Arnold Genthe 17th century Iglesia el Carmen, Antigua, Guatemala 1915
Trump volatility, sort of like an aftertaste of the Trump effect.
• Investors Are Bracing For A Massive Stock-Market Selloff (MW)
If options traders are correct, stocks are in for a wild ride in February. Demand for one-month call options tied to the CBOE Volatility Index, a popular gauge of stock-market volatility, has spiked in the past week, a sign that some are bracing for a sharp downturn following the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump. In that time, investors have purchased 250,000 VIX call options with a strike price at 21, and another 100,000 with the strike at 22, according to Brian Bier, head of sales and trading at Macro Risk Advisors, an options brokerage. The options cost roughly 49 cents per contract, Bier said. By comparison, the CBOE Volatility Index was at 11.16 in midday trading on Friday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 were on track to record modest daily gains. It would take a massive selloff to make these options profitable, Bier said.
Call options represent bets that the level or price of a given asset or index will rise during a given time—in this case, the period between Friday and Feb. 15, when these options expire. Investors frequently use VIX futures and options as a hedge against volatility. That way, if stocks tank, they can offset some of those losses with the profits from their options trades. “Even in the current low volatility environment, we’ve seen a lot of people still looking at the VIX as a hedge,” Bier said. Since the beginning of the year, stock-market volatility has been relatively subdued despite increasing uncertainty surrounding the future direction of fiscal and monetary policy in the U.S. The Daily Shot, a popular market newsletter, illustrates this divergence in the chart below.
The right thing to say.
• Trump Suggests He May Drop Russia Sanctions If Moscow ‘Is Helpful’ (G.)
Donald Trump has suggested he might drop sanctions against Russia and that the communist party rulers in Beijing needed to show good faith on currency and trade practices before he committed to a “One China” policy on Taiwan. In fresh signs that the US president-elect is prepared to reshape longstanding Washington foreign policy, he told the Wall Street Journal that he would keep sanctions against Russia in place “at least for a period of time”. But he added: “If you get along and if Russia is really helping us, why would anybody have sanctions if somebody’s doing some really great things?” Trump’s policy towards Russia is the subject of intense interest in Washington amid a Senate inquiry into allegations that the Kremlin ordered a hacking operation against the Democratic party to help the billionaire politician win the November election.
Trump – who has praised Vladimir Putin for being “very smart” – said he was willing to meet the Russian president in the months after he moves into the White House following his January 20 inauguration. “I understand that they would like to meet, and that’s absolutely fine with me,” he said. Controversy also surrounds the Trump administrations’s attitude towards China, with soon-to-be secretary of state Rex Tillerson warning Beijing this week that China would “not be allowed access” to its artificial islands in the South China Sea. Asked if he supported the “One China” policy on Taiwan that has underpinned US relations with Beijing for decades, Trump said: “Everything is under negotiation including ‘One China’,” the Journal reported.
Who could have predicted a year ago that the Democrats would fall in love with the CIA, and Tucker and Glenn Greenwald would become friends?
• Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald Discuss Deep State War Vs. Trump (ZPN)
Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who is not a fan of President-elect Trump, appeared on Tucker Carlson tonight to discuss the dangerous ongoing effort among powerful anti-Trump factions within the US Government’s “Deep State,” who have collaborated with members of the Democratic Party and the traditionally liberal media to inflict maximum damage on the incoming President. Recall Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s ominous “six ways from Sunday” comment from 10 days ago. Greenwald, an accomplished litigator, journalist, and author, does a masterful job illustrating the players, motives, and potential fallout from this dangerous effort within the US Government’s intelligence apparatus. Greenwald goes deep, discussing how Trump’s election ruined the plan for regime change in Syria, specifically mentioning, among other things, that the deep state was waiting for Obama to leave office before executing their plan:
“The number one foreign policy priority of the CIA over the last four to five years has been the proxy war they’re waging in Syria to remove Bashar Al Assad – and Hillary Clinton was quite critical of Obama for constraining them. She wanted to escalate that war to unleash the CIA, to impose a no-fly zone in Syria to confront Russia, whereas Trump took the exact opposite position. He said we have no business in Syria trying to change the government, we ought to let the Russia and Assad go free and killing ISIS and Al Quaeda and whoever else they want to kill. He [Trump] was a threat to the CIA’s primary institutional priority of regime change in Syria.
Beyond that, Clinton wanted a much more confrontational and belligerent posture towards Moscow, which the CIA has been acrimonious with for decades, whereas Trump wanted better relations. They viewed Trump as a threat to their institutional pre-eminence to their ability to get their agenda imposed on Washington. What you’re seeing is actually quite dangerous. There really is at this point obvious open warefare between this un-elected, but very powerful faction that resides in Washington and sees Presidents come and go – on the one hand, and the person that the American democracy elected to be elected on the other. There’s clearly extreme conflict and subversion taking place.”
[Fiat] CEO Sergio Marchionne called the allegations “unadulterated hogwash.”
I said when this broke in late 2015 that it was unpossible that VW’s competitors would not have known. Nobody had succeeded in making ‘clean’ engines’. Then VW claims it has. So the others go out, buy a VW car and take it completely apart, including software. They knew. Simple as that. And some will have used that knowledge.
• As VW Settles, Probes Open Into Fiat, Renault Emissions Test Cheating (BBG)
Pressure weighing on the global auto industry for more than a year finally appeared to ease on Wednesday as Volkswagen agreed to $4.3 billion in fines for cheating on emissions tests, largely putting the scandal to rest. Less than a day later, the outlook darkened again as Renault and Fiat Chrysler were hit with similar allegations of violating clean-air regulations. Paris prosecutors, who raided Renault a year ago in an initial emissions investigation, opened a probe into the automaker on Thursday. About the same time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency accused Fiat Chrysler of installing software in 104,000 Jeep Grand Cherokees and Ram 1500 pickups that allowed them to exceed pollution limits on the road. The Justice Department also is investigating Fiat Chrysler over its diesel emissions, according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported Friday.
Both companies denied using software like Volkswagen’s, which was designed to lower emissions to legal limits when it senses the car is being tested and then easing pollution controls on the road to improve performance. Nonetheless, the prospect of a fight with authorities sent shares of the two automakers tumbling. Fiat fell 16% on Thursday before clawing back some of those losses today after CEO Sergio Marchionne called the allegations “unadulterated hogwash.” Renault lost as much as 6% in Paris trading Friday morning, its sharpest drop since June, after word of the probe filtered out. The shares finished the day down 3.2%.
[..] “There will be many more probes,” said Matthias Holweg, a management professor at Oxford University’s Said Business School. “The scope for manipulation is very present for every car company.” Renault, whose biggest shareholder is the French government with a 20% stake, says it hasn’t received any official notification about the latest developments in the probe, which French prosecutors announced in a brief statement on Friday. The company insists its vehicles comply with French and European Union legislation and aren’t equipped with software to cheat on emissions.
There must be a lot of data on them then.
• Senior VW Managers Warned Not To Travel To US (R.)
Senior Volkswagen managers have been warned not to travel to the United States, legal and company sources told Reuters, after six current and former managers were indicted for their role in the German carmaker’s diesel test-cheating scheme. One of the six charged, Oliver Schmidt, was arrested at Miami International Airport on Saturday as he was about to fly home from holiday in Cuba. Schmidt, who is caught up in the “Dieselgate” investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, was ordered to be charged and held without bail on Thursday pending trial. Under the constitution, German citizens can be extradited only to other European Union countries or to an international court.
But leaving Germany at all could pose a risk of being extradited to the United States from a third country. “Several Volkswagen managers have been advised not to travel to the United States,” one legal adviser to Volkswagen said on condition of anonymity because the matter is confidential. A second legal adviser said this also applied to managers who had not yet been charged with any offense in the United States. “One doesn’t need to test the limits,” the adviser said. Schmidt was among those who had been warned by lawyers working for the company not to travel to the United States, one of the legal sources said.
I’m still hoping she takes a job with Trump. If only as an antidote to all the hysteria emanating from Washington.
Tulsi Gabbard has had a banner year. She resigned as vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, broke ranks with her colleagues in Hawaii’s congressional delegation by throwing her support to Bernie Sanders rather than Hillary Clinton, drew the largest applause at the Hawaii Democratic Party Convention, and entered the national spotlight by putting Sanders’ name in nomination at the Democratic National Convention in August. But Gabbard wasn’t done. Following Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the last half-century’s most vile campaign, she was invited to Trump Tower to meet with the president-elect. Worse in the eyes of some of the bluest of blue Democrats, she accepted the invitation. Gabbard offers no apologies, starting with the Trump meeting.
“He invited me to talk about Syria,” she says. “I’ve been focused on Syria for a long time. It’s a counterproductive regime-change war. “We had an hour-long, very substantive discussion about Syria and the Middle East. On some things we seemed to agree, on others we didn’t. I think the issue provides an opportunity for bipartisanship.” Nor does Gabbard have second thoughts about her support for Sanders. “I don’t make decisions based on political expediency,” she insists. “I supported him because of his positions on the issues, particularly on foreign policy. He opposed destructive regime-change wars, like Iraq and Syria. He called for Wall Street reform, reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act. I thought he was right on trade, opposing the Pacific Partnership that, like NAFTA, undermines our sovereignty.”
Nor to those who feel that, as a woman, she should have been supporting Clinton: “I’m offended that I must think with my gender regarding the candidacy of Hillary Clinton for president. I’m interested in the issues.” For Gabbard, a major in the Hawaii National Guard and veteran of two deployments to the Middle East, “issues of war and peace can’t be dealt with like other issues. I’ve seen firsthand the cost of war, the deaths of fellow soldiers — the billions of dollars spent on regime-change wars that could have been used for our own domestic needs. “That’s why I supported Bernie Sanders. That’s why I took the meeting with Trump. I wanted to share my views on these subjects, to get to him before the neoconservative voices get behind another regime-change war.”
Some things in life are inevitable.
• Generate Your Own Personalized Insulting Trump Tweets (TG)
Have Trump insult your friends!
The Turkish lira is getting hammered. Erdogan needs scapegoats.
• Deutsche Bank Rejects Claims of ‘Economic Terror’ in Turkey (BBG)
Deutsche Bank’s Turkish unit rejected claims by a pro-government newspaper that it’s plotting to undermine the economy, and said it’s “unacceptable” for the lender’s name to be associated with terrorism. The daily Yeni Safak on Thursday reported that Deutsche Bank and other German institutions were attempting “economic terror” against Turkey by recalling loans to companies before their their due dates. It didn’t identify the debtors or the other German institutions. “Claims in the story about calling loans before their maturity and conducting operations in coordination with other institutions are totally groundless,” the lender’s Istanbul-based business said in an e-mailed statement Friday. Deutsche Bank hadn’t been approached for comment before the publication of the article, it said.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his aides often invoke a conspiracy against Turkey by outside powers when the lira declines, saying other nations are jealous of the country’s economic growth under his leadership. On Thursday, Erdogan accused Turkey’s enemies of speculating in the lira and called on Turks to “thwart these games” by selling their holdings in other currencies. Deutsche Bank, which has been in Turkey since 1987, employs 143 people at its Turkish unit, which posted net income of 72.5 million lira ($19.2 million) at the end of 2015, according to its annual report. It’s not the first time that Deutsche Bank has attracted the fury of the Turkish press. In January 2014, the German lender denied local reports that it deliberately drove down shares of a Turkish state-run lender that had been implicated in a corruption scandal.
Deutsche Bank said most of the shares it processed in that episode were owned by its clients, and it wasn’t trading sufficient volumes to affect the company’s share price. More recently, the Frankfurt-based institution figured in a different way in government rhetoric. At the height of the bank’s share slide and capital concerns last September, Yigit Bulut, a chief adviser to Erdogan, said Turkey should consider buying Deutsche Bank. “Some very good companies in the EU are going to fall into trouble and we need to be ready to buy a controlling stake in them,” Bulut wrote on Twitter. “Wouldn’t you be happy to make Germany’s biggest bank into a Turkish Bank!!”
How to make friends with Erdogan. Politicians can still overrule this, but that’s a slippery slope.
• Greek Supreme Court Rules Against Extradition of Turkish Officers (GR)
Supreme Court prosecutor Nikos Pantelis on Friday suggested that the remaining four Turkish army officers who sought asylum in Greece should not be extradited to Turkey. The four Turkish military men are part of a group of eight who fled to Greece after the July 15 failed coup attempt in the neighboring country and request asylum. Earlier in the week, the Supreme Court also ruled against the extradition of the other four. Nikos Pantelis cited the risk of torture and the prospect of an unfair trial in Turkey as the key reasons behind his recommendation that Greek authorities refuse Ankara’s extradition request. Earlier this week, in two separate sessions at the Supreme Court, two other prosecutors also opposed extradition for the other four men, citing the same concerns.
Question: what is the UNCHR doing to help? Who got paid to winterize the camps but didn’t deliver?
• UNCHR Calls On Greece To Fix ‘Dire’ Situation For Migrants (Kath.)
Governments along the Western Balkan route into the European Union must do more to help migrants and refugees who are dying in the cold winter weather rather than just violently push them back from the border, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Friday, adding that the “situation in Greece is dire.” “Children are particularly prone to respiratory illnesses at a time like this,” said UNICEF spokesperson Sarah Crowe at a UN briefing in Geneva, while the UNHCR called for the transfer of some 1,000 people, including children, who are living outdoors in tents with no heating on the island of Samos to shelters on the Greek mainland.
Meanwhile, locals on the island of Lesvos are reportedly dismayed by the presence of the Lesvos, a navy vessel which has become a temporary shelter for just 40 asylum seekers. In a letter to Migration Policy Minister Yiannis Mouzalas, the island’s mayor, Spyros Galinos, called for the transfer of a sizable number of asylum seekers from camps on Lesvos in order to “finally decongest the island.” Galinos accused Mouzalas of transforming the port into a reception center and slammed what he described as the minister’s failed policies which have had “tragic consequences for the island.” Despite the presence of the vessel, migrants at the Moria camp are refusing to move there as they prefer to remain close to the nearby Asylum Service to get information and updates on their applications.
The deaths of 5-6 human beings have been, let’s say, underreported so far. Wonder why.
• Refugees, Migrants Dying Of Cold, ‘Dire’ Situation In Greece (R.)
Refugees and migrants are dying in Europe’s cold snap and governments must do more to help them rather than pushing them back from borders and subjecting them to violence, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday. “Children are particularly prone to respiratory illnesses at a time like this. It’s about saving lives, not about red tape and keeping to bureaucratic arrangements,” Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF told a U.N. briefing in Geneva. “The dire situation right now is Greece.” UNHCR spokeswoman Cecile Pouilly cited five deaths so far from cold and said about 1,000 people including children were in unheated tents and dormitories on the Greek island of Samos, calling for them to be transferred to shelter on the mainland.
Hundreds of others had been moved to better accommodation on the islands of Lesbos and Chios in the past few days. In Serbia, about 80% of the 7,300 refugees, asylum seekers and migrants are staying in heated government shelters, but 1,200 men were sleeping rough in informal sites in Belgrade. The bodies of two Iraqi men and a young Somali woman were found close to the Turkish border in Bulgaria and two Somali teenagers were hospitalized with frostbite after five days in a forest, Pouilly said. The body of a young Pakistani man was found along the same border in late December. A 20-year-old Afghan man died after crossing the Evros River on the Greece-Turkey land border at night when temperatures were below -10 degrees Celsius.
The body of a young Pakistani man was found on the Turkish side of the border with Bulgaria. “Given the harsh winter conditions, we are particularly concerned by reports that authorities in all countries along the Western Balkans route continue to push back refugees and migrants from inside their territory to neighboring countries,” Pouilly said. Some refugees and migrants said police subjected them to violence and many said their phones were confiscated or destroyed, preventing them from calling for help, she said. “Some even reported items of clothing being confiscated thus further exposing them to the harsh winter conditions,” she said. “These practices are simply unacceptable and must be stopped.”
“This is not some future, fantasized armageddon threat..”
• Woman Dies From Superbug Resistant To All Available Antibiotics In US (CBS)
A Nevada woman has died from an infection resistant to all available antibiotics in the United States, public health officials report. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the woman’s condition was deemed incurable after being tested against 26 different antibiotics. Though this isn’t the first case of pan-resistant bacteria in the U.S., at this time it is still uncommon. Still, experts note that antibiotic resistance is a growing health concern globally and call the newly reported case “a wake up call.” “This is the latest reminder that yes, antibiotic resistance is real,” Dr. James Johnson, a professor specializing in infectious diseases at the University of Minnesota Medical School, told CBS News. “This is not some future, fantasized armageddon threat that maybe will happen after our lifetime. This is now, it’s real, and it’s here.”
According to the report, the woman from Washoe County was in her 70s and had recently returned to America after an extended trip to India. She had been hospitalized there several times before being admitted to an acute care hospital in Nevada in mid-August. Doctors discovered the woman was infected with carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which is a family of germs that CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden has called “nightmare bacteria” due to the danger it poses for spreading antibiotic resistance. The woman had a specific type of CRE, called Klebsiella pneumoniae, which can lead to a number of illnesses, including pneumonia, blood stream infections, and meningitis. In early September, she developed septic shock and died. The authors of the report highlight the need for doctors and hospitals to ask incoming patients about recent travel and if they have been hospitalized elsewhere.
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