomed to enlargement has come as a shock. The EU’s doors are still open to new members of course.

Marina added that one of the EU’s major problems is that it has not spent enough time delving into one particular issue: sovereignty. The British, who “are very practical” and “have a clear idea of England, but not of Europe”, preferred to “regain their sovereignty, even if it makes them poorer”, insisted the Toledo-born thinker. “Sovereignty has always been a complicated issue,” he continued. “In Europe, this debate has been diluted, it has become tired and has not been carried out well,” Marina claimed, adding that this whole concept, as well as the concept of the nation, has to be rethought. However, he warned that regulatory system reforms have to be done carefully, because “they are tools that contain a lot of wisdom”.

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I agree with Scahill’s main topic, but cringe at seeing him fall for the “Trump’s bizarre and consistent lauding of Vladimir Putin” narrative.

The True Scandal Of 2016 Was The Torture Of Chelsea Manning (Scahill)

A few days ago, we learned that Private Chelsea Manning attempted to take her own life last month for the second time since being sentenced to 35 years at the U.S. military prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. The whistleblower, who provided the collateral murder video, the Iraq and Afghan war logs, and the hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. State Department cables to Wikileaks, was convicted of espionage. As I waited to vote today, I found myself thinking of her languishing in misery in isolation and incarceration. This election — particularly in its closing stages — has been dominated by controversies over emails, classified documents, and Wikileaks.

We’ve heard endlessly about Hillary Clinton’s private basement server, her 33,000 deleted emails, the phishing and leaking of John Podesta’s emails, including parts of Clinton’s much discussed private speeches to Goldman Sachs. Trump, for his part, suddenly discovered a great love for Julian Assange, though he does have trouble correctly spelling Wikileaks in his tweets of praise. Taken together with Trump’s bizarre and consistent lauding of Vladimir Putin and leaks from the U.S. intelligence community, the country has been treated to an odd flashback of Cold War propaganda, including a fair dose of red-baiting from the Democrats. In the matter of Anthony Weiner’s computer, his wife Huma Abedin’s communications and the potential implications for Clinton, the FBI, whose overreach had not previously been of much concern to Democrats, suddenly became a deviant manipulator of the electoral process, while Trump and his supporters alternately praised the agency’s professionalism and denounced it as part of the rigged system.

The U.S. public is now getting a taste of the way hacking, phishing, and an overwhelming dependence on fallible machines and networks can impact politics. But let’s be clear: None of the disclosures in this campaign — not one thing in any of the hacked emails or those declassified and released from Clinton’s private server — has brought to light anything of greater importance than the documents Chelsea Manning provided to Wikileaks. She revealed war crimes, including murder and torture, dirty and duplicitous dealings of the U.S. and its allies, exposed liars, documented a secret history of America’s longest running war, and forced a much needed debate about the U.S. role in the world. And for that, she is being tortured.

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Talk about a Trojan horse. More like a Trojan assclown. Maybe Trump can get rid of him.

Geoffrey Pyatt: Greece An Island Of Stability, Owes Its Success To EU (Kath.)

A week before a scheduled visit to Athens by US President Barack Obama, American Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt on Tuesday emphasized that Greece is an island of stability in a volatile region and that the country’s success is linked to the success of the European Union. Pyatt made his comments during a meeting with Parliament Speaker Nikos Voutsis. The two men’s talks focused on the political situation in their respective countries, the state of Greece’s economy and the refugee crisis. Pyatt also met with Deputy Prime Minister Yiannis Dragasakis for talks that focused on the meetings Obama is to have in Athens next week.

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Home Forums Debt Rattle November 9 2016

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  • #31272

    Javier Juén 2016 • Donald Trump Wins White House in Astonishing Victory (AP) • Global Markets Roiled as Trump Election Win Upends Forecasts (BBG) • Pu
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 9 2016]

    #31273
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    I was not unhappy it was not Clinton. I didn’t vote.
    As the Chinese say; may you live in interesting times (it was a curse).
    Well, we are definitely living in interesting times.
    As for the future? We’ll see (I’m not optimistic).

    #31274
    Dr. Diablo
    Participant

    The fantasy rolls ever on. Least astonishing non-upset ever: if you couldn’t tell 2 months ago, when Trump rallies were 40,000 and Hillary 4,000, and online views of their speeches were running 25:1, then I don’t know what to tell you. It reminds me of “The Big Short”, where the premise of the very movie is that “nobody could have seen it coming”, just this tiny handful of lucky, careful agitators. Meanwhile, TAE, HousingCollaspeBlog, FinancialSense, and a field of alt-media viewed by ten million eyes were on it from the day Greenspan lowered rates. Unintended consequences. Nobody saw it coming. Except the 10 million of us all screaming at the top of our lungs in the corner that this would be a national and banking catastrophe.

    They saw it coming. Everybody saw it coming. They were LYING. As they are lying now about it being an upset: it’s only an upset because they wouldn’t report the news.

    But the world rolls on and we have new challenges: hold the new government to the law; local, civil, criminal, security, and international law, same as the last 5 Presidents and the last 26 years, none of whom would. No rest for the weary.

    And to think all they had to do was run someone boring and less corrupt, but they couldn’t. The theft is now so big and the fraud and control so expensive that the smallest restraint in the stealing from the people would collapse the system. …Which will collapse anyway. Closing the Collapse Gap at last.

    #31275
    seychelles
    Participant

    Right on, Diablo.

    #31277
    TonyPrep
    Participant

    I wasn’t particularly surprised, nor particularly concerned. Two bad choices (since very few seem to consider other parties). However, I do note that Clinton won the popular vote, thus rendering the result undemocratic (if not everyone’s vote is equal, then it isn’t a democracy). Perhaps the US ought to fix that, since this is the second time it’s happened in 5 elections.

    #31278
    rapier
    Participant

    I’m sorry Diablo but ” hold the new government to the law” is just too funny. The rule of law is over now and it will be the rule of men who say they are the law when it isn’t just passing laws to allow them to do whatever it is they want, to you. The demise of ossified corrupt so called liberalism is not to be followed by something happy. I’ve been amazed the the entire alt economic world has been thrilled by Trump instead of saddened by the of the inevitable arrival of authoritarian parties and then soon enough states.

    Cue the Yeats, and this time it really truly fits.

    That graphic is a stupendous find IM.and hats off to the artist.

    #31281
    Nassim
    Participant

    “None of the disclosures in this campaign — not one thing in any of the hacked emails or those declassified and released from Clinton’s private server — has brought to light anything of greater importance than the documents Chelsea Manning provided to Wikileaks.”

    Absolutely. That is because these emails were provided semi-officially by people inside the US bureaucracy. Just imagine how there is not a single email incriminating Israel in any sort of scandal. Quite remarkable I would think.

    #31285
    Dr. Diablo
    Participant

    @Rapier, the key thing to understand about the American system is that the power lies in the PEOPLE. They are the government. They are the law. Therefore, so long as the people hold any desire to have a rule of law, it lives inside them. Because we sure know that desire isn’t inside government, or most of the men that occupy it, and mostly never has been. This tension goes far, far back, before the founding of the Republic, even before the American Revolution, and we’ll never be rid of it because all men struggle with healthy limits on their behavior vs the desire to be free.

    It’s no laughing matter to hold government to the rules. If the people don’t get up and do it, every day for 240 years, certainly nobody else will. But eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and if the people won’t do the vigilance, no one can help them. So I, we, aren’t asking pretty please. We’re going out and doing our duty.

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