Jul 162018
 
 July 16, 2018  Posted by at 7:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


René Magritte The human condition 1935

 

Trump Cautious Ahead Of Putin Summit (BBC)
Kremlin Takes Trump To Task Over His Gas Pipeline Comments (R.)
Trump Calls European Union A ‘Foe’ – Ahead Of Russia And China (G.)
Xi’s Overly-Ambitious Goals Triggered US-China Trade War (Nikkei)
The Global Reset Will Come Like A Thief In The Night (von Greyerz)
Theresa May’s Grand Plan Has Left Her Stranded In No Woman’s Land (G.)
Theresa May Faces Rebellion From Brexit Hardliners In Customs Bill Vote (G.)
Glut Of Property Hits UK Housing Market In July (R.)
EU Urges Big Powers To Prevent Trade ‘Conflict And Chaos’ (AFP)
At Last, A Law That Could Have Stopped Blair And Bush Invading Iraq (G.)

 

 

Despite all the attempts to frustrate the meeting, it looks like it will take place. Good.

Trump Cautious Ahead Of Putin Summit (BBC)

US President Donald Trump will meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin later on Monday, ending a tumultuous European tour in which he criticised his allies. Mr Trump said he had “low expectations” ahead of the talks in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, but added that “maybe some good” would come of them. The summit comes after 12 Russians were charged with hacking in the 2016 US elections. Mr Trump says he will raise the issue, but there is no formal agenda. The two leaders will meet one-on-one, and will be joined only by their interpreters. It is the first-ever summit between Mr Putin and Mr Trump – although they have previously met on the sidelines of multilateral talks.

There have been calls in the US for Mr Trump to cancel the meeting altogether over the indictments of Russian military intelligence agents, announced on Friday. Russia denies the allegations, and says it is looking forward to the talks as a vehicle for improving relations. US National Security Adviser John Bolton has said both sides have agreed the meeting will have no set agenda. But he said he found it “hard to believe” Mr Putin did not know about the alleged election hacking and the subject would be mentioned. “That’s what one of the purposes of this meeting is, so the president can see eye to eye with President Putin and ask him about it,” he told ABC News.

Read more …

Nordstream 2 will be built.

Kremlin Takes Trump To Task Over His Gas Pipeline Comments (R.)

U.S. President Donald Trump’s criticism of Russia’s Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline to Europe is an egregious example of unscrupulous competition and it worries Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying on Monday. Speaking shortly before Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin sit down together for a summit in the Finnish capital, Peskov also said discussions between the two on Syria would be difficult because of the U.S. stance on Iran, Russia’s ally and a major player in the Syrian conflict. Russia’s RIA news agency quoted Peskov as saying he hoped the Helsinki talks would represent some kind of step away from the current crisis in U.S.-Russian relations.

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On trade.

Trump Calls European Union A ‘Foe’ – Ahead Of Russia And China (G.)

Donald Trump described the European Union one of his greatest “foes” in another extraordinary diplomatic intervention on Sunday, just hours before sitting down to a high-stakes summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Asked in a TV interview to name his “biggest foe globally right now”, the US president started by naming the European Union, calling the body “very difficult” before ticking off other traditional rivals like Russia and China. Hours earlier, British prime minister Theresa May revealed that Trump suggested she “sue the EU” rather than go into negotiations over Brexit. “Well I think we have a lot of foes,” Trump told CBS News at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland. “I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. Now you wouldn’t think of the European Union but they’re a foe.”

Apparently taken aback, anchor Jeff Glor replied: “A lot of people might be surprised to hear you list the EU as a foe before China and Russia.” But Trump insisted: “EU is very difficult. I respect the leaders of those countries. But – in a trade sense, they’ve really taken advantage of us.” Trump’s controversial tour through Europe has turned postwar western relations inside out, the president sparring with Nato leaders in Brussels and blasting May’s Brexit strategy in the Sun newspaper. His remarks have reflected one of this president’s core beliefs: that America is exploited by its allies. Donald Tusk, president of the European council, tweeted: “America and the EU are best friends. Whoever says we are foes is spreading fake news.”

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A different point of view.

Xi’s Overly-Ambitious Goals Triggered US-China Trade War (Nikkei)

China ranges over the global economy like a bull elephant roams the savanna. Other grassland wildlife is sensitive to this mammoth’s slightest moves. The ferocious lion, the U.S., is no exception. China has yet to become fully aware that it is the elephant in the global economy’s boardroom. But in Washington, Trump was cognizant that he could not stand idly by after China vowed to knock the U.S. off its economic pedestal in just 17 years from now. He campaigned for the presidency by promising voters he would put “America first.” News of China’s decision to bring forward its modernization target date emerged at a bad time. It came shortly after Xi had promised Trump business deals worth $250 billion.

That pledge came in November, when Trump was visiting Beijing, and was portrayed as a salve that would help to heal the U.S.’s massive trade deficit with China. As expected, it was little more than talk. The trade gap continues to quickly widen. Alarmed by China’s ambitions and frustrated by the lack of progress in narrowing the U.S. trade deficit, Trump went on the offensive in the spring. There are good reasons for China coming under U.S. trade fire. It has been the biggest beneficiary of the global trade system since it became a member of the World Trade Organization at the end of 2001. All the while, it has imposed strict foreign ownership limits in each industrial sector, forced foreign companies that enter China to transfer technologies and has set up various other barriers to its markets.

Backed by huge amounts of government funds, Chinese companies have made splashy acquisitions of U.S. and European companies that own key technologies, especially in the auto and information technology sectors. Chinese companies can quickly obtain technologies by acquiring or taking equity investments in U.S. and European companies. In the U.S. and Europe, any company can acquire any other company as long as it can obtain the necessary funds. But it is difficult for U.S. and European companies to acquire Chinese companies. Chinese authorities have numerous regulations at their disposal to block any such attempt.

When Xi bared China’s sharp claws, declaring China would overtake the U.S. economically by 2035, he did so for the benefit of a domestic audience and to aid his fierce power struggle with the political factions that had run China for decades. China is now beginning to realize the high price it is having to pay for Xi’s declaration.

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“When the monster, ‘everything’ bubble pops, so will the paper markets in gold, silver, and other precious metals. The size of this market is at least 100-times bigger than the physical market.”

The Global Reset Will Come Like A Thief In The Night (von Greyerz)

“It is absolutely unreal how the world pays so much respect to mediocrity or even incompetence when it comes to running the financial system. Central banks and their heads have created this monster balloon which is now waiting to be popped. They have given the world the impression that they have been instrumental in saving the world economy. The central bank chiefs that managed to retire before the balloon burst can count themselves lucky. In my view, the luck is now in the process of running out for the present ones. These chiefs believe so much in their own ability as saviors of the world that they don’t understand that all they are doing is creating a much bigger monster by printing and printing and printing.

[..] When the monster, ‘everything’ bubble pops, so will the paper markets in gold, silver, and other precious metals. The size of this market is at least 100-times bigger than the physical market. The rise of this market is very much linked to manipulation of the precious metals by central banks, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and bullion banks. When the paper metals markets pop, there will be no gold (or silver) offered at any price. This is the time when overnight or over a weekend the price will go from $1,250 to $10,000 or even $100,000. This might sound totally unreal to some, but this will be the most likely consequence of the monster bubble popping and everyone in markets running for the exit.

Most people believe that the status quo can go on forever and that central banks will continue their ridiculous game of pretending that air is real money that can create wealth. The few people who believe that there is a serious risk that the system will not survive in its present form, and that their assets — be it cash, bonds, or stocks — could decline substantially in value, must seriously consider insurance.

The next decline in financial markets is likely to start in late 2018 or early 2019. And this will not be an ordinary decline or normal correction. Instead, it will be the beginning of the biggest global bear market in history. And this time central banks and governments will fail in their attempts to save the system. They will, however, certainly print a lot of money and try to reduce interest rates. But as global bond markets collapse, rates will go up rapidly. This means that bonds and stocks will both crash along with most assets.

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The numbers are simply not there.

Theresa May’s Grand Plan Has Left Her Stranded In No Woman’s Land (G.)

Lyndon Johnson, who was majority leader in the US Senate before he became his country’s president, once declared that the most important talent in politics is “the ability to count”. There aren’t enough people who can count around Mrs May. The fatal flaw in her plan is that there is no majority for it in the House of Commons. The Brexit ultras are crying treachery and promising havoc. They both express and feed the furies of Tory activists. The Brextremists don’t have an alternative plan, other than to crash out of the EU without any deal at all, a catastrophic outcome that some of them actually wish for, but that hasn’t stopped them before and won’t curb them now.

Jacob Rees-Mogg and his cabal can muster the 48 signatures of Tory MPs that they need to trigger a confidence vote in Mrs May. They do not sound confident that they have the numbers – they require 159 – to oust her from the premiership. What the ultras can do is make the government’s life even more hellish by prosecuting a “guerrilla war” in parliament. Even if Mrs May could get the EU to accept her plan, 60-plus Conservative MPs are opponents of her version of a Brexit deal. That number will climb if, as is inevitable, she has to make further concessions in Brussels to secure an agreement. There are more than enough Brextremist rebels to block the prime minister in the Commons unless she can get some assistance from the opposition.

She needs the help of Labour MPs and she is not going to get it. Jeremy Corbyn won’t give her any succour. He is more interested in bringing down the Tories than helping them to solve a mad riddle of their own making. The Labour leadership calculates that defeating Mrs May in Brexit votes is their best chance of collapsing the government and precipitating an early general election. But Number 10 clearly harboured hopes that centrist Labour MPs might embrace her plan as the least worst version of Brexit that they are likely to get in the circumstances.

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They’ll keep at it till she’s gone. And it will get even messier.

Theresa May Faces Rebellion From Brexit Hardliners In Customs Bill Vote (G.)

Theresa May faces a concerted rebellion from the hard Brexit wing of the Conservative party on Monday, as MPs unhappy with her Chequers compromise prepare to mount a show of strength by voting for their amendments on the customs bill. The party’s European Research Group says it will reject any last attempts at compromise by Number 10 as they hope to force May to change course over Brexit or risk a no-confidence vote before the summer break by demonstrating the depth of their support. A special ERG whipping operation, using the WhatsApp messaging service, has been created by Steve Baker, the former Brexit minister who resigned from the government last week, although ERG insiders would not put a number on how many they expected to rebel in the Commons.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chairman of the ERG, told the BBC “we’ll have an idea of the numbers at 10pm on Monday evening” while one ERG insider added that they were “intensely relaxed” about the number of rebels they had signed up. Last week, members of the hard Brexit group put down four amendments to the taxation (cross-border trade) bill due to be debated on Monday evening, aimed at halting the customs plan announced by May at Chequers nine days ago. The level of support they attract will draw intense focus, particularly if the number significantly exceeds the 48 required to call for a vote of no confidence in May’s leadership of the Conservative party.

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No buyers left.

Glut Of Property Hits UK Housing Market In July (R.)

Britain’s housing market saw a glut of new property offered for sale this month, keeping a lid on prices at a time when sales typically suffer from a seasonal lull, property website Rightmove said on Monday. Real estate agents now have the highest amount of stock since September 2015, Rightmove said. “While an increase in seller numbers is a welcome sign of more liquidity in a generally stock-starved market, it has unfortunately come at a quieter time of year,” Rightmove director Miles Shipside said. The number of homes advertised by Rightmove, Britain’s largest property website, is 8.6 percent higher than the same month a year ago, but the number of sales is virtually unchanged from a year earlier, down 0.2 percent.

Average asking prices for new sellers are down 0.1 percent since June, typical for the time of year, Rightmove added. But in a sign that previous sellers had priced their property too high, a third of stock being advertised had seen at least one price reduction, the highest proportion for the time of year since 2011. Other industry data has shown British house price growth has slowed sharply since the June 2016 Brexit vote, though with marked regional variation. The slowdown is most marked in London and neighbouring areas, where demand has been hit by higher tax on expensive property and reduced demand from foreign investors. In other parts of Britain, prices are still rising moderately.

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EU Council President Donald Tusk says it is the duty of Europe, the US, China and Russia not to destroy global trade, but to improve it.

EU Urges Big Powers To Prevent Trade ‘Conflict And Chaos’ (AFP)

The European Union on Monday called on the United States, China and Russia to work together to avoid trade “conflict and chaos” to prevent it spiralling into violent confrontation. “It is the common duty of Europe and China, but also America and Russia, not to destroy (the global trade order) but to improve it, not to start trade wars which turned into hot conflicts so often in our history,” EU Council President Donald Tusk said in Beijing. “There is still time to prevent conflict and chaos.” Tusk spoke after meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang as part of an annual EU-China summit that opened against the backdrop of the growing China-US economic confrontation and wider global trade discord.

The EU — the world’s biggest single market with 28 countries and 500 million people — is trying to buttress alliances in the face of the protectionism unleashed by US President Donald Trump’s “America First” administration. The meeting between Chinese and European officials in Beijing, which also included European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker, comes as Trump prepared to hold talks in Helsinki with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The world needed trade reform, rather than confrontation, Tusk said. “This is why I am calling on our Chinese hosts, but also on Presidents Trump and Putin, to jointly start this process from a thorough reform of the WTO.”

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Dream on. As Smedley Butler said, the only way to stop wars is to take the profit out of them.

At Last, A Law That Could Have Stopped Blair And Bush Invading Iraq (G.)

Tuesday is a red-letter day for international law: from then on, political and military leaders who order the invasion of foreign countries will be guilty of the crime of aggression, and may be punishable at the international criminal court in The Hague. Had this been an offence back in 2003, Tony Blair would have been bang to rights, together with senior numbers of his cabinet and some British military commanders. But if that were the case, of course, they would not have gone ahead; George W Bush would have been without his willing UK accomplices. The judgment at Nuremberg declared that “to initiate a war of aggression … is the supreme international crime”.

But this concept never entered UK law (as the misguided crowdfunded effort to prosecute Blair discovered last year). International acceptance of it stalled until states could agree on an up-to-date definition. The crime was included in the ICC jurisdiction back in 1998, but was suspended until its elements could be decided (in 2010) then ratified by at least 30 states (in 2016). At last it is finally being “activated”. In the meantime, Iraq and Ukraine have been invaded and other countries threatened, while Donald Trump attacked Syria last year. Now, the very existence of the crime of aggression offers some prospect of deterrence, and some degree of certainty in identifying the criminals.

Read more …

Home Forums Debt Rattle July 16 2018

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  • #41829

    René Magritte The human condition 1935   • Trump Cautious Ahead Of Putin Summit (BBC) • Kremlin Takes Trump To Task Over His Gas Pipeline Comment
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle July 16 2018]

    #41830
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Love the Magritte, The Human Condition. Indeed; it took a few moments to see just what he had painted.
    Dare I say brilliant.

    At Last, A Law That Could Have Stopped Blair And Bush Invading Iraq (G.)

    Oh please, stop it. The mendacity of that is unbearable in the extreme…

    “When the monster, ‘everything’ bubble pops, so will the paper markets in gold, silver, and other precious metals. The size of this market is at least 100-times bigger than the physical market.”

    Even the rich will suffer greatly; their fiat wealth is just not there…
    Everything they pilfer/steal/plunder will be gone…

    #41831
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    The more I look, the more I like the Magritte; The Human Condition.
    It does indeed, represent, the Human Condition.

    #41832
    Dr. D
    Participant

    What fresh hell is this?

    “A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense, usually for territorial gain and subjugation. … Since the Korean War of the early 1950s, waging such a war of aggression is a crime under the customary international law.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_aggression

    Is there anyone on earth that does NOT know this? Oh yeah, The Guardian, keeping those standards low.

    The classic quote is here, from British judge Norman Birkett in Nuremberg in 1945:

    The charges in the Indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world.

    To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.[2]

    I have another historical quote for you, fresh from America: “Hang ‘em High”

    #41833
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Nuremberg was a joke, an exorcise in obfuscation.
    Sure, they hung a few for show; but the real galoots walked and the really important ones (for the U.S.) were given different identities so they could integrate into U.S. society.
    The whole Nuremberg trial was an out and out sham.
    We supported the Nazi’s through the whole conflict of WWII.
    The U.S. is a lie! In total, a bloody lie.
    Carry on as is your wont…

    #41834
    zerosum
    Participant

    I’m listening to the comments after the Trump/Putin meeting.
    All that I hear is ….

    CULLING

    The word comes from the Latin colligere, which means “to collect”. The term can be applied broadly to mean sorting a collection into two groups: one that will be kept and one that will be rejected. The cull is the set of items rejected during the selection process. The culling process is repeated until the selected group is of proper size and consistency desired.

    #41835
    zerosum
    Participant

    The AE has smart readers.

    Do you really believe that you and your loved ones will be part of the selected group after the culling?

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-16/johnstone-peace-talk-between-nuclear-superpowers-offends-americas-assholes-and

    Only assholes and morons oppose these peace talks. If you want to help steer this ship into the iceberg of nuclear holocaust, then I want you thrown overboard. Get a fucking grip, you raving lunatics. Stop this. Stop this immediately.

    #41836
    olo530
    Participant

    I think it’s pretty easy to tell which groups will survive. Just look at the world before fossil fuels. 90% peasants, 8% military, 1% tradesmen, and 1% clergy. There are whole countries right now that have approximately this demographic composition. They will not even notice that your world has come to an end. On the opposite end of the spectrum we have the US, Europe, Australia, and Japan. Of those only Japan is capable of transitioning back into feudal society. The rest will have a blood bath that no group is capable of surviving. Some individuals still might survive and form groups later, but survival chances will not be based on belonging to any group in existence right now.
    Any country in between will be a mixed case of a blood bath in the cities and relatively peaceful transition in the rural parts away from the cities. So, if you know how to grow LOTS of food WITHOUT machinery, fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics, steroids, and so on, and know how to preserve it without industrial processing – some military group will keep you alive.
    Bottom line – move to Russia, learn how to grow potatoes and raise pigs, and you’ll be ok.

    #41837
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    olo530

    Bottom line – move to Russia, learn how to grow potatoes and raise pigs, and you’ll be ok.

    Probably a good idea. Russia is giving away free, fertile, land in its far east. Inviting emigration for those willing to contribute to Russia’s future.

    The venom spewing from the treasonous leadership class of the U.S. towards the Putin – Trump meeting, is disgraceful. I’m ashamed to be an American. Possibly worse than the McCarthy era…

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