DPC Gillender Building, corner of Nassau and Wall Streets, built 1897, wrecked 1910 1900
Stockman won’t let go.
• Why Trump Won’t Cut Taxes (Stockman)
[..] even the money printers have made it clear in no uncertain terms that they are done for this cycle, anyway, and that they will be belatedly but consistently raising interest rates for what ought to be a truly scary reason. That is, the denizens of the Eccles Building have finally realized that they have not outlawed the business cycle after all and need to raise rates toward 2-3% so that they have headroom to “cut” the next time the economy slides into the ditch. In effect, the Fed is saying to Wall Street: “Price in” a recession because we are! After all, our monetary central planners are not reluctantly allowing interest rates to lift off the zero bound because they have become converts to the cause of honest price discovery – nor are they fixing to liberate money rates, debt yields, and the prices of stocks and other financial assets to clear on the free market.
Instead, they are merely storing up monetary ammo for the next downturn. But the Wall Street mules keep buying the dips anyway because they are under the preposterous delusion that one source of “stimulus” is just as good as the next. And since the gamblers have now decreed that the “stimulus” baton be handed off to fiscal policy, it only remains for Congress and the White House to shape up and get the job done with all deliberate speed. But they won’t. Not in a million years. The massive Trump tax cut and infrastructure stimulus is DOA because Uncle Sam is broke and the U.S. economy has slithered into moribund old age.
In that context, it’s not remotely the same as the 12 members of the FOMC sitting behind closed doors for two days jawing about the short-term economic weather; and then at the conclusion of their gabfest, ordering the New York Fed’s open market desk to flood the canyons of Wall Street with cash by buying another $80 billion of bonds with digital credits conjured from thin air. Au contraire. Fiscal policy is inherently an exercise in herding cats and an especially impossible one when the cupboards are bare. [..] what lies directly ahead, therefore, is another bumbling attempt by the White House and Congressional Republicans to hammer out an FY 2018 budget resolution and what amounts to a 10-year fiscal plan. And it is there where the whole fantasy of the Trump Stimulus comes a cropper. There are not remotely 218 GOP votes for what would be a $12 -13 trillion add to the national debt with the Trump Stimulus program over the next decade – even with all the “dynamic” scoring and revenue “reflows” that are imaginable.
How the sytem works (and then doesn’t): “..workers take on debt that fuels the profits of the corporates that dominate the consumer supply chains. However this rise in corporate profits has not been recycled back into the real economy via workers wages. There will come a point where the workers can no longer take on more debt. When this happens consumer demand will fall, wages will fall and unemployment will rise.”
John Maynard Keynes said that, a fall in bank lending leads to a fall in consumer demand creating recession. He was right, a fall in bank lending does create a fall in consumer demand, it also creates recession and in extreme cases can cause a complete meltdown of the entire economy as in 2008. So the question is, why does bank lending fall? A rise in interest rates can make new borrowing too expensive, it can also lead to existing borrowers defaulting on their loans. This was the catalyst for the 2007 subprime crash in the United States. The graph below shows that US interest rates went from 1% to 5% in the run up to the subprime crash.
Interest rate rises can accelerate a fall in borrowing and a fall in demand, but interest rate rises are not the cause of these falls. Borrowing would eventually, slowly fall over time even if interest rates had remained low. Most of us are now aware that banks create new deposits when they loan, they don’t lend other peoples deposits. How they do it is not important, accepting that they do, is fundamental to understanding the problem. See graph.
The bank creation of money via lending and debt is nothing new, what has changed is the amount of money creation and the ability to recycle this new money back to the debtors. The large increase in debt over the last 30 to 40 years has funded a massive increase in consumerism, consumerism is no longer constrained by wages but rather by how much debt people can accumulate. The graph below shows the result.
Basically we have a trickle up effect, workers take on debt that fuels the profits of the corporates that dominate the consumer supply chains. However this rise in corporate profits has not been recycled back into the real economy via workers wages. There will come a point where the workers can no longer take on more debt. When this happens consumer demand will fall, wages will fall and unemployment will rise. Existing loans made by workers will fall into default, creating another banking crisis. If the banks are not saved by government or central bank intervention the credit created by the banks will become worthless. So, it is in the interests of the wealthy elite to protect the banking system whatever the cost to the rest of society. In the end the wealthy elite will themselves, destroy the financial system by taking so much of it that demand collapses.
Well, it’s true they were the only ones to go to jail…
• Iceland’s Jailed Bankers Say They Were Scapegoats For Financial Crisis (AFP)
Once reviled symbols of rogue capitalism, Iceland’s ex-bankers now say they were scapegoats: jailed for their roles in the 2008 financial crisis, they’re taking their cases to the European Court of Human Rights. In 2008, after Iceland’s inflated financial system imploded, the three main banks Kaupthing, Glitnir, and Landsbanki collapsed. The government urgently nationalised them, then asked the IMF for an emergency bailout, a first for a western European country in 25 years. The crisis brought to light the bankers’ questionable practices, often involving artificially inflating the value of the banks’ assets by providing cheap loans to shareholders to buy even more shares in the bank. Without realising it, thousands of Icelanders had thus placed their life savings in a house of cards.
Since then, dozens of so-called “banksters” have been convicted, about 20 of them to prison, for manipulating the market. Some of them now claim they didn’t get fair trials, and have turned to the European Court of Human Rights. Sentenced by an Icelandic appeals court to four years in prison, Sigurdur Einarsson, the former chairman of the board of Kaupthing, spent one year behind bars before being released. He is critical of what he dubs Iceland’s “scapegoat” justice system, which he claims turned a blind eye to unlawful proceedings during his trial. “Some of the judges were partial … because they had lost a lot of money during the economic crisis,” Einarsson told AFP. “This was not a just and fair trial. (This is) very important because Iceland praises itself for being a Western democratic country, and one of the key issues for that is having fair trials for everyone.”
Good topic for Parry to delve into.
• Blaming Russia for Everything (Robert Parry)
When Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign fails seemingly because he was a wet-behind-the-ears candidate who performed like a robot during debates repeating the same talking points over and over, you might have cited those shortcomings to explain why “Little Marco” flamed out. However, if you did, that would make you a Russian “useful idiot”! The “real” reason for his failure, as we learned from Thursday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, was Russia! When Americans turned against President Obama’s Pacific trade deals, you might have thought that it was because people across the country had grown sick and tired of these neoliberal agreements that have left large swaths of the country deindustrialized and former blue-collar workers turning to opioids and alcohol. But if you did think that, that would mean you are a dupe of the clever Russkies, as ex-British spy Christopher Steele made clear in one of his “oppo” research reports against Donald Trump.
As Steele’s dossier explained, the rejection of Obama’s TPP and TTIP trade deals resulted from Russian propaganda! When Hillary Clinton boots a presidential election that was literally hers to lose, you might have thought that she lost because she insisted on channeling her State Department emails through a private server that endangered national security; that she gave paid speeches to Wall Street and tried to hide the contents from the voters; that she called half of Donald Trump’s supporters “deplorables”; that she was a widely disliked establishment candidate in an anti-establishment year; that she was shoved down the throats of progressive Democrats by a Democratic Party hierarchy that made her nomination “inevitable” via the undemocratic use of unelected “super-delegates”; that some of her State Department emails were found on the laptop of suspected sex offender Anthony Weiner (the husband of Clinton’s close aide Huma Abedin); and that the laptop discovery caused FBI Director James Comey to briefly reopen the investigation of Clinton’s private email server in the last days of the campaign.
You might even recall that Clinton herself blamed her late collapse in the polls on Comey’s announcement, as did other liberal luminaries such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. But if you thought those thoughts or remembered those memories, that is just more proof that you are a “Russian mole”! As we all should know in our properly restructured memory banks and our rearranged sense of reality, it was all Russia’s fault! Russia did it by undermining our democratic process through the clever means of releasing truthful information via WikiLeaks that provided evidence of how the Democratic National Committee rigged the nomination process against Sen. Bernie Sanders, revealed the contents of Clinton’s hidden Wall Street speeches, and exposed pay-to-play features of the Clinton Foundation in its dealings with foreign entities.
Weird games. That’s Brussels for you.
• EU Offers Spain Veto Right Over Gibraltar After Brexit Talks (R.)
The European Union on Friday offered Spain a right of veto over the future relationship between Gibraltar and the EU after Britain leaves the bloc, a move that could smooth Brexit talks but also dash Gibraltar’s hopes of winning a special status. The future of Gibraltar, a rocky British enclave on Spain’s southern tip, is set to be a major point of contention in the exit talks along with issues relating to Britain’s access to the EU’s single market or the future rights of EU citizens in the U.K. and of Britons living in Europe. Rows between Spain and Britain over Gibraltar have held up entire EU deals in the past – including current legislation governing air travel – and Brussels is keen to avoid a new bilateral dispute getting in the way of an orderly Brexit.
“This seems intended to give Spain something so they don’t try to hold the whole withdrawal treaty hostage over it,” one senior EU diplomat said in Brussels. According to the EU’s draft joint position on the exit talks, which the remaining members are due to approve on April 29, “after the United Kingdom leaves the Union, no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without the agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom.” In essence, it offers Madrid a special share of power over Gibraltar’s fate, but only once the territory is no longer an internal EU problem. A spokesman for the Spanish government said Madrid was satisfied with the decision.
“It is what we wanted and what we have said from the beginning… The recognition by the European Union of the legal and political situation that Spain has defended fully satisfies us,” Inigo Mendez de Vigo told a news conference following the weekly cabinet meeting. The Government of Gibraltar issued a statement on Friday evening saying that the draft suggested Spain was trying to get away with mortgaging the future relationship between the EU and Gibraltar. “This is a disgraceful attempt by Spain to manipulate the European Council for its own, narrow, political interests (…) a clear manifestation of the predictably predatory attitude that we anticipated Spain would seek to abusively impose on its partners,” the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, said in an e-mailed statement.
And you should wish to be part of a Union that does such things? I don’t get that. What is that, Stockholm Syndrome?
• The European Union Lays Out A Greek Trap For The United Kingdom (Coppola)
Following the UK’s formal resignation on Wednesday March 29th 2017, the European Union has now laid out its approach to negotiating the United Kingdom’s exit from the bloc. At first glance, the draft negotiation guidelines appear friendly and reasonable. But don’t be fooled. They contain a trap with which followers of the Greek bailout negotiations should be all too familiar. At this point, Brexit supporters will no doubt scream “The UK is not like Greece!”. Of course it isn’t. It is one of the largest economies in Europe, and its departure will leave a gaping wound in the EU which will take some time to heal. A smooth, orderly exit is in everyone’s interests, to minimize damage on both sides and promote healing. And this is what both the UK and the EU say they want. So why do I say there is a trap?
The essence of the Greek negotiations is that the debt relief that Greece so desperately needs is conditional on Greece meeting all the EU creditors’ conditions, in full. The EU will not even discuss debt relief until sufficient progress has been made on everything else. Every time Greece draws nearer to debt relief it is snatched away, either by adding new conditions or by finding reasons to doubt that conditions have really been met. Of course, the UK is not looking for debt relief. It is after another prize. Theresa May’s letter outlined what the UK wants “Agreeing a high-level approach to the issues arising from our withdrawal will of course be an early priority. But we also propose a bold and ambitious Free Trade Agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union. This should be of greater scope and ambition than any such agreement before it so that it covers sectors crucial to our linked economies such as financial services and network industries.”
Wonderful. Not only does the UK want a free trade agreement to be agreed before it leaves the bloc, it apparently wants that agreement to give it better terms than any trade agreement the EU has with any other country. I don’t know who constructed this flight of fancy, but it has about as much chance of seeing the light of day as a bottom-feeder in the Marianas Trench.
“Request a Norway-like agreement for an interim period – something that they cannot refuse..”
• Theresa May May Have Miscalculated (Varoufakis)
Prime Minister May is keen to avoid a defeat at the hands of EU negotiators determined to do to the UK that which they did to Greece in 2015. Correctly, she has set out to arm herself with a credible threat. The problem is that she may have miscalculated her optimal strategy. By making a hard Brexit the default of the negotiations’ process, Mrs May has secured its credibility. However, a credible threat can still produce an undesirable outcome. London’s greatest miscalculation would be to assume that the EU’s negotiators are committed to the bloc’s economic interests. Whilst negotiating Greece’s debt to the EU with them, I realised in horror that they cared very little about getting their money back and a great deal more about shoring up their relative positions in the games they play with one another – even if this sacrificed large economic gains. Mrs May will encounter this mindset soon in Berlin, Brussels and Paris.
If my experiences are anything to go by, a frustrating two years await British negotiators. They are faced with the EU’s favourite tactics: The EU Run-Around (as Brussels refers them to Berlin and vice versa), the Swedish National Anthem Routine (the feeling that whether you have outlined a sensible proposal or sung Sweden’s national anthem they react the same way), the All-Or-Nothing Ruse (refusing to discuss any issue unless all issues are simultaneously discussed) and the Blame Game (censuring you for THEIR recalcitrance). Nothing good, for Britain or for the EU, will come out of this process. It is why I recommend a strategy that robs Brussels of all room to manoeuvre. That is: Request a Norway-like agreement for an interim period – something that they cannot refuse – and empower the next UK parliament to design and pursue Britain’s long-term relationship with the EU.
“Observers fear that Turkey could take other countries along with it. The country holds $270 billion of debt with international banks, with $87 billion of that total in Spain, $42 billion in France and $15 billion in Germany.”
• The Demise of the Anatolian Tiger – Turkey on Verge of Bankruptcy (Spiegel)
[..] the aftermath of the coup attempt — the mass arrests of opposition activists and the confiscation of companies – has scared investors off. The rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s have slashed Turkey’s credit rating to junk status and foreign investment plunged by over 40% last year. Yigit says that he can hardly find anyone anymore who is interested in doing business in Turkey. “The risk is simply too high for investors,” he says. Meanwhile, clients who have been economically involved in the country for years are now pulling their money out. The capital flight has triggered a downward spiral that has been particularly noticeable in the construction industry.
Turkey’s high growth rates in recent years were fueled primarily by infrastructure projects, with Erdogan pouring money into the construction of highways, hospitals and airports. Now, though, there is insufficient foreign capital available and growth is stagnating. Furthermore, political instability has led to a steep drop in tourism revenues, with a plunge of roughly one-third last year. There are hundreds of hotels up for sale on the Turkish Riviera, on the country’s southwest coast, and some 600 of 2,000 shops in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar have been forced to close since last summer, according to the bazaar’s merchant association. Turkish Airlines has taken 30 planes out of service.
The consequences of the struggling economy can be seen in day-to-day life: Companies have been forced to lay off workers and cut salaries; people have less money. Domestic consumption, which made up 60% of the country’s GDP last year, has shrunk. At the same time, the Turkish currency, the lira, has rapidly lost value and inflation stands at 10%. “We are heading toward the worst-case scenario: economic stagnation combined with persistent inflation,” says Istanbul-based economic writer Mustafa Sönmez. “Turkey is on the verge of bankruptcy.” Observers fear that Turkey could take other countries along with it. The country holds $270 billion of debt with international banks, with $87 billion of that total in Spain, $42 billion in France and $15 billion in Germany. Should the country default or partially default, Sönmez believes, it could trigger another financial crisis in Europe.
Turkey’s army has gotten even weaker after Erdogan fired tens of thousands, among them many officers.
• The Pentagon Doesn’t Want Turkey’s Help In Syria (WE)
Like a marriage held together for the sake of the kids, the U.S. and Turkey keep saying nice things in public, while privately fuming and slowly drifting apart. The growing rift between the two countries stems from the intractable dispute over the U.S. plan to liberate Raqqa with a loose coalition of Syrian fighters comprising roughly 40% Kurdish YPG militia members, who Turkey considers terrorists. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has offered his military to drive the Islamic State out of its self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa, if only the U.S. will quit the Kurds. Turkey regards the Kurdish Popular Protection Units, or YPG, as an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK, which has been declared a terrorist group by both Turkey and the U.S. But the Pentagon says the Kurds have proven to be the most battle-hardened and combat-effective force fighting ISIS in Syria, and it has no plans to abandon them now.
Publicly the U.S. says it’s still working with its NATO ally Turkey to find a role for it in the upcoming Raqqa offensive, but here’s the unspoken truth: The U.S. has also judged that the Turkish military is not up to the task, based on its performance in northern Syria. On Aug. 24, Turkey launched “Operation Euphrates Shield,” sending tank and troops into Syria with the stated objective of pushing ISIS back 60 miles from its shared border, and the unstated goal of keeping Kurdish forces from controlling an unbroken swath of land stretching back into Iraq. This past week, Turkey declared Euphrates Shield a success and ended the mission, a move Pentagon sources say was in fact largely because the U.S., Russia and Syria stymied the Turkish offensive from any further gains. The Turks did take the northern Syrian towns of Jarablus, Dabiq and al-Bab from ISIS, but their plan to move against the Kurds in Manbij was foiled when the U.S. positioned Army Rangers just outside the city and declared Manbij was in no further need of liberation.
And the Turkish forces had also suffered heavy losses in the fight against ISIS in al-Bab, or as one Pentagon official put it, “They got their asses kicked.” Meanwhile, Syrian and Russian forces have advanced across the Turkish forces’ southern flank in Syria, effectively blocking any movement south to Raqqa. Essentially hemmed in with nowhere to go, the Turkish forces called it a day and declared mission accomplished. Several Pentagon officials, who talked the Washington Examiner on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss war planning publicly, said the major U.S. takeaway is that Turkish troops lack the training, logistics and weaponry to successfully launch the siege of a fortified and well-defended city. Consider that across the border in Iraq, 100,000 Iraqi troops have all they can handle trying to finish off fewer than 1,000 ISIS fighters in west Mosul.
Yeah, we’re so smart.
• Salmon Farming In Crisis: ‘A Chemical Arms Race In The Seas’ (G.)
Every day, salmon farmers across the world walk into steel cages – in the seas off Scotland or Norway or Iceland – and throw in food. Lots of food; they must feed tens of thousands of fish before the day is over. They must also check if there are problems, and there is one particular problem they are coming across more and more often. Six months ago, I met one of these salmon farmers, on the Isle of Skye. He looked at me and held out a palm – in it was a small, ugly-looking creature, all articulated shell and tentacles: a sea louse. He could crush it between his fingers, but said he was impressed that this parasite, which lives by attaching itself to a fish and eating its blood and skin, was threatening not just his own job, but could potentially wipe out a global multibillion-dollar industry that feeds millions of people.
“For a wee creature, it is impressive. But what can we do?” he asks. “Sometimes it seems nature is against us and we are fighting a losing battle. They are everywhere now, and just a few can kill a fish. When I started in fish farming 30 years ago, there were barely any. Now they are causing great problems.” Lepeophtheirus salmonis, or the common salmon louse, now infests nearly half of Scotland’s salmon farms. Last year lice killed thousands of tonnes of farmed fish, caused skin lesions and secondary infections in millions more, and cost the Scottish industry alone around £300m in trying to control them. Scotland has some of the worst lice infestations in the world, and last year saw production fall for the first time in years.
But in the past few weeks it has become clear that the lice problem is growing worldwide and is far more resistant than the industry thought. Norway produced 60,000 tonnes less than expected last year because of lice, and Canada and a dozen other countries were all hit badly. Together, it is estimated that companies across the world must spend more than £1bn a year on trying to eradicate lice, and the viruses and diseases they bring. As a result of the lice infestations, the global price of salmon has soared, and world production fallen. Earlier this year freedom of information [FoI] requests of the Scottish government showed that 45 lochs had been badly polluted by the antibiotics and pesticides used to control lice – and that more and more toxic chemicals were being used.
You can’t let children pay the price.
• Italy Praised For Giving Lone Child Refugees Legal Protection (Week)
Italy has become Europe’s first country to pass a law giving comprehensive protection to lone child migrants. Known as the Zampa law, the legislation sets minimum standards of care, such as reducing the time children can be kept in migrant reception centres, guaranteeing access to healthcare and setting a ten-day window for authorities to confirm their identities. It also prohibits turning unaccompanied and separated children away at the border or if it could cause them harm, AP reports. Unicef, the UN’s children agency praised the move and said it was the first of its kind in Europe. Afshan Khan, Unicef’s special coordinator for the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe, said: “While across Europe we have seen fences going up, children detained and pledges unmet, the Italian parliamentarians have shown their compassion and duty to young refugees and migrants.
“This new law serves not only to give refugee and migrant children a sense of predictability in their uncertain lives after risking so much to get to Europe, it serves as a model for how other European countries could put in place a legislative framework that supports protection.” The number of unaccompanied child migrants arriving in Italy is believed to still be on the increase, says the charity. In 2016, around 26,000 children arrived in the country without their families, the majority crossing the Mediterranean in unsafe boats from North Africa. In the first two months of 2017, 2,000 arrived, the majority aged between 14 and 17. Italy’s move is in stark contrast to the UK, where MPs earlier this month chose not to continue a scheme to accept more lone child refugees from Europe.
Just lovely.
• Europe Keeps Its Rescue Ships Far From Where Refugees Drown (I’Cept)
An average of 3,500 people have died each year while trying to make the journey to Italy from North Africa since 2014. Their vessels are overcrowded, unseaworthy, and have a near-nothing chance of making it to Europe. Most of the boats sink just 20 to 40 miles from the Libyan coast. These are preventable deaths. Since 2014, the European Union has deliberately chosen to keep their coast guard patrol boats far from where the shipwrecks happen, a decision detailed in an internal letter obtained by The Intercept and other leaked documents. Saving more lives, the logic goes, will only encourage more refugees to come. The result is that rescue boats are kept away from where rescues are actually needed.
The Italian navy used to run patrols near the Libyan coast. Their operation, called Mare Nostrum – “our sea” in Latin – involved a large mobilization of ships, planes, and helicopters in international waters close to Libya, where boats carrying refugees regularly capsized and sank. Mare Nostrum was enormously successful — in the year it ran, it saved over 150,000 people. Still, on October 31, 2014, Italy announced it would phase out the program. The following day, Frontex, the European Union’s border agency, took over with an operation called Triton. In a press release at the time, Frontex said its operation followed in the wake of Mare Nostrum and was intended to support the Italian authorities. There was one key difference from Mare Nostrum, however: Frontex would limit its patrols to just 30 miles off Italy’s coast, which was about 130 miles from Libya — at least a 12-hour sail. Frontex was deliberately not patrolling the area where most of the shipwrecks occurred.
What’s more, according to an internal letter obtained by The Intercept, the director of operations at Frontex privately told Italian authorities that his ships should not be called on to immediately respond to distress calls from outside their 30-mile patrol area. “Frontex is concerned about the engagement of Frontex deployed assets in the activities happening significantly outside the operational area,” Frontex’s director, Klaus Roesler, wrote to the head of Italy’s Immigration and Border Police, Giovanni Pinto, on November 25, 2014. The letter has been referenced in Italian newspapers and released with redactions that covered detailed descriptions of how Frontex coordinated its assistance with rescue efforts. The Intercept is publishing the letter in full for the first time.
Like any other vessels at sea, Frontex ships are obligated under maritime law to respond to distress calls when ordered by the relevant national authorities. For the Italians, an overloaded boat with an untrained captain was a distress situation by default. Typically, someone calls the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center in Rome by satellite phone from a boat or from the Libyan coast, and Italy initiates search and rescue. But for Frontex, at the time, that was not enough proof. [..] Frontex knew it had to respond to emergency calls. But it was deliberately patrolling in the wrong area and quibbling with definitions of distress, meaning that its ships would almost certainly arrive late, if at all.
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