Nov 212014
 
 November 21, 2014  Posted by at 12:47 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Russell Lee Hammond Ranch general store, Chicot, Arkansas Jan 1939

Americans, With Record $3.2 Trillion Consumer Debt, Borrow More (Guardian)
How Wall Street Banks Traded Lending For Oil, Gas And Nukes (MarketWatch)
Citigroup Ejected From ECB FX Group for Rigging (Bloomberg)
China ‘Triple Bubble’ Points To Long Slide For Commodities (MarketWatch)
ECB Dips Toe Into Dead Sea Of Rebundled Debt (Reuters)
ECB’s Draghi: ‘Strong Recovery Unlikely’ (CNBC)
Draghi Says ECB Must Raise Inflation as Fast as Possible (Bloomberg)
Greece To Submit Contentious Budget For 2015 (CNBC)
Hanging Around: Why Abe’s Holding an Election in a Recession (Bloomberg)
Abe Listening to Krugman After Tokyo Limo Ride on Abenomics Fate (Bloomberg)
US Federal Reserve To Review How It Supervises Major Banks (Reuters)
Hugh Hendry: “QE ‘Worked’ By Redistributing Wealth Not Creating It” (Zero Hedge)
Britain Abandons Banker Bonus Fight After EU Court Blow (Bloomberg)
Russia Warns US Against Supplying ‘Lethal Defensive Aid’ To Ukraine (RT)
EuroMaidan Anniversary: 21 Steps From Peaceful Rally To Civil War (RT)
Dutch Government Refuses To Reveal ‘Secret Deal’ Into MH17 Crash Probe (RT)
Creativity, Companies, And The Wisdom Of Crowds (Robert Shiller)
China Starts $2 Trillion Leap Forward to Slash Pollution (Bloomberg)
The Magical Thought That’s Assumed in Climate Studies (Bloomberg)
Rhino Poaching Death Toll Reaches Record in South Africa (Bloomberg)
Growth First. Then These Other Things Can Be Dealt With (Clarke&Dawe)

This is going to end well, right?

Americans, With Record $3.2 Trillion Consumer Debt, Borrow More (Guardian)

Americans are borrowing more even as they have racked up enormous amounts of consumer debt, Federal Reserve data show. The newly released minutes of the last Federal Reserve meeting in October give a wider picture of the US economy. A weak housing market weighed on the US economy, while the fear of Ebola put some brief pressure on the stock markets, the Fed found. The interesting trend, however, is the growing indebtedness of US consumers now that banks have loosened the spigots on lending. The Federal Reserve customarily releases the minutes of its meetings, where the board of governors and staff discuss the major forces at work in the US economy, including employment, housing, borrowing and inflation. The Fed took a positive view of overall economic progress, noting a low unemployment rate, low inflation and, generally, “a continued improvement in labor market conditions”. While the minutes provide a big-picture view of the economy, there are some specific – and strange – worries that make it into the Fed’s discussions.

“Worries about a possible spread of Ebola also appeared to weigh on market sentiment somewhat at times,” the Fed said. The Fed’s meeting was shortly after the first American Ebola patients were being admitted to hospitals. Elsewhere in the economy, the Fed acknowledged that the housing market had slowed. After new home prices hit record highs in 2013, prices have been drifting downward as homeowners still struggle to get mortgages. “Housing market conditions seemed to be improving only slowly,” the central bank said, noting that new home sales were flat in September after moving up in August, and sales of existing single-family homes had not showed much progress and “moved essentially sideways” over the past several months. Banks also loosened the reins and started extending more credit to consumers, particularly through credit cards and auto loans, which some have suggested may be a bubble.

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“The three financial holding companies chose to engage in commodity-related businesses that carried potential catastrophic event risks.”

How Wall Street Banks Traded Lending For Oil, Gas And Nukes (MarketWatch)

A U.S. Senate subcommittee investigation into bank commodities trading has produced some eye-popping findings: Goldman Sachs owned a uranium business that carried the liability of a nuclear accident. J.P. Morgan operated as if it were Con Edison. It owned multiple power-generation plants, exposing it to potential accidents there. Morgan Stanley played the role of Exxon Mobil, stockpiling storage, pipelines, and other natural gas and oil infrastructure.

Together, the report found that banks not only were out of their comfort zone, but put the financial system at risk because they turbo-charged these investments with derivative contracts. They ended up with “huge commodity inventories and participating in outsized transactions,” the Senate Permanent Subcommittee for Investigations said. “The three financial holding companies chose to engage in commodity-related businesses that carried potential catastrophic event risks.” The overreaching foray into commodities underscores how bank “innovation” can take simple services for clients and create massive risk. Banks entered the commodities markets to provide hedges for providers, traders and other market participants. They ended up with huge stakes and, according to the committee, were able to corner at least parts of the market.

This is a far cry from simple brokerage services and investment banking. It is a quantum leap from deposit-taking and lending institutions that are backed by the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. And it all took place in a market supposedly regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which should have at least raised red flags, even if its powers were limited by Congress. While many banks have either left, reduced or signaled they want to exit commodities, the pattern in which simple banking and brokerage products become suddenly dangerous and enormous quagmires may be the larger problem. Regulators can’t put a cop in every division and office on Wall Street, much less every power plant across the country.

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“Citigroup is the world’s biggest foreign-exchange dealer ..”

Citigroup Ejected From ECB FX Group for Rigging (Bloomberg)

The European Central Bank ejected Citigroup from its foreign-exchange market liaison group after the U.S. bank was fined for rigging the institution’s own currency benchmark, two people with knowledge of the move said. The ECB removed Citigroup from the panel, which advises the central bank on market trends, after regulators fined the lender $1 billion for rigging currency benchmarks including the ECB’s 1:15 p.m. fix, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the decision hasn’t been made public. Citigroup was one of six banks fined $4.3 billion by U.S. and U.K. regulators last week and is the only one that also sits on the ECB Foreign Exchange Contact Group. About 20 firms with large foreign-currency operations, ranging from Airbus to Deutsche Bank sit on the committee. The panel’s agenda includes how to improve currency benchmarks.

Citigroup is the world’s biggest foreign-exchange dealer, with a 16% market share, according to a survey by London-based Euromoney Institutional Investor Plc. A spokesman for the New York-based bank declined to comment. The panel isn’t involved in how the ECB’s daily fix is calculated. Currency benchmarks such as the ECB fix and the WM/Reuters rates are used by asset managers and pension funds to value their holdings, including $3.6 trillion in index tracker funds around the world. According to documents released with the settlements, senior traders at the firms shared information about their positions with each other and coordinated trading strategies to the detriment of their clients. They’d congregate in electronic chat rooms an hour or so before benchmark rates were set to discuss their orders and how to execute them to their mutual benefit.

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China’s share for some commodities is insane. And it won’t last.

China ‘Triple Bubble’ Points To Long Slide For Commodities (MarketWatch)

The “commodity super cycle” is dead. Now, it’s time to get used to the “commodity super down cycle, and China is the biggest reason why, warn strategists at Credit Suisse in a Thursday note. Commodity demand tends to be very cyclical. Commodities, however, have been underperforming cyclical indicators of growth, including industrial production and new manufacturing orders (as measured by Institute for Supply Management survey data), they say. Much of the blame is on China, the strategists argue, noting that the country remains the “most significant source” of demand for most industrial commodities. Moreover, they see China on track for a “hard landing” at some point in the next three years. The report adds to some of the recent gloom around China, where the fate of the economy remains a topic for debate.

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services on Wednesday said its negative outlook for Chinese property developers is casting a pall on the rest of the Asia-Pacific region, though it sees prospects for the sentiment to recover next year thanks to looser government policies, particularly on mortgages. The Credit Suisse strategists, meanwhile, see a “triple bubble” in credit, real estate and investment. On credit, they highlight a private-sector to GDP ratio that is 30%age points above trend. China’s investment share of GDP is 48%, much higher than Japan or Korea at similar stages of industrialization, Credit Suisse says. Real estate, meanwhile, is in a “classic bubble.” Prices have dropped six months in a row. A drop of another 20% or more will make for a “hard landing,” they write.

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The headline tells the story.

ECB Dips Toe Into Dead Sea Of Rebundled Debt (Reuters)

The European Central Bank is set to embark this week on a scheme to buy the kind of rebundled debt that sparked the global economic crash. With sparse investor interest its efforts could fall short. Asset backed securities (ABS), reparcelled debt that mixes high-risk loans with safer credit, gained notoriety when rebundled home loans in the United States unravelled to spark financial turmoil. Seven years on, seeking to pump money into a moribund euro zone economy, the ECB believes the same type of debt may make it easier to get credit to companies. It will be safe, the ECB argues, because such European debt, whether car loans or credit cards, is typically repaid and its repackaging should be simpler to understand. The programme is one plank in a strategy which ECB chief Mario Draghi hopes will increase its balance sheet by up to €1 trillion.

If it falls short and fails to boost the economy significantly, pressure to launch full quantitative easing will reach fever pitch. Regulators and investors are sceptical and even within the ECB expectations are muted, people familiar with its thinking say. To limit its risk, the ECB will buy only the most secure part of such loans in the hope that others pile in behind it to buy riskier credit. It is a strategy with little prospect of success, says Jacques de Larosiere, the former head of the International Monetary Fund who has pushed for the repackaging and sale of loans. “While I welcome the ECB’s initiative … it cannot work if it is alone in buying the senior tranches,” he told Reuters. “That is the very area where there is no problem in finding buyers. In order to have an impact, the ECB or other buyers must also be able to buy the lower-quality riskier tranches of ABS.”

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Gee, we had no idea.

ECB’s Draghi: ‘Strong Recovery Unlikely’ (CNBC)

TThe euro zone economy is likely to remain stagnant in the short-to-medium term and the European Central Bank stands ready to act fast to combat low inflation, President Mario Draghi said on Friday. “A stronger recovery is unlikely in the coming months,” Draghi said in an opening speech at the Frankfurt European Banking Congress, referring to the latest flash euro area Purchasing Managers Index (PMI). The PMI, published on Thursday, showed that new orders in the euro zone fell this month for the first time since July 2013. The composite index read 51.4—below forecasts and below October’s final reading of 52.1.

The ECB has launched a slew of measures to ease credit conditions in the region in order to boost growth and combat dangerously low inflation. These include cutting interest rates to record lows and announcing plans to purchase covered bonds and asset-backed securities (ABS). The latest reading for headline inflation in the euro zone was 0.4%—well below the close to 2% level targeted by the ECB and down from 0.9% a year ago. “The inflation situation in the euro area has also become increasingly challenging,” said Draghi on Friday. “We see that it has been essential that the ECB has acted —and is continuing to act—to bring inflation back towards 2%.” Speculation has been rife as to if and when the ECB will start a U.S -style sovereign bond-buying program, as a further measures to ease monetary conditions.

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Mario must be needing tranquilizers by now.

Draghi Says ECB Must Raise Inflation as Fast as Possible (Bloomberg)

Mario Draghi said the European Central Bank must drive inflation higher quickly, and will broaden its asset-purchase program if needed to achieve that. “We will do what we must to raise inflation and inflation expectations as fast as possible, as our price-stability mandate requires,” the ECB president said at a conference in Frankfurt today. Shorter-term inflation expectations “have been declining to levels that I would deem excessively low,” he said. Any new action would follow a flurry of activity since June that has included interest-rate cuts, long-term bank loans, and covered-bond purchases, with buying of asset-backed securities due to start as soon as today.

Draghi has declined to rule out large-scale government-bond buying and said after this month’s monetary policy meeting that staff are studying further measures to boost the economy if needed. “Draghi is sending a clear signal that more stimulus is coming,” said Lena Komileva, chief economist at G Plus Economics . in London. “If the ECB’s current measures prove underwhelming and inflation expectations fail to recover, the ECB will act to expand quantitative easing.”

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When will the next bond attack start?

Greece To Submit Contentious Budget For 2015 (CNBC)

Greece’s proposed budget for 2015 has put it at loggerheads again with the “Troika” of international monitors, who are worried the plan will land it with a bigger fiscal gap than forecast. The coalition government led by Antonis Samaras has promised the budget will include no further austerity measures—on which its bailout is contingent— in an effort to combat the risk of snap national elections next year. The latest polls show that the anti-austerity left-wing opposition party SYRIZA would win an election, if it was held now. Greek Finance Minister Gikas Hardouvelis will submit the final plan for 2015 to the President of the Parliament at 10 a.m. GMT on Friday. Negotiations in Parliament on the Greek budget for 2015 will then start December 4.

The Troika—the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank – is worried that the budget will land Greece with a much bigger fiscal gap next year than the government says. The disagreement has already delayed the country’s review by the Troika and Greece risks missing a December 8 deadline to receive the final instalment of its bailout from Europe, which is worth 144.6 billion euros. This completion of the review would also pave the way for talks on a possible financial backstop for Greece after the European part of its bailout expires at the end of this year.”Only once a staff-level agreement has been reached for the conclusion of the review can discussions on the follow-up to the program take place. The full staff mission will return to Athens as soon as the conditions are there,” Margaritis Schinas, chief spokesperson of the European Commission told CNBC.

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Power games save faces, but not countries.

Hanging Around: Why Abe’s Holding an Election in a Recession (Bloomberg)

The economy’s in recession, his support is sliding, and he has two years left in office with a big majority. Hardly surprising Japanese voters say they don’t understand why Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called an election. Abe dissolved the lower house of parliament today for the vote to be held in mid-December. His coalition isn’t likely to lose its majority as the opposition is in disarray. A solid win now would snuff out potential threats from within his own party in a leadership election set for next year. Abe is taking a page out of his family’s history. His great-uncle Eisaku Sato, the longest-serving prime minister since the war, twice called early elections during his eight years in office from 1964-1972 to consolidate his grip on power.

While Abe has already closed the revolving door of one-year prime ministers that began with his own resignation in 2007, he needs to be seen as keeping his pledges to revive the economy to be able to challenge Sato’s record. “Tradition is that as soon as a prime minister’s popularity goes down, you put in another guy,” said Steven Reed, professor of political science at Chuo University in Tokyo. Each of the last six prime ministers “lost popularity rapidly because they didn’t keep any promises,” he said. The risk is that Abe’s plan backfires and he loses enough seats to fuel a challenge from his own allies, who in Japanese politics are often a more formidable threat to a sitting prime minister than the opposition. 63% of respondents in a Kyodo News poll yesterday said they didn’t understand his reasons for calling an election.

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Say sayonara Nippon.

Abe Listening to Krugman After Tokyo Limo Ride on Abenomics Fate (Bloomberg)

When Japanese economist Etsuro Honda heard that Paul Krugman was planning a visit to Tokyo, he saw an opportunity to seize the advantage in Japan’s sales-tax debate. With a December deadline approaching, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was considering whether to go ahead with a 2015 boost to the consumption levy. Evidence was mounting that the world’s third-largest economy was struggling to shake off the blow from raising the rate in April, which had triggered Japan’s deepest quarterly contraction since the global credit crisis. Honda, 59, an academic who’s known Abe, 60, for three decades and serves as an economic adviser to the prime minister, had opposed the April move and was telling him to delay the next one. Enter Krugman, the Nobel laureate who had been writing columns on why a postponement was needed.

“That nailed Abe’s decision – Krugman was Krugman, he was so powerful,” Honda said in an interview yesterday in the prime minister’s residence, where he has an office. “I call it a historic meeting.” It was in a limousine ride from the Imperial Hotel — the property near the emperor’s palace that in a previous construction was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright — that Honda told Krugman, 61, what was at stake for the meeting. The economist, who’s now heading to the City University of New York from Princeton University, had the chance to help convince the prime minister that he had to put off the 2015 increase. Confronting Honda and fellow members of Abe’s reflationist brain-trust – such as Koichi Hamada, a former Yale University economist, and Kozo Yamamoto, a senior ruling-party lawmaker — were Ministry of Finance bureaucrats.

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Timing is everything. What year is today?

US Federal Reserve To Review How It Supervises Major Banks (Reuters)

The U.S. Federal Reserve said on Thursday it has launched a review of how it oversees major banks, calling on its inspector general to help with the probe after a series of critical reports. Separate studies to be undertaken by the Fed’s Washington-based Board of Governors and its Office of Inspector General are meant to ensure that “divergent views” about the state of large banks are adequately aired. The reviews will determine whether frontline supervisors and other officials at the regional Federal Reserve banks, as well as at the board level, “receive the information needed to ensure consistent and sound supervisory decisions,” the Fed said in a press release.

That includes being made aware of “divergent views” about a bank’s operations, a reference to criticism that supervisors at the Fed’s regional banks have sometimes suppressed the views of staff members considered too critical of the banks they examine. The issue will be the focus of a Senate Banking committee hearing on Friday that features New York Fed President William Dudley as the chief witness. Several Fed regional banks are involved in supervising the country’s 15 largest financial institutions, including Citigroup and Bank of America, that generally have more than $50 billion in assets. But the New York Fed in particular has come under fire for being lax with the banks it oversees and for not reacting forcefully enough in the run-up to the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

A recent inspector general’s report said supervision at the New York Fed was hampered by the loss of key personnel and an inadequate plan for succession into important positions. Secret recordings made by former New York Fed supervisor Carmen Segarra also portrayed the bank as cozy with major institutions like Goldman Sachs. In testimony prepared for the Senate hearing but released on Thursday afternoon, Dudley said “it is undeniable that banking supervisors could have done better in their prudential oversight of the financial system” in advance of the financial crisis.

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More Hugh. He has very original insights.

Hugh Hendry: “QE ‘Worked’ By Redistributing Wealth Not Creating It” (Zero Hedge)

Hendry: This is almost unparalleled in being the most exciting moment for global macro today. And I predicate that upon making an analogy with the Central Bank coordinated policy intervention, in the foreign exchange markets, after the Plaza Accord in, I believe, 1985. There was a profound unease at the current account and particularly the trade deficit that America was running up, especially against the Japanese, which was deemed to be contentious. The real economy is composed of slow-moving prices, wages are slow and the notion of having to wait for productivity improvements and wage price negotiations to work their course, via the U.S. corporate landscape in Japan, such as those deficits would be resolved successfully and become less politically contentious. It was just too long. Politicians just don’t have that time and so they jumped into the world of macro. Macro’s all about fast-moving prices. Foreign exchange is fast. Stock markets prices are fast.

So the notion then was that the Yen and the Deutschmark would appreciate. Now for hedge funds that was amazing. This is the period of the alchemy of finance, as George Soros has celebrated in very successful financial adventures. They just run the biggest long positions. No one stopped to say “Well, the Deutschmark’s getting expensive.” It didn’t really enter into the vernacular of trading in that market. It was macro, there was a policy impulse, a sponsorship by the world’s monetary authorities and you were trending and you had to have that position. By and large it succeeded. So what I would said to you today is that the policy response can’t be found in foreign exchange markets. It’s been muted somewhat by the “Beggar thy neighbour” way that everyone can pursue the same policy. So currencies, up until very lately, haven’t really moved that much. Instead the drama is unfolding in the stock market.

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Cameron keeps on losing against the EU.

Britain Abandons Banker Bonus Fight After EU Court Blow (Bloomberg)

Britain abandoned a bid to overturn a European Union ban on banker bonuses of more than twice fixed pay after it suffered a setback in the EU’s top court. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said he wouldn’t “spend taxpayers’ money” pursuing the legal challenge any further after Britain’s arguments were rebuffed by a senior official at the EU Court of Justice yesterday. The U.K. government will instead redirect its efforts toward countering the effects of the “badly designed rules,” which include an increase in bankers’ overall pay, Osborne said in a statement. The U.K. Treasury said it may be necessary to “develop standards that ensure that non-bonus or fixed pay is put at risk,” echoing remarks this week by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney.

U.K. banks face a running battle with regulators over the EU remuneration rules, with Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland among more than 30 lenders that have tried to circumvent it by introducing so-called role-based pay. The four banks declined to comment on the court opinion. The European Banking Authority, which brings together financial watchdogs from throughout the 28-nation EU, said in October that role-based allowances violate EU rules in “most cases,” and urged regulators to ensure compliance. Osborne and Carney have criticized the EU bonus curb as counterproductive. Britain started the legal fight against the measure last year.

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“Lethal assistance “remains on the table. It’s something that we’re looking at …”

Russia Warns US Against Supplying ‘Lethal Defensive Aid’ To Ukraine (RT)

Moscow has warned Washington a potential policy shift from supplying Kiev with “non-lethal aid” to “defensive lethal weapons”, mulled as US Vice President visits Ukraine, would be a direct violation of all international agreements. A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that reports of possible deliveries of American “defensive weapons” to Ukraine would be viewed by Russia as a “very serious signal.” “We heard repeated confirmations from the [US] administration, that it only supplies non-lethal aid to Ukraine. If there is a change of this policy, then we are talking about a serious destabilizing factor which could seriously affect the balance of power in the region,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich cautioned.

His remarks follow US deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken Wednesday’s statement at a hearing before the Senate Committee for Foreign Affairs, in which he said that Biden may offer the provision of “lethal defensive weapons” as he visits Ukraine. Lethal assistance “remains on the table. It’s something that we’re looking at,” Blinken said. “We paid attention not only to such statements, but also to the trip of representatives of Ukrainian volunteer battalions to Washington, who tried to muster support of the US administration,” Lukashevich said.

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Useful timeline.

EuroMaidan Anniversary: 21 Steps From Peaceful Rally To Civil War (RT)

Protesters who went out to Kiev’s Maidan Square exactly a year ago have their goal – a deal with the EU – achieved. However, they hardly expected the protest would also trigger a bloody civil war which has already claimed 4,000 lives. RT takes a look at the milestone events of the past 365 days, which brought Ukraine – and the world – to where it is now.

1) Then-President Victor Yanukovich’s unwillingness to sign an Association Agreement with the EU led to Maidan (Independence Square) in Ukraine’s capital Kiev filling with protesters on November 21, 2013. The rally participants were holding hands, waving flags and chanting slogans like “Ukraine is Europe!”

2) The brutal dispersal of a protest camp on the morning of November 30 was a turning point in the ensuing events. It’s still unclear whose idea it was to use force against demonstrators. Yanukovich laid the blame on the city’s police chief and sacked him. But that was not enough for the Maidan protesters, who switched from demands of signing the EU deal to calls for the toppling of the government.

3) Over the course of several weeks, which followed the face of Maidan started to change – peaceful protesters were more and more giving way to masked and armed rioters, often from far-right groups. A collective of radicals called the Right Sector were among the most prominent. Peaceful protests evolved into a continuous stand-off between the rallying people and riot police.

4) The deadliest day of the Maidan protests came on February 20 when over a hundred people were killed in the center of Kiev, most of them by sniper fire. The ongoing official investigation blamed a group of elite soldiers from the Berkut riot police for the killings. But there is a lingering suspicion that the massacre was committed by somebody among the anti-government forces.

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More secrets, just what the situation needed.

Dutch Government Refuses To Reveal ‘Secret Deal’ Into MH17 Crash Probe (RT)

The Dutch government has refused to reveal details of a secret pact between members of the Joint Investigation Team examining the downed Flight MH17. If the participants, including Ukraine, don’t want information to be released, it will be kept secret. The respected Dutch publication Elsevier made a request to the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice under the Freedom of Information Act to disclose the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) agreement, along with 16 other documents. The JIT consists of four countries – the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia and Ukraine – who are carrying out an investigation into the MH17 disaster, but not Malaysia. Malaysian Airlines, who operated the flight, has been criticized for flying through a war zone.

Part of the agreement between the four countries and the Dutch Public Prosecution Service, ensures that all these parties have the right to secrecy. This means that if any of the countries involved believe that some of the evidence may be damaging to them, they have the right to keep this secret. “Of course [it is] an incredible situation: how can Ukraine, one of the two suspected parties, ever be offered such an agreement?” Dutch citizen Jan Fluitketel wrote in the newspaper Malaysia Today. Despite the air crash taking place on July 17 in Eastern Ukraine, very little information has been released about any potential causes. However, rather than give the public a little insight into the investigation, the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice is more worried about saving face among the members of the investigation.

“I believe that this interest [international relations] is of greater importance than making the information public, as it is a unique investigation into an extremely serious event,” the Ministry added, according to Elsevier. Other reasons given for the request being denied included protecting investigation techniques and tactics as well as naming the names of officials who are taking part in the investigation. The Ministry said it would be a breach of privacy if they were revealed. “If the information was to be released then sensitive information would be passed between states and organizations, which would perhaps mean they would be less likely to share such information in the future,” said the Ministry of Security and Justice. Dutch MP Pieter Omtzigt, who is a member of the Christian Democratic Party, has made several requests for the information to be released to the public. “We just do not know if the Netherlands has compromised justice,” he said in reaction to the ministry’s decision. The MP was surprised that this agreement was even signed, never mind kept secret.

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Shiller is a blind man: “If we are to encourage dynamism, we need Keynesian stimulus and other policies that encourage creativity”.

Creativity, Companies, And The Wisdom Of Crowds (Robert Shiller)

Economic growth, as we learned long ago from the works of economists like MIT’s Robert M. Solow, is largely driven by learning and innovation, not just saving and the accumulation of capital. Ultimately, economic progress depends on creativity. That is why fear of “secular stagnation” in today’s advanced economies has many wondering how creativity can be spurred. One prominent argument lately has been that what is needed most is Keynesian economic stimulus – for example, deficit spending. After all, people are most creative when they are active, not when they are unemployed. Others see no connection between stimulus and renewed economic dynamism. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently put it, Europe needs “political courage and creativity rather than billions of euros.” In fact, we need both. If we are to encourage dynamism, we need Keynesian stimulus and other policies that encourage creativity – particularly policies that promote solid financial institutions and social innovation.

In his 2013 book Mass Flourishing, Edmund Phelps argues that we need to promote “a culture protecting and inspiring individuality, imagination, understanding, and self-expression that drives a nation’s indigenous innovation.” He believes that creativity has been stifled by a public philosophy described as corporatism, and that only through thorough reform of our private institutions, financial and others, can individuality and dynamism be restored. Phelps stresses that corporatist thinking has had a long and enduring history, going back to Saint Paul, the author of as many as 14 books of the New Testament. Paul used the human body (corpus in Latin) as a metaphor for society, suggesting that in a healthy society, as in a healthy body, every organ must be preserved and none permitted to die. As a public-policy credo, corporatism has come to mean that the government must support all members of society, whether individuals or organizations, giving support to failing businesses and protecting existing jobs alike.

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Throw a big number out there and see if it sticks.

China Starts $2 Trillion Leap Forward to Slash Pollution (Bloomberg)

China, which does nothing in small doses, is planning an environmental makeover in keeping with the political, cultural and market revolutions it has pursued over the past six decades. In his agreement last week with President Barack Obama, Chinese President Xi Jinping committed to cap carbon emissions by 2030 and turn to renewable sources for 20% of the country’s energy. His pledge would require China to produce either 67 times more nuclear energy than the country is forecast to have at the end of 2014, 30 times more solar or nine times more wind power – – more non-fossil fuel energy than almost the entire U.S. generating capacity. That means building roughly 1,000 nuclear reactors, 500,000 wind turbines or 50,000 solar farms. The cost will run to almost $2 trillion, holding out the potential of vast riches for nuclear, solar and wind companies that get in on the action.

“China is in the midst of a period of transition, and that calls for a revolution in energy production and consumption, which will to a large extent depend on new energy,” Liang Zhipeng, deputy director of the new energy and renewable energy department under the National Energy Administration, said at a conference in Wuxi outside of Shanghai this month. “Our environment is facing pressure and we must develop clean energy.” By last year, China had already become the world’s largest producer of wind and solar power. Now, with an emerging middle class increasingly outspoken about living in sooty cities reminiscent of Europe’s industrial revolution, China is looking at radical changes in how its economy operates. “China knows that their model, which has done very well up until recent times, has run its course and needs to shift, and they have been talking about this at the highest levels,” said Paul Joffe, senior foreign policy counsel at the World Resources Institute.

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Interesting concept: to meet official goals, ‘We’ll have to suck the carbon out of the air’. We won’t.

The Magical Thought That’s Assumed in Climate Studies (Bloomberg)

Here’s one way to phrase the basic climate change conundrum: There’s a huge gap between the volume of pollution emitted every year and how much scientists say we can safely send aloft. This has a weird implication for potential fixes governments may need in the future. Emission levels in 2020 could end up about 23% higher than what scientists suggest is safe, according to an annual study of the so-called “emissions gap” put out by the UN Environment Program. The carbon overshoot could grow by 2030 to 40%. “Safe” means what the UN-led climate negotiators have defined it to mean: warming of less than two degrees Celsius above global average temperatures from the beginning of the record, or around 1880. But two degrees doesn’t say much to normal people when you’re talking about the temperature of a planet. That’s why scientists have been beating their heads against walls the last several years to translate “two degrees Celsius” into something incrementally more intelligible – more intelligible even than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

They’ve come up with the idea of a carbon budget, or the volume of pollution we can put into the atmosphere and still have a halfway decent chance of containing the problem. At the rate we’re going, the budget may burn up by the 2040s. Now, in finance, the notion of a budget deficit make sense. When someone overspends, he pays the money back at a later date. Ecological deficits make less sense. How do you pay the ground back in carbon minerals once they’ve been vaporized and are hanging in the atmosphere? Here’s what’s weird, what the Emissions Gap report calls out. It has to do with these “carbon deficits” that result. We’re burning through so much of the budget today that in “safe” projections of the 2070s and 2080s, greenhouse gas emissions must go negative for the climate to stay safe. Smokestacks will have to start inhaling rather than exhaling. We’ll have to suck the carbon out of the air, through reforestation or some as-yet unproven airborne-carbon removal technology.

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This is who we are. This is mankind.

Rhino Poaching Death Toll Reaches Record in South Africa (Bloomberg)

A record 1,020 rhinos have been killed by poachers for their horns in South Africa this year, more than all of 2013 and triple the number four years ago. Kruger National Park, a reserve the size of Israel, has seen 672 rhinos killed since Jan. 1. A total of 1,004 were slaughtered throughout the country in 2013, the Department of Environmental Affairs said today in a statement. The horns are more valuable than gold by weight. Prices for a kilogram of rhino horn range from $65,000 to as much as $95,000 in Asia. “The South African government recognizes that the ongoing killing of the rhino for its horns is part of a multi-billion dollar worldwide illicit wildlife trade and that addressing the scourge is not simple,” the department said. Demand for rhino horns has climbed in Asian nations including China and Vietnam because of a belief that they can cure diseases such as cancer.

South Africa has taken measures including setting up an protection zone within Kruger Park, using new technology, intelligence, and moving rhinos to safe areas within South Africa and other countries where they live. Poachers killed 333 rhinos in 2010 and 668 in 2012, Albi Modise, spokesman for the Department of Environmental Affairs, said today in a mobile-phone text message. “Government will continue to strengthen holistic and integrated interventions and explore new innovative options to ensure the long-term survival of the species,” the department said. Authorities have made a record number of arrests for poaching and related activities, according to the department. A total of 344 alleged rhino poachers, couriers and poaching syndicate members have been apprehended this year, compared with 343 in all of last year, Modise said. Most rhinos in South Africa are white rhinos, the bigger of the two types of the animal found in Africa. They can weigh more than 2 metric tons. The horns are largely made up of keratin, a substance similar to human hair.

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The world’s best economic analysts are two Australian comedians. Fitting.

Growth First. Then These Other Things Can Be Dealt With (Clarke&Dawe)

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Home Forums Debt Rattle November 21 2014

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    Russell Lee Hammond Ranch general store, Chicot, Arkansas Jan 1939 • Americans, With Record $3.2 Trillion Consumer Debt, Borrow More (Guardian) • How
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 21 2014]

    #16776
    Raleigh
    Participant

    After Obama made his immigration speech last night where he used the phrase “we are a nation of laws,” a blogger said:

    “As Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist reminded us, ‘The law is a ass – a idiot.'”

    How did Obama keep a straight face while saying this? If it were me, I’d have been rolling on the floor laughing! I couldn’t have gotten the words out.

    A nation of “outlaws” would be more appropriate, don’t you think?

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