Sep 152023
 


Pierre-Auguste Renoir The Return of the Boating Party 1862

 

Hunter Biden Indicted On Federal Firearms Charge (ZH)
Go F**ing Ahead: McCarthy Dares Republicans to Boot Him From Speakership (Sp.)
US Political System Frozen by Soviet-Style ‘Aging Crisis’ (Sp.)
The Insouciant Russians (Paul Craig Roberts)
US Imperial ‘Death Cult’ Admits it Provoked Proxy Conflict in Ukraine (Sp.)
Moscow Responds To Ukrainian Official’s ‘Terrorist’ Threat (RT)
Mr. Zelensky Goes To Washington, Again (ZH)
Sy Hersh: Overly Optimistic US Intel Reports on Ukraine to Lead to Disaster (Sp.)
ATACMS – The Latest American Poison Pill for Ukraine (Scott Ritter)
EU Gave ‘Bad Answer’ To Ukraine Crisis – Hungary (RT)
Global South Won’t Back Kiev As West Demands – WSJ (RT)
Germany Hugely Increases Imports Of Russian Oil – Der Spiegel (RT)
Polish Minister Warns Of Threat From Ukraine (RT)
In Vladivostok, The Russian Far East Rises (Pepe Escobar)
“Never Embrace Socialism… Or The Siren Song Of Social Justice” – Milei (ZH)

 

 

 

 

McCullough
https://twitter.com/i/status/1702277639191310734

 

 

RFK

 

 

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

Fulton County

 

 


 

 

 

 

David Weiss headed the investigation into Hunter and is now the Special Counsel. Just reading this makes you realize why that is against the law. Weiss was in on the plea deal that the judge laughed out of court but Hunter’s lawyers keep insisting is valid regardless.

Stretching out the gun case can silence Hunter about all other cases. Oh, and the gun case keeps Joe out of sight, and all the information about him: he has no link to the gun. It’s the only thing he’s not linked to.

Hunter Biden Indicted On Federal Firearms Charge (ZH)

Hunter Biden has been indicted on three counts related to the possession of a gun while using narcotics, court documents show. The move, a “historic indictment against the son of a sitting president,” comes after an absurd plea deal fell apart, and days after House Republicans launched an impeachment inquiry which seeks bank records and other documents on the Biden family’s business dealings. “The case is being overseen by special counsel David Weiss, who also headed the investigation. Weiss is a Trump appointee who was kept on as U.S. attorney for Delaware because of the sensitive and unique nature of the investigation into a president’s son by the Justice Department, a part of the executive branch headed by the president. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland named Weiss special counsel in August, as negotiations over the tax and gun charges collapsed.”

Of course, none of this has to do with perhaps the biggest grift in the US history – as the Biden family raked in more than $20 million from foreign sources – including figures in China, Ukraine, Russia and Romania, all funneled through a complex arrangement of corporations, according to House GOP investigators and whistleblowers who are currently seeking Biden bank records. For example, in 2017, Hunter pulled in over $2.3 million – with $1 million of that coming from a company he formed with the CEO of a Chinese conglomerate. He also took in $664,000 from a Chinese infrastructure investment firm, $500,000 from a Ukrainian energy company (we assume to be Burisma), $70,000 from a Romanian business, $48,000 from an international law firm, and $666,000 from domestic business interests.

In 2018, Hunter made over $2.1 million according to the unraveled plea deal – which came as his drug addiction went critical. According to Biden’s memoir, cited by the document, that year saw “a spring and summer of nonstop debauchery.” “According to the agreement, Biden was well aware of his tax liabilities from an accountant he hired. The accountant prepared Biden’s returns and sent them to him for review and signature. Despite repeated encouragement by his accountant, Biden never signed or submitted his returns. According to the agreement, Biden failed to pay his taxes despite having the money to do so. By May 2019, he had spent money he could have used for that purpose “on personal expenses, including large cash withdrawals, payments to or on behalf of his children, credit card balances, and car payments for his Porsche.” -Bloomberg. By October 2021, Biden’s tax liabilities for 2017 and 2018 had grown to $955,800 and $956,632 respectively – and were paid for by an unidentified third party.

That person also covered $45,661 and $197,372 to resolve outstanding tax issues from 2016 and 2019. Earlier this year, the NYT reported that Hollywood entertainment lawyer Kevin ‘bong rip’ Morris lent over $2 million to Biden to help with his taxes. Of note, an IRS whistleblower from the agency’s criminal investigations unit told the House Ways and Means Committee in June that Hunter Biden illegally deducted tens of thousands of dollars spent on prostitutes and a sex club from his taxes, according to testimony from June 1 which was released by House Republicans. “So some of the items that he deducted were personal no-show employees. He deducted payments that were made to who he called his West Coast assistant, but she was essentially a prostitute,” said the whistleblower, who worked directly on the IRS’s investigation into Hunter’s tax issues, speaking of the younger Biden’s 2018 return.

Another whistleblower, IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapely , told the committee on May 26 that he found several instances of Hunter expensing flights for prostitutes. “There were multiple examples of prostitutes that were ordered basically, and we have all the communications between that where he would pay for these prostitutes, would book them a flight where even the flight ticket showed their name. And then he expensed those,” said Shapely , who noted that they were expensed to Biden’s consulting firm, Owasco, PC. What’s more, Hunter expensed a deposit for an elite Los Angeles sex club (which he was kicked out of for ‘grabbing women’s asses’ and ‘acting like a spoiled child’). But hey, he also owned a gun while being a junkie. Get ’em boys.


Rep Andy Biggs: This is just China. We also have evidence from Romania, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Russia.

 

 

s
Mace

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“..tensions have been rising in the Republican House Caucus over the looming government shutdown, which lawmakers have until September 30 to avoid..”

Go F**ing Ahead: McCarthy Dares Republicans to Boot Him From Speakership (Sp.)

A motion to vacate would remove Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from his position as House speaker, a leadership post he fought hard for in early January. In fact, it took 15 voting sessions before McCarthy was confirmed by the House to serve. US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) reportedly dared the House Freedom Caucus and other hard-right members of the Republican House to try and oust him from his leadership position amid growing threats from the fractured lower chamber. “You guys think I’m scared of a motion to vacate. Go f***ing ahead and do it. I’m not scared,” McCarthy said during a closed caucus meeting early Thursday, according to a lawmaker who spoke to US media on the condition of anonymity.

The majority of Republicans still support McCarthy, but the GOP as a whole holds only a slim majority in the House. A vote to remove the Republican would require a majority from the House overall. If House Democrats joined with even a few hardliners in the Republican party, McCarthy could lose a potential vote to vacate. However, there have been no indications from Democrats they plan to join the Republican hardliners in removing McCarthy. It is unclear if doing so would even be advantageous to them outside of making Republicans look chaotic. A new speaker would also require a majority vote in the House. Democrats would either have to agree on a new speaker with the hardline Republicans – something that is unlikely given their political differences, or join with other elements of the GOP to choose a speaker after just voting to remove one they support.

Failing both options would leave it up to House Republicans to come to a deal; however, ultraconservative Republicans have made it clear they will not vote for a House speaker more palatable to Democrats than McCarthy. Despite how messy it could be for both parties to remove McCarthy, tensions have been rising in the Republican House Caucus over the looming government shutdown, which lawmakers have until September 30 to avoid. On Wednesday, House Republicans failed to pass a procedural vote on funding the Defense Department, normally one of the least controversial spending bills in Congress. Officials also failed to pass an agricultural bill in July, another provision that usually passes little resistance.

[..] US Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is a member of the Freedom Caucus and one of McCarthy’s most vocal critics. He previously said that if McCarthy tried to push forward spending bills without fulfilling the promises he made to hardline Republicans, he would file a motion to vacate. “The path forward for the House of Representatives is to either bring you [McCarthy] forward to immediate and total compliance or remove you,” Gaetz said. “If we have to start the day with the prayer, pledge and the motion to vacate, so be it.” Gaetz dismissed McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry on Tuesday as “baby steps” and accused him of acting like a “valet” to Biden’s agenda.

McCarthy

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Apt comparison.

US Political System Frozen by Soviet-Style ‘Aging Crisis’ (Sp.)

Last week, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, now 83, announced she would run for reelection again next year, while Senator Diane Feinstein, 90, continues to sit in the Senate with no thought of retirement even though her own daughter took power of attorney to pay her bills. Last week, 81-year-old Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, addressing concerns about his health following episodes of freezing in public, vowed to finish out his term. In addition, a recent CNN poll revealed 75% of Americans are concerned about US President Joe Biden’s age and mental competence, while 67% of Democrats do not want him to run again.

Constitutional historian Dan Lazare suggested these developments are part of a generational illness afflicting an out-of-touch US governing elite that stayed too long in power, not unlike what happened to the Soviet Union during the 1980s, when the Kremlin was plainly at a loss in responding to a declining economy and dysfunctional political system. “Basically, the United States is caught in a Soviet-style age crisis,” Lazare said. “Remember what [former US President] Ronald Reagan said? When asked why he didn’t talk with Soviet leaders, he replied: ‘Because they keep dying on me.’ He was right.” However, while Reagan’s line got a good laugh, Lazare added, the joke is on the United States with elderly lawmakers feebly holding on to Senate seats, not to mention Biden’s “growing senility.”

“After one superpower descended into gerontocracy, how is it that another one is doing the same thing 40 years later? The answer to this question is political gridlock,” Lazare said. “Everyone is terrified of what change might mean.” Deepening gridlock has led to 30 years of trench warfare on Capitol Hill, Lazare pointed out. And thanks to this deadlock, the lineup barely shifts from one year to the next, he added. However, Lazare warned, history has proven this cannot go on forever. In the Soviet Union, he explained, the “ice eventually broke” with the appointment of premier Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 – but the change came too late. “The ice will eventually break in the United States as well, but the results could be just as explosive,” Lazare said.

Watters

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“..The Russians are yet to learn that Putin’s idealism exists nowhere else and that they must out-bribe the Americans..”

The Insouciant Russians (Paul Craig Roberts)

Armenia, despite being a member of Russia’s Collective Security Treaty Organization, began last Monday joint military exercises with the United States that will conclude September 20. This would appear to be Armenia’s finger in Russia’s eye. Clearly, Big Bucks Washington bribed someone in Armenia. The Russians are yet to learn that Putin’s idealism exists nowhere else and that they must out-bribe the Americans. About a year ago Washington organized “Regional Cooperation 2022,” an exercise of the US armed forces with the former Soviet Central Asian Republics of Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kryrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. As Washington’s cover for stirring up new troubles for Russia, Washington’s ambassador to Tajikistan, John Pommersheim, explained Washington’s presence in Central Asia as working on peaceful responses to global challenges.

Just as Putin, the Kremlin, the Russian media sat sitting on their butts for 8 years while Washington built and equipped an Ukrainian Army poised to destroy the Russian peoples in the Donbas breakaway republics, the Kremlin, and the Russians media sit on their butts doing nothing while Washington, motivated by Putin’s failure to bring the Ukrainian war to an end, prepares to present the butt-sitter with another Ukraine in Central Asia. It seems Russians, too, can be insouciant. I sometimes wonder if they realize that they are at war. Russian tourists flock to Europe to have their cars and personal possessions stollen as sanctioned goods. And instead of warning the weak, essentially militarily irrelevant EU countries, the Kremlin warns its own citizens. The persona of irresoluteness, indecision, inability to act that the Kremlin broadcasts to the world encourages Washington to ever more provocations that will eventually go too far.

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“We point our fingers at Congress like they’re not just rented mules for the same people who sit on the board for the Rand Corporation.”

US Imperial ‘Death Cult’ Admits it Provoked Proxy Conflict in Ukraine (Sp.)

US deep state and financial interests openly schemed for years to provoke the conflict in Ukraine, says a media commentator. Webcast host Steve Poikonen told Sputnik he was gratified that NATO leaders were “finally saying that it’s a proxy war now.” That was “delightfully refreshing” after more than a year of “being called a tinfoil hat or Putin apologist for merely suggesting that what we are engaged in is a proxy war,” he said. The media commentator characterized the “permanent unelected state, the neocons and the military industrial complex” in the US as a “death cult.” “It operates like one, against all reason and against their own best interests even,” Poikonen said. “They pursue endless war, and they don’t even bother to care about the people on the ground. It’s all about moving the self-perpetuating money laundering machine, and they do it with impunity… because they’re 100 percent amoral.”

US strategic think-tank the RAND Corporation published a paper in 2019 entitled Overextending and Unbalancing Russia — a blueprint for a campaign of hybrid warfare, including “providing lethal aid to Ukraine” in order to “exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability.” “For every international conflict in which the U.S. is now overextended, there is a supporting RAND document that outlines exactly how we’re going to get into this mess,” Poikonen said. “This is their sole purpose. The reason the Rand Corporation gets together to figure out how to destabilize nations and how a handful of people in the United States, in the international business community can profit from it.” The RAND report also recommended disrupting Russia’s overseas oil and gas markets.

“Of course, they’re going to go after the oil and gas,” the pundit argued. “And when they see that and the RAND argument, the first thing I think of is the Nord Stream pipeline.” “The RAND Corporation is nothing if not fantastic salesman,” Poikonen observed. “They’ve been able to exist for the last 60, 70 years based solely on their ability to convince at least a handful of Congresscritters that all of our money should go to the military budget.” He argued US politics was nothing but theatre that concealed those pulling the strings behind the scenes. “We’re consistently attacking the wrong people in this country. We’re consistently pointing the finger at the wrong people,” he said. “We point our fingers at Congress like they’re not just rented mules for the same people who sit on the board for the Rand Corporation.”

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A 50-year-old transgender American is Kiev’s military spokesperson and threatens to kill anyone who asks questions. What a world.

Moscow Responds To Ukrainian Official’s ‘Terrorist’ Threat (RT)

Threats aimed at Russian journalists by Ukrainian military spokesperson, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, will be referred to international organizations as an example of the terrorist nature of the Kiev regime, Moscow’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. On Wednesday, Ashton-Cirillo issued a threat to kill Russian “propagandists” and claimed that “next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash even harder, and their rabid mouths will foam in uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes.” “Russia’s war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down, and justice will be served as we in Ukraine are led on this mission by faith in God, liberty and complete liberation,” the transgender military spokesperson pledged.

“A zombie apocalypse,” Zakharova wrote in response to the threat. “We will be sending this further evidence of the terrorist nature of the Kiev regime and its sponsorship by Washington to all international organizations and NGOs,” she said. The first deputy of the Russian State Duma’s culture committee, Elena Drapenko, claimed Ashton-Cirillo’s words were within the logic of the “terrorists and fascists” in Kiev and supported Zakharova’s suggestion that the threat be referred to international institutions. “There are international conventions, there are obligations that Ukraine has assumed. We must demand that they be fulfilled,” Drapenko said.

The head of Russia’s Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeev, has also stated that he would contact the Investigative Committee and the Federal Security Service (FSB) to investigate the threats in light of the “sad experience” of previous assassination attempts on Russian journalists and public opinion leaders. Investigative Committee chairman Alexander Bastrykin has confirmed that he has already instructed his service to investigate and provide a legal assessment of Ashton-Cirillo’s statements. Meanwhile, Russia’s Journalist Union (SJR) has cautioned that Ashton-Cirillo’s threats may be quite real in light of previous terrorist attacks on Russian media representatives.

“It is probably pointless to talk about the moral qualities of representatives of the Kiev leadership. These threats should be taken seriously,” said SJR president Vladimir Solovyov, urging fellow journalists to be careful. He added that he hoped Ashton-Cirillo would be appropriately punished as soon as they fall into the hands of Russian law enforcement agencies. The first deputy chairman of the Duma Defense Committee, Alexei Zhuravlev, also noted that “Ukrainian terrorism is gradually degrading” and taking on an “increasingly uglier face” in the form of Ashton-Cirillo, whom he called a “pervert-satan.”

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Ideal moment to tell him it’s over.

Mr. Zelensky Goes To Washington, Again (ZH)

Ukraine’s Present Volodymyr Zelensky is again expected to pay homage to the hands that feed him, as Bloomberg is reporting that another trip to the White House is imminent. “President Joe Biden will host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House next week, according to a person familiar with the plans,” the fresh Thursday report indicates. The Ukrainian leader’s first official visit to Washington had occurred in December 2022, and also had marked his first known trip outside his war-ravaged country since Russia invaded. But things have changed since he gave that “Christmas season” address in Congress, where then House speaker Pelosi treated him like a rockstar as she and VP Kamala Harris excitedly waived the Ukrainian flag around, hugging Zelensky in the process.

Not only is the much-anticipated counteroffensive not going well, or even failing, but his personal ‘star status’ is waning too. Bloomberg notes the new context, namely that Republicans are less likely to sign off on massive new aid packages in the federal budget: For the US president, it also coincides with an upcoming showdown over federal funding. Biden has asked Congress to provide $24 billion for the Ukraine war and related costs, but conservatives in the House are threatening to shut down the US government if they consider any funding bill a “blank check” for Ukraine. Current funding for government operations runs through Sept. 20.

Next week’s meeting was first reported by Reuters. And a fresh photo op with Zelensky is perhaps what Biden thinks he needs for a boost in domestic approval ratings, given not only is the mainstream media turning on him……but he’s also newly focused his campaign going into 2024 on being the “tough” commander-in-chief who “protects” democracy around the world: “He entered Ukraine under the cover of night. And in the morning, Joe Biden walked shoulder to shoulder with our allies in the war-torn streets,” the narrator of a new one-minute Biden campaign ad begins. “Standing up for democracy in a place where a tyrant is waging war to take it away.”

On the Ukrainian side, Zelensky could be coming also to bolster support and enthusiasm among GOP hawks and conservative supporters in order to get their fellow Republicans in line. Kiev has also expressed increased impatience and frustration of late when it comes to F-16 delivery timeline, and related to getting more advanced US weapons like long-range missiles. There’s currently talk within the administration of Ukraine getting approval for the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which has a max range of 190 miles. Certainly Zelensky is going to press for this and more. Will Biden make this the focus of a “big” announcement when he greets Zelensky in the White House next week?

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“DIA’s intelligence on Russia does not get to relevant hands in the White House because it is being ignored for political expediency..”

Sy Hersh: Overly Optimistic US Intel Reports on Ukraine to Lead to Disaster (Sp.)

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) withheld documents from the White House on anti-government extremist groups in Syria producing sarin gas and has been providing “insanely” optimistic assessments on the conflict in Ukraine, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh stated on his Substack blog on Wednesday. DIA’s intelligence on Russia does not get to relevant hands in the White House because it is being ignored for political expediency, just like CIA reports on the current failed Ukrainian counteroffensive are being ignored by Blinken, Hersh said. The journalist pointed out that he chose to publish a series of documents on his Substack because what the US Intelligence community did regarding Syria, it is doing once again regarding the Ukraine crisis.

If the same situation is allowed to persist regarding Ukraine, the conflict with Russia can scale up and that is an outcome that nobody wants, Hersh added. “[Secretary of State Anthony] Blinken’s wrong-headed confidence… could be based on insanely optimistic assessments supplied by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA’s assessments, as I have reported, are now the intelligence of choice inside the White House,” the journalist said. Hersh noted that amid calls for the United States to intervene in the Syrian conflict ten years ago, the White House was not provided with crucial intelligence because of its alleged “politically inconvenient” nature. Such was the case of a detailed yet DIA-redacted five-page report from intercepts by the National Security Agency (NSA) that anti-government Islamist groups possessed the nerve agent sarin gas, the journalist stressed.

“It revealed the kind of truth that presidents then and now viewed as political poison,” Hersh emphasized. The much-touted counteroffensive attempt by the Kiev regime in early June has evidently been a failure, with massive losses and non-existent gains. A number of NATO generals, as well as Western military analysts, have already admitted the catastrophic situation of the Ukrainian forces. Nevertheless, Ukrainian officials – following their Western masters – refuse to acknowledge the reality: Ukraine has lost virtually all of its strategic reserves together with an enormous amount of NATO-supplied military equipment in a futile effort to breach the Russian defenses.

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“..the ATACMS has been the beneficiary of a Service Life Extension Program designed to keep the missile from failing once launched due to old age..”s

ATACMS – The Latest American Poison Pill for Ukraine (Scott Ritter)

Back in July 2022, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, pushing back against increasing demands from Ukraine and its American backers in Congress, the State Department, and the Pentagon that the Biden administration provide Ukraine with the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, declared that providing Ukraine with this weapon would risk putting the US and Russia on “the road towards a third world war.” Ukraine had been demanding that the ATACMS, a 300-kilometer range solid-fuel guided missile, be included in the list of weapons Ukraine claimed it needed to successfully execute its much-touted “counteroffensive.”

Now, with the “counteroffensive”, which has been underway for more than three months, floundering in the face of a Russian defense that had proven more capable than originally thought by the NATO military planners who helped the Ukrainians craft it, US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, suddenly announced that the Biden administration was considering reversing course on the issue of providing Ukraine with ATACMS. Left unsaid was to what extent, if any, the Biden administration had addressed the issue of a third world war with Russia, and whether the ATACMS was still considered to be a likely trigger for its initiation.

One theory that is making its way around Washington, DC, is that the Biden administration, after successive arms procurement decisions (HIMARS, the M-1 Abrams, and the F-16) appeared to cross so-called Russian “red lines” without generating any appreciable Russian reaction, believed that the Russians would likewise allow the introduction of the ATACMS to take place without provoking a crisis akin to a third world war. The underlying analysis for this assessment is that Russian President Vladimir Putin is bluffing when it comes to the so-called “red lines”, and that the US can provide Ukraine the weapons it needs to successfully prosecute its stalled counteroffensive.

There are two major problems with this assessment. First, it makes certain assumptions about Russia’s so-called “red lines”, and the consequences which would accrue to Ukraine and its Western partners if these lines were crossed. Russia has, to date, only articulated two definitive “red lines” when it comes to the ongoing Special Military Operation against Ukraine. The first is the direct involvement of US and/or NATO forces in the conflict, whether by putting boots on the ground in Ukraine, or intervening in Belarus. The second was any military situation which threatened the existential survival of the Russian nation. In both circumstances, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has decreed that Russia would use all the means at its disposal to respond to the threat, up to and including nuclear weapons. All other so-called “red lines” are speculative in nature, made by persons other than the President. Second, it assumes that the ATACMS is a game-changing technology whose presence on the battlefield will have a meaningful and telling impact on the ability of the Ukrainian armed forces to prevail in combat against their Russia foes.

The ATACMS is a 50-year-old system which the US Army stopped buying in 2007. While the ATACMS has been the beneficiary of a Service Life Extension Program designed to keep the missile from failing once launched due to old age, it remains an aging system with limited capabilities. If employed by Ukraine, the ATACMS will find itself targeted by Russian anti-missile weapons that will intercept the rocket prior to reaching its target and jam the guidance systems using electronic-warfare capabilities considered to be among the most effective in the world. There is no doubt that an ATACMS missile is capable of inflicting considerable harm and damage on any target it can strike. But the reality is that most of the ATACMS missiles will be shot down before they reach their target, a fact the military planners in the Pentagon are only too aware of. In short, ATACMS is the antithesis of a “magic” weapon designed to strengthen Ukrainian military capacity.

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“Brussels “should have isolated this war, but instead of that the EU has globalized” it..”

EU Gave ‘Bad Answer’ To Ukraine Crisis – Hungary (RT)

The European response to the Ukraine crisis is causing the world to fragment, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has claimed, adding that Budapest wants to see unifying action, like China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). “Europe has given a very bad answer to the war in Ukraine that unfortunately seems to be ending up in a world being divided into blocs again,” the Hungarian diplomat told CNBC on the sidelines of the Belt and Road summit in Hong Kong. Brussels “should have isolated this war, but instead of that the EU has globalized” it, he said in the interview broadcast on Wednesday.

Szijjarto argued that a lack of communication between opposing countries has led to them giving up on achieving peace, while states that benefit from good East-West relations – such as Hungary – have been hurt economically. The minister contrasted this to how the BRI aims to bring the world together for mutual prosperity and security, which is why Hungary welcomes China’s presence. He criticized rich Western European nations who are now talking about decoupling from the Chinese economy or “derisking” due to political concerns. Quietly, they seek Chinese investment just like small nations, Szijjarto said.

“They can be hypocritical, they can afford [it],” he argued. Unlike those countries, Budapest states its foreign policy openly, the diplomat said, warning that if ‘decoupling’ with China were to succeed, it would “kill the European economy.” The Hungarian government has been a vocal critic of the Western response to the Ukrainian conflict since its outset. It has called for peace talks, while speaking out against sanctioning Russia and arming Ukraine. Most EU nations, following in the US lead, have pledged to support Kiev for “as long as it takes” to defeat Moscow.

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“It’s clear that the West overall has been surprised by the pretty widespread reluctance by many of the countries in the so-called Global South… to come on board..”

Global South Won’t Back Kiev As West Demands – WSJ (RT)

Western officials have overestimated the willingness of neutral nations to join anti-Russia policies in support of Ukraine, according to The Wall Street Journal. “It’s clear that the West overall has been surprised by the pretty widespread reluctance by many of the countries in the so-called Global South… to come on board,” Jan Techau of the consulting firm Eurasia Group told the newspaper, as quoted on Thursday. He cited “animosity toward the US and Europe” in some parts of the world and the desire of rising powers, such as Brazil and South Africa, to “assert their independence”, the article said. The WSJ detailed purported successes and failures of Western diplomacy to rally the support of neutral nations for what it called “a fair peace settlement for Ukraine” ahead of next week’s gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has been internationally promoting his “peace formula” with Western backing. It includes Ukraine regaining control over all former territories, war reparations from Russia, and a tribunal for the Russian leadership. Moscow has dismissed the Zelensky plan as being detached from reality. The newspaper noted that many “emerging countries” have resisted demands for reparations and a tribunal, while “the international willingness to call out Russia publicly has diminished.” In particular, the final statement of the G20 leaders after the summit in India last week did not condemn Russia or even call the conflict a war “against Ukraine.”

The newspaper asserted that the G20 meeting was a “success for the West too,” because Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping did not attend the event in person. “Factually, Russia is much more isolated than before,” a senior European official told The WSJ. At the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting, non-Western participants are likely “to shift the global focus onto their priorities: global inequality and debt relief,” the report predicted. Moscow has described the Ukraine crisis as part of a Western proxy war against Russia. It has also accused the US of mismanaging the global economy for selfish goals, while trying to preserve its dominance and resisting the emergence of a multipolar world.

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Twelvefold. And much more expensive. Very smart.

Germany Hugely Increases Imports Of Russian Oil – Der Spiegel (RT)

Germany has continued importing large volumes of Russian oil, turning to India as a substitute supplier after the EU banned almost all crude imports from Moscow in early December. According to a Der Spiegel report on Tuesday, Berlin’s imports of petroleum products from India jumped more than twelvefold in January-July 2023 year-on-year. The value of those imports soared from €37 million ($39 million) in the first seven months of 2022 to $484 million during the same period of 2023, the outlet’s analysis of official data reportedly showed. The imports from India “were mainly gas oils that are used to produce diesel or heating oil,” the report said, noting that New Delhi has recently been producing a significant proportion of those gas oils from Russian crude oil.

Germany, which has historically been the largest EU buyer of Russian oil, stopped imports via pipelines on January 1, despite the fact that the latest EU embargo exempts piped deliveries to the bloc from the sanctioned country. Official data by German statistical office Destatis shows that Berlin’s imports of Russian crude oil have ceased almost entirely amid the sanctions. Statistics, however, do not count crude of Russian origin purchased indirectly from global traders through ship-to-ship transfers. According to Der Spiegel, citing data, some volumes of Russian oil bought by India later end up in Germany in some form.

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Poland won’t break the union. But Hungary may.

Polish Minister Warns Of Threat From Ukraine (RT)

If Ukraine were to become a member of the EU it would have to be under certain conditions, particularly in light of the threat posed by its agriculture, Poland’s Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Robert Telus has said, in an interview with polish news station PAP on Thursday. Telus was asked if Warsaw would take any steps to oppose Kiev’s accession to the EU, given that Poland has placed an embargo on Ukrainian grain. The minister replied that although the Polish government was generally in favor of Ukraine’s admission to the bloc, certain issues would first have to be addressed before that can become a reality. “Ukraine cannot join the EU without conditions. We had conditions and the same must apply to Ukraine,” Telus said.

He noted that agriculture is a particularly important point in relations with Kiev as Ukraine’s agriculture sector is structured completely differently than Poland’s and the EU’s. “We need to take a closer look at this, because Ukrainian agriculture is a threat to the agriculture of the frontline countries, but also to the whole of Europe,” he told PAP. Earlier this week, Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki stressed that Warsaw will not allow cheap Ukrainian grain to “flood” the Polish market and disrupt the country’s agricultural industry. He added that regardless of what the EU says, Poland will keep its border closed to Ukrainian grain in order to protect the interests of Polish farmers.

Back in May, five Eastern European members of the EU, namely Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia, placed a sweeping ban on the import of Ukrainian grain. That was after Brussels lifted quotas and tariffs from Ukrainian grain exports in a bid to support Zelensky’s government in the early months of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. However, the policy ultimately backfired on Eastern European nations, which have faced mass protests from local farmers. The EU then closed off the markets of the five nations to Ukrainian wheat, corn, sunflower seeds and rapeseed, but still allowed the transit of the goods to continue. On Friday, the European Parliament is set to debate on the extension of the embargo.

Commenting on Brussels’ possible decision to lift the ban, Telus suggested that such a move would bear political undertones and that “there are forces in Europe that want to further destabilize” Poland’s market. Kiev, meanwhile, has opposed the grain ban, with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky calling the embargo a betrayal of “European values.” The president has since threatened to go to an international arbitration court if Brussels decides to prolong the ban beyond September 15.

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“Although western economies are well-developed, they are already “too heavily invested and sluggish,” says Titov: “In the East, on the other hand, everything is booming, moving forward rapidly, developing rapidly…”

In Vladivostok, The Russian Far East Rises (Pepe Escobar)

Russian President Vladimir Putin opened and closed his quite detailed address to the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok with a resounding message: “The Far East is Russia’s strategic priority for the entire 21st century.” And that’s exactly the feeling one would have prior to the address, interacting with business executives mingling across the stunning forum grounds at the Far Eastern Federal University (opened only 11 years ago), with the backdrop of the more than four kilometer-long suspension bridge to Russky Island across the Eastern Bosphorus strait. The development possibilities of what is in effect Russian Asia, and one of the key nodes of Asia-Pacific, are literally mind-boggling.

Data from the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East and the Arctic – confirmed by several of the most eye-catching panels during the Forum – list a whopping 2,800 investment projects underway, 646 of which are already up and running, complete with the creation of several international Advanced Special Economic Zones (ASEZ) and the expansion of the Free Port of Vladivostok, home to several hundred small and midsize enterprises (SMEs). All that goes way beyond Russia’s “pivot to the East” which was announced by Putin in 2012, two years before the Maidan events in Kiev. For the rest of the planet, not to mention the collective west, it is impossible to understand the Russian Far East magic without being on the spot – starting with Vladivostok, the charming, unofficial capital of the Far East, with its gorgeous hills, striking architecture, verdant islands, sandy bays and of course the terminal of the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway.

What Global South visitors did experience – the collective west was virtually absent from the Forum – was a work in progress in sustainable development: a sovereign state setting the tone in terms of integrating large swathes of its territory to the new, emerging, polycentric geoeconomic era. Delegations from ASEAN (Laos, Myanmar, Philippines) and the Arab world, not to mention India and China, totally understood the picture. In his speech, Putin stressed how the rate of investment in the Far East is three times the Russian region average; how the Far East is only 35 percent explored, with unlimited potential for natural resource industries; how the Power of Siberia and Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok gas pipelines will be connected; and how by 2030, liquified natural gas (LNG) production in the Russian Arctic will triple.

In a broader context, Putin made clear that “the global economy has changed and continues to change; the west, with its own hands, is destroying the system of trade and finance that it itself created.” It is no wonder then that Russia’s trade turnover with Asia-Pacific grew by 13.7 percent in 2022, and by another 18.3 percent in just the first half of 2023. Cue to Presidential Business Rights Commissioner Boris Titov showing how this reorientation away from the “static” west is inevitable. Although western economies are well-developed, they are already “too heavily invested and sluggish,” says Titov: “In the East, on the other hand, everything is booming, moving forward rapidly, developing rapidly. And this applies not only to China, India, and Indonesia, but also to many other countries. They are the center of development today, not Europe, our main consumers of energy are there, finally.”

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“The State does not create wealth, the State destroys it. The State can give you nothing, because it produces nothing.”

“Never Embrace Socialism… Or The Siren Song Of Social Justice” – Milei (ZH)

Argentina’s leading presidential candidate Javier Milei – a self-described anarcho-capitalist who won the primaries with 30% of the vote – sat down with Tucker Carlson this week in Buenos Aires for a wide-ranging discussion. Carlson and Milei talked about why the citizens of Argentina are fed up with the relentless lack of change and the relentless economic decline, echoing many similar patterns taking place in America, with the one-time congressman explaining his platform of radical change which would include the dissolution of numerous socialist institutions and the very central bank which has led Argentina into multiple fiscal crisis events. Milei’s advice to Americans is simple: “Never embrace the ideas of socialism.”

Tucker Milei

“Never allow yourselves to be seduced by the siren song of social justice. Don’t get caught up in that terrible concept that where there is a need, there is a right. But that can’t happen on its own. We have to be prepared for this, and wage a cultural war every single day and we have to be careful because they have no problem with getting inside the State and employing Gramsci’s techniques: seducing the artists, seducing the culture, seducing the media or meddling in educational content.” Reflecting in the slippery slope of American leftist politics, Carlson noted that Argentina has adopted many left-wing social issues. “I didn’t fully appreciate the degree to which the Argentinian government had embraced fringe academic, American-style social justice,” Carlson told Milei, adding that “a businessman told me at lunch today that people who identify as transgender pay lower taxes, and that in 2019 you had a Ministry of Women and Diversity created in this country for the first time. What does that ministry do?”

“In theory, it is supposed to deal with women’s issues,” Milei said. “But when you look at the results, you find there aren’t any. Just writing songs…” “Are women happier here?” Carlson asked. “No,” Milei said. “Because there are no real results.” And added, “why isn’t there a Ministry of Men?” Then, Milei really touched the third rail… by supporting President Trump, and offering him some advice: “[Trump] should continue his fight against socialism. Because he is one of the few who truly understood that we are fighting socialism, that we are fighting the statists. He understood perfectly that the generation of wealth comes from the private sector.

The State does not create wealth, the State destroys it. The State can give you nothing, because it produces nothing. And when it attempts it, it does so poorly.” “So I’d say, if I could humbly offer advice, all I could say would be to double down on his efforts in the same direction: defending the ideals of freedom and refusing to give an inch to the socialists,” he continued. The discussion included Milei’s controversial denouncement of the Pope, his views on abortion, and his belief that climate change is a “socialist lie.”

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Hermit Crab

 

 

 

 

Ribbon eel

 

 

Colosseum

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Jun 282022
 


Pablo Picasso The sculptor and his statue 1933

 

Global Energy Cleaving Continues, Iran and Argentina Apply to Join BRICS (CTH)
How Africa And The Middle East Could Tip War In Putin’s Favour (DM)
Sanctions Against Russia Are Leading Latin America To The Abyss (Saker)
West Doing Its Utmost To Continue The Conflict In Ukraine – Zakharova (Tass)
WHO Behind FDA Scheme to Skip All Future Clinical Trials for COVID Jabs (CHD)
Where The World Is Heading From July 2022 – Geert Vanden Bossche (Assaya)
Warnings Of Mental Health Crisis Among ‘Covid Generation’ Of Students (G.)
‘Off The Charts’ Chemical Shortages Hit US Farms (R.)
The Time of Our Time (Kunstler)
Sri Lanka Suspends Fuel Sales Amid Economic Collapse (ZH)
Voicemail Shows Biden Did Talk Business Dealings With Hunter (NM)
Turkey’s Opposition Promises To Target Israel, Saudi Arabia And Greece (MEE)

 

 

 

 

Macron oil

 

 

 

 

Desmet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had originally called my Sunday article, The Entire World Order Has Changed, BRICS+++. Changed it, in part because I thought people might not understand. 24 hours later, the first applicants.

Wonder how Russia and China can get Saudi Arabia to join, and if they can persuade both Saudi AND Iran.

Global Energy Cleaving Continues, Iran and Argentina Apply to Join BRICS (CTH)

This is not some grand conspiracy, ‘out there‘ deep geopolitical possibility, or foreboding likelihood as an outcome of short-sighted western emotion. No, this is just a predictable outcome from western created events that pushed specific countries to a natural conclusion based on their best interests. You can debate the motives of the western leaders who structured the sanctions against Russia, and whether they knew the outcome would happen as a consequence of their effort, but the outcome was never really in doubt. Personally, I believe this outcome is what the west intended. The people inside the World Economic Forum are not stupid – ideological, yes, but not stupid. They knew this global cleaving would happen.

In April the finance ministers of the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) decided to create their own financial mechanisms to continue trade between nations of similar disposition despite Western/NATO sanctions. Earlier this month Fed Chairman Jerome Powell stated, “rapid changes are taking place in the global monetary system that may affect the international role of the dollar.” Additionally, as the proverbial ‘west’ follows the corporate instructions from the World Economic Forum, Powell expanded his points to note the creation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) is also being reviewed. Following a recent meeting of the BRICS group, Iran (86 million people) and Argentina (46 million people) are now applying to join BRICS, possibly creating BRICS+.

(Reuters) – “Iran has submitted an application to become a member in the group of emerging economies known as the BRICS, an Iranian official said on Monday. Iran’s membership in the BRICS group, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, “would result in added values for both sides,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said separately that Argentina had also applied to join the group. Argentinian officials could not be reached for immediate comment.

Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez, currently in Europe, has in recent days reiterated his desire for Argentina to join BRICS. “While the White House was thinking about what else to turn off in the world, ban or spoil, Argentina and Iran applied to join the BRICS,” Zakharova wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Russia has long been pushing to forge closer ties with Asia, South America and the Middle East, but it has intensified its efforts recently to weather sanctions imposed by Europe, the United States and other countries over its invasion on Ukraine.”

[.] The bottom line is – the 2022 punitive economic and financial sanctions by the western nations’ alliance against Russia was exactly the reason why BRICS assembled in the first place. Multinational corporations in control of government are what the BRICS assembly foresaw when they first assembled during the Obama administration. When multinational corporations run the policy of western government, there is going to be a problem. In the bigger picture, the BRICS assembly are essentially leaders who do not want corporations and multinational banks running their government. BRICS leaders want their government running their government; and yes, that means whatever form of government that exists in their nation, even if it is communist. BRICS leaders are aligned as anti-corporatist. That doesn’t necessarily make those government leaders better stewards, it simply means they want to make the decisions, and they do not want corporations to become more powerful than they are. As a result, if you really boil it down to the common denominator, what you find is the BRICS group are the opposing element to the World Economic Forum assembly.

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We’ll have to wait until Europe feels the heat. Or actually, the cold.

How Africa And The Middle East Could Tip War In Putin’s Favour (DM)

Ukraine believes its fate will be decided in the mud and blood of Donbas – where its troops are trying to grind Russia’s army into the dirt using skill, courage, and a fearsome arsenal of Western weaponry. But it seems increasingly likely that its destiny could be decided on another frontline, thousands of miles away: In the deserts of the Middle East and drought-stricken farmlands of Africa, where 44million people who relied on the country for food are now facing famine unless the conflict can be brought to a swift end. Blockades of Ukraine’s main Black Sea ports have placed a stranglehold on grain supplies which previously fed 400million, threatening starvation and riots from Libya to Liberia, and Syria to South Sudan.

On this front, at least, Putin seems to be winning. A growing chorus of leaders – joined in recent weeks by African Union head Macky Sall – are putting pressure on the West to pave the way for a peace deal that most analysts say would favour Russia, but which would get supplies flowing again. Playing catch-up, Western leaders – including Boris Johnson at today’s G7 meeting – have vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to reopen Ukraine’s ports, but are faced with the daunting task of sailing cargo vessels past Russia’s Black Sea fleet and through a minefield to get the grain. All the while, the risk of multiple and simultaneous global famines continues to grow – and with it, Putin’s chances of eking out something resembling a victory despite Ukraine’s heroics on the battlefield.

Before the outbreak of war on February 24, Ukraine supplied some 11 per cent of the world’s grain with food being one of its major exports – worth $18.5billion in 2018, according to latest-available data from the World Bank. Almost half of those exports went to Europe but a quarter went to either the Middle East and North Africa or sub-Saharan Africa – two regions that are now most at-risk of shortages, because they have few alternatives to turn to. Ukraine was also a major supplier of the World Food Programme – a UN body which provides sustenance for the globe’s most-vulnerable – providing up to 40 per cent of its wheat, which is used to make staples such as bread. For the time being, the crisis is logistical: There is plenty of food to go around, the difficulty is getting it to the people who need it.

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Machine translated from: http://www.opciones.cu/internacionales/2022-04-13/las-extorsiones-contra-rusia-golpean-a-latinoamerica

Sanctions Against Russia Are Leading Latin America To The Abyss (Saker)

Washington uses all kinds of extortion to that end: political influence, economic promises and blackmail, as was the case during the recent vote at the UN General Assembly to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. After the vote, several delegates expressed that for various reasons they had been forced to vote that way. Due to the impact of the Western “sanctions” war, the supply of fertilizers has been affected, which poses a threat to Latin American farmers, but is advantageous for the United States, which manufactures large quantities of fertilizer. Already, U.S. producers are looking to increase exports to countries in the region. Fertilizer prices are currently at an all-time high and in the first quarter of 2022 they rose by 30%, which exceeds those reached in 2008 during the global financial crisis.

Due to the “sanctions”, shipments from Russia have been interrupted and this country is one of the main producers and exporters globally. Moscow is the largest exporter of nitrogen fertilizers and the second largest exporter of potash and phosphorus fertilizers. In 2021 the Eurasian giant shipped fertilizers worth $12.5 billion. Among its main buyers were Brazil and the European Union with 25% respectively, and the United States with 14%. As is to be expected, if the fertilizers do not arrive, agricultural production in these countries will be greatly affected.

This complex scenario comes at a time when the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UNFAO) reported that the food price index reached 159.3 points in March, an all-time high, while in February it had already beaten the record since the creation of the cost index in 1990. The agency added that among the five categories that make up the index, four have never recorded such high prices: vegetable oils (248.6 points), cereals (170.1), dairy products (145.2) and meat (120.0). Two of the categories increased prices in February due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict: cereals by 17% and vegetable oils by 23%. These countries together export 30 % of the wheat and 20 % of the corn consumed in the world.

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“West unwilling to answer questions about its mercenaries in Ukraine — Russian diplomat..”

West Doing Its Utmost To Continue The Conflict In Ukraine – Zakharova (Tass)

Western countries are reluctant to answer Russia’s questions about their mercenaries in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday. “As [Russian Ambassador to London Andrey] Kelin said, they [Western countries] are writing some provocative, boorish things. They don’t want to answer the question we ask about their activities,” she said in an interview with the Voskresny Vecher (Sunday Evening) with Vladimir Solovyov on the Rossiya-1 television channel, when asked whether the United States and the United Kingdom have contacted Russia concerning their nationals who are taking part in combat operations in Ukraine.


According to Zakharova, the West is doing its utmost to continue the conflict in Ukraine as long as possible. “They are sparing no effort so that the conflict in Ukraine continued as long as possible. We remember what US 43rd President George Bush Jr said: Ukraine’s mission is to kill as many Russians as possible. <…> They have endowed Ukraine and the Kiev regime with this duty. They are using (Ukraine – TASS) as an instrument and the entire logistics are centered round that – weapons supplies, sending people, anything to keep the conflict burning, as [UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson told [French President Emmanuel] Macron today, to prevent the settlement of this situation. Otherwise, their plan will fail,” she added.

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Double down.

WHO Behind FDA Scheme to Skip All Future Clinical Trials for COVID Jabs (CHD)

Late Friday afternoon, the FDA released its agenda for the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) meeting that will vote on the Orwellian “Future Framework” on Tuesday, June 28. Then on Saturday morning, the FDA released a briefing document in connection with this scheme to end science as we know it in connection with future COVID-19 shots. [..] The briefing document is 18 pages of text, 1.5 line spacing, with just 19 references — 9 of which are pre-prints or from the CDC’s in-house newsletter Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) which means they are not peer-reviewed. Any true believer in The Narrative(TM) could have written this in a few hours.

To base the entire future of COVID-19 shots on this glorified undergrad term paper is madness. As I predicted, even though the April 6 meeting was presented as an exploratory initial conversation that reached no conclusions whatsoever, the “Future Framework” is now being presented by the FDA as a done deal, fait accompli, you’d have to be crazy to insist on proper safety studies. The core argument of the briefing document is hilarious (or rather, it would be hilarious if it was not a plan to permanently institutional genocide and hide the evidence). In several places the FDA argues (colloquialisms mine):

1. These COVID-19 shots work great, miracles really, incredibly effective, boy howdy do they work well! Boosters too, total home run, the Israelis even have 10-weeks of data showing that they might help old people. What more evidence could you want? 2. Okay, well, it depends on what you mean by work. These shots do not stop infection, transmission, hospitalization, or death, even though that’s why we licensed them. Any protection wears off fairly quickly, but It’s Not Our Fault(TM) because This Wily Virus(TM) mutates too fast and no one told us that it would ever mutate. 3. So these shots must be reformulated but we cannot possibly ask Lord Pharma to do proper clinical trials ever again because we already know that these shots work great.

The briefing document literally states: “The evaluation of modified vaccines for the purpose of vaccine strain composition decisions will need to rely mainly on comparative immunogenicity data due to the time constraints involved in vaccine manufacturing and clinical efficacy evaluation.” Did you catch that? The evaluation “will need to rely on” (no decision to be made here) measures other than actual health outcomes because of “time constraints.” Ah, $cience!

No clinical trials

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From commenter Germ: “Start listening at the 20 minute mark if you don’t have much time. He states that BA 4&5 is still evolving and that in 6 to 7 weeks we will see it evolve into a much more deadlier variant crashing the healthcare systems of the world. He said in two months we will be living in a different world.

You really need to listen from the 38:45 minute mark down to the 52 minute mark where he’s predicting the end of western civilization.”

Where The World Is Heading From July 2022 – Geert Vanden Bossche (Assaya)

In this talk with Assaya’s founder Clas Sivertsen, Geert predicts in this video that a new flu epidemic will soon emerge from an animal reservoir, and that the world (except Africa) will experience another wave of hospitalizations and economic collapse. He also discusses vaccinated vs unvaccinated responses to infection by new and future emerging variants, as well as describing what it will take to reach herd immunity. Clas discusses his detailed tracking of eCT values during his recent Covid-19 Omicron infection, and go through some of the histopathology and disease progression, lack of symptoms, etc.

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How to write an article that says nothing.

Warnings Of Mental Health Crisis Among ‘Covid Generation’ Of Students (G.)

The pandemic has had a lasting legacy on the mental health of the “Covid generation” of students, exacerbating rates of anxiety, depression and self-harm and resulting in a “significant rise” in young people struggling at university, experts have said. UK universities have reported that more students are experiencing mental health problems in the aftermath of the pandemic, and that this is expected to continue with the cohort arriving in September, whose school experience was heavily disrupted by the pandemic. The president of the National Union of Students, Larissa Kennedy, said she was “deeply concerned” by the student mental health crisis, which was “getting worse”, with NUS research suggesting “the majority of students are burdened by anxiety”.


Recent research by the Humen mental health charity suggested that more than two in five (41%) of students did not think their institution prevented problems from arising. Nearly half (47%) of students said mental health difficulties had a negative impact on their university experience, while a third said they didn’t know where to go to seek help, according to the survey of 7,385 students. Kennedy said students’ struggles were caused by exam pressure combined with the cost of living crisis, and called for more funding to introduce “early support hubs” that would “prevent thousands reaching crisis point” Last week the government announced £3m in funding to close the gap between the NHS and university mental health services, which the NUS warned was a drop in the ocean, equating to just £1 per student.

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You want to rely on Bayer?

‘Off The Charts’ Chemical Shortages Hit US Farms (R.)

U.S. farmers have cut back on using common weedkillers, hunted for substitutes to popular fungicides and changed planting plans over persistent shortages of agricultural chemicals that threaten to trim harvests. Spraying smaller volumes of herbicides and turning to less-effective fungicides increase the risk for weeds and diseases to dent crop production at a time when global grain supplies are already tight because the Ukraine war is reducing the country’s exports. Interviews with more than a dozen chemical dealers, manufacturers, farmers and weed specialists showed shortages disrupted U.S. growers’ production strategies and raised their costs.


Shawn Inman, owner of distributor Spinner Ag Incorporated in Zionsville, Indiana, said supplies are the tightest in his 24-year career. “This is off the charts,” Inman said. “Everything was delayed, delayed, delayed.” Shortages further reduce options for farmers battling weeds that developed resistance to glyphosate, the key ingredient in the commonly used Roundup herbicide, after decades of overuse in the United Sates. Prices for glyphosate and glufosinate, another widely used herbicide sold under the brand Liberty, jumped more than 50% from last year, dealers said, padding profit at companies like Bayer AG BAYGn.DE, BASF SE BASFn.DE and Corteva Inc CTVA.N.

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“..these giant governments and corporations are thrashing in their death throes. Get out of their way if you possibly can.”

The Time of Our Time (Kunstler)

These days, this place on the planet that used to be a nation groans under a tribulation of bad ideas, bad choices, bad conduct, bad management, and bad faith. We have not been so ripe for regime change since 1776. A ruling Party of Chaos is doing absolutely everything to disorder our lives and there really is no generous interpretation for its motives. Everything it touches breaks, wilts, withers, splinters, rots, poisons, and infects the body politic, driving it deeper into derangement. It doesn’t even pretend to make sense because that would require making distinctions between what is true and what’s not true. We follow-the-science into pure evil.

What awaits is the abandoned scaffold of the family and the community as opposed to the brute hierarchies of mere lonely, forsaken persons under the leviathan state and the behemoth corporation, which have produced mainly new kinds of cruelties, such as: the deadly “vaccine” mandates, the no-knock FBI visitations, the surveillance cameras, the robotic phone trees with their interminable holds, the obtuse insults of the HR departments, the drag queens twerking in your children’s faces, and much more. You might not know it from the news — what is the news now, anyway, except mercenary shuck-and-jive — but these giant governments and corporations are thrashing in their death throes. Get out of their way if you possibly can. Form the bonds you can with people and cherish them. For many, they will be all you’ll have for a while.

You can’t overstate the havoc that we’ll have to live with in the months ahead, short of blowing up the whole joint, one can hope. And it will happen just as a gigantic set of pretenses to a New Order of things rolls out to thumping failure. Forget about central bank digital currencies. Don’t believe that the very people who have severed the relationship between actual capital and money can just magically conjure a new order of money that they propose to control and you don’t. Meanwhile, the old-school money they created too much of is headed for the biggest gaping black hole imaginable because that’s what happens when money based on debt is not paid back. So, for a while, there will be too much money and then there will be not enough, and then nobody will have money.

All that happens as the supply of every kind of stuff in the world stops moving from Point A to Point B, including replacement parts for every sort of machine, distribution of petroleum and its products, and food. And at the same time, it finally becomes too obvious to ignore the fact that many millions are dying or becoming disabled from the effects of the mRNA vaccines foisted on the public, especially in the USA and Europe.

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Test case.

Sri Lanka Suspends Fuel Sales Amid Economic Collapse (ZH)

A broke and extremely cash-strapped Sri Lanka halted all fuel sales except for essential services in a desperate attempt to manage a severe fuel shortage — allowing the government to buy some time and send two government officials to Russia to negotiate a fuel deal. “From midnight today, no fuel will be sold except for essential services like the health sector, because we want to conserve the little reserves we have,” government spokesman Bandula Gunawardana said in a pre-recorded statement, obtained by AFP News. The Sri Lankan government announced only essential services would operate and be allowed access to fuel until July 10 because of a fuel shortage. “Sri Lanka has never faced such a severe economic crisis in its history,” Gunewardena added.

The move comes less than a week after Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the debt-laden economy of the island nation has “completely collapsed:” “We are now facing a far more serious situation beyond the mere shortages of fuel, gas, electricity, and food. Our economy has faced a complete collapse. “It is no easy task to revive a country with a completely collapsed economy, especially one that is dangerously low on foreign reserves,” ” Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told parliament on June 22. “The country is also facing record-high inflation and lengthy power blackouts, all of which have contributed to months of protests — sometimes violent — calling on President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to step down,” AFP said.

While the government said talks were held with the IMF, India, China, and Japan for new credit lines, negotiations to purchase heavily discounted Russian crude oil are set to begin this week. Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera said the two ministers would arrive in Russia early this week to continue talks about directly purchasing Russian fuels, according to AP News. “There is an advantage for us if we could buy oil directly from the Russian government or the Russian firms. There are talks going on,” Wijesekera told reporters Sunday. Earlier this month, Sri Lanka turned to Russia for cheap oil to purchase crude roughly $30 below the international spot price. The South Asian country said it received 90,000 tons of Russian crude but will need a lot more.

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Of course he did.

Voicemail Shows Biden Did Talk Business Dealings With Hunter (NM)

A backup voicemail recording recovered from Hunter Biden’s laptop computer shows that Joe Biden spoke with his son Hunter about Hunter’s business dealings with a Chinese oil giant, even though now-President Biden has repeatedly said that he has never talked to his son about his foreign business dealings. The Daily Mail reports that Joe Biden called Hunter on Dec. 12, 2018, after reading a New York Times article that detailed Hunter’s connections with the Chinese oil firm CEFC. Joe Biden left a voicemail for Hunter on his son’s iPhone XS, which was backed up on the laptop that Hunter later abandoned at a Maryland computer repair shop.The Times story in 2018 noted that CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming had been arrested in China and one of his top aides, Patrick Ho, had been convicted in the United States for bribing African officials to aid Iran in evading oil sanctions.

The story also reported that in 2017, Ye and Hunter Biden had met at a Miami hotel to talk about ”a partnership to invest in American infrastructure and energy deals.” When Ho was arrested, he called Joe Biden’s brother Jim, the Times reported, who told the paper he thought the call was intended for Hunter. The Times reported that it was ”unclear whether Hunter Biden struck any business deals with CEFC.” After reading the story, Joe Biden picked up the phone and dialed his son. ”Hey, pal, it’s Dad,” he said. ”It’s 8:15 on Wednesday night. If you get a chance just give me a call. Nothing urgent. I just wanted to talk to you. ”’I thought the article released online, it’s going to be printed tomorrow in the Times, was good. I think you’re clear,” Biden continued. ”And anyway, if you get a chance give me a call. I love you.”

As reporting on Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings have come to light, President Biden has on a number occasions denied ever having spoken to his son about them, both directly and through his press spokespersons to members of the press who have asked about the matter. Hunter Biden’s best friend and business partner, Devon Archer, texted him the next day: ”Nice quote from uncle jimmy. I hope you thanked him for that.” Hunter replied: ”Took it totally out of the context atctually (sic) the text itself that it was said in. Either way yeah I’m delighted.” But after Ho was arrested, he contacted Hunter Biden and paid him $1 million as a retainer to represent him.

The Daily Mail reports that a FISA warrant shows that federal agents were also monitoring Ho as a possible spy for China. Hunter Biden appeared to be aware of Ho’s status, as revealed in a recording while making sex tapes in a hotel room, according to the Mail. On one of the recordings, Hunter Biden tells the woman he is with: ”’I have another New York Times reporter calling about my representation of the, literally, Dr. Patrick Ho — the f***ing spy chief of China who started the company that my partner [Jianming], who is worth $323 billion, founded and is now missing.”

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A bigger Turkey.

Turkey’s Opposition Promises To Target Israel, Saudi Arabia And Greece (MEE)

The leader of the Turkish opposition said on Sunday that he will hold Israel, Saudi Arabia and Greece accountable for the steps they have taken against Turkey in recent years, promising to backtrack from Ankara’s recent policies that have sought detente with its regional neighbours. Writing in a series of tweets on Sunday, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), said there were “red lines” when it came to dealing with these countries. “There is a price for martyring our citizens in international waters,” he said, referring to the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla incident where nine Turkish activists were killed by Israeli forces in a civilian ship headed for the Gaza Strip. “My message to Israel is that this issue is not closed to us.”

His comments came following a visit by the political leader with the family of one of the Turkish activists who was killed by the Israeli forces. Turkey and Israel signed a deal in 2016 after Israel apologised and decided to pay compensation for the killings. Since then all court cases in Turkey have been dropped by the government. Both governments recently made efforts to repair their relationship, with Israeli President Isaac Herzog visiting Ankara in March. Kilicdaroglu, a possible joint presidential candidate for the opposition during next year’s elections, also criticised the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who visited Ankara last week to officially close the rift between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which emerged following the brutal killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 at the hands of Saudi agents in Istanbul.

“I also have a few words to say to bin Salman, who came to our country. Murder on our land also has its price,” Kilicdaroglu said. “Our account with him has not been closed either. He may be playing Erdogan on his finger, but Turkey is a great state, he will be made to pay for what he has done in our land.” But arguably Kilicdaroglu’s strongest comments were reserved for Greece. He threatened Greece with “nationalist” resistance and reminded Athens of the Turkish military’s 1974 Cyprus invasion which was led by then-Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit – who was also CHP leader – and deputy prime minister Necmettin Erbakan. Turkey argues that Greece has been arming some of its islands which hold non-militarised status under a set of agreements signed since the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has called on Greece to stop arming the islands, otherwise their sovereignty would be put into question by Turkey. Greece denies that said deals grant non-militarised status to those islands.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Build my house

 

 

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Feb 202021
 
 February 20, 2021  Posted by at 4:49 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  21 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Head of a Woman 1946
Missing, stolen painting .. gifted to the National Gallery by Picasso in 1946 in recognition of Athens’s resistance to Nazi occupation; he inscribed on the back: “For the Greek people, a tribute from Picasso.”

 

 

Dr. D posted this as a short comment, not an article, and he’s welcome, encouraged even, to expand on it at a later date. But I think it’s important enough, and detailed enough, to in fact make it an article. We can take if from here. The blind drive towards EV’s is going to hurt, and we should prepare for that.

The idea, and the concept, that we can simply switch from one energy source to another and keep motoring and do all the other things we do, is nothing but a cheap and meaningless sales pitch. To produce 20 million Tesla’s would require 165% of the entire 2019 global lithium production, says this from mining.com:

 

 

That’s just Tesla, that doesn’t yet include the entire rest of the world’s car manufacturers who also claim they’ll go “green”. But then we’ll just raise the production of lithium! Well, there may be a problem with that…

Wouldn’t it be hilarious if “green” cars in the end prove to be more polluting than “dirty” cars?

 

 

Dr. D: More math, like garlic and holy water, keeps the riff raff away.

One solution to Texas’ problem is to have long-term storage that the grid refuses to buy and install. But you can! For only $10,000, 5-10x the cost of yesterday’s generator, you can own a brand new Tesla Powerwall. That maybe MIGHT not catch on fire like all their cars and solar panels have. With it, you can have 13kw of power, and that’s not joking: an American house uses 1kw a day, so that’s almost two weeks of power. For $10,000, and a little house fire.

There are 3M Texans without power, so say 1M households, not sure how they account it or how carefully. 1M Powerwalls, and their NOT drawing on the grid would help the rest of Texas households too! For only $10 BILLION dollars. (And a 10-year lifespan). Chicken feed these days.

Cool. He’s building a factory there, we’ll buy one today. You know, with that extra $10k most American families have hanging around.

But…then there’s math. At 200lbs/pc 1 Million Powerwalls would need 200 MILLION pounds of lithium or 100,000 tons. (90,718 Metric Tonnes)

 

Pic

 

Oh wait: that’s more Lithium than is mined in WHOLE CONTINENTS, like top producer Australia @ 42,000 tonnes. Next is Chile, 18,000 tonnes.

I detect a problem.

More problems follow. Lithium is both unbelievably reactive and unbelievably toxic. It catches on fire in water — not like there’s any “water” where humans live, and as lithium is a major ingredient in psychology drugs, causing mood leveling or even erasing emotions altogether, and doesn’t decay, even a small amount of escaped lithium is a big deal. That’s both in the Pecos and Red River, AND at the mining site, where it consumes tens of thousands of gallons in the world’s driest environments, like Bolivia.

The Environmental Impact of Lithium Batteries

“Lithium extraction harms the soil and causes air contamination. In Argentina’s Salar de Hombre Muerto, residents believe that lithium operations contaminated streams used by humans and livestock and for crop irrigation. In Chile, the landscape is marred by mountains of discarded salt and canals filled with contaminated water with an unnatural blue hue.

… In Australia, only two percent of the country’s 3,300 metric tons of lithium-ion waste is recycled.

… recovered cells are usually shredded, creating a mixture of metal that can then be separated using pyrometallurgical techniques—burning—which wastes a lot of the lithium.”

Two other key ingredients, cobalt and nickel, are more in danger of creating a bottleneck in the move towards electric vehicles, and at a potentially huge environmental cost. Cobalt is found in huge quantities right across the Democratic Republic of Congo and central Africa, and hardly anywhere else. The price has quadrupled in the last two years.

Unlike most metals, which are not toxic when they’re pulled from the ground as metal ores, cobalt is “uniquely terrible,” according to Gleb Yushin, chief technical officer and founder of battery materials company Sila Nanotechnologies.”

Not done yet, where one solution to one 7-day crisis takes more lithium than is mined? Then polluted? Then not recycled? Then as not recycled, permanently escapes into your water supply?

There’s still this: it takes 60kw to produce 1kw of lithium battery capacity. Now it’s reusable, so there are many, many cycles in a battery, but your 13 Million Kwh are going to need 78M Kwh to create, just for the battery side, or 78,000 megawatts.

Are you sure you wouldn’t rather – say it with me now:

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without”? You know, by reducing, reusing, economizing, using less, and creating only things that last longer?

Nope. If I DON’T buy a Powerwall, who profits? No subsidy, no GDP, no sales tax, no Wall Street IPO. No 18 weeks’ work at $20/hr, tied up to Jamie Dimon and Uncle Sam to buy it.

Thoreau said he could walk to Boston on foot quicker than he could get the money to take the train there. Is chopping fallen wood and sitting on a rammed clay floor next to your small wood stove REALLY that bad? That’s 18 weeks you can stay home and read Cicero – from a real-to-god, paper book — with your children. Or not. Don’t, end up in the dark and curse: “I cry to you, O God, but you don’t answer. I will speak out in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.” What do you think he’s going to do for you that you’re not doing for yourself?

 

 

See also:

The Spiralling Environmental Cost Of Our Lithium Battery Addiction

And

Bolivia: Where revolutionaries and lithium miners go to die

 

 

 

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Feb 092020
 


Dorothea Lange Play street for children. Sixth Street and Avenue C, NYC June 1936

 

Authorities Order Foxconn To Keep Chinese Facilities Closed (AI)
China To Stagger Back To Work As Coronavirus Deaths Surpass SARS (R.)
In-Hospital Infection Blamed In Wuhan Hospital (NHK)
Coronavirus Outbreak Has Affected 4 Different Cruise Ships (H.)
Still No Port For Cruise Ship Westerdam (NHK)
Five Britons Contract Coronavirus In French Ski Resort (R.)
Coronavirus Brings China’s Surveillance State Out Of The Shadows (R.)
Coronavirus Threatens The Chinese Communist Party’s Grip On Power (SCMP)
Yesterday’s Gone: Iowa Was Waterloo for Democrats (Taibbi)
The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President (Atl.)
A Stock Market Boom Is Not The Basis Of Shared Prosperity (Palley)
Argentina Won’t Repay IMF Debt Till Recession Over – VP Kirchner (R.)

 

 

Late last night in my present timezone, CET, initial new coronavirus numbers came out and everyone said they meant the virus has now killed more people (805-806) than SARS. Everyone except for SCMP which cited a WHO number of 813 SARS deaths (they still haven’t figured that out after 17 years). And then, wouldn’t you know, when I got up in the morning, SCMP had revised their new deaths number to … exactly 813. If I weren’t born so wonderfully gullible I would ask myself something.

Global death toll for new coronavirus hits 805, exceeding that of SARS

The global death toll from the new coronavirus is now at 805, higher than that of SARS. Hubei province reported Sunday morning that there were 81 additional deaths, bringing the total number of fatalities in the mainland to 803 so far. The global death toll for the new coronavirus currently stands at 805, including one death in the Philippines and another in Hong Kong. That compares to the SARS outbreak which killed at least 774 people and infected 8,096 people worldwide in 2002 and 2003, according to data from the World Health Organization.

NOTE: SARS deaths took 9 months. This epidemic is just 1-2 months old.

China’s Hubei reports 81 deaths, global total just short of WHO’s SARS figure

China’s Hubei province, the epicentre of the novel coronavirus epidemic, reported 81 new deaths from the disease on Saturday, bringing the province’s total fatalities from the outbreak to 780. Total deaths globally stood at 805, just short of the 813 total fatalities attributed to the deadly Sars epidemic of 2002-2003 by the World Health Organisation. The provincial health authorities also reported 2,147 newly confirmed cases of the disease in the past 24 hours. This brings the total cases in Hubei to 27,100. These figures compared to the reported deaths and newly confirmed cases of 81 and 2,841, respectively, on Friday.

 

 

• 813 deaths, up from 724 yesterday. 89 new deaths is a new record again.

• Confirmed new cases rose to 37,198, an increase of 2,652 overnight

• 3,916 suspected new cases, bringing the total to 28,942 suspected cases.

 

And this little map looks promising, but I do have questions about it:

 

 

Questions like: what are the effects of the ever wider and ever more stringent lockdowns on this? Do fewer people get infected if they’re all locked up in their homes? Or are infected people also harder to find when they’re behind closed doors? Would families volunteer to deliver potentially infected family members to authorities, or would they wait until they’re as good as dead?

I found this interesting as well: “Wuhan has 49 crematoriums, which can each burn 5 bodies every two hours. They’ve been working 24 hours a day for 17 days now. 49 x 17 x 24 x 5/2 = 49,980 bodies.”

 

Still, as I said yesterday, it’s really all about Monday morning, when the economy is supposed to start “working” again. On Friday, Tesla said its Shanghai plant would re-open tomorrow morning. But then today, the government ordered Foxconn’s Shenzhen factories to remain closed. Will Tesla really open?

As I also said somewhere yesterday, “restarting” the economy where 100s of millions are under some form of lockdown now, means shoving all those millions into planes, trains and subways to bring them to plants where they spend 8-10-12 hours in close proximity to potential virus carriers. Thousands more petri dishes.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

 

 

Well, that’s my question: “No-one wants to bear the responsibility for restarting work at this critical moment.”

Authorities Order Foxconn To Keep Chinese Facilities Closed (AI)

As authorities attempt to stem the spread of the coronavirus in China, Foxconn did its part to help on Friday by telling staff not to return to work on February 10, following the Lunar New Year. Rather than resuming operations on the originally anticipated return date, the assembly partner told its tens of thousands of employees to stay away from the Shenzhen plant. A report by Nikkei claims the calling off of production has been further halted by the Chinese authorities, who have told Foxconn not to reopen. People familiar with the matter advised the factory was subject to on-site inspections by public health officials, which found there were “high risks of coronavirus infection” if it did reopen.

One internal memo about the inspection and government-ordered closure mentioned “Violation of epidemic prevention and control could potentially face the death penalty.” Part of the problem is the production facilities use central air condition and have a high density of workers, conditions ripe for viral transference. “The local governments do not want to risk the potential virus spreading in such a labor-intensive working environment,” a source told the report. “No-one wants to bear the responsibility for restarting work at this critical moment.” On Friday, Foxconn took the extra step of canceling flight bookings for employees from Taiwan returning from their home country to China between February 7 and February 14.


The measure was allegedly announced by Chairman Young Liu in a video conference that morning, who also confirmed the company’s Zhengzhou complex would need to be evaluated by the local government before it could be reopened. Foxconn has previously confirmed the coronavirus will affect production, and it is allegedly affecting Apple’s AirPods along with other products it makes, such as iPhones.

Read more …

What will stocks do?

China To Stagger Back To Work As Coronavirus Deaths Surpass SARS (R.)

China raised the death toll from the coronavirus epidemic to 811 on Sunday, passing the number killed globally by the SARS epidemic in 2002/2003 and raising anxiety among people preparing to return to work after an extended Lunar New Year break. Struggling to contain the spread of the disease, authorities had told businesses to tack up to 10 extra days onto holidays that had been due to finish at the end of January as the rising numbers of dead and infected cast a pall over the country. Many of China’s usually teeming cities have almost become ghost towns during the past two weeks, as the Communist Party rulers ordered virtual lockdowns, cancelled flights, closed factories and kept schools shut.


The sight of an economy regarded as a workshop to the world laid so low has also taken a toll on international financial markets, as shares slumped and investors switched into safe-havens like gold, bonds and the Japanese yen. Even on Monday, a large number of workplaces will remain closed and many white-collar workers will continue to work from home. The new deaths on Saturday reached another daily record at 89, data from the National Health Commission showed, pushing the total well over the 774 who died from SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

Read more …

“..around 40 percent of the patients with the new coronavirus they have treated may have contracted the illness at their hospital.”

In-Hospital Infection Blamed In Wuhan Hospital (NHK)

A team of medical professionals at a hospital in Wuhan says that around 40 percent of the patients with the new coronavirus they have treated may have contracted the illness at their hospital. The team works at a Wuhan University hospital in the Chinese city at the heart of the outbreak. They published their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Friday. The study says 138 cases were confirmed at the hospital between January 1 and 28. Of those, 41 percent, or 57 people, were medical staff or patients who were initially hospitalized for other reasons.


The study found that one patient in the surgical department may have infected more than 10 members of hospital staff. It says that while patients had symptoms such as high fever and sense of fatigue, researchers revealed that 10 percent either had atypical symptoms such as diarrhea, or complained of nausea. It concludes that it was difficult to screen patients with symptoms not previously associated with the virus. The team says that an important feature of the new coronavirus is the rapid human-to-human transmission among people in close contact.

Read more …

I think the ship off Hong Kong was freed today. The Yokohama one with 61 infected won’t be so lucky.

Coronavirus Outbreak Has Affected 4 Different Cruise Ships (H.)

Cruises are, for the most part, meant to elicit feelings of relaxation—literally floating away from your landlocked responsibilities for a few days. But, for thousands of passengers aboard at least four different cruise ships, their vacations quickly turned into nightmare scenarios. As of Friday, four major vessels—the Diamond Princess, Westerdam, World Dream, and Royal Caribbean’s The Anthem of the Seas cruise ships—have been impacted by the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), aka the Wuhan coronavirus. Most affected by the outbreak is the Diamond Princess cruise ship, currently quarantined off the coast of Yokohama, near Tokyo.

The ship was docked Tuesday after a former passenger tested positive for the coronavirus. Since then, 61 passengers of the 3,700 people on board have tested positive for the virus, reports CNN. The ship’s quarantine is expected to last until at least February 19. The two other ships—the Westerdam, currently in search of a port in the East China Sea; and the World Dream, docked in Hong Kong—have also come to a halt due to fears of coronavirus, per CNN. No current or former passengers on the Westerdam have been reported as having the coronavirus, nor have any current passengers on the World Dream, though eight former passengers of the cruise ship have been confirmed as having the illness.


And most recently, on Friday, the Royal Caribbean’s The Anthem of the Seas was docked near New York City, at a port in Bayonne, New Jersey, where 27 passengers were screened for the coronavirus, according to CNN. Four of those passengers were sent to the hospital for further investigation, while the other 23 were cleared. In a statement, per CNN, Royal Caribbean confirmed that, like airlines, they too are working to help limit the spread of the coronavirus. “We continue to work in close consultation with the CDC, the WHO, and local health authorities to align with their guidance and ensure the health and wellbeing of our guests and crew.”

Read more …

Sailed on Feb 1. Now it’s like the original Flying Dutchman ship.

Still No Port For Cruise Ship Westerdam (NHK)

The operator of the cruise ship Westerdam is searching for a port to call at after being rejected by destinations including Japan amid fears of the spreading coronavirus. The US-based Holland America Line said in a statement on Friday that the ship is “currently sailing on a southwesterly course off the coast of Taiwan.” The firm says it is positioning the ship “for access to potential port locations.” The Westerdam departed Hong Kong on February 1 with more than 2,200 passengers and crew onboard. Taiwan denied it permission to call, citing a suspicion of coronavirus infection among the passengers. Japanese authorities followed suit, preventing it from entering a port in the southwestern prefecture of Okinawa. Holland America Line said in the statement that “The ship is not in quarantine” and there is “no reason to believe there are any cases of coronavirus on board.” It added the ship has sufficient fuel and food, and passengers are provided with free internet and phone access.

Read more …

Is this the first cluster than doesn’t involve Chinese people? Note that the original infection came from Singapore, not China.

Five Britons Contract Coronavirus In French Ski Resort (R.)

Five British nationals including a child have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus at a French mountain village, and health officials said they were checking who else might have been exposed, including at local schools. In total, 11 people, including the five who tested positive, have been hospitalized in southeastern France and were being examined, the French health ministry said on Saturday, adding that none were in serious condition. The group of Britons included holidaymakers and a family currently residing in the Alpine village and ski resort, Les Contamines-Montjoie. They shared neighboring apartments in a chalet and temporarily hosted a British man believed to have contracted the virus at a business congress in Singapore before his short visit to France in late January, the ministry added.


Two schools would be shut next week for checks, regional health official Jean-Yves Grall said, after it emerged that the nine-year-old who tested positive had attended lessons and French classes in different establishments. Two other children were also part of the group of 11 now in hospital in the cities of Lyon, Saint-Etienne and Grenoble, and they had been schooled in the area too, according to Etienne Jacquet, mayor of Les Contamines-Montjoie. Some parents in the village, nestled in the mountains close to the Mont Blanc peak and the Swiss city of Geneva, said on Saturday they had received little information so far and were being cautious.

Read more …

Thermal cameras, cameras that see through face-masks, a good crisis to step up state control.

Coronavirus Brings China’s Surveillance State Out Of The Shadows (R.)

When the man from Hangzhou returned home from a business trip, the local police got in touch. They had tracked his car by his license plate in nearby Wenzhou, which has had a spate of coronavirus cases despite being far from the epicenter of the outbreak. Stay indoors for two weeks, they requested. After around 12 days, he was bored and went out early. This time, not only did the police contact him, so did his boss. He had been spotted near Hangzhou’s West Lake by a camera with facial recognition technology, and the authorities had alerted his company as a warning.

“I was a bit shocked by the ability and efficiency of the mass surveillance network. They can basically trace our movements with the AI technology and big data at any time and any place,” said the man, who asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions. Chinese have long been aware that they are tracked by the world’s most sophisticated system of electronic surveillance. The coronavirus emergency has brought some of that technology out of the shadows, providing the authorities with a justification for sweeping methods of high tech social control. Artificial intelligence and security camera companies boast that their systems can scan the streets for people with even low-grade fevers, recognize their faces even if they are wearing masks and report them to the authorities.

If a coronavirus patient boards a train, the railway’s “real name” system can provide a list of people sitting nearby. Mobile phone apps can tell users if they have been on a flight or a train with a known coronavirus carrier, and maps can show them locations of buildings where infected patients live. Although there has been some anonymous grumbling on social media, for now Chinese citizens seem to be accepting the extra intrusion, or even embracing it, as a means to combat the health emergency. “In the circumstances, individuals are likely to consider this to be reasonable even if they are not specifically informed about it,” said Carolyn Bigg, partner at law firm DLA Piper in Hong Kong.

[..] Facial recognition firm Megvii said on Tuesday it had developed a new way to spot and identify people with fevers, with support from the industry and science ministries. Its new “AI temperature measurement system”, which detects temperature with thermal cameras and uses body and facial data to identify individuals, is already being tested in a Beijing district. SenseTime, another leading AI firm, said it has built a similar system to be used at building entrances, which can identify people wearing masks, overcoming a weakness of earlier technology. Surveillance camera firm Zhejiang Dahua says it can detect fevers with infrared cameras to an accuracy within 0.3ºC.

Read more …

Wishful thinking?

Coronavirus Threatens The Chinese Communist Party’s Grip On Power (SCMP)

China missed the best opportunity to contain the spread of the virus because officials at first delayed – or possibly covered up – the release of information and were slow in taking precautionary actions. The first patient who experienced symptoms was found on December 1, 2019, suggesting the origin of the disease was even earlier. And there has been some evidence of human-to-human transmissions since late December, with more emerging in early January when several medical workers were infected. These vital bits of information were not released to the public in time. Nor was any decisive action taken between early December and January 23, the day Beijing told the world about the severity of the epidemic and declared war on it just two days before the Lunar New Year on January 25.

Lives continued as normal in Wuhan in the week before then. On January 18, the Wuhan government hosted a banquet attended by more than 40,000 families in a bid to set a Guinness world record. On January 20, the municipal government said it was distributing 200,000 free tickets to residents for festive new year activities. Videos show few people wearing face masks in Wuhan before mid-January. Compare that to Hong Kong, where since early January the government has been updating people on the situation daily and holding frequent news briefings.


In terms of human-to-human transmissions, the alarm wasn’t raised until the prominent epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan spoke out on January 20 – nearly 50 days after the first patient was found and three weeks after it was established that human-to-human infections were taking place. Instead of acting against the virus, the government focused on controlling the information. In an effort to underscore the CCP’s determination to crack down on unsanctioned information, the broadcaster CCTV reported on January 2 that Wuhan police had interrogated and warned eight whistle-blowers, frontline doctors, for “rumourmongering” about the epidemic. It seemed all too familiar to 2003, when military doctor Jiang Yanyong defied government rules and risked his own life to break the news about the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) to the international media.

Read more …

“Perhaps all the Democrats need to win the presidency is a Rust Belt millennial who’s gay and speaks Norwegian.”

Yesterday’s Gone: Iowa Was Waterloo for Democrats (Taibbi)

Democratic campaign events have long been more pep rally than discussion, more about the terribleness of Republicans than substance. “They’re so used to events where everyone is rooting for them,” says Redd. “It’s like, ‘No, we’re actually here to challenge you on issues that matter.’” Biden performed surprisingly well all year in polls, but he headed into Iowa like a passenger jet trying to land with one burning engine, hitting trees, cows, cars, sides of mountains, everything. The poking incidents were bad, but then one of his chief surrogates, John Kerry, was overheard by NBC talking about the possibility of jumping in to keep Bernie from “taking down” the party.

“Maybe I’m fucking deluding myself here,” Kerry reportedly said — mainstream Democrats may not have changed their policies or strategies much since Trump, but they sure are swearing more — then noted he would have to raise a “couple of million” from people like venture capitalist Doug Hickey. Kerry later said he was enumerating the reasons he wouldn’t run, though those notably did not include humility about his own reputation as a comical national electoral failure, or because there’s already a candidate in the race (Biden) he’d been crisscrossing Iowa urging people to vote for, but instead because he’d have to step down from the board of Bank of America and give up paid speeches. French aristocrats who shouted “Vive le Roi!” on the way to the razor did a better job advertising themselves.

With days, hours left before the caucuses, there were signs everywhere that the party establishment was scrambling to find someone among the remaining cast members to stop what Kerry called the “reality of Bernie.” But who? Yang said smart things about inequality, so he was out. Tulsi Gabbard was Russian Bernie spawn. Tom Steyer was Dennis Kucinich with money. Voters had already rejected potential Trump WWE opponents like the “progressive prosecutor” (Kamala Harris), the “pragmatic progressive” (John Delaney), “the next Bobby Kennedy” (Beto O’Rourke), “Courageous Empathy” (Cory Booker), Medicare for All can bite me (John Hickenlooper), and over a dozen others.

Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg seemed perfect, a man who defended the principle of wine-based fundraisers with military effrontery. New York magazine made his case in a cover story the magazine’s Twitter account summarized as: “Perhaps all the Democrats need to win the presidency is a Rust Belt millennial who’s gay and speaks Norwegian.”

Read more …

The Trump people meddle in conspiracy theories. The “others” don’t. This is how and why you will lose the election.

The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President (Atl.)

One day last fall, I sat down to create a new Facebook account. I picked a forgettable name, snapped a profile pic with my face obscured, and clicked “Like” on the official pages of Donald Trump and his reelection campaign. Facebook’s algorithm prodded me to follow Ann Coulter, Fox Business, and a variety of fan pages with names like “In Trump We Trust.” I complied. I also gave my cellphone number to the Trump campaign, and joined a handful of private Facebook groups for MAGA diehards, one of which required an application that seemed designed to screen out interlopers. The president’s reelection campaign was then in the midst of a multimillion-dollar ad blitz aimed at shaping Americans’ understanding of the recently launched impeachment proceedings.

Thousands of micro-targeted ads had flooded the internet, portraying Trump as a heroic reformer cracking down on foreign corruption while Democrats plotted a coup. That this narrative bore little resemblance to reality seemed only to accelerate its spread. Right-wing websites amplified every claim. Pro-Trump forums teemed with conspiracy theories. An alternate information ecosystem was taking shape around the biggest news story in the country, and I wanted to see it from the inside. The story that unfurled in my Facebook feed over the next several weeks was, at times, disorienting. There were days when I would watch, live on TV, an impeachment hearing filled with damning testimony about the president’s conduct, only to look at my phone later and find a slickly edited video—served up by the Trump campaign—that used out-of-context clips to recast the same testimony as an exoneration. Wait, I caught myself wondering more than once, is that what happened today?

[..] Every presidential campaign sees its share of spin and misdirection, but this year’s contest promises to be different. In conversations with political strategists and other experts, a dystopian picture of the general election comes into view—one shaped by coordinated bot attacks, Potemkin local-news sites, micro-targeted fearmongering, and anonymous mass texting. Both parties will have these tools at their disposal. But in the hands of a president who lies constantly, who traffics in conspiracy theories, and who readily manipulates the levers of government for his own gain, their potential to wreak havoc is enormous.

The Trump campaign is planning to spend more than $1 billion, and it will be aided by a vast coalition of partisan media, outside political groups, and enterprising freelance operatives. These pro-Trump forces are poised to wage what could be the most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history. Whether or not it succeeds in reelecting the president, the wreckage it leaves behind could be irreparable.

Read more …

How you tie your impression of Trump as a con-man in with the topic is unclear. Today’s bubbles started with Greenspan and Bill Clinton, not Trump.

A Stock Market Boom Is Not The Basis Of Shared Prosperity (Palley)

The United States is currently enjoying another stock market boom. If history is any guide, it may well end in a bust. In the meantime, the boom is having a politically toxic effect. Donald Trump uses it to make the case for his reelection in the fall. But his argument, at a minimum, requires a big leap of faith. Trump’s assertion — that a stock market boom is the basis for shared prosperity — is just that, an assertion. It certainly hasn’t led to any broad-based prosperity. The beneficiaries are the happy few at the top of the U.S. economic pyramid. Anyone who ever read John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Great Crash 1929, his 1954 classic, has run across Galbraith’s idea of the “bezzle.” In addition to Ponzi schemes, Galbraith’s bezzle also captures the dynamic of speculative bubbles.

Those bubbles are a form of fraud we collectively inflict on ourselves. Investors buy in believing they will be able to sell at a higher price, and their purchases drive up prices and attract new investors who hope to jump on the price appreciation band wagon. The bubble continues until belief in ever higher prices is punctured, whereupon buyers evaporate and the bubble implodes. Once again, all feel richer along the way. Today’s stock market increasingly has the smell and feel of another bezzle. That smell is metaphorically rather perfectly reflected in President Trump who has all the integrity of a con man. Better yet, Trump’s business history, in addition to reliance on funding from suspect sources, is marked by serial bankruptcies.


Trump has also managed to use the presidential bully pulpit to cajole the U.S. Federal Reserve into further inflating asset prices by enjoining it to lower interest rates. In addition to directly impacting asset pricing, the Federal Reserve has given a green flag for speculative buying. In that process, it has strengthened beliefs that it stands ready to guarantee stock prices, via the so-called “Powell put.” That put is an amplification of the prior “Bernanke put,” which was in turn an amplification of the “Greenspan put” which launched the Federal Reserve’s commitment to stock prices. To be honest, it did not take much cajoling from Trump as the Federal Reserve has evidently learned little from the past 35 years of serial asset price bubbles.

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A lesson for Greece.

Argentina Won’t Repay IMF Debt Till Recession Over – VP Kirchner (R.)

Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said on Saturday that the government will not pay “even half a cent” of its debt back to the International Monetary Fund before the country has exited recession. “The first thing we have to do in order to be able to pay is to exit the recession,” Fernandez de Kirchner said at a presentation of her book “Sinceramente” (Sincerely) at Havana’s international book fair. “If there is a recession no-one will pay even half a cent and the way you exit recession is through a lot of state investment.” Argentina needs to restructure $100 billion in sovereign debt with creditors, including part of a $57 billion credit facility that the IMF extended the country in 2018.


Dealings with the IMF are key as Argentina hopes to avoid a default amid a currency crash, steep inflation and a contracting economy. An IMF technical mission is expected in Buenos Aires next week to discuss obligations owed to the fund. Fernandez de Kirchner said Argentina should get a “substantial haircut” on its IMF debt. A leftist and militant Peronist, she has traveled frequently to Communist-run Cuba over the past year to visit her daughter Florencia Kirchner who is undergoing medical treatment there.

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Just one of those timelines where Dean Koontz wrote a book about a Chinese super virus called Wuhan that escaped a secret lab.

 

 

 

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Oct 312019
 
 October 31, 2019  Posted by at 8:28 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  13 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Van Gogh painting sunflowers 1888

 

Trump-Ukraine Whistleblower Revealed (GP)
Adam Schiff Coached Vindman Throughout Impeachment Testimony – Nunes (ZH)
Tulsi Gabbard Unleashes On Erdogan: “Radical Islamist Megalomaniac” (ZH)
We May Not Have A 2020 Election – Kunstler (USAW)
The Fumes of Fanaticism (Kunstler)
Boeing Employee Raised Concern Over Max Sensor Three Years Before Crashes (G.)
Over 50 Boeing 737NG Grounded Globally With Wing-Related Cracks (RT)
Union Calls On Qantas To Ground Entire 737 Fleet For Investigation (G.)
The Age of Anger Exploding in Serial Geysers (Pepe Escobar)
Russia-India Counter-Terrorism Group Vows ‘Credible Action’ (RT)
Famed Pathologist Michael Baden Says Jeffrey Epstein’s Death Was Homicide

 

 

Yeah, I know what I said: no more Debt Rattles. But then yesterday I found myself looking at the Epstein story, the whistleblower revealed, and some Boeing stuff, Jim Kunstler etc., and I was thinking: I should at least keep those for reference. So I injected them into the Debt Rattle format, and that sort of gelled. And so I decided I can perhaps do this, but I did give myself a deadline: it can not cost more than two hours in the morning. Which means some of these Things will be short, and some days there may not be one.

Oh, and we still need financial support, badly. People have been mighty generous this week, but we would need 52 such weeks in the year.

 

 

OK, now we know. What is the next step?

Trump-Ukraine Whistleblower Revealed (GP)

The anti-Trump whistleblower behind the Ukraine witch hunt was revealed on Wednesday night. According to investigative reporter Paul Sperry, one person’s name keeps coming up in the impeachment hearings that fits the description of the whistleblower — Eric Ciaramella. We have reported on Ciaramella previously at The Gateway Pundit. 33-year-old Ciaramella is a registered Democrat, worked for Obama, worked for Biden, worked for CIA Director John Brennan, he’s a vocal critic of Trump and he helped initiate the ‘Russia collusion’ hoax investigation! Ciaramella’s identity was an open secret in the DC swamp, says Paul Sperry.


Mr. Ciaramella is a CIA officer who specializes in Russia and Ukraine who was detailed to work in the National Security Council under Susan Rice in 2015. He was then moved into the West Wing in 2017 to ‘fill a vacancy’ where he was able to ‘see and read everything.’ The Gateway Pundit and others had already identified Ciaramella as Schiff’s CIA whistleblower. But we were not the first to point out that this dangerous Obama operative was working in the Trump White House and was given access to top secret information. Mike Cernovich warned the Trump administration about Eric Ciaramella back in June 2017.

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Vindman is yet another ‘witness’ whose import is heavily promoted.

Adam Schiff Coached Vindman Throughout Impeachment Testimony – Nunes (ZH)

Rep. Devin Nunes claims that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff was coaching Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the director of European affairs at the National Security Council (NSC), as he told House committees that he “did not think it was proper” for President Trump to ask Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky to investigate former VP Joe Biden during a July 25 phone call. “I have never in my life seen anything like what happened today, during the testimony of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman,” Nunes told Fox News’ “Hannity.”


“It was unprecedented,” Nunes continued. “I mean, they’ve been bad at most of these depositions, but to interrupt us continually to coach the witness, to decide… what we’re going to be able to ask the witness.” “And, to see someone coach a witness, this isn’t the first time that Schiff — Schiff is very good at coaching witnesses.”

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I see more and more people suggesting Tulsi is really a Republican. Ostensibly because you cannot be a Democrat and not agree with Hillary and her DNC. Expect ugliness.

Tulsi Gabbard Unleashes On Erdogan: “Radical Islamist Megalomaniac” (ZH)

A day after the US House of Representatives in a historic vote overwhelmingly passed a resolution to recognize the Armenian Genocide, resulting in an immediate fierce rebuke from Ankara, Democratic Congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard issued a video statement slamming Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan as “a radical Islamist megalomaniac” who for years supported ISIS. Erdogan has been “slaughtering the Syrian Kurds and he’s using terrorists from ISIS and al-Qaeda as his militia,” she explained, and has “been helping ISIS/AQ for years,” according to the social media video message.

She also reiterated her consistent position that the Islamic State was born of the externally funded and weaponized push to overthrow the Assad government. “He has denied this but is now openly using militias of ‘former’ ISIS/AQ terrorists, exposing him for what he really is: a radical Islamist megalomaniac who wants to establish a caliphate with himself as the Caliph — the supreme ruler.” The Democratic presidential candidate said Turkey is now doing this “openly” and “brazenly” but also reminded her audience that she’s been warning about this for years.

[..] Concerning the Saudis, she joined relatives of Sept. 11 victims on Tuesday to demand the US government release its full findings on the role that Saudi state operatives played in the 9/11 attacks. “We are 18 years removed from this terrible crime, and the victims of this crime, the families who are here today, the American people deserve all of the evidence to fully come to light,” the Hawaii congresswoman said.

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Jim Kunstler is one of very few people who agree with me that Trump is not the biggest factor, his antagonists are, in intelligence, in the Democratic party, and perhaps most of all in the media. The MSM have taken it upon themselves to control what you think. And if you get your news mostly from CNN or the NYT or WaPo, what defenses do you have?

We May Not Have A 2020 Election – Kunstler (USAW)

“What I am waiting for is if and when indictments come down from Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham. I am wondering whether the editors and publishers of the Washington Post and New York Times and the producers at CNN and MSNBC are going to be named as unindicted co-conspirators in this effort to gaslight the country and really stage a coup to remove the President and to nullify the 2016 election. I say this as someone who is not necessarily a Trump supporter. I didn’t vote for the guy. I am not a cheerleader for the guy, but basically, I think the behavior of his antagonists has been much worse and much more dangerous for the nation and the American project as a long term matter.

I really need to see some action to hold people responsible for the acts they have committed. . . . I am not an attorney, and I have never worked for the Department of Justice, but it seems to me that by naming the publishers and editors of these companies as unindicted co-conspirators, that allows you to avoid the appearance of trying to shut down the press because you are not going to put them in jail, but you are going to put them in disrepute. That may prompt their boards of directors to fire a few people and maybe change the way they do business at these places.”

“When all is said and done, I am not convinced there is enough there to convict President Trump of anything. At the same time, there is probably going to be a lot of legal actions brought against the people who started this coup against him, and that’s going to be extremely disturbing to the Left. I think one of the possibilities is we may not have a 2020 election. In some way or another, the country may be so disorderly that we can’t hold an election. There may be so much strife that we cannot handle the legal questions around holding the election, and it may be suspended. I don’t know what that means, but I am very impressed of the disorder that we are already in. It’s more of a kind of mental disorder between the parties, but it could turn into a lot of kinetic disorder on the ground and a lot of institutional failure.”

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And some more of that.

The Fumes of Fanaticism (Kunstler)

Judging by the volume of intemperate emails and angry social media blasts that come my way, the party of impeachment seems to be inhaling way too much gas from the smoking guns it keeps finding in the various star chambers of its inquisition against you-know-who. You’d think that the failure of Mr. Mueller’s extravaganza might have chastened them just a little — a $32 million-dollar effort starring the most vicious partisan lawyers inside-the-Beltway, 2,800 subpoenas issued over two years, 500 search warrants exercised, and finally nothing whatever to pin on Mr. Trump — except the contra-legal assertion that now he must prove his innocence.

When you state just that, these frothing hysterics reply that many background figures — if not the Golden Golem of Greatness himself — were indicted and convicted of crimes by Mr. Mueller’s crew. Oh yes! The Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency was indicted for spending $400,000 on Facebook ads (and never extradited or tried in a court-of-law). Pretty impressive victory there! The hacking of Hillary Clinton’s emails by “Russia”? Still just alleged, never proven, with plenty of shady business around the search for evidence. Paul Manafort, on tax evasion of money earned in Ukraine, 2014? We’ll see about that as the whole filthy business of the 2014 Ukraine regime change op under Mr. Obama gets reviewed in the months ahead.

George Papadopoulos for lying to the FBI? Stand by on that one, too; still a developing story. General Michael Flynn, for ditto? You may have noticed that General Flynn’s case is shaping up to be the biggest instance of prosecutorial misconduct since the Dreyfus affair (France, 1894-1906, which badly-educated Americans most certainly know nothing about). To set the record straight I’m forced to repeat something that these New Age Jacobins seem unable to process: you don’t have to be a Trump cheerleader to be revolted by the behavior of his antagonists, which is a stunning spectacle of bad faith, dishonesty, incompetence, and malice — and is surely way more toxic to the American project than anything the president has done.

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Haven’t really seen much of day 2, but it looks like more posing by Capitol Hill. If one person, dies, you get a crminal investigation. And when 346 die, you get a hearing in the House?!

Boeing Employee Raised Concern Over Max Sensor Three Years Before Crashes (G.)

In a second day of congressional hearings into Boeing’s handling of its ill-fated 737 Max plane, lawmakers were shown internal records revealing that three years before two fatal crashes one employee had expressed concern that an anti-stall flight system at the center of crash investigations could be triggered by a single sensor. “Are we vulnerable to single [angle-of-attack] failures with [the system’s] implementation or is there some checking that occurs?” a Boeing employee asked in an email from December 2015, nearly three years before the first Max 737 crash in Indonesia almost exactly a year ago. The employee, who has not been identified, was referring to a sensor on the outside of the plane that measured its angle in flight and could trigger a system, known as MCAS, to push it down if it thought the aircraft was at risk of stalling.


Relying on a single sensor, aviation experts say, is fundamentally dangerous. With no back-up any malfunction could trigger the plane into a dive – as investigators believe happened with both the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airline crashes, killing 346. The release of the document, in addition to warnings from Boeing’s chief test pilot that the MCAS system could engage without warning, adds to belief that Boeing overlooked safety in a rush to put the Max 737, its most profitable model, into production. The new email is among others unearthed during withering transportation committee hearings during which lawmakers have repeatedly assailed Boeing’s CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, over a failure to prioritize safety. “You have a systemic problem in your company. You’re driving profit. You’re not driving quality, and you’re sure as heck not driving safety,” the California Democrat John Garamendi told the chief executive.

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NG=Not Good.

Over 50 Boeing 737NG Grounded Globally With Wing-Related Cracks (RT)

Boeing has confirmed that it has grounded over 50 of its planes around the world, after wing-related cracks were discovered, while the company’s CEO has admitted to making safety mistakes. It’s the US aviation giant’s 737NG (Next Generation) model that is now under scrutiny. The plane is a precursor to the infamous Boeing 737 MAX, which killed 346 people in two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, and has been grounded since March. A Boeing spokesperson told AFP that some 1,000 planes worldwide had “reached the inspection threshold.” The problem these inspections zeroed in on was the so-called ‘pickle fork’ – a part of the plane that connects the fuselage to the wing. The US aviation authority this month ordered checks of Boeing 737NG planes that had made over 30,000 flights.

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33 planes at over $100 million a piece. When are the airlines going to sue Boeing?

Union Calls On Qantas To Ground Entire 737 Fleet For Investigation (G.)

Australia’s aircraft engineers association has called on Qantas to ground all of its Boeing 737 aircraft after cracks were discovered in one of its planes. Steve Purvinas, the federal secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA), said the fleet of 33 should be “grounded until such time that Qantas can establish which aircraft are safe and which aircraft aren’t”. According to Purvinas, the crack was discovered in a part of the plane known as the “pickle fork”, which is part of the landing gear. “It is a primary structure which takes the load off the wing,” he told the ABC on Thursday. “This could cause loss of control of an aircraft, and Qantas shouldn’t be flying them.”

“The first [crack] found on a Qantas aircraft was about an inch long, it’s very small. But these things do propagate very quickly when they’re under load…It’s when that grows, and that grows very quickly, that you have problems.” He told the ABC on Thursday that another crack had been found in a second plane overnight. On Thursday morning, Qantas announced it would bechecking more than 30 of its Boeing 737 aircraft after cracking was discovered in one plane during a maintenance check. But Purvinas said the airline should go further and ground the fleet.

[..] The problem came to light after Boeing said that it had found cracking in a part of the 737NG (the model before the troubled 737 Max) called the “pickle fork” on jets being overhauled in China. Nearly 5% of 810 inspections subsequently conducted have found cracks in the part, which attaches the plane’s fuselage to the wing. Purvinas told the ABC that repairs on this kind of crack take “months to fix” and require a special Boeing team.

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The IMF. All the way down.

The Age of Anger Exploding in Serial Geysers (Pepe Escobar)

The presidential election in Argentina was no less than a game-changer and a graphic lesson for the whole Global South. It pitted, in a nutshell, the people versus neoliberalism. The people won – with new President Alberto Fernandez and former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) as his VP. Neoliberalism was represented by Mauricio Macri: a marketing product, former millionaire playboy, president of football legends Boca Juniors, fanatic of New Age superstitions, and CEO obsessed with spending cuts, who was unanimously sold by Western mainstream media as the new paradigm of a post-modern, efficient politician.

Well, the paradigm will soon be evacuated, leaving behind a wasteland: $250 billion in foreign debt; less than $50 billion in reserves; inflation at 55 percent; the U.S. dollar at over 60 pesos (a family needs roughly $500 to spend in a month; 35.4 percent of Argentine homes can’t make it); and, incredible as it may seem in a self-sufficient nation, a food emergency. Macri, in fact the president of so-called Anti-Politics, No- Politics in Argentina, was a full IMF baby, enjoying total “support” (and gifted with a humongous $58 billion loan). New lines of credit, for the moment, are suspended. Fernandez is going to have a really hard time trying to preserve sovereignty while negotiating with foreign creditors, or “vultures,” as masses of Argentines define them.

There will be howls on Wall Street and in the City of London about “fiery populism,” “market panicking,” “pariahs among international investors.” Fernandez refuses to resort to a sovereign default, which would add even more unbearable pain for the general public. The good news is that Argentina is now the ultimate progressive lab on how to rebuild a devastated nation away from the familiar, predominant framework: a state mired in debt; rapacious, ignorant comprador elites; and “efforts” to balance the budget always at the expense of people’s interests.

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Don’t really know what to make of this, let’s see.

Russia-India Counter-Terrorism Group Vows ‘Credible Action’ (RT)

Moscow and New Delhi will boost cooperation in the fight against terrorism and destroy militant “safe havens” around the world, the two countries’ counter-terror working group said in a joint statement. Meeting in India’s capital on Wednesday, the working group condemned “terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” and called for deeper ties on counter-terror issues, including through “intensifying exchange of information” and “regular meetings at [the] experts level.” The two parties also stressed the need for “credible, irreversible … action against terrorists” and terrorist “safe havens” – particularly in the South Asia region – “without double standards.” Drug trafficking and other avenues of funding for militant groups, as well as countering extremism on the internet, were also touched upon.

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Strongly denied by the NY medical examiner.

Famed Pathologist Michael Baden Says Jeffrey Epstein’s Death Was Homicide

New York City’s former chief medical examiner insisted Wednesday that Jeffrey Epstein’s death was a homicide. Forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden was hired by the pedophile’s brother, Mark Epstein, to observe his autopsy after he was found hanged in his Manhattan lockup in August. “I think that the evidence points toward homicide rather than suicide,” Baden insisted on Fox News Wednesday. “The brother is concerned that if [Epstein] was murdered, then other people who have information might be at risk,” Baden insisted, suggesting powerful players may have been involved in the death.


“If they think he has information, his life could be in jeopardy.” Baden said there were signs of “unusual” activity “from day one” of the autopsy, saying the wounds were “more consistent with ligature homicidal strangulation.” Baden noted three fractured bones in the sex attacker’s thyroid that he insisted he has never before seen from a hanging death in 50 years of examinations. “Hanging does not cause these broken bones and homicide does,” he insisted on Fox. “A huge amount of pressure was applied.”

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Saw this map of remaining elephant populations and noticed most of them are where recently researchers said the origin of mankind is.

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 272018
 
 September 27, 2018  Posted by at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  8 Responses »


M. C. Escher Symmetry Drawing 1948

 

Kavanaugh Mayhem (ZH)
Argentina Gets Biggest Loan In IMF’s History At $57 Billion (G.)
The Next Financial Crisis Will Hit In 12-24 Months – Griffin (ZH)
Macron Rejects Trade Deals With Countries Outside Paris Climate Accord (Ind.)
For The First Time Ever, Jeremy Corbyn Looked Like A Prime Minister (Ind.)
UK Appoints Food Supplies Minister Amid Fears Of No-Deal Brexit (G.)
No-Deal Brexit ‘Would Stop British Farming Exports For Six Months’ (G.)
UK Could Use Brexit To Avoid EU Ban On Antibiotics Overuse In Farming (G.)
How UN Scientists Are Preparing For The End Of Capitalism (Nafeez Ahmed)
How Economics Became A Cult (Steve Keen)
1% Of Greeks Owe 90% Of Tax Arrears To State (K.)
World’s Wetlands Disappearing Three Times Faster Than Forests (AFP)

 

 

Well, it’s Kavanaugh day, and yesterday both sides did what was expected: double down. New allegations, denials, talk of restraining orders, gang rapes that went unreported, it was a circus. No telling what will happen today.

You can read the Senate Judiciary Committe interview with Kavanaugh here.

Let’s get this over with.

Kavanaugh Mayhem (ZH)

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday night released a time of their efforts to responded to various accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh – including two men who say they they were the basis for the “groping” allegation. The claims also include a new allegation from a San Diego woman who alleges that Kavanaugh and others raped her in the backseat of a car, though it does not specify the place, date or identities of the alleged accomplices. [..] earlier Wednesday, another Kavanaugh accuser – Julie Swetnick, had an ominous cloud of doubt cast over her allegation that the Supreme Court nominee and a friend were operating a date-rape “gang bang” operation at 10 high school parties she attended as a legal adult three years older than Kavanaugh (yet didn’t report once).

Politico reports that Swetnick’s ex-boyfriend, Richard Vinneccy – a registered Democrat, took out a restraining order against her, and says he has evidence that she’s lying. “Right after I broke up with her, she was threatening my family, threatening my wife and threatening to do harm to my baby at that time,” Vinneccy said in a telephone interview with POLITICO. “I know a lot about her.” -Politico. “I have a lot of facts, evidence, that what she’s saying is not true at all,” he said. “I would rather speak to my attorney first before saying more.” Avenatti called the claims “outrageous” and hilariously accused the press of “digging into the past” of a woman levying a claim against Kavanaugh from over 35 years ago. Meanwhile, Swetnick has now been linked to Blasey Ford – as she utilized the law firm run by Ford to sue her previous employer, New York Life Insurance Co. for sexual harassment.

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Rudy Havenstein on Twitter: All Argentina got from Paulie was protection from other guys looking to rip them off. That’s what it’s all about. What Paulie and the IMF offer is protection for the kinds of guys who can’t go to the cops. They’re like the police department for wiseguys.

Argentina Gets Biggest Loan In IMF’s History At $57 Billion (G.)

Argentina has received the biggest loan package ever from the IMF, aimed at shoring up the country’s ailing finances: a whopping $57.1bn that will be disbursed over the next three years. “This is the biggest loan in the history of the IMF,” said the fund’s director, Christine Lagarde, on Wednesday as the final loan agreement was announced in New York. The loan – $15bn of which has already been received by Argentina – comes with stringent conditions, including a commitment to a zero deficit for 2019. Argentina had initially secured $50bn in a deal worked out in June after the South American country was battered by a currency crisis, a run on the peso and double-digit inflation. The economy minister, Nicolás Dujovne, said that at the last minute the IMF agreed to increase the lending package by $7.1bn.

Lagarde said that as part of the deal, Argentina’s central bank had agreed to intervene in currency markets only in case of extreme circumstances and that the new amount would help Argentina’s government face its challenges. The agreement will only allow Argentina’s central bank to intervene to stabilize its currency if the peso depreciates below 44 pesos to the dollar. It is currently at 39 pesos to the dollar after losing 50% of its value since the start of the year. The deal was announced just a day after the president of Argentina’s central bank, Nicolás Caputo, resigned unexpectedly, reportedly after disagreements with the IMF’s guideline limiting the bank’s future intervention to rescue the peso. Thousands of Argentinians joined in a nationwide strike on Tuesday to protest against economic turmoil and Mauricio Macri’s austerity measures.

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EU countries are vulnerable in the next crisis; they don’t control their currencies.

The Next Financial Crisis Will Hit In 12-24 Months – Griffin (ZH)

With Ray Dalio predicting that the US has about 2 years until the next recession, earlier today the head of hedge fund Citadel, Ken Griffin, echoed the Bridgewater founder and predicted that there are “at least 18-to-24 months left in the market rally”, thanks to the “giant adrenaline shot” of the U.S. tax overhaul. Speaking at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York Wednesday, Griffin said that “we are in this debt-fueled buying binge.” He said that the U.S. economy is “running hot now” thanks to President Trump’s actions: “The Trump policies, whether deregulation or tax reform, are certainly pushing corporate America to go, go, go,” he said, citing low unemployment and meaningful wage growth.

That’s the “good” news. The bad new: the artificial “binge” that will extend what is already the longest bull market of all time is “laying the seeds of the next financial crisis”, said Griffin. And what may come as a surprise to many, Griffin admitted that that he’s already managing his fund for the next economic downturn. “My position today is very much focused on managing the tail risks for that… we are late in the cycle, the animal spirits have been unleashed and when these correction occur they happen with very little notice”, he said.

In terms of specific crisis catalysts, the hedge fund manager said his biggest worry is the European Union, where individual nations like Italy and Spain can’t print euros to rescue their own economies. “Every crisis in the West for the last 50 years has been ultimately solved by intervention of governments,” he said. “There has been a huge sea change that has taken place, which is in the EU, the individual governments can no longer issue debt in their own currency.” And thanks to Brussels’ monetary strait-jacket, the ability of “those countries as sovereigns to rescue their financial system in the next crisis is greatly diminished or not even there,” he said.

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Seems fair, even if Paris is a dud.

Macron Rejects Trade Deals With Countries Outside Paris Climate Accord (Ind.)

Emmanuel Macron has announced France will no longer accept “commercial agreements” with countries that do not “respect” the Paris Climate Accord during a fiery speech at the United Nations General Assembly. The French president called for the upholding of trade rules that “guarantee fair competition on equal footing” during his Tuesday speech, following a Monday afternoon meeting with Donald Trump and the US president’s speech on Monday morning. Mr Macron appeared defiant towards Mr Trump, suggesting he’d no longer negotiate trade deals with the US after its withdrawal from the climate agreement last year.

“We will no longer sign commercial agreements with powers that do not respect the Paris accord,” Mr Macron said without directly referencing Mr Trump or the US. The high-profile speech arrived a day after Mr Macron met with Mr Trump for a discussion involving trade. Officials from both sides described the meeting as “constructive”. The US is now reportedly the only nation in the world which remains opposed to the Paris Agreement, after Mr Trump decided to pull out of the accord in 2017.

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I’ll just leave this here: ..the Liverpool People’s Choir singing “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”.

For The First Time Ever, Jeremy Corbyn Looked Like A Prime Minister (Ind.)

The Labour leader offers no solution to the problems of Brexit, but that doesn’t matter. He knows all he has to do is look the part, sound the part and wait for the desire for change to come to him

It may well be that claims the Labour Party has been turned into a personality cult are not completely fair, and never before has Jeremy Corbyn worked harder to counteract this unjust narrative than when he, Corbyn, stood on stage before his leader’s speech, joining in with the crowds as they chanted “Oooaaah Jeremy Corrrr-byn”. They held aloft scarves reading “Oh Jeremy Corrr-byn”. They sang the words “Oaaaah Jeremy Corr-byn,” and there, both on the stage and towering above on gigantic television screens, Corbyn mouthed along to the song, of which 66 per cent of the lyrics are his own name. To Corbyn’s credit, it certainly placed on proceedings a Waco siege-style edge he would not otherwise have engendered through the power of oratory alone.

As he descended into a spiral of circular arguments on the “mainstream media”, furtive glances were made at the door, wondering when special forces might finally storm the place and liberate the captives. There was no clearer evidence of the civil war that still hides in plain sight in the party than the fact that its deputy leader, the now seven stone lighter Tom Watson, did not address the conference from its main stage. But it would be nice to think his contribution to the party did not go entirely unacknowledged as he led the shadow cabinet on to the stage to the sound of the Liverpool People’s Choir singing “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”.

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There’s something dawning.

UK Appoints Food Supplies Minister Amid Fears Of No-Deal Brexit (G.)

The government has appointed a minister to oversee the protection of food supplies through the Brexit process amid rising concerns about the effect of a no-deal departure from the European Union. The MP David Rutley, a former Asda and PepsiCo executive, was handed the brief at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs earlier this month. Defra said that Rutley, who once ran home shopping and e-commerce businesses at Asda, was merely taking on responsibilities already held by other ministers. He said: “It is an honour to join the Defra ministerial team at such an important time. I am determined to ensure that we fully realise the opportunities of leaving the EU.” Food industry insiders welcomed his appointment after warnings that delays of only half an hour at UK ports and the Irish border would risk one in 10 British firms going bankrupt.

One food industry business leader said: “The issue at the ports is a big threat. The UK always has been a net importer of food. If the ports don’t work then exporters will be struggling and importers will have a challenge too.” The executive said that while some food manufacturers were already setting aside additional supplies, stockpiling was not possible for products with a short shelf life, such as milk or vegetables. Another industry insider said the appointment of Rutley was “totally welcome”. They added: “There has been a level of naivety that people can stockpile food which is completely impossible and shows a misunderstanding of how the supply chain works. We would welcome someone genuinely informed and engaged.”

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Not an exaggeration.

No-Deal Brexit ‘Would Stop British Farming Exports For Six Months’ (G.)

The National Farmers Union has warned of “catastrophic” consequences for the industry if there is no Brexit deal, after being warned by the EU that the UK faces a six-month wait to be certified as an approved third-country supplier. This would be a major setback to the food and drink sector, where exports to the EU are worth £13.2bn a year. The NFU says it has been told informally that although Britain is in complete regulatory alignment with the EU, if there is no deal, the same health checks countries such as China and the US undergo will apply to UK suppliers. “What we are talking about in effect is a six-month trade embargo until such time we can get the product in, from that point we will face the European’s external tariff wall meaning we will be priced out of the market,” said the NFU’s director general, Terry Jones.

It has been told that 6,000 meat processing plants that export to the EU will have to undergo individual audits by British authorities. These will then be checked by EU officials and then put to a standing veterinary committee for approval, a process that the NFU has calculated will take six months “at a conservative reading”. These checks will also be conducted on any other companies supplying food and drink to the EU, including those exporting bottled water, honey, jam, dairy and other fresh foods. “‘No deal is unpalatable and catastrophic for the industry and the more we hear, the more certain we are that our lines all along are right,” said NFU president, Minette Batters.

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Lovely.

UK Could Use Brexit To Avoid EU Ban On Antibiotics Overuse In Farming (G.)

UK farmers could be allowed to use powerful antibiotics in ways soon to be banned by the European Union, after the government was accused of using Brexit to avoid implementing tougher rules on animal health. New rules aimed at curbing overuse of the drugs are being brought in by the European commission, but they will not come into effect before the Brexit cut-off date in March. The Guardian understands that government animal health experts have been advising vets and farmers they will therefore not have to implement the change. A divergence from EU rules could allow farmers and vets in the UK to dose healthy animals through their feed, as well as those diagnosed with illnesses – while EU farmers will be prevented from doing so.

Campaigners say this is irresponsible misuse of antibiotics that can lead to resistance and should be stopped in line with European rules. At an event this summer held by the UK’s Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD), which regulates farm antibiotics, the VMD’s director of operations, Paul Green, said the UK would implement the new EU regulations “as fully as we see fit … there may be some clauses we wish to omit [or] alter”. According to a person present at the event, Green then went on to say the government would allow farmers in some circumstances to continue to mix antibiotics in feed and drinking water to groups of animals for disease prevention.

Antibiotic use in farming is controversial; livestock account for the majority of antibiotics consumed, and overuse on herds and flocks can build up resistant bacteria that can spread to humans. Rules on the medicines have been toughened by the EU over the past decade. Under the EU’s planned improvements, it would no longer be possible for vets and farmers to mix antibiotics with feed to be given to large numbers of animals at a time, except under exceptional circumstances. This is seen as essential to cutting the overuse of antibiotics, as currently whole herds or flocks can be treated at once because of one sick animal.

The government is coming under pressure from potential trade partners not to adhere to stringent EU animal welfare standards after Britain leaves the EU, in order to open up the UK market to imports from countries with weaker regulations. The US Department of Agriculture, which has a strong influence on trade deals, has been working on plans that would allow groups of healthy animals to be dosed with antibiotics, against World Health Organization guidelines. These plans could play a key part in future trade with the US.

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In the end, it’s all about energy and thermodynamics.

How UN Scientists Are Preparing For The End Of Capitalism (Nafeez Ahmed)

Capitalism as we know it is over. So suggests a new report commissioned by a group of scientists appointed by the UN secretary general. The main reason? We’re transitioning rapidly to a radically different global economy, due to our increasingly unsustainable exploitation of the planet’s environmental resources and the shift to less efficient energy sources. Climate change and species extinctions are accelerating even as societies are experiencing rising inequality, unemployment, slow economic growth, rising debt levels, and impotent governments. Contrary to the way policymakers usually think about these problems these are not really separate crises at all. These crises are part of the same fundamental transition. The new era is characterised by inefficient fossil fuel production and escalating costs of climate change.

Conventional capitalist economic thinking can no longer explain, predict or solve the workings of the global economy in this new age. Those are the implications of a new background paper prepared by a team of Finnish biophysicists who were asked to provide research that would feed into the drafting of the UN Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), which will be released in 2019. For the “first time in human history”, the paper says, capitalist economies are “shifting to energy sources that are less energy efficient.” Producing usable energy (“exergy”) to keep powering “both basic and non-basic human activities” in industrial civilisation “will require more, not less, effort”.

At the same time, our hunger for energy is driving what the paper refers to as “sink costs.” The greater our energy and material use, the more waste we generate, and so the greater the environmental costs. Though they can be ignored for a while, eventually those environmental costs translate directly into economic costs as it becomes more and more difficult to ignore their impacts on our societies. And the biggest “sink cost”, of course, is climate change: “Sink costs are also rising; economies have used up the capacity of planetary ecosystems to handle the waste generated by energy and material use. Climate change is the most pronounced sink cost.”

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“What an education in economics does is make you into a zealot”.

How Economics Became A Cult (Steve Keen)

Watch Steve Keen discuss how mainstream economics acts more like a cult than a science, how mathematics has been misused by the economic discipline, and how with the right tools a grad student can make a better economic model than a central bank.

[..] present day #economics is based on mythomatics, not #mathematics! Economists belong to a cult that make fantastical assumptions and live in a dream world disconnected from real life.

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Tax arrears as high as the entire GDP.

1% Of Greeks Owe 90% Of Tax Arrears To State (K.)

The vast majority of state debtors (93.3 percent) owe amounts of up to 10,000 euros each, while just 1 percent are behind 90 percent of total debts to the state. This is according to data processed by the Independent Authority for Public Revenue that was published in Parliament following a question put to the finance minister. In total, about 3.8 million taxpayers and enterprises have arrears to the Greek state that add up to 101.5 billion euros, most of which have been run up since Greece resorted to the bailout mechanisms.

Data indicate that some 3.6 million Greeks owe up to 10,000 euros each, totaling 3.7 billion euros. About another 240,000 people owe 10,000-100,000 euros, totaling 6.6 billion euros, while major debtors number 41,232 but owe a total of 91.2 billion euros to the state. Notably, about a third of the debtors’ arrears to the state, some 33 billion euros, concerns fines concerning corporate taxation, that have a low collection rate. One of the reasons for this low rate is the particularly heavy fines imposed in the past, which have led to the closure of several enterprises.

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“35% of wetlands across the globe were lost between 1970 and 2015.”

World’s Wetlands Disappearing Three Times Faster Than Forests (AFP)

Wetlands, among the world’s most valuable and biodiverse ecosystems, are disappearing at alarming speed amid urbanisation and agriculture shifts, conservationists said Thursday, calling for urgent action to halt the erosion. “We are in a crisis,” Martha Rojas Urrego, head of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, told reporters in Geneva, warning of the potential devastating impact of wetland loss, including on climate change. The convention, adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar nearly a half-century ago, on Thursday issued its first-ever global report on the state of the world’s wetlands.

The 88-page report found that around 35 percent of wetlands — which include lakes, rivers, marshes and peatlands, as well as coastal and marine areas like lagoons, mangroves and coral reefs — were lost between 1970 and 2015. Today, wetlands cover more than 12 million square kilometres (4.6 million square miles), the report said, warning that the annual rates of loss had accelerated since 2000. “We are losing wetlands three times faster than forests,” Rojas Urrego said, describing the Global Wetland Outlook report as a “red flag”. While the world has been increasingly focused on global warming and its impact on oceans and forests, the Ramsar Convention said wetlands remain “dangerously undervalued”.

Directly or indirectly, they provide almost all of the world’s consumption of freshwater and more than 40 percent of all species live and breed in wetlands. Animals and plants who call wetlands home are particularly vulnerable, with a quarter at risk of extinction, the report said. Wetlands also provide a livelihood for more than one billion people, while mitigating floods and protecting coastlines. They are also a vital source of food, raw materials and genetic resources for medicines.

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Jun 082018
 


B-25s fly past erupting Vesuvius, Italy 1944

 

Why Bringing Assange Home Would Be The Best Possible Thing For Australia (CJ)
Julian Assange Gets Embassy Visit From Australian Officials (ITV)
Ben Bernanke: US Economy To Go Off The Cliff In 2020 (ZH)
The Return Of King Dollar Could Create A Feeding Frenzy For US Stocks (MW)
Trouble Brewing in Emerging Markets (Rickards)
Deutsche Bank’s Junk Bond Firesale (ZH)
China Trade Surplus Falls, But US Gap Widens (MW)
Argentina Clinches $50 Billion IMF Financing Deal (R.)
Welcome To The Post-Westphalian World (Escobar)
Turkey Suspends Migrant Deal With Greece (R.)
Mediterranean A ‘Sea Of Plastic’ (AFP)
All UK Mussels Contain Plastic And Other Contaminants (Ind.)

 

 

Caitlin Johnstone: “A beautiful continent where the Aboriginal Dreamtime has been paved over with suburbs and shopping centers.”

Why Bringing Assange Home Would Be The Best Possible Thing For Australia (CJ)

Well I’ll be damned, it’s about time. According to a new report by the Sydney Morning Herald, officials from Australia’s High Commission have just been spotted leaving the Ecuadorian embassy in London, accompanied by Julian Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson. Robinson confirmed that a meeting had taken place, but declined to say what it was about “given the delicate diplomatic situation.” So, forgive me if I squee a bit. I am aware how subservient Australia has historically been to US interests, I am aware that those US interests entail the arrest of Assange and the destruction of WikiLeaks, and I am aware that things don’t often work out against the interests of the US-centralized empire. But there is a glimmer of hope now, coming from a direction we’ve never seen before. A certain southerly direction.

If the Australian government stepped in to protect one of its own journalists from being persecuted by the powerful empire that has dragged us into war after war and turned us into an asset of the US war/intelligence machine… well, as an Australian it makes me tear up just thinking about it. It has been absolutely humiliating watching my beloved country being degraded and exploited by the sociopathic agendas of America’s ruling elites, up to and including the imprisonment and isolation of one of our own, all because he helped share authentic, truthful documents exposing the depraved behaviors of those same ruling elites. I have had very few reasons to feel anything remotely resembling patriotism lately. If Australia brought Assange home, this would change.

We Australians do not have a very clear sense of ourselves; if we did we would never have stood for Assange’s persecution in the first place. We tend to form our national identity in terms of negatives, by the fact that we are not British and are not American, without any clear image about what we are. A bunch of white prisoners got thrown onto a gigantic island rich with ancient indigenous culture, we killed most of the continent’s inhabitants and degraded and exploited the survivors [..] That’s pretty much our entire nation right now. A beautiful continent where the Aboriginal Dreamtime has been paved over with suburbs and shopping centers.

[..] Bringing Julian Assange home could be the first step to giving ourselves a bright, shining image of who we are and what we stand for. At the moment, Australia is a lifeless vassal state hooked up to the US power establishment with our every orifice and resource being used to feed the corporatist empire. Anesthetized to the eyeballs and in a state of total submission, the return of Julian might just be the little spark we need to get the old ticker pumping for itself again. Finally standing up for ourselves, for what’s right, and for the things that Julian stands for might just be the very thing we need as a nation to discover who we really are again.

Bring him home. It’s time.

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It must have been so strange for him. How can he trust these people?

Julian Assange Gets Embassy Visit From Australian Officials (ITV)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been visited by officials from the Australian High Commission. Two officials went to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where Mr Assange has been living for almost six years. His internet and phone connections were cut off by the Ecuadorian government six weeks ago and he was denied visitors. The Australian-born campaigner fears being extradited to the US if he leaves the embassy and being questioned about the activities of WikiLeaks. It is believed to be the first time officials from the Australian High Commission in London have visited him.

Jennifer Robinson, a member of Mr Assange’s legal team, said: “I can confirm we met with Australian government representatives in the embassy today. “Julian Assange is in a very serious situation, detained without charge for seven-and-a-half years. “He remains in the embassy because of the risk of extradition to the US. “That risk is undeniable after numerous statements by Trump administration officials, including the Director of the CIA and the US attorney-general. “Given the delicate diplomatic situation we cannot comment further at this time.”

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He probably doesn’t get the irony in contradicting himself.

Ben Bernanke: US Economy To Go Off The Cliff In 2020 (ZH)

Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, Bernanke echoed Bridgewater’s biggest concern about the sugar high facing the US economy for the next 18 months, saying that the stimulative impact from Trump’s $1+ trillion fiscal stimulus “makes the Fed’s job more difficult all around” because it’s happening at a time of very low unemployment; it also means that the more supercharged the economy gets thanks to the fiscal stimulus, the greater the fall will be when the hangover hits. “What you are getting is a stimulus at the very wrong moment,” Bernanke said Thursday during a policy discussion at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. “The economy is already at full employment.”

Stealing further from the Bridgewater note, Bernanke said that while the stimulus “is going to hit the economy in a big way this year and next year and then in 2020 Wile E. Coyote is going to go off the cliff, and it’s going to look down” just when the US economy collides head on with what Bridgewater called “an unsustainable set of conditions.” The irony here is delightful: after all it was Ben Bernanke who consistently blamed Congress for not doing enough to jumpstart the economy during his time in office – a core topic of his 2015 memoir “The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath”; it is the same Bernanke who three years later is now blaming the President and Congress for doing too much. Here is the NYT on the very topic:

“Congress is largely responsible for the incomplete recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, Ben S. Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman, writes in a memoir published on Monday. Mr. Bernanke, who left the Fed in January 2014 after eight years as chairman, says the Fed’s response to the crisis was bold and effective but insufficient. “I often said that monetary policy was not a panacea — we needed Congress to do its part,” he says. “After the crisis calmed, that help was not forthcoming.” And now that Congress has more than done its part, Bernanke predicts collapse in under 2 years.

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It’s starting to feel that way.

The Return Of King Dollar Could Create A Feeding Frenzy For US Stocks (MW)

While Wall Street stocks may well be on their way to fresh highs, the dollar has been taking hits from all comers. That buck weakness is largely due to speculation the ECB may be nearing its own quantitative-easing unwind. The dollar is also sagging a bit as investors fret about the upcoming G-7 and Trump-Kim Jong Un meetings next week. But try to imagine a not-so-distant future, where King Dollar sits on the Iron Throne, while the world burns in chaos. That’s the vision laid out in our call of the day from Santiago Capital CEO Brent Johnson, who predicts the dollar will go “much, much higher” over the next one to two years. That in turn should trigger a global currency crisis and drive investors into U.S. stocks, he argues.

“What it means is we haven’t seen the blowoff top yet. I think equities are going a lot higher. This isn’t a Polyanna view — I’m not saying to go out and buy equities because things are good. I’m saying buy equities because things are bad,” says Johnson in a recent interview with Real Vision . Johnson sees big blowback from the Fed’s unwinding of quantitative easing, already underway and well ahead of the rest of the world’s central banks. That will leave fewer dollars sloshing around the global financial system, even as the world still has a big need for them. He estimates demand for the buck tops $1 trillion a year, just to pay interest on dollar-based debt.

As the Fed tightens and injects less liquidity into the system, it will cause the dollar to go higher and higher, driving more investors toward the buck and then U.S. stocks as well. And a super strong dollar will just cause chaos elsewhere, as other currencies crumble. Just ask emerging-market central bankers how hot it’s getting in the kitchen right now. In Johnson’s opinion, global financial trade revolves around the dollar, which is why it matters so much if it decides to take off in a big way. “And when that money flows into the dollar, it eventually goes into U.S. assets, and I think it is going to push equities to all-time highs,” he says.

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“The U.S. will need to borrow over $3 trillion of new money in the next three years in addition to rolling over the existing $21 trillion in U.S. Treasury debt.”

Trouble Brewing in Emerging Markets (Rickards)

Hot money has been heading out of stocks and moving in the direction of government bonds, where higher risk-adjusted returns await. With this market backdrop in mind, what are the prospects for emerging markets in the months ahead? Outflows from EM stocks have just begun and are set to accelerate dramatically in the months ahead. This could lead to a full-blown emerging-market debt crisis with some potential to morph into a global liquidity crisis of the kind last seen in 2008, possibly worse. Some of the main drivers of this outflow from EMs are:

• China has begun cracking down on excessive leverage, zombie companies and shadow banking. The result will be a slowdown in growth in the world’s second- largest economy as the Communist Party tries to bring a credit bubble in for a soft landing. If they fail, the result will be worse than a slowdown; it could be a made- in-China credit crisis

• President Trump has launched a trade war. Major U.S. trading partners such as China, Canada and Mexico are in the cross hairs. Retaliation by those trading partners will be quick in coming. This trade war is another head wind for world growth and will put added stress on EM exports to developed economies

• The U.S. budget deficit is out of control. The U.S. will need to borrow over $3 trillion of new money in the next three years in addition to rolling over the existing $21 trillion in U.S. Treasury debt. The Federal Reserve is no longer monetizing this debt and is actually reducing its holdings of U.S. Treasuries by shrinking the base money supply and deleveraging its balance sheet. This debt will find buyers at progressively higher interest rates. Since central banks are no longer buyers, private parties will have to buy this debt. Those private buyers will have to sell stocks in developed and emerging markets to have the liquidity to buy government bonds

This is an extremely potent combination. Slower growth in China, a global trade war and an epic portfolio rebalancing from stocks to government bonds will sink U.S. and emerging-market stocks. The best case will be a 30% drawdown in stocks. The worst case will be a new global liquidity crisis that makes 2008 look like a warm-up for the main event.

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The most desperate bank in the world.

Deutsche Bank’s Junk Bond Firesale (ZH)

Deutsche Bank is seeking to sell its portfolio of non-investment grade energy loans, worth about $3 billion, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The potential firesale comes as Deutsche’s short-dated CDS (counterparty risk) is soaring..

And comes as European HY Energy debt is weakening notably and US HY Energy is as good as it gets… Bloomberg reports that Deutsche is planning to sell the loan book as a whole and has marketed it to North American and European peers, said one of the people. The portfolio is expected to sell for par value, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly; good luck with that! The bank’s energy business is expected to wrap up on June 30, one of the people said. The bank has been an active lender in the energy space in the past year, participating in the financing of companies including Peabody Energy Corp. and Coronado Australian Holdings Pty., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

So to summarize: Moody’s is warning that when the economy weakens we will see an avalanche of defaults like we haven’t seen before; Corporate debt-to-GDP and investor risk appetite is reminding a lot of veterans of previous credit peaks; and now the most desperate bank in the world is offering its whole junk energy debt book in a firesale… just as high yield issuance starts to slump. All of which raises more than a single hair on the back of our previous lives in credit necks… and reminds us of this…

Thank you all for coming in a little early this morning. I know yesterday was pretty bad and I wish I could say that today is gonna be less so, but that isn’t gonna be the case. Now I’m supposed to read this statement to you all here, but why don’t you just read it on your own time and I’ll just tell you what the fuck is going on here. I’ve been here all night… meeting with the Executive Committee. And the decision has been made to unwind a considerable position of the firm’s holdings in several key asset classes. The crux of it is… in the firms thinking, the party’s over as of this morning. “For those of you who’ve never been through this before, this is what the beginning of a fire sale looks like.” – Sam Rogers, Margin Call

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“Concerns about more tariffs ahead likely caused some companies to front-load shipments..”

China Trade Surplus Falls, But US Gap Widens (MW)

China’s trade surplus narrowed in May on strong imports, through the gap with the U.S. widened–in part, some economists said, because of concerns that trade tensions could worsen in the months ahead. China reported a trade surplus of $24.92 billion last month, according to customs data released Friday, narrower than April’s $28.78 billion and the $32.6 billion forecast in a poll of economists. Imports were up 26% from a year earlier–driven by rising oil prices and bigger purchases of factory inputs, some economists said–accelerating from April’s 21.5% and beating forecasts. The higher-than-expected figure came after Beijing pledged to its trading partners to increase purchases and narrow trade gaps.

Stripping out price effects, Julian Evans-Pritchard, an economist with Capital Economics, estimated that import volumes in May were still up a seasonally adjusted 5.2% from April, reversing most of the decline since the start of 2018. The increase suggests that industrial activity remains strong following the easing of wintertime pollution controls, he said. Washington and Beijing have skirmished over trade this year, increasing tariffs on some products and threatening to do so on tens of billions of dollars in other goods. Beijing in recent weeks extended an olive branch, announcing plans to increase purchases from abroad and reduce tariffs on automobiles and some consumer products ranging from food and cosmetics.

Even so, China’s trade surplus with the U.S. in May was up 11% from April, at $24.58 billion, according to Friday’s data. Concerns about more tariffs ahead likely caused some companies to front-load shipments, said Liu Xuezhi, an economist with Bank of Communications.

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Shackles.

Argentina Clinches $50 Billion IMF Financing Deal (R.)

Argentina and the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday they reached an agreement for a three-year, $50 billion standby lending arrangement, which the government said it sought to provide a safety net and avoid the frequent crises of the country’s past. Argentina requested IMF assistance on May 8 after its peso currency weakened sharply in an investor exodus from emerging markets. As part of the deal, which is subject to IMF board approval, the government pledged to speed up plans to reduce the fiscal deficit even as authorities now foresee lower growth and higher inflation in the coming years.

The deal marks a turning point for Argentina, which for years shunned the IMF after a devastating 2001-2002 economic crisis that many Argentines blamed on IMF-imposed austerity measures. President Mauricio Macri’s turn to the lender has led to protests in the country. “There is no magic, the IMF can help but Argentines need to resolve our own problems,” Treasury Minister Nicolas Dujovne said at a news conference. Dujovne said he expected the IMF’s board to approve the deal during a June 20 meeting. After that, he said he expects an immediate disbursement of 30% of the funding, or about $15 billion. Argentina will seek to reduce its fiscal deficit to 1.3% of GDP in 2019, down from 2.2% previously, Dujovne said. The deal calls for fiscal balance in 2020 and a fiscal surplus of 0.5% of GDP in 2020.

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Overview of all initiatives to move away from western dominance.

Welcome To The Post-Westphalian World (Escobar)

In his latest, avowedly “provocative” slim volume, Has the West Lost It? former Singaporean ambassador to the UN and current Professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the National University, Kishore Mahbubani frames the key question: “Viewed against the backdrop of the past 1,800 years, the recent period of Western relative over-performance against other civilizations is a major historical aberration. All such aberrations come to a natural end, and that is happening now.” It is enlightening to remember that at the Shangri-la Dialogue two years ago, Professor Xiang Lanxin, director of the Centre of One Belt and One Road Studies at the China National Institute for SCO International Exchange and Judicial Cooperation, described BRI as an avenue to a ‘post-Westphalian world.’

That’s where we are now. Western elites cannot but worry when central banks in China, Russia, India and Turkey actively increase their physical gold stash; when Moscow and Beijing discuss launching a gold-backed currency system to replace the US dollar; when the IMF warns that the debt burden of the global economy has reached $237 trillion; when the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) warns that, on top of that there is also an ungraspable $750 trillion in additional debt outstanding in derivatives. Mahbubani states the obvious: “The era of Western domination is coming to an end.” Western elites, he adds, “should lift their sights from their domestic civil wars and focus on the larger global challenges. Instead, they are, in various ways, accelerating their irrelevance and disintegration.”

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The Greek court system works.

Turkey Suspends Migrant Deal With Greece (R.)

Turkey has suspended its migrant readmission deal with Greece, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was quoted as saying by state-run Anadolu agency, days after Greece released from prison four Turkish soldiers who fled there after a 2016 attempted coup. The four soldiers were released on Monday after an order extending their custody expired. A decision on their asylum applications is still pending. “We have a bilateral readmission agreement. We have suspended that readmission agreement,” Cavusoglu was quoted as saying, adding that a separate migrant deal between the EU and Turkey would continue. Under the bilateral deal signed in 2001, 1,209 foreign nationals have been deported to Turkey from Greece in the last two years, data from the Greek citizens’ protection ministry showed.

Cavusoglu was quoted as saying that he believed the Greek government wanted to resolve the issue about the soldiers but that Greek judges were under pressure from the West. “The Greek government wants to resolve this issue. But we also see there is serious pressure on Greece from the West. Especially on Greek judges,” Cavusoglu was quoted as saying. The eight soldiers fled to Greece following the July 2016 failed coup in Turkey. Ankara has demanded they be handed over, accusing them of involvement in the abortive coup. Greek courts have rejected the extradition request and the soldiers have denied wrongdoing and say they fear for their lives. In May, Greece’s top administrative court rejected an appeal by the Greek government against an administrative decision by an asylum board to grant asylum to one of the Turkish soldiers.

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Worst offender? Turkey.

Mediterranean A ‘Sea Of Plastic’ (AFP)

The Mediterranean could become a “sea of plastic”, the WWF warned on Friday (June 8) in a report calling for measures to clean up one of the world’s worst affected bodies of water. The WWF said the Mediterranean had record levels of “micro-plastics,” the tiny pieces of plastic less than 5mm in size which can be found increasingly in the food chain, posing a threat to human health. “The concentration of micro-plastics is nearly four times higher” in the Mediterranean compared with open seas elsewhere in the world, said the report, “Out of the Plastic Trap: Saving the Mediterranean from Plastic Pollution.” The problem, as all over the world, is simply that plastics have become an essential part of our daily lives while recycling only accounts for a third of the waste in Europe.

Plastic represents 95 per cent of the waste floating in the Mediterranean and on its beaches, with most coming from Turkey and Spain, followed by Italy, Egypt and France, the report said. To tackle the problem, there has to be an international agreement to reduce the dumping of plastic waste and to help clear up the mess at sea, the WWF said. All countries around the Mediterranean should boost recycling, ban single-use plastics such as bags and bottles, and phase out the use of micro plastics in detergents or cosmetics by 2025. The plastics industry itself should develop recyclable and compostable products made out of renewable raw materials, not chemicals derived from oil.

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Bon appetit.

All UK Mussels Contain Plastic And Other Contaminants (Ind.)

All mussels sampled from UK coastlines and supermarkets were found to contain tiny shards of plastic and other debris in a new study. The scientists behind the report said microplastic consumption by people eating seafood in Britain was likely “common and widespread”. Though they were less certain about the resulting impact on human health, the research team emphasised the importance of further studies to determine any potential harm as a result of people eating plastic. In samples of wild mussels from eight coastal locations around the UK and eight unnamed supermarkets, 100 per cent were found to contain microplastics or other debris such as cotton and rayon.

Every 100 grams of mussels eaten contains an estimated 70 pieces of debris, according to the researchers, whose study is published in the journal Environmental Pollution. Mussels feed by filtering seawater through their bodies, meaning they ingest small particles of plastic and other materials as well as their food. There was more debris in the wild mussels, which were sampled from Edinburgh, Filey, Hastings, Brighton, Plymouth, Cardiff and Wallasey, than in the farmed mussels bought in shops. But mussels from the supermarkets, which came from various places around the world, had more particles in them if they had been cooked or frozen than if they were freshly caught, the study found.

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Jun 012018
 


Edward Hopper Rooms by the sea 1951

 

Deutsche Bank Downgraded By S&P Over Restructuring Plans (MW)
ANZ, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup Face ‘Criminal Cartel’ Charges (BBC)
Deutsche Bank’s US Ops Deemed “Troubled” By Fed A Year Ago (R.)
Why Turkey And Argentina Are Doomed (ZH)
US On Brink Of Trade War With EU, Canada and Mexico (G.)
China To Slash Import Tariffs On Many Consumer Products By 60% From July 1 (R.)
Populist Government To Be Sworn In As Italy’s Political Deadlock Ends (G.)
Italians Back Euro But Rail Against EU’s Rules (G.)
Juncker: Italians Need To Work Harder And Be Less Corrupt (G.)
Spain’s Government Poised To Fall As Socialists Prepare For Power (Ind.)
UK’s “Bank of Mum & Dad” is Running Out of Liquidity (DQ)
Ecuador’s President Says Assange Can Stay In Embassy ‘With Conditions’ (G.)

 

 

Deutsche is enormous. Its derivatives portfolio is gigantic. This is a big story.

Deutsche Bank Downgraded By S&P Over Restructuring Plans (MW)

Deutsche Bank was downgraded Friday by S&P Global Ratings, which cited concerns over the German lender’s restructuring plans. The ratings agency cut the long-term issuer credit rating to ‘BBB+’ from ‘A-‘on the bank and its core operating subsidiaries. The troubled bank last week announced plans to cut thousands of jobs in a bid to overhaul its operations and cut costs, but S&P said they see “significant execution risks in the delivery of the updated strategy amid a continued unhelpful market backdrop, and we think that, relative to peers, Deutsche Bank will remain a negative outlier for some time,” in a statement. Investors also demanded the resignation of the bank’s chairman, Paul Achleitner, at the Annual General Meeting last week.

Shares have tumbled 42% so far this year. The agency kept a stable rating on the bank’s outlook, saying that management will execute the plan over time and achieve longer-term objectives. Meanwhile, Australia’s consumer watchdog on Friday announced that it would be bringing criminal cartel charges against Deutsche Bank, Citigroup and Australia & New Zealand Banking. Shares of Deutsche Bank opened up 1.5%, bouncing off a 7% drop Thursday, which came after the Federal Reserve designated the German lender’s U.S. business in “troubled condition,” people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.

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Deutsche again. Insult and injury.

ANZ, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup Face ‘Criminal Cartel’ Charges (BBC)

Financial institutions ANZ, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup will be prosecuted on criminal cartel charges, Australia’s consumer watchdog says. The allegations concern arrangements for the sale of A$2.5bn (£1.4bn; $1.9bn) worth of ANZ shares in 2015. The three banks said they would fight the charges. ANZ said it would also defend allegations against an employee. Australia’s scandal-plagued financial sector is at the centre of a national inquiry into misconduct. Several “other individuals” are also expected to be charged by prosecutors, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said.

“The charges will involve alleged cartel arrangements relating to trading in ANZ shares following an ANZ institutional share placement in August 2015,” chairman Rod Sims said in a statement. “It will be alleged that ANZ and the individuals were knowingly concerned in some or all of the conduct.” ANZ, one of Australia’s so-called “big four” banks, said the charges related to a placement of 80.8 million shares. The deal was underwritten by global giants Deutsche Bank, Citigroup and JP Morgan, as part of a bid by ANZ to raise capital to meet regulatory requirements. ANZ said regulators were now investigating whether it should have stated that 25.5 million shares of the placement had been taken up by “joint lead managers”.

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And it’s OK to keep that from -potential- shareholders, bondholders for over a year?!

Deutsche Bank’s US Ops Deemed “Troubled” By Fed A Year Ago (R.)

The United States Federal Reserve last year designated Deutsche Bank U.S. operations to be in “troubled condition”, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The Fed’s assessment has not previously been made public, it said, sending shares in the German lender down 7.2% to 9.16 euros, their lowest level in more than a year and a half. The “troubled condition” status is one of the lowest designations employed by the Fed, The WSJ said. The report comes a month after Deutsche Bank’s new Chief Executive Christian Sewing announced plans to cut back bond and equities trading, where it has been unable to compete with U.S. powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.

Deutsche Bank’s attempts to break into the U.S. markets, which are seen as an essential plank for delivering a global investment banking platform, proved to be costly as it ended up paying out billions of dollars to settle regulatory breaches, prompting speculation at one point of a bailout by Berlin. The WSJ said that the Fed downgrade of Deutsche Bank’s U.S. operations caused the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to put Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas on its list of “Problem Banks”.

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Clear enough.

Why Turkey And Argentina Are Doomed (ZH)

It was all the rage in 2017. Not long after contrarians like Jeff Gundlach and Russell Clark said to go long Emerging Markets, suddenly everyone was doing it, either as a standalone trade or as part of a pair trade shorting one or more DMs. Of course, maybe all they were doing was indirectly shorting the USD, which was arguably the biggest driver behind EM outperformance. But, in no small part due to the recent surge in the dollar, after outperforming developed equity markets by 20% in 2016-2017, EM is underperforming by 2.5% so far this year. Of course, it’s not just the dollar, but also interest rates, which until the recent Italian fiasco, were at 4 year, or greater, highs.

And, as JPM’s Michael Cembalest writes in his latest “Eye on the market” note, investor fears are predictably focused on the impact of rising US interest rates and the rising US dollar on EM external debt, and on rising oil prices. And yet, despite the occasional scream of terror from EM longs who refuse to throw in the towel, a closer look shows that the market reaction has been orderly so far, with two exceptions: Argentina and Turkey, which are leading the way down. However, as the JPM Asset Management CIO shows below, the collapse in these two countries has been largely a function of state-specific/idiosyncratic reasons.

The chart below, courtesy of Cembalest, shows each country’s current account (x-axis), the recent change in its external borrowing (y-axis) and the return on a blended portfolio of its equity and fixed income markets (the larger the red bubble, the worse the returns have been). This outcome looks sensible given weaker Argentine and Turkish fundamentals. And while Cembalest admits that the rising dollar and rising US rates will be a challenge for the broader EM space, most will probably not face balance of payments crises similar to what is taking place in Turkey and Argentina, of which the latter is already getting an IMF bailout and the former, well… it’s only a matter of time.

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1: look if present conditions are fair. 2: adapt them.

US On Brink Of Trade War With EU, Canada and Mexico (G.)

The United States and its traditional allies are on the brink of a full-scale trade war after European and Canadian leaders reacted swiftly and angrily to Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium producers. The president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, promised immediate retaliation after the US commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, said EU companies would face a 25% duty on steel and a 10% duty on aluminium from midnight on Thursday. Europe, along with Canada and Mexico, had been granted a temporary reprieve from the tariffs after they were unveiled by Donald Trump two months ago.

However, Ross sent shudders through global financial markets when he said insufficient progress had been made in talks with three of the US’s traditional allies to reduce America’s trade deficit and that the waiver was being lifted. Wall Street slumped as the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down more than 250 points as investors sold off shares in manufacturers and corporations with global reach. Shares across Europe also declined. The move from Washington – which comes at a time when Trump is also threatening protectionist action against China – triggered an immediate and angry response from Canada, Brussels and from individual European capitals.

Juncker called the US move “unjustified” and said the EU had no choice but to hit back with tariffs on US goods and a case at the World Trade Organisation in Geneva. “We will defend the Union’s interests, in full compliance with international trade law,” he added. Brussels has already announced that it would target Levi’s jeans, Harley-Davidson motorbikes and bourbon whiskey.

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Something’s working.

China To Slash Import Tariffs On Many Consumer Products By 60% From July 1 (R.)

China will cut import tariffs on nearly 1,500 consumer products ranging from cosmetics to home appliances from July 1, in a bid to boost imports as part of efforts to open up the economy. The move would be in step with Beijing’s pledge to its trade partners – including the United States – that China will take steps to increase imports, and offers a boon to global brands looking to deepen their presence in China. The finance ministry published a detailed list of products affected and their new reduced tax rates on Thursday, following early announcements of the broader plan. Starting next month, the average tariff rate on 1,449 products imported from most favored nations will be reduced to 6.9% from 15.7%, which is equivalent to a cut of about 60%, the finance ministry said in a statement on its website.

That followed an announcement from the State Council, or the country’s Cabinet, on Wednesday that China will cut import tariffs on consumer items including apparel, cosmetics, home appliances, and drugs. The tariff cuts this time are more broad-ranging than previous reductions. Import tariffs for apparel, footwear and headgear, kitchen supplies and fitness products will be more than halved to an average of 7.1% from 15.9%, with those on washing machines and refrigerators slashed to just 8%, from 20.5%. Tariffs will also be cut on processed foods such as aquaculture and fishing products and mineral water, from 15.2% to 6.9%.

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Savona comes out strong. His replacement as finance minister is no fan of the euro, and he himself is EU minister.

Populist Government To Be Sworn In As Italy’s Political Deadlock Ends (G.)

A populist government will be sworn into power in Italy on Friday after president Sergio Mattarella agreed to a revised slate of ministers – just days after a bitter row over the incoming leaders’ stance on the euro ended their initial bid to assume power. A joint statement by the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and the far-right League announced that political newcomer Giuseppe Conte, who had been seen as a controversial choice, would serve as prime minister. The relatively unknown law professor met Mattarella late on Thursday night to put forward a list of ministers, which the president has accepted.

“All the conditions have been fulfilled for a political, Five Star and League government,” said Luigi Di Maio, the Five Star chief, and Matteo Salvini, the League leader, in a joint statement after a day of talks in Rome. The deal will bring at least temporary calm to a political crisis that has embroiled Italy for weeks. The tumult raised questions – in Brussels and among investors around the world – about whether the rise in Italian populism and the collapse of traditional parties posed a fundamental threat to the country’s future in the eurozone.

The formation of the new government will at least temporarily allay those concerns, because it will remove for now the threat that snap elections will be called later this summer, a prospect which worried investors because it could have bolstered support for anti-EU parties. The populist leaders stepped back from their insistence that Paolo Savona, an 81-year-old Eurosceptic, should serve as finance minister. The choice had been vetoed by Mattarella, prompting the M5S and the League to call off their deal. Savona will now serve as EU minister instead. But there are still many unknowns about how the new administration – an uneasy alliance between two former political opponents, both jockeying for power – will govern Italy.

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If the EU doesn’t adapt to its new reality, it’s doomed.

Italians Back Euro But Rail Against EU’s Rules (G.)

Ever since the inception of the EU, Italians have been among the staunchest defenders of the European project. But the political crisis that engulfed the bloc’s third largest economy this week, centring on a debate over Italy’s commitment to the eurozone, has spooked investors and worried Brussels. It has raised a question that just a few years ago would have seemed unfathomable: are Italians ready to ditch the euro? The answer, like most aspects of Italian politics, is complicated. Opinion polls show that a majority of Italians – 59%, according to Eurobarometer – support the country’s continued inclusion in the eurozone. But that does not mean they want to continue to abide by the rules set by Brussels, which Italy agreed to when it adopted the currency.

Instead, more Italians are seeking a tougher and more antagonistic approach towards Brussels, after years of frustration over fiscal constraints set by the EU coupled with a feeling that Europe has abandoned Italy to cope on its own with the migration crisis. The latest Eurobarometer survey found that only 3 in 10 Italians believed their voices counted within the EU. While a full break from the EU – an “Italexit” – is not a matter of public debate (such a move is considered implausible even among the most hardline Eurosceptics), surveys show Italians generally have a dim view of the bloc. Eurobarometer found that 39% believed Italy’s inclusion in the EU was a “good thing” and 44% believed Italy benefited from being in the EU.

In March, stagnant economic growth and concerns about immigration drove voters across Italy to vote in large numbers for two populist parties – the Five Star Movement and the League, formerly the Northern League – while the most pro-EU party, the Democratic party (PD), suffered a humiliating defeat. Josef Janning, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said: “There is no desire to exit. But there is a willingness to follow the League and the Five Star Movement and to say ‘we don’t want to follow the rules’. That seems to be the new consensus.”

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It’s like he’s talking about himself.

Juncker: Italians Need To Work Harder And Be Less Corrupt (G.)

Jean-Claude Juncker has said Italians need to work harder, be less corrupt and stop looking to the EU to rescue the country’s poor regions, in comments unlikely to ease the fraught political battle over Italy’s future relationship with Brussels. Days after the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, defended Italy’s place in the eurozone against the country’s populist leaders, the president of the European commission said he was in “deep love” with “bella Italia”, but could not accept that all the country’s problems should be blamed on the EU or the commission. “Italians have to take care of the poor regions of Italy. That means more work; less corruption; seriousness,” Juncker said.

“We will help them as we always did. But don’t play this game of loading with responsibility the EU. A country is a country, a nation is a nation. Countries first, Europe second.” Officials in Brussels and markets around the world are awaiting the outcome of ongoing talks between Italy’s two populist leaders, Luigi Di Maio of the Five Star Movement (M5S) and Matteo Salvini of the far-right League, on forming a new government. After making the remarks during a question and answer session in Brussels, Juncker added it would be best to be “silent and prudent and cautious” this week, whenever he was asked about Italy. “I have full confidence in the genius of the Italian people,” he said.

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“..the PP’s former treasurer, as well as 28 others previously linked to the party, sentenced to jail for 33 years for fraud and money-laundering..”

Spain’s Government Poised To Fall As Socialists Prepare For Power (Ind.)

Mariano Rajoy’s chances of remaining Spanish Premier evaporated almost completely after the moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) confirmed that its MPs would vote in favour of a parliamentary no-confidence motion against him if he did not resign. Despite its tiny number of MPs – five deputies in a 350 seater parliament – it is widely believed that the PNV’s decision will tip the balance against Mr Rajoy in a no-confidence motion, by a mere four votes. If successful, the Socialist party leader Pedro Sánchez, who tabled the no-confidence motion last week, would be automatically elected as Spanish PM, ending seven years of centre-right rule by the Partido Popular (PP) in Spain.

However, given that those voting in favour of the motion – ranging from Catalan Republican Nationalists, currently at daggers drawn with almost all Spain’s mainstream political parties, through to the left-wing Podemos coalition – have little in common beyond a desire to depose Mr Rajoy so a new government could prove highly unstable. Should Mr Rajoy lose the vote, he will be Spain’s first PM to leave office as a result of a no-confidence motion since democracy was restored to the country more than four decades ago.

[..] the impact of a court verdict last week in the so called Gurtel case, a cash-for-kickback scandal that saw the PP’s former treasurer, as well as 28 others previously linked to the party, sentenced to jail for 33 years for fraud and money-laundering, coupled with a €240,000 (£210,000) fine for the PP itself, left Mr Rajoy looking unexpectedly vulnerable.

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“Mum & dad are lending money to their kids so their kids can afford to pay the prices demanded by mum & dad & their friends..” “It’s like a giant Ponzi scheme but where the victims are your children.”

UK’s “Bank of Mum & Dad” is Running Out of Liquidity (DQ)

Mortgages for 100% (or above) of the purchase price not only help fuel high-octane housing bubbles, they also make them a lot riskier when home prices decline, and when more and more borrowers end up with negative equity – where someone’s home is worth less than their debt. That, in turn, significantly raises the likelihood of borrowers defaulting on their loans. And that’s why these 100% mortgages are risky for banks. Today’s new breed of 100% mortgages has a twist in its tail: to provide the banks extra security, they are insisting on family members acting as guarantors for parts of the loans. In other words, if a borrower falls behind on repayments, a parent’s home can also be put at risk.

This kind of deal is becoming increasingly common in the UK, where property prices still remain close to their all-time high despite fears prompted by Brexit and the recent cooling of London’s property market. Underpaid and over-indebted, many young people cannot afford to put down even a 5% deposit on houses whose prices, after they’re adjusted for inflation, have almost doubled in the last 20 years. And a 10% or 15% down-payment is totally out of reach. Their only hope of getting onto the “property ladder” is to get a financial leg up from their parents.

So widespread is this phenomenon that in 2017 the so-called “Bank of Mum and Dad” became the ninth biggest mortgage lender in the UK shelling out some £6.5 billion in loans. Parents helped provide deposits for more than 298,000 mortgages last year — the equivalent of 26% of all transactions. “The Bank of Mum and Dad continues to grow in importance in helping young people take their early steps onto the housing ladder,” said Nigel Wilson, chief executive of the financial service company Legal & General.

It is not driven purely by altruism. The UK’s multi-decade property boom, propelled by artificially low interest rates and supportive government policies, has provided a huge source of wealth for baby boomers. If the Bank of Mum and Dad didn’t lend this money to the new generation, demand for new mortgages would dry up and the UK’s multi-decade housing bubble would have begun to deflate some time ago. As a result, the houses that mum and dad own would lose much of their “value” and their respective net worth would plummet. “Mum & dad are lending money to their kids so their kids can afford to pay the prices demanded by mum & dad & their friends,” explained buyers agent Henry Pryor. “It’s like a giant Ponzi scheme but where the victims are your children.”

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A glimmer of hope.

Ecuador’s President Says Assange Can Stay In Embassy ‘With Conditions’ (G.)

Lenín Moreno, the president of Ecuador, has said Julian Assange’s asylum status in the country’s London embassy is not under threat – provided he complies with the conditions of his stay and avoids voicing his political opinions on Twitter. However, in an interview with Deutsche Welle on Wednesday, Moreno said his government would “take a decision” if Assange didn’t comply with the restrictions. “Let’s not forget the conditions of his asylum prevent him from speaking about politics or intervening in the politics of other countries. That’s why we cut his communication,” he said. Ecuador suspended Assange’s communication’s system in March.

Moreno’s statements come two weeks after an investigation by the Guardian and Focus Ecuador revealed the country had bankrolled a multimillion-dollar spy operation to protect and support Assange, employing an international security company and undercover agents to monitor his visitors, embassy staff and even the British police. Over more than five years, Ecuador put at least $5m (£3.7m) into a secret intelligence budget that protected him while he had visits from Nigel Farage, members of European nationalist groups and individuals linked to the Kremlin. Earlier this month, Moreno withdrew additional security assigned to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has remained for almost six years.

Moreno has previously described Assange’s situation as “a stone in his shoe” and repeatedly hinted that he wants to remove the Australian from the country’s London embassy. In an interview in Quito, the president said granting Assange Ecuadorian citizenship in December last year had not been his idea but that of the foreign minister, María Fernanda Espinosa. He had delegated all decisions related to the case to her, Moreno told Deutsche Welle.

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May 242018
 


Wassily Kandinsky Contrasting Sounds 1924

 

Every Fed Tightening Cycle ‘Creates A Meaningful Crisis Somewhere’ (MW)
Fed Minutes Show Support For June Hike And Calm About Inflation Outlook (MW)
US Launches Auto Import Probe (R.)
China Signals To State Giants: ‘Buy American’ Oil And Grains (R.)
Turkey Halts Lira’s Free Fall – But It’s Not Out Of The Woods Yet (MW)
Argentines Brace For Another Crisis As Nation Again Seeks IMF Help (R.)
US Birth Rates Are Falling Because This Is A Harsh Place To Have A Family (G.)
Yulia Skripal Gives First Interview (RT)
NHS Needs £2,000 In Tax From Every Household To Stay Afloat (Ind.)
Trump’s Blocking Of Critics On Twitter Violates Constitution – US Judge (R.)
Hitting Toughest Climate Target Will Save World $30 Trillion In Damages (G.)
The Mediterranean Diet Is Gone: Region’s Children Are Fattest In Europe (G.)

 

 

Take their power away?!

Every Fed Tightening Cycle ‘Creates A Meaningful Crisis Somewhere’ (MW)

Federal Reserve rate increases are a lot like shaking an overripe fruit tree. That’s the analogy offered by Deutsche Bank macro strategist Alan Ruskin in a note late Wednesday, in which he urged clients not to “overcomplicate” the macro picture. “A starting point should be that every Fed tightening cycle creates a meaningful crisis somewhere, often external but usually with some domestic (U.S.) fallout,” he wrote. To back it up, Ruskin offered the following history lesson:

“Going back in history, the 2004-6 Fed tightening looked benign but the US housing collapse set off contagion and a near collapse of the global financial system dwarfing all post-war crises. The late 1990s Fed stop/start tightening included the Asia crisis, LTCM and Russia collapse, and when tightening resumed, the pop of the equity bubble. The early 1993-4 tightening phase included bond market turmoil and the Mexican crisis. The late 1980s tightening ushered along the S&L crisis. Greenspan’s first fumbled tightening in 1987 helped trigger Black Monday, before the Fed eased and ‘the Greenspan put’ took off in earnest. The early 80s included the LDC/Latam debt crisis and Conti Illinois collapse. The 1970s stagflation tightening was when the Fed was behind ‘the curve’ and where inflation masked a prolonged decline in real asset prices.”

So what about now? The fed funds rate stands at 1.50% to 1.75% following a series of slow rate increases that began in December 2015, lifting it from near zero. The degree of tightening might seem pretty tame, but Ruskin notes that it comes after a period of “extreme and prolonged” accommodation and is also taking forms that economists and investors don’t fully understand as swollen balance sheet begins to shrink.

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The stronger the dollar the more likely rate hikes get.

Fed Minutes Show Support For June Hike And Calm About Inflation Outlook (MW)

Federal Reserve officials in their meeting in early May confirmed they planned to raise interest rates in June and were not concerned they were behind the curve on inflation. “Most participants judged that if incoming information broadly confirmed their economic outlook, it would likely soon be appropriate for the FOMC to take another step in removing policy accommodation,” the minutes said. Traders in the federal funds futures market see more than a 90% chance of a June rate hike. Although inflation hit the Fed’s 2% target in the latest reading for March, for the first time in a year, officials were not convinced it would remain there for long.

“It was noted that it was premature to conclude that inflation would remain at levels around 2%, especially after several years in which inflation had persistently run below the Fed’s 2% objective,” the minutes said. Only a “few” officials thought inflation might move “slightly” above the 2% target. “It has taken them so long to get there, with so many fits and starts, they are not quite sure it’s going to stay there,” said Michael Arone, chief investment strategist for State Street Global Advisors. Arone said the minutes were consistent with three total hikes this year although the Fed gave itself wiggle room if inflation picks up markedly. “They didn’t take [a fourth hike] off the table,” he said.

On the trade dispute with China, officials said the possible outcome on inflation and growth remained “particularly wide,” but there was some concern the dispute would hurt business confidence.

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Up to 25% tariffs. How about building better cars? Or weaning yourself off the addiction?

US Launches Auto Import Probe (R.)

The Trump administration has launched a national security investigation into car and truck imports that could lead to new U.S. tariffs similar to those imposed on imported steel and aluminum in March. The national security probe under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 would investigate whether vehicle and parts imports were threatening the industry’s health and ability to research and develop new, advanced technologies, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday. “There is evidence suggesting that, for decades, imports from abroad have eroded our domestic auto industry,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement, promising a “thorough, fair and transparent investigation.”

Higher tariffs could be particularly painful for Asian automakers including Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Hyundai, which count the United States as a key market, and the announcement sparked a broad sell-off in automakers’ shares across the region. The governments of Japan, China and South Korea said they would monitor the situation, while Beijing, which is increasingly eyeing the United States as a potential market for its cars, added that would defend its interests. “China opposes the abuse of national security clauses, which will seriously damage multilateral trade systems and disrupt normal international trade order,” Gao Feng, spokesman at the Ministry of Commerce, said at a regular news briefing in Beijing on Thursday which focused largely on whether it is making any progress in its trade dispute with Washington.

[..] Roughly 12 million cars and trucks were produced in the United States last year, while the country imported 8.3 million vehicles worth $192 billion. This included 2.4 million from Mexico, 1.8 million from Canada, 1.7 million from Japan, 930,000 from South Korea and 500,000 from Germany, according to U.S. government statistics. At the same time, the United States exported nearly 2 million vehicles worldwide worth $57 billion. German automakers Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW all have large U.S. assembly plants. The United States is the second-biggest export destination for German auto manufacturers after China, while vehicles and car parts are Germany’s biggest source of export income. Asked if the measures would hit Mexico and Canada, a Mexican source close to the NAFTA talks said: “That probably is going to be the next battle.”

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For now it’s all opaque.

China Signals To State Giants: ‘Buy American’ Oil And Grains (R.)

China will import record volumes of U.S. oil and is likely to ship more U.S. soy after Beijing signalled to state-run refiners and grains purchasers they should buy more to help ease tensions between the two top economies, trade sources said on Wednesday. China pledged at the weekend to increase imports from its top trading partner to avert a trade war that could damage the global economy. Energy and commodities were high on Washington’s list of products for sale. The United States is also seeking better access for imports of genetically modified crops into China under the deal. As the two sides stepped back from a full-blown trade war, Washington neared a deal on Tuesday to lift its ban on U.S. firms supplying Chinese telecoms gear maker ZTE, and Beijing announced tariff cuts on car imports.

But U.S. President Donald Trump indicated on Wednesday that negotiations were still short of his objectives when he said any deal would need a “different structure”. China is the world’s top importer of both oil and soy, and already buys significant volumes of both from the United States. It is unclear how much more Chinese importers will buy from the United States than they would have otherwise, but any additional shipments would contribute to cutting the trade surplus, as demanded by Trump. Asia’s largest oil refiner, China’s Sinopec will boost crude imports from the United States to an all-time high in June as part of Chinese efforts to cut the surplus, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday.

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Erdogan defeated?

Turkey Halts Lira’s Free Fall – But It’s Not Out Of The Woods Yet (MW)

Turkey’s central bank intervened to halt the free fall of the Turkish lira on Wednesday, but it isn’t clear whether policy makers will be able to stave off a full-fledged currency crisis. The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey raised its late liquidity window lending rate by 300 basis points on Wednesday, in a surprise move that put a halt to the lira selloff — at least for now. The lending rate now sits at 16.5%, compared with 13.5% before. The U.S. dollar had rallied to a historic high against Turkey’s lira on Wednesday, buying 4.9233 lira at the high, before the path reversed on the back of the CBRT’s action and the lira found its feet again. The buck last bought 4.7015 lira. In the year to date, the Turkish currency has dropped more than 20% against the dollar, according to FactSet data.

The euro-lira pair behaved similarly, first rallying to an all-time high but paring the rise after the rate increase. The euro last bought 5.5084 lira. The U.S. and eurozone are two of Turkey’s most important trading partners. The central bank has been operating in a peculiar environment given that Turkey’s inflation has been hitting double digits and its currency keeps sliding to historic lows. Moreover, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been critical of the central bank, calling for lower interest rates.

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Rising dollar.

Argentines Brace For Another Crisis As Nation Again Seeks IMF Help (R.)

Maria Florencia Humano opened a clothing store in 2016, convinced that Argentina’s long history of economic crises had ended under pro-business President Mauricio Macri. She will shutter it later this month, unable to make rent or loan payments. Soaring interest rates and a plunging currency have upended her dream and returned Argentina to a familiar place: asking the IMF for a lifeline. Humano’s decision comes just weeks after a somber Macri announced in a televised May 8 speech that Argentina would start talks with the IMF. He is seeking a credit line worth at least $19.7 billion to fund the government through the end of his first term in late 2019. The unexpected move surprised investors and stoked Argentines’ fears of a repeat of the nation’s devastating 2001-2002 economic collapse.

Many here blame IMF-imposed austerity measures for worsening that crisis, which impoverished millions and turned Argentina into a global pariah after the government defaulted on a record $100 billion in debt. Word of a potential bailout sent thousands of angry Argentines into the streets this month, some with signs declaring “enough of the IMF.” As recently as a few months ago, analysts were hailing Argentina as an emerging-market success story. Now some are predicting recession. Macri’s popularity has plummeted. [..] Macri’s free-market credentials earned him a 2017 invitation to the White House to meet U.S. President Donald Trump, who just last week on Twitter hailed the Argentine leader’s “vision for transforming his country’s economy.”

But economists say Macri badly damaged his credibility in December when his administration weakened tough inflation targets. The central bank followed with a January rate cut to goose growth, even as consumer prices kept galloping. Rising U.S. interest rates did not help. Argentina is saddled with more than $320 billion in external debt, equivalent to 57.1% of GDP, much of it denominated in dollars. Jittery investors hit the exits. The peso swooned. The central bank sold $10 billion in reserves trying to prop up the peso, forcing Macri to seek assistance from the IMF.

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And getting harsher all the time.

US Birth Rates Are Falling Because This Is A Harsh Place To Have A Family (G.)

America’s birth rate has fallen to a 30-year low, let the hand-wringing and finger-pointing begin. It’s those selfish women, wanting careers before kids! Or, gasp, not wanting kids at all! It’s all those abortions! It’s Obama’s fault! The reality is, for all its pro-family rhetoric, the US is a remarkably harsh place for families, and particularly for mothers. It’s a well-known fact, but one that bears repeating in this context, that the US is one of only four countries in the world with no government-subsidized maternity leave. The other three are Lesotho, Swaziland, and Papua New Guinea, countries that the US doesn’t tend to view as its peer group.

This fact is met with shrugs from those who assume that companies provide maternity leave. Only 56% do, and of those, just 6% offer full pay during maternity leave. This assumption also ignores the fact that 36% of the American workforce, a number expected to surpass 50% in the next 10 years, are contract laborers with no access to such benefits. That gig economy you keep hearing so much about, with its flexible schedule and independence? Yeah, it sucks for mothers. That doesn’t stop companies and pundits from pushing it as a great way for working moms to balance children and career. As a gig-economy mother myself, I can tell you exactly how great and balanced it felt to go back to work two hours after giving birth.

If they return to work, mothers can look forward to an increasingly large pay gap for every child they have, plus fewer promotions. Who could resist? The option for one parent to stay home with kids is increasingly not economically viable for American families, either. A data point that got far less attention than the falling birth rate was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last month: 71.1% of American mothers with children under 18 are in the workforce now. It’s not just because they want to be (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but increasingly because they have to be in order to support the family.

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Scripted interview?

Yulia Skripal Gives First Interview (RT)

In her first interview since surviving an alleged nerve agent attack, Yulia Skripal said she eventually wants to return to Russia. She has not shed any light on what happened in March in Salisbury. “I came to the UK on the 3rd of March to visit my father, something I have done regularly in the past. After 20 days in a coma, I woke to the news that we had both been poisoned,” Skripal said in a video that was recorded by Reuters. She reiterated her words in a handwritten statement. She and her father, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double-agent, were found unconscious on a public bench in the British city of Salisbury on March 4. The UK government immediately accused Russia of being behind their poisoning, but it has yet to provide evidence for the claim.

Skripal did not comment on who she thought was to blame for her poisoning. “I still find it difficult to come to terms with the fact that both of us were attacked. We are so lucky to have both survived this attempted assassination. Our recovery has been slow and extremely painful,” she said. “The fact that a nerve agent was used to do this is shocking. I don’t want to describe the details but the clinical treatment was invasive, painful and depressing.” She also said that she was “grateful” for the offers of assistance from the Russian Embassy, “but at the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services.” Skripal reiterated what she had said in an earlier written statement released by British police: “no one speaks for me, or for my father, but ourselves.”

Following the release of the interview, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman addressed Yulia Skripal in a comment to RT. “We’d like Yulia Skripal to know that not a single day passed without the Foreign Ministry, Russia’s Embassy in London trying to reach her with the main purpose to make sure she was not held against her will, she was not impersonated by somebody else, to get the first-hand information about her and her father’s condition,” Maria Zakharova said.

Russia’s Embassy in the UK welcomed the release of the interview, stating: “we are glad to have seen Yulia Skripal alive and well.” The video itself and the wording of the written statements, however, raised concerns with Russian diplomats, who urged London once again to allow consular access to Yulia “in order to make sure that she is not held against her own will and is not speaking under pressure.” Skripal said that the ordeal had turned her life “upside down,” both “physically and emotionally.” She added that she was now focused on helping her father to make a full recovery, and that “in the long term I hope to return home to my country.”

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With the level of incompetence in UK politics, the NHS looks beyond salvation.

NHS Needs £2,000 In Tax From Every Household To Stay Afloat (Ind.)

Taxes will “almost certainly” have to rise over the coming years simply to prevent the National Health Service and social care system from slipping further into crisis, a major new report concludes. The Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Health Foundation state that the NHS, which has been suffering the most severe fiscal squeeze since its foundation over the past eight years, now requires an urgent increase in government spending in order to cope with an influx of older and sicker patients. Funding the projected increases in health spending through the tax system would need taxes to rise by between 1.6 and 2.6% of GDP – the equivalent of between £1,200 and £2,000 per household, the experts said.

The two organisations say that state funding growth rate, which has been just 1.4% a year since 2010, will have to more than double to between 3.3% and 4% over the next 15 years if government pledges, such as bringing down waiting times and increasing the provision of mental health services, are to stand any chance of being delivered. They also say that to finance this increase the government would “almost certainly need to increase taxes”. “If we are to have a health and social care system which meets our needs and aspirations, we will have to pay a lot more for it over the next 15 years. This time we won’t be able to rely on cutting spending elsewhere – we will have to pay more in tax,” said the IFS’s director Paul Johnson.

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Raises some interesting questions. I can block him, but he cannot block me. I can all him “Corrupt Incompetent Authoritarian” and much much worse, and he’s going to have to swallow it.

Trump’s Blocking Of Critics On Twitter Violates Constitution – US Judge (R.)

Trump has made his @RealDonaldTrump Twitter account an integral and controversial part of his presidency, using it to promote his agenda, announce policy and attack critics. He has blocked many critics from his account, which prevents them from directly responding to his tweets. U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan ruled that comments on the president’s account, and those of other government officials, were public forums, and that blocking Twitter users for their views violated their right to free speech under the First Amendment of Constitution. Eugene Volokh, a University of California Los Angeles School of Law professor who specializes in First Amendment issues, said the decision’s effect would reach beyond Trump.

“It would end up applying to a wide range of government officials throughout the country,” he said. The U.S. Department of Justice, which represents Trump in the case, said, “We respectfully disagree with the court’s decision and are considering our next steps.” Twitter, which is not a party to the lawsuit, declined to comment on the ruling. Buchwald’s ruling was in response to a First Amendment lawsuit filed against Trump in July by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and several Twitter users. The individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Philip Cohen, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland; Holly Figueroa, described in the complaint as a political organizer and songwriter in Washington state; and Brandon Neely, a Texas police officer.

Cohen, who was blocked from Trump’s account last June after posting an image of the president with words “Corrupt Incompetent Authoritarian,” said he was “delighted” with Wednesday’s decision. “This increases my faith in the system a little,” he said. Novelists Stephen King and Anne Rice, comedian Rosie O’Donnell, model Chrissy Teigen, actress Marina Sirtis and the military veterans political action committee VoteVets.org are among the others who have said on Twitter that Trump blocked them. Buchwald rejected the argument by Justice Department lawyers that Trump’s own First Amendment rights allowed him to block people with whom he did not wish to interact.

“While we must recognize, and are sensitive to, the president’s personal First Amendment rights, he cannot exercise those rights in a way that infringes the corresponding First Amendment rights of those who have criticized him,” Buchwald said. She said Trump could “mute” users, meaning he would not see their tweets while they could still respond to his, without violating their free speech rights.

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Said it before: putting it in monetary terms is counter-productive. Only when we recognize that it’s not about money will we do something.

Hitting Toughest Climate Target Will Save World $30 Trillion In Damages (G.)

Achieving the toughest climate change target set in the global Paris agreement will save the world about $30tn in damages, far more than the costs of cutting carbon emissions, according to a new economic analysis. Most nations, representing 90% of global population, would benefit economically from keeping global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the research indicates. This includes almost all the world’s poorest countries, as well as the three biggest economies – the US, China and Japan – contradicting the claim of US president, Donald Trump, that climate action is too costly. Australia and South Africa would also benefit, with the biggest winners being Middle East nations, which are threatened with extreme heatwaves beyond the limit of human survival.

However, some cold countries – particularly Russia, Canada and Scandinavian nations – are likely to have their growth restricted if the 1.5C target is met, the study suggests. This is because a small amount of additional warming to 2C would be beneficial to their economies. The UK and Ireland could also see some restriction, though the estimates span a wide range of outcomes. The research, published in the journal Nature, is among the first to assess the economic impact of meeting the Paris climate goals. Data from the last 50 years shows clearly that when temperatures rise, GDP and other economic measures fall in most nations, due to impacts on factors including labour productivity, agricultural output and health.

The scientists used this relationship and 40 global climate models to estimate the future economic impact of meeting the 1.5C target – a tough goal given the world has already experienced 1C of man-made warming. They also assessed the long-standing 2C target and the impact of 3C of warming, which is the level expected unless current plans for action are increased.

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It’s not gone. But it is under threat.

The Mediterranean Diet Is Gone: Region’s Children Are Fattest In Europe (G.)

For kids in Greece, Spain and Italy, the Mediterranean diet is dead, according to the World Health Organisation, which says that children in Sweden are more likely to eat fish, olive oil and tomatoes than those in southern Europe. In Cyprus, a phenomenal 43% of boys and girls aged nine are either overweight or obese. Greece, Spain and Italy also have rates of over 40%. The Mediterranean countries which gave their name to the famous diet that is supposed to be the healthiest in the world have children with Europe’s biggest weight problem. Sweets, junk food and sugary drinks have displaced the traditional diet based on fruit and vegetables, fish and olive oil, said Dr Joao Breda, head of the WHO European office for prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases.

“The Mediterranean diet for the children in these countries is gone,” he said at the European Congress on Obesity in Vienna. “There is no Mediterranean diet any more. Those who are close to the Mediterranean diet are the Swedish kids. The Mediterranean diet is gone and we need to recover it.” Children in southern Europe are eating few fruit and vegetables and drinking a lot of sugary colas and other sweet beverages, said Breda. They snack. They eat sweets. They consume too much salt, sugar and fat in their food. And they hardly move. “Physical inactivity is one of the issues that is more significant in the southern European countries,” he said. “A man in Crete in the 60s would need 3,500 calories because he was going up and down the mountain.”

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May 212018
 


Margaret Bourke-White Great Ohio River Flood, Louisville, Kentucky 1937

 

The Soaring Dollar Will Lead To An “Explosive” Market Repricing (ZH)
Draghi Calls for Consolidation of Debts? (Martin Armstrong)
Italy’s Organic Crisis (Thomas Fazi)
Italy Has A New Government As Populist Parties Agree On New Premier (ZH)
Argentina: From The “Confidence Fairy” To The -Still Devilish- IMF (CF)
US-China Trade War ‘On Hold’ As America Backs Off On Tariffs (Ind.)
Bill Aimed At Saving Community Banks Is Already Killing Them (Dayen)
EU Blocking Cities’ Efforts To Curb Airbnb (G.)
End Of Greek Bailout Means Fresh Cuts To Salaries, Pensions (K.)
Why Boomtown New Zealand Has A Homelessness Crisis
Hundreds Of Homeless People Fined And Imprisoned In UK (G.)
Scientists Revise Their Understanding of Novichok (Slane)

 

 

Dollar shortage grows as interest rates grow.

The Soaring Dollar Will Lead To An “Explosive” Market Repricing (ZH)

Something curious took place one month ago when the PBOC announced on April 17 that it would cut the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) by 1% to ease financial conditions: it broke what until then had been a rangebound market for both the US Dollar and the US 10Y Treasury, sending both the dollar index and 10Y yields soaring…

… which led to an immediate tightening in financial conditions both domestically and around the globe, and which has – at least initially – manifested itself in a sharp repricing of emerging market risk, resulting in a plunge EM currencies, bonds and stocks.

Adding to the market response, this violent move took place at the same time as geopolitical fears about Iran oil exports amid concerns about a new war in the middle east and Trump’s nuclear deal pullout, sent oil soaring – with Brent rising above $80 this week for the first time since 2014 – a move which is counterintuitive in the context of the sharply stronger dollar, and which has resulted in even tighter financial conditions across the globe, but especially for emerging market importers of oil.

Meanwhile, all this is playing out in the context of a world where the Fed continues to shrink its balance sheet – a public sector “Quantitative Tightening (QT)” – further tightening monetary conditions (i.e., shrinking the global dollar supply amid growing demand), even as high grade US corporate bond issuance has dropped off a cliff for cash-rich companies which now opt to repatriate cash instead of issuing domestic bonds, with the resulting private sector deleveraging, or “private sector QT”, further exacerbating tighter monetary conditions and the growing dollar shortage (resulting in an even higher dollar).

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Europe has no bond market left. Japan has no bond market left. All they have is central banks.

Draghi Calls for Consolidation of Debts? (Martin Armstrong)

COMMENT: You were here in Brussels a few weeks ago. Suddenly, the ECB is talking about the need to merge the debts to prevent a crisis. So your lobbying here seems to work. – RGV, Brussels. REPLY: I do not lobby. It is rather common knowledge I have made those proposals since the EU commission attended our World Economic Conference held back in 1998 in London. I focused on the reason the Euro would fail if the debts were not consolidated. So it is not a fair statement to say I meet in Brussels to lobby for anything. I meet with people who call me in because of a crisis brewing.

So everyone else understands what this is about, the ECB President Mario Draghi has come out and proposed interlocking the euro countries to create a “stronger” and “new vehicle” as a “crisis instrument” to save Europe. He is arguing that this should prevent countries from drifting apart in the event of severe economic shocks. Draghi has said it provides “an extra layer of stabilization” which is a code phrase for the coming bond crash. He has conceded that the legal structure is difficult because what he is really talking about is the consolidation of national debts into a single Eurobond market. There is no bond market that is viable in Europe after the end of Quantitative Easing. There will be NO BID.

There is no viable bond market left in Europe. The worst debt is below US rates only because the ECB is the buyer. Stop the buying and the ceiling comes crashing down. This is why what he is saying is just using a different label. He is not calling it debt consolidation, just an extra layer of stabilization to bind the members closer together. It will be a hard sell and it may take the crisis before anyone looks at this. You have “bail-in” policies because of the same problem. If the banks in Italy need a bailout from Brussels, then other members will look at it as a subsidization for Italy which is unfair. There is no real EU unity behind the curtain which is when the debt was NEVER consolidated from day one. They wanted a single currency, but not a single responsibility for the debt.

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“..20% of Italy’s industrial capacity has been destroyed, and 30% of the country’s firms have defaulted..”

Italy’s Organic Crisis (Thomas Fazi)

The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci coined the term “organic crisis” to describe a crisis that differs from ”ordinary” financial, economic, or political crises. An organic crisis is a “comprehensive crisis,” encompassing the totality of a system or order that, for whatever reason, is no longer able to generate societal consensus (in material or ideological terms). [..] Gramsci was talking about Italy in the 1910s. A century later, the country is facing another organic crisis. More specifically, it is a crisis of the post-Maastricht model of Italian capitalism, inaugurated in the early 1990s.

[..] The downfall of the political establishment—and the rise of the “populist” parties—can only be understood against the backdrop of the “the longest and deepest recession in Italy’s history,” as the governor of the Italian central bank, Ignazio Visco, described it. Since the financial crisis of 2007–9, Italy’s GDP has shrunk by a massive 10%, regressing to levels last seen over a decade ago. In terms of per capita GDP, the situation is even more shocking: according to this measure, Italy has regressed back to levels of twenty years ago, before the country became a founding member of the single currency. Italy and Greece are the only industrialized countries that have yet to see economic activity surpass pre–financial crisis levels.

As a result, around 20% of Italy’s industrial capacity has been destroyed, and 30% of the country’s firms have defaulted. Such wealth destruction has, in turn, sent shockwaves throughout the country’s banking system, which was (and still is) heavily exposed to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Italy’s unemployment crisis continues to be one of the worst in all of Europe. Italy has an official unemployment rate of 11% (12% in southern Italy) and a youth unemployment rate of 35% (with peaks of 60% in some southern regions). And this is not even considering underemployed and discouraged workers (people who have given up looking for a job and therefore don’t even figure in official statistics).

If we take these categories into consideration, we arrive at a staggering effective unemployment rate of 30%, which is the highest in all of Europe. Poverty has also risen dramatically in recent years, with 23% of the population, about one in four Italians, now at risk of poverty—the highest level since 1989.

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Europe gets nervous.

Italy Has A New Government As Populist Parties Agree On New Premier (ZH)

Taking the biggest step toward forming Italy’s next government, the head of the anti-immigration League party Matteo Salvini said he’s reached a deal with Five Star leader Luidi Di Maio on forming a populist government, and picked a premier. According to a report in Corriere, Florence University law professor Giuseppe Conte was chosen as prime minister, while Matteo Salvini would be proposed as interior minister, and Five Star head Luigi and Di Maio would be labor minister. On Saturday, Il Messaggero reported that Salvatore Rossi, the Bank of Italy’s director general, could be picked as finance minister.

Today, Ansa added that according to Di Maio, Five Star will head joint ministry of economic development and labor; separately Giancarlo Giorgetti, Matteo Salvini’s right-hand man, will be proposed as economy minister, while Nicola Molteni would become minister of the infrastructure and transport and Gian Marco Centinaio would head the department of Agriculture and Tourism. ANSA added that Salvini will present the proposal to President Sergio Mattarella on Monday. As Bloomberg adds, the endgame follows a week of turmoil in Italian bonds and stocks triggered by reports about the coalition’s spending plans and rejection of European Union budget rules.

Italy’s 10-year yield spread over German bonds shot up to 165 bps on Friday, the most since October, prompting a warning from Paris. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said in a Sunday interview with Europe 1 radio that “if the new government took the risk of not respecting its commitments on debt, the deficit and the cleanup of banks, the financial stability of the entire euro zone will be threatened.” Salvini fired back on Twitter, suggesting the warning was “unacceptable” interference. “Italians first!” he said, clearly referencing Donald Trump.

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No crisis until now because so much was borrowed. Crisis now because so much was borrowed. It’s like a blue print for the entire world.

Argentina: From The “Confidence Fairy” To The -Still Devilish- IMF (CF)

[..] looking at the external front, one may even be forgiven for asking: why did this crisis take so long to burst? Argentina was haemorrhaging dollars for many years, and with no sign of reversal: since 2016 the domestic non-financial sector acquired an accumulated amount of USD 41 billion in external assets. During the same period, the current account deficit totalled another USD 30 billion, in the form of trade deficit, tourism deficit, profit remittances by foreign companies and increasing interest payments. The well-known factor that allowed all these trends to last until now is the foreign borrowing spree that involved the government, provinces, firms, and the central bank, including the inflow from short-term investors for carry trade operations.

In the case of debt issuance, since 2016 the central government, provinces and private companies, have issued a whopping USD 88 billion of new foreign debt (13% of GDP). In the case of carry trade operations, since 2016 the economy recorded USD 14 billon of short-term capital inflows (2% of GDP). The favourite peso-denominated asset for this operations were the debt liabilities of the central bank called LEBAC (Letters of the Central Bank). Because of this, the outstanding stock of this instrument has now become the centre of all attention. It is important to understand the LEBACs. They were originally conceived as an inter-bank and central bank liquidity management instrument.

Since the lifting of foreign exchange and capital controls and the adoption of inflation targeting, the stock of LEBACs grew by USD 18 billion. Moreover, the composition of holders has changed significantly since 2015: At that time, domestic banks held 71% of the stock, and other investors held 29%. In 2018 that proportion has reverted to 38% banks/62% to other non-financial institution holders, which includes other non-financial public institutions (such as the social security administration) (17%), domestic mutual investment funds (16%), firms (14%), individuals (9%), and foreign investors (5%). That means that a large part of all the new issuance of LEBAC is held by investors outside the regulatory scope of the central bank, especially individuals and foreign investors. [..] these holdings could easily be converted into foreign currency, causing a large FX depreciation.

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They’re talking.

US-China Trade War ‘On Hold’ As America Backs Off On Tariffs (Ind.)

The US will hold off on imposing steep tariffs on China that ignited fears of a trade war as both sides pursue a broader deal, a top economic official said. “We’re putting the trade war on hold,” Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. “We have agreed to put the tariffs on hold”. The announcement of a detente in the escalating trade dispute came after Chinese officials visited Washington last week, leading the White House to release an optimistic statement about both sides agreeing to take “measures to substantially reduce the United States trade deficit in goods with China” and to work on expanding trade and protecting intellectual property.

Donald Trump has railed against trade imbalances, particularly with China, as he seeks to renegotiate America’s economic relationship with other nations he accuses of exploiting the US. Breaking with some of his top economic advisers, Mr Trump announced earlier this year that he would levy tariffs on steel and aluminium. He also signed a memorandum seeking tariffs on $60bn worth of Chinese goods. [..] Mr Mnuchin signalled that America was using the leverage from tariff threats to pivot to negotiation, saying talks with Chinese officials had produced “very meaningful progress” – including a “Very productive” oval office meeting between Mr Trump and a top Chinese official.

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Unintended?

Bill Aimed At Saving Community Banks Is Already Killing Them (Dayen)

After initial reluctance, House Republicans have finally reached an agreement to move forward on a bipartisan bank deregulation bill that the Senate passed in March. Its stated aim — to help rural community banks thrive against growing Wall Street power — appears to have been enough to power it across the finish line. But banking industry analysts say the bill is already having the opposite effect, and its loosening of regulations on medium-sized banks is encouraging a rush of consolidation — all of which ends with an increasing number of community banks being swallowed up and closed down. “We absolutely expect bank consolidation to accelerate,” Wells Fargo’s Mike Mayo told CNBC the day after the Senate passed the deregulation bill in March.

The reason? Banks no longer face the prospect of stricter and more costly regulatory scrutiny as they grow. And regional banks in Virginia, Ohio, Mississippi, and Wisconsin have already taken note before the bill has even passed into law, announcing buyouts of smaller rivals. The expected consolidation simply furthers an existing trend. Community banks have been struggling for decades against an epidemic of consolidation; the number of banks in America has fallen by nearly two-thirds in the past 30 years. Ironically, the one state that has seemingly figured out how to arrest this systemic abandonment of smaller communities is North Dakota, the home state of the bill’s co-author, Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp. That’s because North Dakota has a public bank.

Using idle state tax revenue as its deposit base, the Bank of North Dakota partners with community lenders on infrastructure, agriculture, and small business loans. It has thrived, earning record profits for 14 straight years, which have funneled back into state coffers. And while Heitkamp has complained that the Dodd-Frank Act has been disastrous for community banks, in North Dakota they appear to be doing well. According to a Institute for Local Self-Reliance analysis of Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data, North Dakota has more banks per capita than any other state, and lends to small businesses at a rate that is four times the national average.

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The wonders of lobbying.

EU Blocking Cities’ Efforts To Curb Airbnb (G.)

The explosive rise of short-stay Airbnb holiday rentals may be shutting locals out of housing and changing neighbourhoods across Europe, but cities’ efforts to halt it are being stymied by EU policies to promote the “sharing economy”, campaigners say. “It’s pretty clear,” said Kenneth Haar, author of UnfairBnB, a study published this month by the Brussels-based campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory. “Airbnb is under a lot of pressure locally across Europe, and they’re trying to use the top-down power of the EU institutions to fight back.” While it might have started as a “community” of amateur hosts offering spare rooms or temporarily vacant homes to travellers, Airbnb had seen three-digit growth in several European cities since 2014 and was now a big, powerful corporation with the lobbying clout to match, Haar said.

The platform lists around 20,500 addresses in in Berlin, 18,500 in Barcelona, 61,000 in Paris and nearly 19,000 in Amsterdam. Data scraped by the campaign group InsideAirbnb suggests that in these and other tourist hotspots, more than half – sometimes as many as 85% – of listings are whole apartments. Many of the properties are also rented out year-round, removing tens of thousands of homes from the residential rental market. Even in cities where short-term lets are now restricted, about 30% of Airbnb listings are available for three or more months a year, the data indicates. In those where they are not, such as Rome and Venice, the figure exceeds 90%.

[..] local attempts to protect residents’ access to affordable housing and preserve the face of city-centre neighbourhoods are being undermined, campaigners say, by the EU’s determination to see the “collaborative economy” as a key future driver of innovation and job creation across the bloc. “The commission seems almost hypnotised by the prospect of a strong sharing economy, and not really interested in its negative consequences,” said Haar. “Commissioners talk about ‘opportunities, not threats’. The parliament, too, recently condemned cities’ attempts to restrict lettings on online platforms.”

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The torture never stops. Death by a thousand cuts.

End Of Greek Bailout Means Fresh Cuts To Salaries, Pensions (K.)

Millions of salaried workers and pensioners stand to lose at least one monthly payment within two years, in 2019 and 2020. For Greece to boast of a successful – as the government desires – exit from the third bailout program without facing any obstacles by August, the Finance Ministry has ruled out the option of avoiding a reduction to pensions from 2019 and will also be proceeding with demands to reduce the minimum tax threshold as of 2020. [..] January 2019 is when the barrage of cuts to pensions is due to start, lasting at least until 2022, with reductions to main as well as auxiliary pensions and also the abolition of family benefits. The bulk of cuts will affect some 1.1 million retirees, who will see their main pension slashed as of this December (when the January 2019 pensions are paid out) by up to 18%.

In total, in the private and public sector, the reduction of pension expenditure from this particular measure in 2019 is estimated at 2.13 billion euros. Reductions will start at 5 euros a month and may reach up to 350 euros a month. There will even be cuts to pensions where there is no personal difference, owing to the abolition of family benefits currently being paid out with the pensions in the public and private sectors. This is expected to concern around 1 million pensioners. Some 200,000 pensioners will also be affected by the cut of the personal difference from auxiliary pensions. According to the midterm fiscal plan, the reduction in 2019 will amount to savings of 232 million euros for state coffers, which is the amount pensioners will also be deprived of.

According to the government’s plans, the sum of cuts that will become evident as of this December will mean that new pensions will eventually be 30 percent below the original level before the law introduced in May 2016 by then labor minister Giorgos Katrougalos. Therefore, the vast majority of monthly pensions will hover in the 700-euro range, even for retirees who used to bring in an average of 1,300 euros.

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“They’re a long way down a hole that was created by somebody else..”

Why Boomtown New Zealand Has A Homelessness Crisis

New Zealand’s dairy-fuelled economy has for several years been the envy of the rich world, yet despite the rise in prosperity tens of thousands of residents are sleeping in cars, shop entrances and alleyways. The emerging crisis has created a milestone that New Zealanders won’t be proud of: the highest homelessness rate among the 35 high-income OECD countries. It’s a curious problem afflicting boom towns where some residents get pushed onto the streets as they can no longer afford the rocketing rents in a flourishing economy – let alone purchase a house as the price of property has soared. “I have no assets at the moment,” said 64-year-old Victor Young, who spoke to Reuters at a soup kitchen in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington.

“It’s not a kind country, it’s not an easy country. I slept in my car 20 days last year. I worked 30 hours a week.” That sentiment is something the country’s popular Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern would like to reverse. Last Thursday, across town from the Sisters of Compassion Soup Kitchen, her Labour-led government unveiled its first budget with an ambitious plan to build social infrastructure. The government has allocated NZ$3.8 billion ($2.62 billion) of new capital spending over a five-year period. This includes an extra NZ$634 million for housing, on top of the NZ$2.1 billion previously announced to fund Kiwibuild, a government building program to increase affordable housing supply.

[..] But experts say the government’s first budget underwhelms on the radical reforms the wider public wanted. “They’re a long way down a hole that was created by somebody else and they haven’t really got a great or easy solution,” said John Tookey, professor of construction management at Auckland University of Technology. He said the government’s much-vaunted Kiwibuild could come unstuck because there weren’t enough skilled workers to deliver on its ambitious target to build 100,000 homes in the next decade.

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Where does this originate? WIth Theresa May of course.

Hundreds Of Homeless People Fined And Imprisoned In UK (G.)

Growing numbers of vulnerable homeless people are being fined, given criminal convictions and even imprisoned for begging and rough sleeping. Despite updated Home Office guidance at the start of the year, which instructs councils not to target people for being homeless and sleeping rough, the Guardian has found over 50 local authorities with public space protection orders (PSPOs) in place Homeless people are banned from town centres, routinely fined hundreds of pounds and sent to prison if caught repeatedly asking for money in some cases. Local authorities in England and Wales have issued hundreds of fixed-penalty notices and pursued criminal convictions for “begging”, “persistent and aggressive begging” and “loitering” since they were given strengthened powers to combat antisocial behaviour in 2014 by then home secretary, Theresa May.

Cases include a man jailed for four months for breaching a criminal behaviour order (CBO) in Gloucester for begging – about which the judge admitted “I will be sending a man to prison for asking for food when he was hungry” – and a man fined £105 after a child dropped £2 in his sleeping bag. Data obtained by the Guardian through freedom of information found that at least 51 people have been convicted of breaching a PSPO for begging or loitering and failing to pay the fine since 2014, receiving CBOs in some cases and fines up to £1,100. Hundreds of fixed-penalty notices have been issued. Lawyers, charities and campaigners described the findings as “grotesque inhumanity”, saying disadvantaged groups were fined for being poor.

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“..one of its primary effects is to generate in its victims a strong desire to go out for a beer followed by a pizza.”

Scientists Revise Their Understanding of Novichok (Slane)

Warning: This article is likely to contain traces of satire. In the aftermath of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury on 4th March, scientists are currently re-evaluating their understanding of A-234 – or Novichok as it is more commonly known. Prior to the poisoning, it had been thought that the substance was around 5-8 times more toxic than VX nerve agent, and therefore that just a tiny drop would be likely to kill a person within minutes or possibly even seconds of them coming into contact with it. In the unlikely event of a person surviving, it was believed that their central nervous system would be completely destroyed, and that they would suffer numerous chronic health issues, including cirrhosis, toxic hepatitis, and epilepsy before dying a premature and miserable death, probably within a year or so.

However, according to an anonymous source at the Porton Down laboratory, which is located just a few miles down the road from Salisbury, scientists now believe they may have completely misunderstood the properties and effects of the chemical: “All the available information we had about Novichok before March this year suggested that it was by far the most lethal nerve agent ever produced, and we had assumed that even the tiniest drop would kill a person within minutes. However, after studying the movements of the Skripals after being poisoned, we have now revised our understanding, and we now believe that one of its primary effects is to generate in its victims a strong desire to go out for a beer followed by a pizza.”

Yet it’s not only the effects of the substance that have led to this reappraisal, but also its mysterious ability to move about from location to location, seemingly at will. According to the source: “At first, differing reports of the location of the poisoning baffled us. First it was the restaurant, then it was the pub, followed by the bench, the car, the cemetery, the flowers, the luggage, the porridge, and then finally the door handle three weeks after the incident. However, we now believe we have an explanation for this phenomena. When Novichok was developed, we think it may have been given the ability to appear in one place, only to then disappear and turn up in an entirely different place.

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