Mar 262019
 
 March 26, 2019  Posted by at 10:48 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  7 Responses »


Jan van Eijk The Arnolfini portrait 1434

 

 

I first asked Dr. D. a few years ago if I could turn one one his comments at the Automatic Earth into an essay. The following illustrates why I asked. Not sure he understands why some of his rants stand out while others do not, but they certainly do. Go to the Automatic Earth comments section to figure that one out. He’s there every day.

And you’re free to disagree of course. And I myself am good, have an essay on the same topic waiting but love the view from over there. Nothing not to like.

 

 

It USED to be that when a newspaper catastrophically screwed the pooch as we Yanks say, people would cancel their subscription to such a piece of pure, useless, misleading garbage.

Dr. D.: Legally, the path is pretty clear and incredibly old. It’s always been illegal to slander (in voice) or libel (in print) someone. The Covington kids are following this right now. It’s illegal everywhere, including Britain and New Zealand, and the legal threshold has a couple of bullet points. There has to be provable damage, the facts provided have to wrong, they have to be specific, and so on. Then you sue civilly for compensation in measure with the damage caused. Pretty simple. But if it’s actual libel of the sort anyone actually means, not just “I disagree with you”, then all these elements are absolutely in play. No false accusations, no just getting the facts wrong on accident.

What’s more, the government is never the plaintiff. Although in theory I suppose they could get standing, in practice slander and libel are prosecuted BY private people AGAINST private people, which eliminates a major element of government censorship and repression. …The problem is, now that the entire force of media is resident in 5 corporations the size of most countries, no one has been suing anyone, much less challenging them to pistols at dawn.

That and the marketplace is adjusting to the new reality: It USED to be that when a newspaper catastrophically screwed the pooch as we Yanks say, people would cancel their subscription to such a piece of pure, useless, misleading garbage. …But no one ever pays for news anymore; there’s nothing to cancel. Clicks are free. So even when it’s completely wrong, knowingly, provably wrong in 10 minutes of google, if it gets clicks you get paid, so there is a new OPPOSITE incentive to lie, so long as the lies are salacious. It’s literally impossible to be discredited under this model. Look at Brian Williams on NBC and Donna Brazile on Fox.

However, you can still be sued to penury and be unable to pay your click-bills, and I expect this is a new growth industry, perhaps led by Nunes. Certainly Buzzfeed and Vox haven’t waited, they’re collapsing under their blizzard of nonsense and poor reputation, while so many bloggers who got it right continue to rise despite every repression the algos can throw at them. And that’s the market adjusting, note: without the government.

So that’s how Americans and legal nations with free speech do it and always have. Because legally, there is no such thing as ‘hate speech’. If there were, it would be thought crime, a tyranny so diabolical that even the existence of opinions is illegal. You are allowed to hate. Why? Because you are human, we don’t lock people up for thinking and feeling things, and thank our ever-loving God for that.

You are also allowed to SAY you hate someone. Why? Because it’s both a fact and your opinion. What would be the alternative, universal love enacted by perpetual violent force? If people don’t know you don’t like them, you can’t be forewarned, you can’t work things out, we don’t have an open debate in the marketplace of ideas.

What you CAN’T do – and again, this is the law everywhere and always – is ACTUALLY HARM someone. ‘Cause words are just cheap air, sound and fury, signifying nothing. A world where people are terrified of words alone is a world the weakest man who ever lived could conquer. But that’s the western world now, apparently having never seen or felt violence, actually believes that ‘words are violence.’ …That is until being so weak, such violets, such snowflakes, their total weakness attracts REAL violence which devours their nation in hours, as they see with decadent, falling empires throughout history.

There are a few other things: you are generally liable if your words cause physical or monetary harm. Further, you can’t therefore call for specific harm to a specific person, as is called on my people every day, because being more dangerous, the law wishes to prevent murder rather than punish it. But any rational person can follow these without even knowing the law exists, although, like all laws in the U.S. presently, it isn’t enforced, or only enforced on people they don’t like.

But that’s all terribly simple. The media legally CAN’T tell lies like this without consequences. Thankfully, however, the government isn’t the plaintiff and repressor. We legally can have open discussions where bad ideas, bad beliefs are able to be read openly and refuted, like Jim Jones, like Mein Kampf; as they must be, for the only alternative is to control and erase history, and then we could never learn, never recognize it. To punish people for ideas in their heads and feelings in their hearts, making their very existence a prison.

The media will soon wish they could erase history, and perhaps they will already. I mean, they just erased Patrick Moore from founding Greenpeace yesterday. But without the authorization of legal propaganda against the people and the government cash payments that’s soon going to be revealed — as long-used but signed into law by Obama — CNN, MSNBC and the boys are going to go broke on a business plan that has been totally discredited.

So under market capitalism – and now lacking monetary and legal protection of their lies by government, and under attack for monopoly bias and with executive orders reminding everyone that speech is always free – the liars are about to be sued, go broke, and disappear. Which is a pity, since I doubt they have the competence to clean toilets instead. So that’s what free nations do, and are doing right now, instead of making all news, all facts, and all history verboten.

 

 

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
– George Orwell, 1984

 

 

Jan 192019
 


Johannes Vermeer Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window 1657-59

 

In the last few days I was looking around for stories that could illustrate what fake news actually is, and I had a nice collection, but then last night Robert Mueller of all people clarified what exactly fake news is better than I could have. At first the BuzzFeed crew that was caught staring straight into the headlights has a feeble response (what exactly was untrue in our article?), but was silenced by the WaPo of all publications: Mueller’s team said every bit of the article was false.

And still I wonder if people now understand better what fake news is. Which I think has a lot to do whit the fact that the term was monopolized by a section of US media as meaning things that had to do with Trump, more or less exclusively. That way, when Trump accused these same media of publishing fake news, they knew their loyal readers wouldn’t believe him.

But in reality they’ve been at it ever since Trump entered US politics, and they dug in ever deeper into their anti-Donald trenches, first for political reasons, later for profit (nothing sells like Trump in America today). And in the process, especially since they published umpteen pieces a day on the topic, they had to use unproven and biased allegations and innuendo. There was never enough real news to go around to feed the monster they created. That’s how we got Russiagate.

Still, of course, like me, you want to know how fake news is recognized, how ‘experts’ tell it apart from real news. Well, despair no more. An actual professor researched it, and was quoted by the New York Times last week, which doesn’t publish fake news, it says. I got to say, personally, I found this highly enlightening.

 

Older People Shared Fake News on Facebook More Than Others in 2016 Race

The authors were careful in defining “fake news,” a term that has been weaponized by many, including President Trump, to dismiss real news they dislike. “Reasonable people disagree about where to draw the line and we were very conscious of those issues,” Professor Guess said.

As a result, they assembled a limited list of sites that reliably published fake content, based on various sources, including reporting from BuzzFeed News. As best the researchers could tell, the list did not include any websites associated with Russian disinformation efforts, according to Professor Guess. The Facebook and survey data came from a group of about 3,500 people whom the authors tracked during the 2016 election in order to better understand the role social media played in political discourse.

They found that Republicans and those who identified as “very conservative” tended to share the most news from questionable sources. But that tendency may have less to do with ideology and more to do with what those articles said: Users tend to share stories they agree with and the fake news sites were disproportionately pro-Trump, the authors said.

So the researchers distinguish fake news from real news, but they don’t tell us -or the NYT doesn’t- what methods they use to tell the two apart. They do tell us that what Trump calls fake news is merely real news he dislikes. It’s funny how people say that so easily, and never think they themselves might do just that.

“..a limited list of sites that reliably published fake content..” sounds intriguing, but not convincing. That this list partly comes from BuzzFeed is hilarious in view of Mueller’s indictment of BuzzFeed’s article about Trump instructing Michael Cohen to lie. Other than that, the article doesn’t really say much. But luckily Quentin Fottrell, personal finance editor at MarketWatch, elaborates (free advice: Quentin, stick to your trade!)

His article caught my eye because whereas the NYTimes piece talked about older people sharing more fake news, Quentin adds that it’s about Republican older people. And that I find hard to believe. At least without proof; I wouldn’t want to jump to such conclusions based on fake news. Let’s see how far I can get:

 

Why Republican Baby Boomers Are More Likely To Share #Fakenews On Facebook

So why are Republican baby boomers more likely to share fake news on Facebook? One theory: As they didn’t grow up with technology, they may be more susceptible to being fooled.

That one sentence says a lot about this entire ‘study’. It even sounds fake to me. Because while I can see the “less exposed to tech” issue to an extent, I see no reason why Republican baby boomers would be fooled more easily by technology than their Democrat peers.

[..] Andrew Guess, an associate professor at Princeton University, and his colleagues disseminated an online survey to 3,500 people in three waves throughout the 2016 campaign. Of the respondents, 1,331 in the initial wave agreed to share their Facebook profile data, which allowed researchers to analyze the age and political affiliations of those people who were more likely to spread fake news.

The results showed that 90% of these users actually did not share misleading or fake articles and only 8.5% shared one or more fake news articles. A plurality, 18%, of the Facebook users who shared the fake stories were both self-identified Republicans and over the age of 65, the authors concluded, and these individuals shared nearly seven times as many fake news articles as respondents in the youngest age group, ranging in age from 18 to 29.

I had to look at this a few times. Here’s what I think it says:

• They ‘studied’ 3,500 people in 3 waves, of which the initial one was larger than 1,331 people, since that is the segment of the first wave who shared their Facebook data (we assume not all did).

• 90% of these 1,331, or 1,198 people, shared nothing at all (no fake news).

• 8.5% of the 1,331, or 114 people, did share fake news stories. 18% of those 114 (so 18% of 8.5%), or 20 people, were self-identified Republicans over the age of 65.

• Therefore 20 people out of 3,500, or 0.57%, were older Republicans who shared fake news (as it was defined by the survey). There are probably even more people in that target group suffering from dementia than the 0.57% who shared fake news. So what are we looking at here?

You could argue that it’s really 20 people out of 1,331, but that’s still only 1.5%. Meaningless.

• These 20 people shared 7 times as many fake news pieces as young people. That may be true, but they also shared more than 99.43% of people their own age. Does this still mean anything at all to you?

Quentin delights us with some more data;

Another possible explanation: Older Americans may have felt particularly passionate and entrenched in their political views and, therefore, ideological. For instance, the most ideological members of Congress shared news stories on their Facebook pages more than twice as often as moderate legislators between Jan. 2, 2015, and July 20, 2017, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center study, which examined all official Facebook posts created by and for members of Congress in this period.

If you ask me, it’s peculiar to make statements about politics that heap ordinary Americans together with politicians, but at least that paragraph doesn’t say Republicans are more likely than others to [fill in your preference]. But then we’re off to the races again:

[..] What’s more, baby boomers are more likely to be conservative and ideological, according to data crunched by Pew. “In both 2015 and 2016, about one in 10 baby boomers identified as conservative Republicans — the highest percentages dating back to 2000,” researchers Shiva Maniam and Samantha Smith wrote for Pew. “In both years, conservative Republicans made up the largest single partisan and ideological group among boomers.”

Wait. The logic here is that baby boomers are more likely to be conservative and ideological because 1 in 10 baby boomers say they’re conservative Republicans. But that means 9 out of 10 does not. This doesn’t even make a single sliver of sense. Yo, Quentin (and professor Guess), we need some help here.

To be fair, older Republicans share more news in general, and fake news gets caught up in the mix. Members of Congress with very conservative or very liberal voting records both shared news links in about 14% of all their posts, but members with more moderate ideology scores shared links to news stories in just 6% of their posts, Pew found.

That starts out with older Republicans in general and then seamlessly veers into members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, with either very conservative or very liberal voting records. Not fully self-contradictory, but darn close.

There may also be a political explanation: A trickle-down effect from the president’s own remarks about the liberal media. Older Republicans could feel more emboldened by Trump’s comments and, as a result, assume stories that support their causes are accurate.

That’s the first time I explicitly read Quentin saying that fake news is linked to Trump. But other than that, there is no sign that older Democrats don’t feel ’emboldened’ by DNC or Hillary or Pelosi comments just as much as Republicans do by Trump. Quentin and professor Guess only pretend to make a point, but there’s nothing there.

The president has doubled down of late on the view that the mainstream media’s negative coverage of his administration is rooted in bias. “The media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative and often times false attacks and stories,” Trump said last year.

“Confirmation bias” helps outlandish theories and reports gain traction on social media. And that, psychologists say, is where fake news comes in.

Since there is nothing that indicates one political side is more prone to confirmation bias than the other, fake news will necessarily also occur on both sides. Why you would have psychologists define fake news I don’t know. Oh, and I think that Trump comment makes a lot of sense.

With so much noise on social media, how can people distinguish between rumor and reality? Psychologists say people develop defense mechanisms to cope with an uncertain world early in life, but this also draws people to information that seems to confirm their own beliefs and world views and to ignore reports or opinions that contradict their perceptions.

“At its core is the need for the brain to receive confirming information that harmonizes with an individual’s existing views and beliefs,” said Mark Whitmore, an assistant professor of management and information systems in Kent State University’s business school. “In fact, one could say the brain is hard-wired to accept, reject, miss-remember or distort information based on whether it is viewed as accepting of or threatening to existing beliefs.”

Older Americans may be less likely to question authority

However, many people effectively rationalize the irrational in order to avoid going against values and ideas they were taught by their parents. “Children’s learning about make-believe and mastery becomes the basis for more complex forms of self-deception and illusion into adulthood,” Eve Whitmore said. When people are faced with absurd and conflicting messages, her husband added, “It becomes easier to cling to a simple fiction than a complicated reality.”

[..] Ultimately, however, it may come down to our trust in the internet, rather than institutions or belief systems. “People who have grown up with the internet have experienced things that are not necessarily truthful. They have had experiences on social media or they have witnessed friends dealing with false information, which has made them more skeptical about what they read versus the baby boomers who did not grow up with the internet and have, therefore, limited experience.”

Remember, the article’s headline is “Why Republican Baby Boomers Are More Likely To Share #Fakenews On Facebook”. And then it does absolutely nothing to make that point, but instead goes a very long way to proving that ALL baby boomers do that. Either one of which, first of all, you don’t prove by talking 20 people out of a sample of 3,500, but moreover, secondly, your entire article -strongly- appears to deny.

And do we know what fake news is now, are we any closer to that? Not that I can see. And there’s no way I can say it all in one go, so I’ll get back to this topic. But not before thanking Robert Mueller for defining fake news in his own way. It must have cost him, and the FBI and DOJ, some genuine heartache, but in the end he couldn’t let the entire avalanche of media and Democrats run with such an overtly fake piece of ‘news’. There were calls for Congressional investigations based on it, for crying out loud.

Speaking of which, crying out loud might be what you expect BuzzFeed to do now, but don’t count on it: they got a ton of free publicity, and that’s all the entire fake news cycle has been based on from the start. And if it didn’t kill the New York Times or CNN, why would it kill BuzzFeed? It’s a growth industry. And credibility is overrated.

 

 

Jan 192019
 


Pablo Picasso Guitar on a table 1922

 

Mueller Shoots Down Buzzfeed’s Latest Russiagate Scoop With Rare Dismissal (RT)
US Asked Ecuadorean Officials About Alleged Assange-Manafort Meeting (R.)
56% Majority Of Britons Now Want To Remain In The EU – Poll (DM)
Extending The Brexit Deadline Could Clash With Coming EU Elections (CNBC)
EU Loves British Money More Than It Loves Democracy (Clark)
UK Patients Stockpile Drugs In Fear Of No-Deal Brexit (G.)
UK Shoppers Rein In Spending As Fears Grow Over Economy (G.)
Rising Credit-Card Use Shows US Consumers Are Strapped (DDMB)
Tesla Cuts 7% Of Workforce, Musk Sees ‘Very Difficult’ Road Ahead (CNBC)
Tesla Has $920 Million In Debt Coming Due, A Third Of Company’s Cash (CNBC)
Russia Outshines China To Become World’s 5th Biggest Holder Of Gold (RT)
French Court Cites Precautionary Principle To Cancel Monsanto Permit (R.)

 

 

Is this the worst day for fake news to date? It’s hard to keep track. It’s just that this one was taken up by so many hoping for -finally!- impeachment. Please Lord make it stop.

Two reasons why Mueller issued his statement: 1) the credibility of the Special Counsel itself (since every outlet ran with the -false- BuzzFeed story), 2) members of Congress were calling for investigations based on the story (would have been even more embarrassing than making the statement).

One Shimon Prokupecz on Twitter: “We cannot underestimate the statement disputing Buzzfeed’s story from the special counsel. I’m sure it pained them to do this. I’m sure this went through many levels at the DOJ and FBI. They don’t talk. This is massive.”

Trump on Twitter: “Remember it was Buzzfeed that released the totally discredited “Dossier,” paid for by Crooked Hillary Clinton and the Democrats (as opposition research), on which the entire Russian probe is based! A very sad day for journalism, but a great day for our Country!”

Mueller Shoots Down Buzzfeed’s Latest Russiagate Scoop With Rare Dismissal (RT)

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has poured cold water on BuzzFeed’s latest Russiagate “bombshell” with a rare public statement calling the article, which claims Trump told his ex-lawyer Cohen to lie to Congress, “not accurate.” BuzzFeed reported that President Donald Trump directly instructed his former attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about his plans to build a Trump Tower property in Moscow, citing two anonymous “federal law enforcement officials” as sources that the president had suborned perjury – which, being an actual crime, triggered talk of impeachment “walls closing in” among the anti-Trump “Resistance.”

While half of Congress took to Twitter to wave the story as the long-awaited proof of Collusion, the BuzzFeed reporters could not seem to agree on their own sourcing. Anthony Cormier admitted to CNN he hadn’t seen the proof directly but had two “law enforcement” sources claiming they had seen it, while Jason Leopold told MSNBC they had in fact seen the documents themselves. The smoking gun du jour collapsed further when word came down from Mueller himself – via spokesman Peter Carr – that Buzzfeed’s “description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony” were “not accurate.”

Mueller has been extremely tight-lipped about the numerous previous “Russiagate” scoops, and considering the time and effort involved in his own ongoing crusade to take Trump down, his dismissal of BuzzFeed’s would-be bombshell knocked the legs out from under a story whose vague sourcing had already raised questions.

Read more …

And this fits in seamlessly with the Mueller/BuzzFeed thing: The Guardian story has been thoroughly discredited, but 2 months later, US officials are still chasing it. What’s new to me is that it’s the first time I see a Guardian response: “The Guardian has defended the article and said it “relied on a number of sources.” Lame poppycock. And the same thing Buzzfeed says.

US Asked Ecuadorean Officials About Alleged Assange-Manafort Meeting (R.)

U.S. officials spoke with officials from Ecuador’s British embassy on Friday about an alleged meeting there between President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, an Ecuadorean government source said. The Guardian newspaper reported the meeting in November, alleging the two met at least three times, including in 2016, just before WikiLeaks released damaging emails about Trump’s rival in the 2016 presidential elections, Hillary Clinton. Manafort and Assange have both previously denied meeting each other at the embassy.

WikiLeaks, in a statement on Friday entitled the “U.S. interrogation of Ecuadorian diplomats,” accused Ecuador’s government of assisting the United States in prosecuting Assange, who first sought asylum in the embassy in 2012. The source said the embassy officials, at the request of the U.S. Justice Department, provided testimony in Quito at facilities provided by Ecuadorean authorities. [..] Part of Mueller’s probe has involved looking into whether Trump associates may have had advance notice before WikiLeaks published emails stolen by Russian hackers from Democratic computer networks to damage Clinton. WikiLeaks called the Guardian’s story “indisputably fabricated” and said it was being used as a pretext for the United States to prosecute Assange. The Guardian has defended the article and said it “relied on a number of sources.”

Read more …

But neither one of the two main parties do. How screwed up is that? Nobody represents the majority.

56% Majority Of Britons Now Want To Remain In The EU – Poll (DM)

A majority of Britons now say they want to stay in the EU after Theresa May’s Brexit plan suffered a massive defeat, a new poll published today has found. A YouGov survey asked 1,070 voters how they would vote in a second Brexit referendum if it were held today – and found Remain has stretched out a 12-point lead over Leave, with 56% saying they would vote to stay in the EU versus 44% in favour of leaving. The voters were questioned the day after the PM’s Brexit plan suffered a crushing defeat – leaving the machinery of government deadlocked and with the bitter divisions among MPs offering no clear way ahead.

Ministers are now at war over Brexit, openly clashing over whether Britain should be willing to crash out without a deal on March 29, or back a softer Brexit or second referendum. The Prime Minister must make a statement on Monday where she will lay out her ‘next steps’ on a Brexit ‘plan B’ before a week of debate on the various options. The following week, MPs will vote on their preferred course of action, putting huge pressure on the Prime Minister to adopt it. With Westminster gripped by chaos, the new poll suggests voters are losing faith in Brexit with growing numbers now backing Remain. The survey for The Times found that 56% of those polled would now back staying in the EU, while the same proportion back a second referendum. And voters were even more likely to want to stay in the bloc if the only other option was the PM’s Brexit deal, with Remain leading by 65% to 35%.

Read more …

If Article 50 were extended, which looks pretty sure, Britain will have to vote in European elections. But their seats have already been given out to others.

Extending The Brexit Deadline Could Clash With Coming EU Elections (CNBC)

Extending the official Brexit deadline for the U.K. could bring a wave of extra logistical and political problems for the EU. The ongoing deadlock has sparked a debate on the potential extension of Article 50 — the legal means by which the U.K. leaves the EU. However, there is strong opposition from some European lawmakers over giving more time to the U.K. to sort out its domestic politics. The U.K. is set to leave the EU on March 29 — but this could change if the U.K. asks for an extension and the other 27 member nations accept the request. Extending the departure beyond the agreed date would likely clash with European parliamentary elections that are set to take place between May 23 and 26. The chamber is made of lawmakers from all 28 European member countries, including the U.K., and is responsible for approving European policies, such as the Union’s total budget.

“What we will not let happen, deal or no deal, is that the mess in British politics is again imported into European politics. While we understand the U.K. could need more time, for us it is unthinkable that Article 50 is prolonged beyond the European Elections,” Guy Verhofstadt, a member of the European Parliament and its representative in Brexit negotiations, said on Twitter on Wednesday. [..] Seb Dance, member of the European Parliament for the U.K. Labour party, said the prospect of having Brexit and the European elections clashing “is a logistical headache.” “The impact of delaying Brexit on the EU elections is certainly troublesome logistically speaking,” he said, “but politically speaking it shouldn’t make a difference as it is entirely possible that elections take place in the other member states without needing to take place in Britain.”

[..] According to a Brussels-based European official, who did not want to be named due to the sensitivity surrounding the Brexit talks, an extension would likely mean that the U.K. would have to participate in the vote. This is because it would still technically be a member of the European Union. Zsolt Darvas, senior fellow at Bruegel, reiterated this point in an email to CNBC Friday. “If the extension goes beyond the elections, the U.K. would have to elect members of the European Parliament. Not expecting this, the European Parliament has already agreed on how to allocate the U.K. seats after Brexit. That agreement will have to be revised, or perhaps its implementation be postponed after the actual, delayed Brexit date.”

“From the U.K. side, it might look awkward to elect members of the European Parliament when people expect that the U.K. will leave the EU not much after the European elections; plus the U.K. would need to act quickly to make the European Parliament election possible, which would also involve some costs.”

Read more …

“..the Common Fisheries Quota has for the past 34 years given 84% of the cod in the English Channel to France and just 9% to the UK..”

EU Loves British Money More Than It Loves Democracy (Clark)

The European establishment is desperate for Britain to reconsider Brexit. Internationalist ideals about ‘preserving European unity’, don’t come in to it, this is all about protecting income streams. Consider a few facts. If Britain does leave without a deal, then the EU as an institution would be considerably worse off. The UK has consistently been one of the top three countries that puts most into the EU budget (after Germany and France). It is one of ten countries that puts more into the EU than it gets out. In 2017, the UK’s net contribution was £9bn. If Britain leaves, the EU faces a financial shortfall. In 2016, 16 countries were net receivers, including Donald Tusk’s Poland. Little wonder that he regards Britain staying as “the only positive solution”.

The very generous financial remuneration packages of EU officials might also be threatened by British withdrawal. In December, it was reported that the EU’s top civil servants would be paid over €20,000 a month for the first time, and that Tusk and Juncker would see their packages rise to €32,700 a month. Austerity? Not in Brussels, mon ami! The EU is a fabulous gravy train once you are on board. But the gravy train relies on its richest members not leaving, otherwise who’s going to foot the bill? If Britain leaves with ‘No Deal’, it’s not just the EU budget which will take a hit. In 2017, EU countries sold around £67 billion more in goods and services to the UK, than the UK sold to them. Europe needs full and unfettered access to British markets, much more than Britain needs full and unfettered access to European markets.

[..] The country that would lose out the most with Brexit is Germany. Britain’s trade deficit with Germany is higher than with any other country, even higher than China, whose products are everywhere in our shops! In 2016, the year of the EU referendum, Britain imported around £26 billion more from Germany than it exported. [..] We also have to discuss fishing. The other EU countries do extremely well out of the Common Fisheries Policy, which provides them with access to UK waters. Belgian fleets get around half their catch from British waters! As reported in the Independent, the Common Fisheries Quota has for the past 34 years given 84% of the cod in the English Channel to France and just 9% to the UK. Overall, EU vessels take out around four times as much fish out of UK waters as British vessels take out of EU waters.

Read more …

Is it Brexit or just the overall state of affairs as the Tories dismantle the NHS?

UK Patients Stockpile Drugs In Fear Of No-Deal Brexit (G.)

Ministers have been urged by top doctors to reveal the extent of national drug stocks, amid growing evidence patients are stockpiling medication in preparation for a no-deal Brexit. The Royal College of Physicians (RCP), which represents tens of thousands of doctors, urged the government to be more “transparent about national stockpiles, particularly for things that are already in short supply or need refrigeration, such as insulin”. Prof Andrew Goddard, the RCP president, said: “Faith in the system will be created by openness and regular updates to trusts and clinicians; this will allow clinicians to reassure patients.” The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) has warned medical shortages have increased in recent months.

Generic drugs are usually bought through nationally set tariff prices. However, pharmacies can apply for price concessions under which the NHS will temporarily pay more when the drugs are in short supply. The number of concessions the PSNC applied for went up from 45 in October, to 72 in November and 87 in December. The Guardian has also found evidence some patients are stockpiling drugs, against official guidance. They said they were doing so by ordering drugs from abroad, and by asking their GPs for emergency prescriptions. One diabetic patient has been stockpiling insulin for four months, ordering twice the amount he needs for each of his drugs from the pharmacist.

Robin Hewings, the head of policy at Diabetes UK, backed calls for more transparency from the government about current stock levels to reassure patients. “There is a level of concern that has risen quite a lot [in the last few months] and people with diabetes are talking about stockpiling. The government needs to be more transparent about insulin supplies.”

Read more …

Only, not really: “..sales grew by 2.7% last year, compared with a growth rate of 2% in 2017.”

UK Shoppers Rein In Spending As Fears Grow Over Economy (G.)

British consumers reined in their spending in December after splashing out during November on Black Friday promotions, according to official figures that confirmed the tough festive shopping period on the high street. The Office for National Statistics said the quantity of goods bought last month fell by 0.9% compared to November, when Black Friday deals encouraged shoppers to bring forward some of their Christmas spending. All sectors except food and petrol declined on the month, the figures showed, coming after the British Retail Consortium said the key Christmas shopping period had been the worst for retailers since the financial crisis a decade ago.

James Smith, an economist at the City bank ING, said: “After another bumpy week for Brexit, today’s UK retail sales data is a timely reminder that all is not particularly well in the UK economy.” Figures for the three months to December, highlighting the wider trend for consumer spending, showed that the quantity of goods bought dropped by 0.2%. [..] Despite the downturn last month, the latest snapshot showed that retail sales growth for 2018 as a whole was above the level recorded a year earlier. Although significantly below the peak growth rate of 4.7% seen before the Brexit vote in 2016, sales grew by 2.7% last year, compared with a growth rate of 2% in 2017.

Read more …

Or does it show that they are more confident? Always a nice puzzle. A popular industry POV: people get deeper in debt because they feel so great.

Rising Credit-Card Use Shows US Consumers Are Strapped (DDMB)

Even though evidence is mounting that the U.S. economy may be soon heading into a recession, there are plenty of analysts who say that the surge in credit card borrowing is a sign of strong confidence among households. That’s hardly the case. In fact, households’ confidence in the future growth of their incomes has been cooling since late last summer, which means borrowers will only reach for what’s in their wallet to compensate for what their paychecks will not cover. Many working adults have no recollection of credit card borrowing not being a mainstay among their financing options. But then, few would be able to identify a Diners Club card, which was a popular brand during the 1980s “yuppie” era when Americans first began to embrace credit card spending in earnest.

These days, consumers are not keen to lean on credit cards, partly due to a cultural and financial shift in the industry. The financial crisis arguably altered households’ views on charging beyond their means. It didn’t hurt that the availability of subprime credit all but disappeared for a few years or that the interest rate on credit cards remained in double-digit territory despite the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy. That said, the idea of frugality re-entered many households’ thinking in the wake of the severe hardship the foreclosure crisis brought to bear on millions of working Americans. Debit cards became the predominant form of plastic used at the checkout.

And yet, consumer credit likely rounded out 2019 at a new $4 trillion milestone as runaway higher educationand car-price inflation coupled with ridiculously looser lending standards pushed households to take on record levels of student loan and auto debt. At roughly $1 trillion, credit cards are but a co-star in a star-studded, full-length feature film. A long history of credit card borrowing suggests that we would have multiples of today’s $1.04 billion in outstanding balances had the growth rate of spending on plastic maintained the headier double-digit paces clocked in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Shares down 13%.

Tesla Cuts 7% Of Workforce, Musk Sees ‘Very Difficult’ Road Ahead (CNBC)

Tesla is cutting its full-time staff headcount by about 7 percent, as it ramps up production of its Model 3 sedans, CEO Elon Musk said Friday. The announcement follows recent cost-cutting measures the company has made in a bid to reduce the price of its products and boost margins. Tesla shares fell 13 percent by the end of trading Friday. In an email to employees, Musk said the company faces a “very difficult” road ahead in its long-term goal to sell affordable renewable energy products, noting the company is younger than other players in the industry. “Tesla will need to make these cuts while increasing the Model 3 production rate and making many manufacturing engineering improvements in the coming months,” Musk said.

“Attempting to build affordable clean energy products at scale necessarily requires extreme effort and relentless creativity, but succeeding in our mission is essential to ensure that the future is good, so we must do everything we can to advance the cause.” The exact number of employees who will be laid off has not been disclosed. However in an October tweet, Musk said Tesla had a staff count of 45,000. If still true today, that would mean 3,150 layoffs. Musk said Friday that Tesla faces “an extremely difficult challenge” in making its electric vehicles and solar products a competitive alternative to traditional vehicles and energy products that rely on fossil fuels.

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Plunging share prices are the last thing Tesla needs.

Tesla Has $920 Million In Debt Coming Due, A Third Of Company’s Cash (CNBC)

Tesla has a billion dollar debt coming due, and it could wipe out nearly a third of the company’s cash if the stock price doesn’t improve. About $920 million in convertible senior notes expires on March 1 at a conversion price of $359.87 per share. But Tesla’s stock hasn’t traded above $359 for weeks. If the shares are about $359.87, then Tesla’s debt converts into Tesla shares. If not, Tesla will have to pay the debt in cash. Tesla reported cash and cash equivalents of $3.37 billion at the end of its September quarter. The company continues to reveal pressure to maintain profitability, and announced Friday it would cut 7 percent of its full-time workforce. Shares fell more than 10 percent Friday following the announcement to trade around $310 per share.

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If only because of the sanctions.

Russia Outshines China To Become World’s 5th Biggest Holder Of Gold (RT)

The Central Bank of Russia reported purchasing 8.5 million troy ounces of gold in January-November 2018. With its 67.6 million ounces of gold Russia is now the world’s fifth largest holder behind the US, Germany, France and Italy. China dropped to sixth place as it reported an increase in gold reserves just once in more than two years – to 59.6 million ounces in December 2018 from 59.2 million ounces in October 2016. Industry sources told Reuters that Western sanctions against Russia lifted the country’s gold buying to record highs in 2018. One of the reasons Russia’s Central Bank was betting on the yellow metal was because it could not be frozen or blacklisted, sources explained.

“It seems that there is an aim to diversify from American assets,” said a source in one of Russia’s gold producers, referring to the Central Bank’s holdings. While purchases of the precious metal by Russia jumped last year the country continued getting rid of US Treasury securities. Earlier this month, Russia’s Central Bank reported that it cut the share of the US dollar in the country’s foreign reserves to a historic low, transferring nearly $100 billion into the euro, the Japanese yen and the Chinese yuan. The step came as a part of a broader state policy on eliminating reliance on the greenback. According to sources, the Central Bank has been purchasing a significant portion of Russia’s domestic gold production, which is also rising.

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As the EU promotes Roundup, this court has the only right attitude, referring to “a precautionary principle in French law.” All GMO crops should be banned because of that principle. The risks are too great, and there’s likely no way back. You can’t put the onus of proof on society at large, Monsanto will have to prove there is no risk or damage at all, not the other way around. Nassim Taleb is the only person I’ve seen who also says this as the most important thing concerning GMO.

French Court Cites Precautionary Principle To Cancel Monsanto Permit (R.)

A French court canceled the license for one of Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weedkillers on Tuesday over safety concerns, placing an immediate ban on Roundup Pro 360 in the latest legal blow to the Bayer-owned business. Germany’s Bayer, which bought Monsanto for $63 billion last year, faces thousands of U.S. lawsuits by people who say its Roundup and Ranger Pro products caused their cancer. A court in Lyon in southeast France ruled that the approval granted by French environment agency ANSES in 2017 for Roundup Pro 360 had failed to take into account potential health risks. Bayer, which said it disagreed with the decision and was considering its legal options, has cited regulatory rulings as well as scientific studies that found glyphosate to be safe.

The firm is appealing a first U.S. court ruling that awarded $78 million in damages to a school groundskeeper from California. “Bayer disagrees with the decision taken by the Administrative Court of Lyon to cancel the marketing authorization for RoundUp Pro 360,” it said in a statement. “This product formulation, like all crop protection products, has been subject to a strict evaluation by the French authorities (ANSES), an independent body and guarantor of the public health security.” The French court said ANSES had not respected a precautionary principle in French law, notably by not conducting a specific evaluation of health risks for Roundup Pro 360.

“Despite the European Union’s approval of the active substance (glyphosate), the court considered that scientific studies and animal experiments showed Roundup Pro 360 … is a potentially carcinogenic product for humans, suspected of being toxic for human reproduction and for aquatic organisms,” the court said in a summary of its ruling. ANSES said it was still examining the court ruling, but that the decision was effective immediately. “As a consequence, the sale, distribution and use of RoundUp Pro 360 are banned as of today,” the agency said in an email.

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Jan 112017
 
 January 11, 2017  Posted by at 10:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  5 Responses »


Dorothea Lange Hoe culture in the South. Poor white, North Carolina 1936

Trump Said to Be Told of Unverified Russian Intelligence (BBG)
BuzzFeed Publishes Unsubstantiated Report On Trump (G.)
4Chan Claims To Have Fabricated Anti-Trump Report As A Hoax (ZH)
Michael Cohen: ‘It Is Fake News Meant to Malign Mr. Trump’ (Atlantic)
Tillerson To Face Questions On Russian Ties At Confirmation Hearing (R.)
Meryl Streep, Obama Prosecuted Whistleblowers & Bombed Weddings (Ryan)
Banks Forced To Cover Tracks Of China’s Forex Regulator (R.)
Boeing: 3 More Waves of Layoffs in 2017, Orders Collapse, Shares Rise (WS)
Euro May Not Exist In 10 Years, French Pres. Candidate Macron Says (CNBC)
Le Pen Says All French Banks Have Refused to Meet With Her (BBG)
Greek Severe Weather: Refugees Freeze, Aid Industry Fails (G.)

 

 

What an incredible story. What has the country turned into? What happened to verifying sources, stories? So strike out BuzzFeed as a news source. And John McCain. Any story that contains his name is fake.

Trump Said to Be Told of Unverified Russian Intelligence (BBG)

U.S. intelligence officials have informed President-elect Donald Trump about unsubstantiated reports they’ve received that the Russian government had compiled potentially damaging personal and financial information on him, a person familiar with the situation said. CNN reported earlier on Tuesday that as part of a briefing on Russian attempts to meddle in the presidential election, U.S. spy chiefs included a two-page summary of memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative about alleged Kremlin operations to gather prejudicial information on Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. The FBI hasn’t been able to verify the information in the documents, CNN said.

BuzzFeed later published the entire 35-page compilation of memos, which contain potentially damaging but uncorroborated information about Trump and his associates. The person confirmed that the document was the same as the material in the government’s possession. The aim of the alleged Russian government intelligence-gathering was to leverage the information to shift U.S. policy toward Russia, including by potentially blackmailing Trump, according to the memos. President Barack Obama also was briefed on the documents. Trump denounced “FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” on Twitter at about 8:20 p.m. in New York, without mentioning or linking to any of the reports.

He retweeted a Trump Organization official, Executive Vice President Michael Cohen, who tweeted that “I have never been to Prague in my life” with a picture of the front of his passport. One of the memos alleged that Cohen had met with “Kremlin officials” in Prague in August 2016. Trump then tweeted an article by Lifezette, a website run by conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, that was critical of the BuzzFeed report.

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BuzzFeed is like WaPo. Done. No credibility. Cheap clickbait chasing.

BuzzFeed Publishes Unsubstantiated Report On Trump (G.)

BuzzFeed’s decision to publish an intelligence report filled with salacious and unsubstantiated claims about Donald Trump’s purported behaviour in Russia has triggered a political storm and debate over media ethics. The news website posted the unredacted documents on Tuesday, just 10 days before Trump’s inauguration, with a warning that the contents contained errors and were “unverified and potentially unverifiable”. The decision to put the claims in the public domain forced other media outlets to repeat the allegations or ignore a story that lit up the internet. Some critics rounded on BuzzFeed, calling it irresponsible. The documents, reportedly compiled by a British former intelligence agent, alleged that the Kremlin was “cultivating, supporting and assisting” Trump for at least five years.

They also alleged that Russian spies exploited the president-elect’s “personal obsessions and sexual perversion” to gather compromising material. The president-elect denied and denounced the claims in a series of tweets. “FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT.” The memos were compiled by the former intelligence officer on behalf of some of Trump’s Republican opponents in the primaries, and later by Democrats. Other media outlets including the Guardian obtained and reviewed the documents in recent weeks but declined to publish because there was no way to independently verify them. The stakes rose on Tuesday when CNN reported that America’s intelligence chiefs gave Trump and Barack Obama a two-page summary of the reports last week. CNN and The Guardian also reported that Senator John McCain delivered a copy to FBI director James Comey last month, but withheld the documents’ most eye-opening details, citing lack of corroboration.

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This is what America has become. Not Trump’s doing.

4Chan Claims To Have Fabricated Anti-Trump Report As A Hoax (ZH)

In a story that is getting more surreal by the minute, a post on 4Chan now claims that the infamous “golden showers” scene in the unverified 35-page dossier, allegedly compiled by a British intelligence officer, was a hoax and fabricated by a member of the chatboard as “fanfiction”, then sent to Rick Wilson, who proceeded to send it to the CIA, which then put it in their official classified intelligence report on the election. Here is 4Chan’s explanation of how the story came to light:

And a summary posted on pastebin:

On january 10, Buzzfeed posted a story under the byline of Ken Bensinger, Mark Schoofs and Miriam elder titled “these reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia” and posted a link to a document alleging, among other things, that russia has been cultivating trump for 5+ years, that trump has been in constant contact with the kremlin for information on his opponents, and perhaps most inflammatory, that there are many recorded instances of blackmail of trump in sexual misconduct. A prominent claim is that trump rented the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in moscow, where he knew that the Obamas had slept in; he them hired a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden shower’ (pissplay) on the bed and in the room. https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-dee…
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984/Trump-Intelligence-Al…

Noted #nevertrump voice Rick Wilson later commented on twitter, stating that the report “gave a new meaning to Wikileaks” (https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/818982395202379777) and that the report was the reason everybody was fighting so hard against the election of Trump. (https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/818983514335047680)

The remarkable thing? It’s all fake. And not only fake; it’s a prank perpetuated by 4chan, on Rick Wilson himself. A post on 4chan on october 26 stated “mfw managed to convince CTR and certain (((journalists))) on Twitter there’ll be an October surprise on Trump this Friday” along with a picture of a smug face with a hash name. https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/94704894/#94705224

on november 1, a person without a picture but is assumed to be the same person posted “So they took what I told Rick Wilson and added a Russian spy angle to it. They still believe it. Guys, they’re truly fucking desperate – there’s no remaining Trump scandal that’s credible.” https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/95568919/#95571329

on january 10, moments after the story broke and began to gain traction on social media, a person with the same smug grin face, and the same hash title for the picture, stated “I didn’t think they’d take it so far.” https://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/106514445#p106520376

This story has taken on something of a life of it’s own. Going through Rick Wilson’s twitter, you can find many different stories from the time that he had shown the story to a wide number of anti-trump news sources, trying to find a news organization that would actually publish the story. During that time period, he referred to it often as ‘the thing’, and often playing coy with followers on the content with the story with anybody who was not also a #Nevertrumper. Unconfirmed sources has people as high up as John McCain giving the story to FBI Director James Comey to attempt to verify the story. Given that Rick Wilson runs in Establishment circles, it is not an impossible scenario that long-serving senators are falling for what amounts to a 4chan troll trump supporter creating an ironic October Surprise out of wholecloth to punk a GOPe pundit who derogatorily referred to them as single men who masturbate to anime.

While this entire incident is laughable, and even more so if the 4Chan account is accurate, what makes it quite tragic, is that it is no longer possible to dismiss the “fake news” angle to an intelligence report. And if the CIA is compromised, what is left for “news outlets” like CNN and BuzzFeed, which were all too eager to run with the story without any attempt at verification?

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Maybe Cohen should sue BuzzFeed?

Michael Cohen: ‘It Is Fake News Meant to Malign Mr. Trump’ (Atlantic)

Donald Trump and his lawyer on Tuesday night denied allegations in an explosive, unverified dossier that describes a purported Russian operation to compromise Trump. Trump tweeted that the document, which was referred to in a CNN report and later published in full on BuzzFeed News, was “FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” Trump was reacting to allegations in a memo originating from research reportedly compiled by a former British intelligence officer that purports to show that the Russian government has compromising information on Trump. The document also makes specific claims about contacts between people working for Trump and Russian officials. It alleges that Michael Cohen, special counsel to Trump, was central to “the ongoing secret liaison relationship between the New York tycoon’s campaign and the Russian leadership,” and that he met secretly with Kremlin officials in Prague in August 2016.

Reached by telephone on Tuesday night, Cohen denied the dossier’s allegations. The story is “totally fake, totally inaccurate,” Cohen said. “I’m telling you emphatically that I’ve not been to Prague, I’ve never been to Czech [Republic], I’ve not been to Russia,” Cohen said. “The story is completely inaccurate, it is fake news meant to malign Mr. Trump.” Cohen said that during the time the report places him in Prague, he was actually with his son visiting USC and meeting with the baseball coach. A USC baseball source confirmed Tuesday night that Cohen and his son had visited USC on August 29th. Cohen said that he was in Los Angeles from the 23rd through the 29th of August, and that the rest of the month he was in New York. He said that his only trip to an EU country over the summer had been a vacation to Italy in July. Cohen also tweeted a photo of his passport: “I have never been to Prague in my life. #fakenews.” Trump retweeted Cohen’s tweet.

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They won’t get to Tillerson.

Tillerson To Face Questions On Russian Ties At Confirmation Hearing (R.)

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, faces tough questioning at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday over his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin as both Democrats and Republicans worry about Moscow’s increasingly aggressive behavior. The central question facing Tillerson, 64, the former chairman of Exxon Mobil, is how effectively he can transform himself from a Big Oil “dealmaker” to being America’s top diplomat with little government experience. According to excerpts from his opening statement released before the hearing, Tillerson will say that Russia poses a danger and NATO allies are right to be alarmed at a resurgent Moscow. He will argue, however, that Russia’s resurgence happened in the “absence of American leadership” and will call for open and frank dialogue with Moscow.

“We must be clear-eyed about our relationship with Russia,” Tillerson will say. “Russia today poses a danger but it is not unpredictable in advancing its own interests,” according to the transcript of his remarks. “We need an open and frank dialogue with Russia regarding its ambitions, so that we know how to chart our own course,” he will say. He will also emphasize the need to destroy Islamic State, and will criticize China’s behavior in the South China Sea and call on Beijing to pressure North Korea. Tillerson’s confirmation hearing comes at a time of rising tensions with Russia over its role in the U.S. presidential election and an assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia was behind the hacks of political figures in an effort to help Trump win the Nov. 8 election. Moscow has denied the allegations. Tillerson opposed U.S. sanctions against Russia in 2014 over its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine because he thought they would be ineffective.

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There was a good take down from Piers Morgan of all people on the same topic.

Meryl Streep, Obama Prosecuted Whistleblowers & Bombed Weddings (Ryan)

Streep’s anti-Trump speech on Sunday night at the Golden Globes was a sublime performance. It was delivered with emotion and grace. A real tear-jerker for anyone worried about the oncoming era of Trump. And yet… it also stank. It reeked, in fact. Of pure, unadulterated hypocrisy. Because Streep, sadly, is that common breed of liberal Hollywood hypocrite. You know, the ones whose bleeding heart credentials are suddenly nowhere to be found when the occupant of the White House is a cool Democrat who’s besties with Beyonce. In her impassioned speech, Streep called on her peers and fans to join with her in donating to the Committee to Protect Journalists: “We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage. That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution,” she said.

She’s right, of course. But one wonders is Streep even aware, for instance, that the Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all of his predecessors combined? It’s a tradition Trump is likely to continue, of course, but it’s rather strange that the issue never crossed her mind until now. And where was Streep – only suddenly concerned about how “violence incites violence” – when Obama was helping Saudi Arabia level Yemen, bombing funerals and wedding parties? Or when his “humanitarian intervention” in Libya went so disastrously wrong that it turned the country into a failed state, allowing the terrorist group ISIS to flourish? Or when the great uniter earned himself the nickname “The Drone King” as he expanded the US drone program and conducted ten times more strikes than George W. Bush? Also a tradition Trump will likely be only too happy to uphold.

Where was Streep as the Nobel Peace Prize winner bombed not one, two or three — but seven different countries? To be fair to Streep, she probably didn’t notice because the “principled press” didn’t seem to either. Funny thing about that too, since Streep and her friends are worried about Trump’s apparent disdain for foreigners: All of the countries bombed by the Obama administration were Muslim countries. And where was Streep when Obama’s administration was negotiating on behalf of Al Qaeda-linked “moderate” rebels in Syria? In fact, where were all the hypocrites in the room, as Obama spent 2016 dropping 26,171 bombs? Oh that’s right, they were partying in his house!

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“You must control your forex deficit, but you can’t say that SAFE is controlling capital outflows..”

Banks Forced To Cover Tracks Of China’s Forex Regulator (R.)

China’s forex regulator is telling banks to keep its instructions about curbing capital outflows secret and to ensure that research analysts keep any negative views about the yuan’s prospects to themselves, several bankers said. Both demands are seen as an attempt by the authorities to prevent alarm that could trigger further declines in the yuan, the bankers from local and foreign banks said. The yuan lost more than 6% against the dollar last year and is at eight-year lows, prompting a flurry of restrictive measures on capital outflows from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), including setting limits on banks’ currency volumes in some cities or provinces and requiring approval for ever smaller transactions.

SAFE, which is part of the People’s Bank of China, is insisting in oral instructions to dozens of banks that they don’t reveal its role in such restrictions, six bankers said, which was damaging their relationships with clients since they were unable to explain why they were turning away business. SAFE and the PBOC have yet to respond to requests for comment. SAFE’s reticence began at least as far back as August, when its Shanghai branch called at least 20 of the major foreign and domestic banks operating in the city to a meeting with the regional heads of several SAFE departments. A representative from an international bank attending the meeting said there were no written instructions, but a high-ranking SAFE official told them explicitly what was expected of them. “You must control your forex deficit, but you can’t say that SAFE is controlling capital outflows,” the official told the bankers.

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World trade is collapsing.

Boeing: 3 More Waves of Layoffs in 2017, Orders Collapse, Shares Rise (WS)

This is not the way to start your workday… to find this email from your boss in your inbox: “As we enter 2017, our plan calls for us to reduce our Engineering staff. I realize some of this news is unpleasant. But I wanted to respect your right to know what is occurring this year.” But that’s what happened on Tuesday at Boeing. Hammered by slowing aircraft sales and a declining order book, Boeing warned on Tuesday in an internal memo that it would conduct involuntary and voluntary layoffs of engineers in Washington state, southern California, and South Carolina, according to The Seattle Times. The memo did not mention the size of the staff cuts. The memo by John Hamilton, VP of engineering at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, summed the situation up this way: “We continue to operate in an environment characterized by fewer sales opportunities and tough competition.”

These staff cuts come on top of the cuts in 2016, when Boeing slashed its workforce in Washington state down by 9.3%. That’s 7,357 jobs. Business has been tough. In 2016, deliveries fell by 14 jets from a year ago, to 748. Net orders dropped 13% from an already rotten level in 2015, to just 668, down 53% from 2014. And the lowest level since 2010! Of these orders, 550 were for the 737 model. But Boeing only sold 58 Dreamliners, and analysts are speculating that it will need to cut production. And it only sold 17 of its twin-aisle long-range 777, its most profitable plane. In December, Boeing said it would slash production of the 777 by 40%. Order cancellations in 2016 jumped by 67% to 180 airplanes, another sign that airlines are getting increasingly cautious – and nervous.

Boeing had already given a foretaste of these job cuts on December 19, without going into specifics. It showed that it is slashing jobs faster and more aggressively than forecast in early 2016. The new CEO, Kevin McAllister, who’d succeeded Ray Conner in November, is getting his feet on the ground, so to speak. And Boeing shares hit an all-time high. [..] orders have plunged 53% in two years, order cancellations have soared, deliveries have dropped, production is getting cut, as wave after wave of layoffs sweep out engineers and productions worker – but no problem. In this wondrous era of ours, stocks can only go up no matter what. Boeing closed up on Tuesday, at $159.07 a share, just a buck shy of its all-time high in December:

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No kidding: “The dysfunctioning of the euro is of good use to Germany, I have to say..”

Euro May Not Exist In 10 Years, French Pres. Candidate Macron Says (CNBC)

The euro may not exist in 10 years’ time if Paris and Berlin fail to bolster the single currency union, French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday, adding the current system benefited Germany at the expense of weaker member states.Macron was economy minister under Socialist President Francois Hollande until he resigned last year to create his own political movement and stand as an independent candidate in this year’s presidential election.”The truth is that we must collectively recognise that the euro is incomplete and cannot last without major reforms,” Macron said in a speech at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Speaking in English, he added: “It has not provided Europe with full international sovereignty against the dollar on its rules. It has not provided Europe with a natural convergence between the different member states.”

France must implement labour market reforms and revamp its education system to revive growth, while Germany must accept that more investment instead of austerity can boost growth across the euro zone area, the centrist politician said. “The dysfunctioning of the euro is of good use to Germany, I have to say,” said Macron, adding that a lack of trust between France and Germany was blocking major reforms that would increase solidarity among the 19 members of the euro zone.”The euro is a weak Deutsche Mark,” said Macron. “The status quo is synonymous, in 10 years’ time, with the dismantling of the euro. “He proposed the creation of a euro zone budget to finance growth-oriented investments and to extend financial assistance to struggling member states.

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“It’s the banks who decide who can run and who can’t.”

Le Pen Says All French Banks Have Refused to Meet With Her (BBG)

National Front leader Marine Le Pen said French banks have refused to meet with her to discuss the possibility of financing her presidential campaign. All the other candidates have received funding from French banks, Le Pen said in an interview on France 2 television. “The fact that the banks won’t lend to us, playing a political role, poses a real problem for democracy,” she said. “It’s the banks who decide who can run and who can’t.” The leader of the anti-euro, anti-immigrant National Front said she is looking for foreign banks for financing.

In France public funds are provided to candidates for campaign expenses after presidential elections provided they win at least 5% of the vote. Typically candidates borrow during campaign with the idea of using public funds to repay the loans after the vote. Polls suggest Le Pen will win at least 20% of votes in the first round of the presidential election on April 23.

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Nobody puts the NGOs under fire? What about the EU? People will have to die first. And even then, all there is, is the aid industry that is obviously criminally dysfunctional.

Greek Severe Weather: Refugees Freeze, Aid Industry Fails (G.)

In northern Greece, where the deep freeze worsened at the weekend, the plight of refugees living in tents in abandoned industrial warehouses was further complicated by water and electricity cuts. NGOs attributed the chaos to the absence of a national response plan, saying despite warnings of bitterly cold weather the state had been woefully ill-prepared. But international organisations also said the shocking images highlighted Europe’s inhumane policies towards refugees and migrants. “What we are seeing on the islands is the manifestation of the way Europe is failing to provide dignity for some of the world’s most vulnerable,” said Panos Navrozidis, country director of the International Rescue Committee in Greece.

“It is imperative that people are moved off the Greek islands. The IRC warned of these life-threatening conditions months ago yet still now with this weather we face a life-or-death situation.” With resources stretched to breaking point in a nation itself dealing with economic and social crisis, the beleaguered government has appealed to other EU member states to expedite the process of taking in asylum seekers. Under an emergency relocation plan, agreed as part of the EU-Turkey deal, the 28-member bloc vowed to accept 63,302 refugees from Greece. To date only 7,280 have been relocated from the country, according to European commission data released this week.

Brawls between rival ethnic groups, attacks by far-right xenophobes, and frustration and uncertainty over what lies ahead have exacerbated tensions in camps. In September, thousands were forced to flee Moria after members of Greece’s neo-fascist Golden Dawn party set fire to the facility. In what it described as “an extremely urgent appeal”, the anti-racist group Keerfa said government-run installations in Athens, including a former military barracks at Malakasa, had to be closed immediately because hundreds of detainees, among them children, toddlers and disabled people were “literally freezing”.

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