The best comment on the June 13 Jeff Sessions Senate testimony, and I’m sorry I forgot who made it, was that it looked like an episode of Seinfeld. A show about nothing. Still, an awful lot of voices tried to make it look like it was something life- and game-changing. It was not. Not anymore than Comey’s testimony was, at least not in the sense that those eager to have these testimonies take place would have liked it to be.
Comey shone more of an awkward light on himself rather than on Donald Trump, by admitting that he had leaked info on a private conversation with the president he served at the time. Not quite nothing, but very little to satisfy the anti-Trump crowd. It’s just that there’s so many in that crowd, and most in denial, that you wouldn’t know it unless you paid attention.
To cut to the chase of the issue, it’s no longer possible -or at least increasingly difficult- to find coverage in the US -and European- press of anything related to either Trump or Russia that doesn’t come solidly baked in a partisan opinionated sauce.
For instance, I have a Google News page, somewhat personalized, and I haven’t been able to open it for quite some time without the top news articles focusing on Trump and/or Russia, and all the ones at the very top are invariably from the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, The Hill, Politico et al.
But I am not interested in those articles. These ‘news’ outlets -and you really must ask whether using the word ‘news’ is appropriate here- dislike anything Trump and Putin so much, for some reason, that all they do is write ‘stuff’ in a 24/7 staccato beat based on innuendo and allegations, quoted from anonymous sources that may or may not actually exist.
In the case of Russia, this attitude is many years old; in the case of Trump, it dates back to him announcing his candidacy. And that’s funny, because when you think back to who else was a GOP candidate, how can you not wonder if Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush would really have been better presidents than Trump? The Trump presidency is not an indictment of the man himself, but of the entire US political system.
You only need to think back of the Republican hopefuls who got beaten in the primaries, or the Democratic candidates on the other side of the isle. There are 320 million Americans, and that was the cream of the crop? What does that say about the state of the union? That’s very much true about Trump as well: is that the best you can do?
It’s the story behind the multiple veils, the -political- policy choices of the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post, that is perhaps the most interesting part of this. Their anti-Trump stories are certainly not. They’re utterly boring repetitive propaganda material. Still, there are also reasons behind this that have little to do with politics.
With the advent of the interwebs, the MSM were always going to have a challenging time. As time passed, it became clear they were going to have to compete with 100 million other voices. And while the established media have clear advantages, it was never going to be an easy task. For one thing because unlike most of these 100 million voices, the traditional media have a lot of overhead, fixed costs etc.
They can establish their own web presence, but not much about that is obvious. Some have moved behind a paywall to manage costs, others focus on ads. But none of that really works well. Ad revenue is not enough to keep the vast machinery going, and a paywall limits readership.
Ergo, the MSM has to focus on both 1) what makes it strong, and on 2) what sets it apart from the ‘new competition’. That does seem evident, and it’s therefore surprising that they have elected to do the opposite. A choice that will inevitably hasten their demise.
I’ve long thought that the only way the MSM can survive in the age of the interwebs, for as long as they can indeed survive, is to be uncompromisingly objective, perhaps even to stay away from opinionating, period. Because all other areas, everything that is subjective, will be taken over, and often already is, by the millions who write and post their own opinions on social media.
And no-one will be able to make up their mind any longer about what’s real or not if they can’t figure out from reading between all these lines what is true or not. That is a battle the media establishment cannot win. So it’s more than a bit surprising that it is exactly that which they have elected to pin their futures on.
Media organizations like the New York Times and the Washington Post have over a long time built the contacts, the revenue (for now) and the resources to do what newer media can not: that is for instance, to assign a team of good and smart researchers and/or writers to difficult topics that may take months to cover satisfactorily. It just so happens that is what their entire business model was always based on.
But they’ve thrown it away. They’ve chosen to compete with the entire world, who can all write and all have opinions, in the shadowy realm of fake news, anonymity and mud-slinging. But the opinion of a Washington Post writer, or even its editorial staff, is just another opinion. That’s not where they can stand out. That they can only do in truth-finding. And then they choose not to.
Mainstream media are not short on content, but they ARE short on news. What they do is opinion, propaganda, and that’s not what they’re there for. Both they themselves and their readers should be very worried about that. Because news gathering and dissemination is a vital function in any democratic nation. Taking it away leaves a big hole.
And they’re pouring out so much of the same stuff that even if inside the echo chamber the audience just can’t get enough of it, those on the outside get pushed ever further away. The distance between these groups of people keeps growing, and that’s not what media should be doing, let alone aim for.
There comes a point when people will say: we get it, you don’t like Trump, but we don’t need to see that repeated 100 times a day, and certainly not if you don’t provide facts to base your preferences on. Outside the echo chamber that has already happened. I haven’t read anything in the New York Times or Washington Post forever. If I can’t trust them to write facts on Trump, I can’t trust them, period.
They already have so much going against them. Sales of paper copies are under relentless pressure, because they’re a day old when they’re published, and nobody needs to wait for their news that long anymore. Another kind of pressure comes from the fact that a huge part of their subscribers are older, and the younger stay away from print.
The Hill, a smaller member of the MSM, ran a story over the weekend which said CNN, one of its “brethren in crime”, is clamping down on stories about Russia. All stories have to go through the senior editors now. CNN the next day fired 3 people over one of the many stories. How about the rest? Did they all meet those ‘rigorous editorial standards?
With that Hill piece, you think: someone’s trying to save face… But The Hill would have to come clean about its own coverage of the topic to regain any credibility. As for CNN, have you watched those guys on TV lately? They’re like a firing-squad. Henchmen don’t ask questions either.
Before I forget: Does anyone think there would have been a Special Counsel appointed if the anti-Trump echo chamber press had not incessantly came up, and still does, with new narratives about President Trump, his campaign, his advisers, his staff, and all of the above’s links to Russia? For which to this day no proof has been revealed?!
I find it hard to fathom. I even think it is possible that the feeding frenzy will cost Trump his presidency, not because of evidence but because of neverending innuendo. The frenzy has shown no signs of letting up, and it can continue because it feeds on itself.
While it’s strange that the MSM should risk their own credibility and even survival to be competing, as I said, with a 100 million other ‘sources’, a fight that it can never win, in the short term they have established a loyal echo chamber following that has even ‘miraculously’ increased their subscription numbers.
The flipside of that is they have lost half of their potential readers, but they got so many more from inside the chamber in return that the bottom line looked good. But at some point you will have to prove something, if you want to live. And very little of the ‘material’ on both Trump and Russia has turned out to actually be wearing clothes.
Then again, once you’re inside the chamber, it’s hard to leave. Which is a disgrace for America in all its facets, but there’s not easy way back out. There’s only one, and it’s more out of reach than perhaps ever before: that of the truth, which only the MSM have the resources to provide on a consistent and wide-ranging basis. But they’ve rejected the truth.
They will find out soon enough that the echo chambers are all booked full, with nutjobs and snake oil salesmen. Why they would want to be thrown in with that crowd, who knows? Sure, a quick profit can work miracles. But then you die.
The entire drama has caused an enormous impoverishment of the American media landscape. And it never had much, if anything, to do with news.
The best way to illustrate what’s really going on is probably in these graphs. The negative ‘reporting’ about Trump is off the scale (don’t miss German TV network ARD’s 98% score):
But when it comes to bombing the Middle East, all the ducks get in line. As ducks do. As behooves ducks. Even when it comes to Trump, they can’t hide their true nature.
President Donald Trump is eager to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin with full diplomatic bells and whistles when the two are in Germany for a multinational summit next month. But the idea is exposing deep divisions within the administration on the best way to approach Moscow in the midst of an ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. elections. Many administration officials believe the U.S. needs to maintain its distance from Russia at such a sensitive time – and interact only with great caution. But Trump and some others within his administration have been pressing for a full bilateral meeting. He’s calling for media access and all the typical protocol associated with such sessions, even as officials within the State Department and National Security Council urge more restraint, according to a current and a former administration official.
Some advisers have recommended that the president instead do either a quick, informal “pull-aside” on the sidelines of the summit, or that the U.S. and Russian delegations hold “strategic stability talks,” which typically don’t involve the presidents. The officials spoke anonymously to discuss private policy discussions. The contrasting views underscore differing views within the administration on overall Russia policy, and Trump’s eagerness to develop a working relationship with Russia despite the ongoing investigations. Asked about the AP report that Trump is eager for a full bilateral meeting, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow on Monday that “the protocol side of it is secondary.” The two leaders will be attending the same event in the same place at the same time, Peskov said, so “in any case there will be a chance to meet.”
Peskov added, however, that no progress in hammering out the details of the meeting has been made yet. There are potential benefits to a meeting with Putin. A face-to-face meeting can humanize the two sides and often removes some of the intrigue involved in impersonal, telephone communication. Trump — the ultimate dealmaker — has repeatedly suggested that he can replace the Obama-era damage in the U.S.-Russia relationship with a partnership, particularly on issues like the ongoing Syria conflict. There are big risks, though. Trump is known to veer off-script, creating the possibility for a high-stakes diplomatic blunder. In a brief Oval Office meeting with top Russian diplomats last month, Trump revealed highly classified information about an Islamic State group threat to airlines that was relayed to him by Israel, according to a senior administration official. The White House defended the disclosures as “wholly appropriate.”
Three CNN journalists who worked on a now-retracted story about Russia and a top Trump adviser are leaving the network. CNN is casting their departure as resignations in the wake of the fiasco, but the network has come under substantial criticism since apologizing for the story. The move would also help CNN’s legal position in case of a lawsuit. Anthony Scaramucci, the Trump adviser who is the target of the story, told me that he has no plans to sue. He said he has accepted CNN’s apology and wants to move on. But Scaramucci also told me in an earlier interview, “I was disappointed the story was published. It was a lie.” Lex Harris, executive editor of CNN’s investigative unit, was the highest-ranking official to resign. Thomas Frank, who wrote the story, and Eric Lichtblau, who edited it, also turned in their resignations.
Lichtblau is a highly regarded reporter who spent nearly a decade and a half at the New York Times. The story tried to draw a link between Scaramucci and the Russian Direct Investment Fund. Scaramucci was a Trump transition team member who has been nominated to an ambassadorial-level post based in Paris. The CNN.com article said that Scaramucci, back in January, held a secret meeting with an official from the Russian fund. According to an unnamed source, Scaramucci discussed the possibility of lifting U.S. sanctions at the meeting. But Scaramucci told me there was no secret meeting. He said he had given a speech on Trump’s behalf at Davos, and fund official Kirill Dmitriev approached him in a restaurant to say hello and they had a brief conversation, with no discussion of sanctions. In the retraction, the network said the story “did not meet CNN’s editorial standards.” The network is now requiring approval from two top editors before any Russia-related story can be published.
The Republican chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee has said the US Congress will hold up approval of arms sales to the Gulf as a result of the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar. Senator Bob Corker said the nations of Gulf Cooperation Council had failed to take advantage of a summit with President Trump in May to overcome their differences and had “instead chosen to devolve into conflict”. Corker continued: “For these reasons, before we provide any further clearances during the informal review period on sales of lethal military equipment to the GCC states, we need a better understanding of the path to resolve the current dispute and reunify the GCC.”
Earlier this month, the Senate narrowly fended off a bid to block a Trump administration plan to sell Saudi Arabia $500m in precision-guided munitions, part of a proposed $110bn arms sales package announced during the president’s visit to Riyadh last month. Congress has the power to block individual sales during a 30-day review period from when the state department gives notification of an impending sale. A Saudi-led coalition that includes Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar on 5 June, but only provided a justification 18 days later with the presentation of a list of 13 demands. They want Doha to close the al-Jazeera TV channel, restrict diplomatic ties with Iran, halt the construction of a Turkish military base in the country, and sever contacts with extremist organisations.
Qatar has been given 10 days to meet the demands, but the Saudi-led group has not said what action it would take if the deadline is not met. The US has sent mixed signals on the standoff. In the immediate aftermath of the embargo, Trump gave Riyadh and its allies fulsome support, echoing Saudi claims about Qatari funding for terrorism. However, Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, last week called on the coalition present its complaints and negotiate a solution. Since the list of 13 demands was presented, Tillerson has been non-committal, observing that some of them would be “very difficult for Qatar to meet”, but arguing there were “significant areas which provide a basis for ongoing dialogue leading to resolution.”
David Sirota: “Jerry Brown campaigned for president supporting single-payer, then he got big cash from insurers/drugmakers, now he refused to back the bill.”
Single payer is the only thing that can save US health care. But all sides are in debt to the very interests who will block it.
As Republican lawmakers grapple with their unpopular bill to repeal Obamacare, Democrats have tried to present a united front on health care. But for all their populist rhetoric against insurance and drug companies, Democratic powerbrokers and their allies remain deeply divided on the issue — to the point where a political civil war has spilled into the open in America’s largest state. In California last week, Democratic state Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon helped his and his party’s corporate donors block a Democrat-sponsored bill to create a universal health care program in which the government would be the single payer. Rendon’s decision shows how progressives’ ideal of universal health care remains elusive — even in a liberal state where government already foots 70% of the total health care bill.
Until Rendon’s move, things seemed to be looking up for Democratic single-payer proponents in deep blue California, which has been hammered by insurance premium increases. There, the Democratic Party — which originally created Medicare — just added a legislative supermajority to a Democratic-controlled state government that oversees the world’s sixth largest economy. That 2016 election victory came as a poll showed nearly two-thirds of Californians support the creation of a taxpayer-funded universal health care system in a state whose population is roughly the size of Canada — which already has such a system. California’s highest-profile federal Democratic lawmaker recently endorsed state efforts to create single-payer systems, and 25 members of its congressional delegation had signed on to sponsor a federal single-payer bill.
Former chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke said Monday that economists have a “responsibility” to help address populist frustrations. “The credibility of economists has been damaged by our insufficient attention, over the years, to the problems of economic adjustment and by our proclivity toward top-down, rather than bottom-up, policies,” Bernanke, now distinguished fellow in residence, Brookings Institution, said in prepared remarks for a dinner speech called “When growth is not enough.” “Nevertheless, as a profession we have expertise that can help make the policy response more effective, and I think we have a responsibility to contribute wherever we can,” the former Fed chair said.
In the last 18 months, growing populist sentiment contributed to the UK’s surprise vote to leave the European Union last June, and the election of U.S. President Donald Trump last November. Trump promised to bring jobs back from China and Mexico to the U.S., winning him support. The U.S. Census Bureau’s latest report on household income showed the Gini index of income inequality for the U.S. in 2015 of 0.482 was significantly higher than the prior year’s 0.480. “This increase suggests that income inequality increased across the country,” the report said. “Policymakers in recent decades have been slow to address or even to recognize those trends, an error of omission that has helped fuel the voters’ backlash,” Bernanke said. He was speaking at the European Central Bank’s Forum on Central Banking in Sintra, Portugal.
Europe’s growing inequality is highly destabilizing and needs to be tackled with education, innovation and investment in human capital, particularly jobs for young people, ECB President Mario Draghi said on Monday. Income inequality has grown among euro zone countries since the global financial crisis and some measures also show divergence between the bloc’s richer and poorer members, a source of tension for the 19-member currency bloc. “Is this a seriously destabilizing factor that we should cope with?” Draghi said in a rare town-hall style meeting with university students in Lisbon. “Yes it is.” “We have to fight against inequality,” Draghi in response to a student question. Draghi, leading one of Europe’s most respected institutions, has for years called on governments to enact fundamental reforms, arguing that the ECB is able to prop up growth, but only temporarily, giving governments a window of opportunity.
Eurostat data has shown that only a handful of countries have managed to shrink income inequality since the crisis while it has grown sharply in places like France or Spain. Figures also show the highest level of income inequality in the bloc’s periphery, like Greece, Spain and Portugal, hit hardest by the crisis. Calling convergence among euro zone members “fundamental,” Draghi said the best way to fight inequality is by creating jobs, which comes from an increased investment in education, skills development and innovation. He also called on governments to consider better income and wealth redistribution policies. Defending the ECB’s ultra easy monetary policy, Draghi said that super low rates create jobs, foster growth and benefit borrowers, ultimately easing inequality. He also rejected calls to exit super easy monetary policy quickly, arguing that premature tightening would lead to a fresh recession and more inequality.
Compare the limited power of an individual with cash and the enormous power of unlimited cheap credit. Let’s say an individual has saved $100,000 in cash. He keeps the money in the bank, which pays him less than 1% interest. Rather than earn this low rate, he decides to loan the cash to an individual who wants to buy a rental home at 4% interest. There’s a tradeoff to earn this higher rate of interest: the saver has to accept the risk that the borrower might default on the loan, and that the home will not be worth the $100,000 the borrower owes. The bank, on the other hand, can perform magic with the $100,000 they obtain from the central bank. The bank can issue 19 times this amount in new loans—in effect, creating $1,900,000 in new money out of thin air.
This is the magic of fractional reserve lending. The bank is only required to hold a small%age of outstanding loans as reserves against losses. If the reserve requirement is 5%, the bank can issue $1,900,000 in new loans based on the $100,000 in cash: the bank holds assets of $2,000,000, of which 5% ($100,000) is held in cash reserves. This is a simplified version of how money is created and issued, but it helps us understand why centrally issued and distributed money concentrates wealth in the hands of those with access to the centrally issued credit and those who have the privilege of leveraging every $1 of cash into $19 newly created dollars that earn interest. Imagine if we each had a relatively modest $1 million line of credit at 0.25% interest from a central bank that we could use to issue loans of $19 million.
Let’s say we issued $19 million in home loans at an annual interest rate of 4%. The gross revenue (before expenses) of our leveraged $1 million would be $760,000 annually –let’s assume we net $600,000 per year after annual expenses of $160,000. (Recall that the interest due on the $1 million line of credit is a paltry $2,500 annually). Median income for workers in the U.S. is around $30,000 annually. Thus a modest $1 million line of credit at 0.25% interest from the central bank would enable us to net 20 years of a typical worker’s earnings every single year. This is just a modest example of pyramiding wealth.
So Draghi whines about inequality and at the same time makes sure Greece gets hammered even more economically. Does his ass know where his mouth is located?
The president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, said on Monday that Greece will not join its quantitative easing program (QE) until international creditors specify what sort of debt relief measures the country can expect. “Until sufficient details are given on debt-related measures, serious concerns remain about the sustainability of Greek government debt,” he said in response to a question from Popular Unity (LAE) MEP Nikos Hountis over whether the ECB had completed its own debt sustainability analysis (DSA), and if it had come to any conclusions on the issue. Draghi said that ECB experts “are not currently in a position to complete a fully fledged DSA analysis of Greece’s public debt.” Up until very recently, Greece was banking on its inclusion in QE as a way to return to bond markets, which would put an end to its dependence on bailout programs.
If the ECB were to buy Greek debt it would boost the confidence of investors about the prospects of the Greek economy. But given Draghi’s comment on Monday and the failure of the government to secure more concrete language on debt relief at the Eurogroup on June 15, Athens now believes it can achieve the goal to enter bond markets without having to join QE. And it believes that it has three windows of opportunity to issue a bond in the period stretching from July until early next year. These three opportunities are, reportedly, in July, given the improved climate in international markets. The second chance will be at the end of September and beginning of October after German elections, while the third will be at the end of the year or early 2018, as predicted by the head of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), Klaus Regling.
Europe is at the mercy of a common currency that not only was unnecessary for European integration, but that is actually undermining the European Union itself. So what should be done about a currency without a state to back it – or about the 19 European states without a currency that they control? The logical answer is either to dismantle the euro or to provide it with the federal state it needs. The problem is that the first solution would be hugely costly, while the second is not feasible in a political climate favoring the re-nationalization of sovereignty. Those who agree that the cost of dismantling the euro is too high to contemplate are being forced into a species of wishful thinking that is now very much in vogue, especially after the election of Emmanuel Macron to the French presidency.
Their idea is that, somehow, by some unspecified means, Europe will find a way to move toward federation. “Just hang in there,” seems to be their motto. Macron’s idea is to move beyond idle optimism by gaining German consent to turn the eurozone into a state-like entity – a federation-lite. In exchange for making French labor markets more Germanic, as well as reining in France’s budget deficit, Germany is being asked to agree in principle to a common budget, a common finance ministry, and a eurozone parliament to provide democratic legitimacy. Macron knows that such a federation would be macroeconomically insignificant, given the depth of the debt, banking, investment, and poverty crisis unfolding across the eurozone. But, in the spirit of the EU’s traditional gradualism, he thinks that such a move would be politically momentous and a decisive step toward a meaningful federation.
“Once the Germans accept the principle, the economics will force them to accept the necessary magnitudes,” is how a French official put it to me recently. Such optimism may seem justified in light of proposals along those lines made in the past by none other than Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister. But there are two powerful reasons to be skeptical. First, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Schäuble were not born yesterday. If Macron’s people imagine a federation-lite as an entering wedge for full-blown political integration, so will Merkel, Schäuble, and the reinvigorated Free Democrats (who will most likely join a coalition government with Merkel’s Christian Democrats after the September federal election). And they will politely but firmly reject the French overtures.
Second, in the unlikely event that Germany gives federation-lite the go-ahead, any change to the functioning of the eurozone would, undoubtedly, devour large portions of the reformers’ political capital. If it does not produce economic and social results that improve, rather than annul, the chances of a proper federation, as I suspect it will not, a political backlash could ensue, ending any prospect of a more substantial federation in the future. In that case, the euro’s dismantling will become inevitable, will cost more, and will leave Europe in even greater shambles.
Germany doesn’t care one bit about Macron’s agenda; they may pay lip service, but that’s it. In this particular case, do you think Germany wants an Italian bank collapse a few months before Merkel’s election?
Germany sounded the alarm over Italy’s latest bank bailout, saying the apparent bending of EU rules casts doubt on efforts to further integrate the euro zone. The government in Rome announced the country’s biggest bank rescue to date on Sunday evening as it committed as much as €17 billion ($19 billion) to clean up two failed banks. While the European Commission approved the plan, German officials pointed to the involvement of state aid to shield senior creditors from losses as working around EU law established to deal with bank failures. That exemption drew criticism from members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition, who cited the need to uphold European law without setting unhealthy precedents.
“We’re in a phase where we are faced with the question of whether we can succeed at applying European law, irrespective of all the understandable domestic policy discussions,” Alexander Radwan, a lawmaker from Merkel’s CSU Bavarian sister party who sits on the Bundestag’s finance committee, said in an interview on Monday. “Cases like these make it more difficult to think about deepening the economic and monetary union.” The growing drumbeat for closer euro-area integration following Emmanuel Macron’s election in France is making some German lawmakers increasingly uneasy. Citing election results in France and the Netherlands this year that open “an opportunity for moving Europe forward,” Merkel has spoken of joint projects with France and left the door open to creating a euro-area budget and a joint finance minister.
“This decision discredits the further completion of the banking union and moves the common deposit-guarantee scheme into the distant future,” said Carsten Schneider, a deputy head of the Social Democrat caucus in Germany’s lower house. “It’s not acceptable that bank wind-downs under national rules offer better conditions for creditors than under the European regime.” Italy’s decision is “a grave mistake,” Schneider said in emailed comments to Bloomberg.
The bailout is dressed up as a rescue by a larger bank along the same lines as Santander’s recent acquisition for a nominal 1 euro of the insolvent Banco Popular. Like Santander, Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s second-biggest lender, will buy the two banks 1 euro. But there the similarity ends. Santander took on full responsibility for recapitalizing Banco Popular, for which it announced a 7bn euro rights issue. But Intesa isn’t taking financial responsibility for anything. The Italian government is paying Intesa about 5bn euros in cash to take over the two banks, and is additionally providing guarantees worth 12bn euros for the two banks’ bad assets. The total bailout amount is thus around 17bn euros, though according to the European Commission, the net cost will be much lower: Both guarantees and cash injections are backed up by the Italian State’s senior claims on the assets in the liquidation mass. Correspondingly, the net costs to the Italian State will be much lower than the nominal amounts of the measures provided.
The bailout imposes losses on the two banks’ shareholders and subordinated debtholders. But the all-important seniors have been spared, and small subordinated debtholders will be compensated by Intesa from the funds provided by the Italian government. The BRRD has effectively been sidestepped. Did the EU oppose this sleight of hand? Not a bit of it. In this statement, the European Commission approved the use of taxpayers’ funds to bail out these banks: “The Commission found these measures to be in line with EU State aid rules, in particular the 2013 Banking Communication. Existing shareholders and subordinated debt holders have fully contributed to the costs, reducing the cost of the intervention for the Italian State. Both aid recipients, BPVI and Banca Veneto, will be wound up in an orderly fashion and exit the market, while the transferred activities will be restructured and significantly downsized by Intesa, which in combination will limit distortions of competition arising from the aid.”
Remarkable. Winding up two banks in the Venetian area would cause massive economic disruption. So the solution is to create an effective banking monopoly in that area. And this doesn’t distort competition, apparently. I detect a distinct odor of Eurofudge. Italy’s decision, supported by the European Commission, tramples the BRRD to death. Senior creditors need never again fear losses due to a failing bank. If it is systemically important, it will be given a precautionary recapitalization at taxpayers’ expense. If it is not, an excuse will be found to bail it out at taxpayers’ expense. Either way, seniors and unsecured depositors are safe. That is, they are as safe as politicians want them to be. Italy is able to bail out these banks – and will no doubt in due course bail out others too – because it is a big country which can easily borrow the funds needed.
Brazil’s top prosecutor charged President Michel Temer with bribery on Monday, plunging Latin America’s biggest country into what could be prolonged new political turmoil. The bribery charge filed by Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot swept Temer into the forefront of a giant graft scandal that has engulfed Latin America’s biggest country over the last three years. Although several past Brazilian presidents and scores of other politicians are currently being investigated for corruption in the “Car Wash” probe, Temer is the first leader in the country’s history to face criminal charges while still in office. Temer acted “in violation of his duties to the state and to society,” Janot wrote, citing “abundant” proof that the president received bribe money.
For Temer to go on trial, the lower house of Congress must first approve Janot’s charge by a two-thirds majority. Temer would then be suspended for six months for the trial. Janot is also probing Temer for alleged obstruction of justice and membership of a criminal group. He could file those charges at a later date, guaranteeing a sustained legal assault. However, Temer’s aides say they are confident he has sufficient support in Congress to get the charges thrown out. In his first comments since returning from a trip to Russia and Norway, the president was defiant. “There is no plan B,” he said at a ceremony to sign a new bill in the capital Brasilia. “Nothing will destroy us – not me and not our ministers.”
I registered as a Democrat in 1972 — largely because good ole Nixon was at the height of his power (just before his fall, of course), and because he was preceded as party leader by Barry Goldwater, who, at the time, was avatar for the John Birch Society and all its poisonous nonsense. The Democratic Party was still deeply imbued with the personality of Franklin Roosevelt, with a frosting of the recent memory of John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby, tragic, heroic, and glamorous. I was old enough to remember the magic of JFK’s press conferences — a type of performance art that neither Bill Clinton or Barack Obama could match for wit and intelligence — and the charisma of authenticity that Bobby projected in the months before that little creep shot him in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel. Even the lugubrious Lyndon Johnson had the heroic quality of a Southerner stepping up to abolish the reign of Jim Crow.
Lately, people refer to this bygone era of the 1960s as “the American High” — and by that they are not talking about smoking dope (though it did go mainstream then), but rather the post World War Two economic high, when American business might truly ruled the planet. Perhaps the seeming strength of American political leaders back then was merely a reflection of the country’s economic power, which since has been squandered and purloined into a matrix of rackets loosely called financialization — a criminal magic act whereby wealth is generated without producing anything of value. Leaders in such a system are bound to be not just lesser men and women but something less than human. Hillary Clinton, for instance, lost the 2016 election because she came off as demonic, and I mean that pretty literally.
To many Americans, especially the ones swindled by the magic of financialization, she was the reincarnation of the little girl in The Exorcist. Donald Trump, unlikely as it seems — given his oafish and vulgar guise — was assigned the role of exorcist. Unlike poor father Merrin, he sort of succeeded, even to his very own astonishment. I say sort of succeeded because the Democratic Party is still there, infested with all its gibbering demons, but it has been reduced politically to impotence and appears likely to soon roll over and die. None of this is to say that the other party, the Republicans, have anything but the feeblest grip on credibility or even an assured continued existence. First of all there is Trump’s obvious plight as a rogue only nominally regarded as party leader (or even member).
Then there is the gathering fiasco of neither Trump nor his party being able to deliver remedies for any of the ills of our time that he was elected to fix. The reason for that is simple: the USA has entered Hell, or at least a condition that looks a lot like it. This is not just a matter of a few persons or a party being possessed by demons. We’ve entered a realm that is populated by nothing but demons — of our own design, by the way. Our politics have become so thoroughly demonic, that the sort of exorcism America needs now can only come from outside politics. It’s coming, too. It’s on its way. It will turn our economic situation upside down and inside out. It’s a Technicolor swan, and you can see it coming from a thousand miles out. Wait for it. Wait for it.
Glyphosate, an herbicide and the active ingredient in Monsanto Co’s popular Roundup weed killer, will be added to California’s list of chemicals known to cause cancer effective July 7, the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) said on Monday. Monsanto vowed to continue its legal fight against the designation, required under a state law known as Proposition 65, and called the decision “unwarranted on the basis of science and the law.” The listing is the latest legal setback for the seeds and chemicals company, which has faced increasing litigation over glyphosate since the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said that it is “probably carcinogenic” in a controversial ruling in 2015.
Dicamba, a weed killer designed for use with Monsanto’s next generation of biotech crops, is under scrutiny in Arkansas after the state’s plant board voted last week to ban the chemical. OEHHA said the designation of glyphosate under Proposition 65 will proceed following an unsuccessful attempt by Monsanto to block the listing in trial court and after requests for stay were denied by a state appellate court and the California’s Supreme Court. Monsanto’s appeal of the trial court’s ruling is pending. “This is not the final step in the process, and it has no bearing on the merits of the case. We will continue to aggressively challenge this improper decision,” Scott Partridge, Monsanto’s vice president of global strategy, said.
Listing glyphosate as a known carcinogen under California’s Proposition 65 would require companies selling the chemical in the state to add warning labels to packaging. Warnings would also be required if glyphosate is being sprayed at levels deemed unsafe by regulators. Users of the chemical include landscapers, golf courses, orchards, vineyards and farms. Monsanto and other glyphosate producers would have roughly a year from the listing date to re-label products or remove them from store shelves if further legal challenges are lost.
In an epic (mutual) trolling between president-elect Trump on one hand and BuzzFeed and CNN, on the other, the two media organizations which issued yesterday’s unsubstantiated report about Russia having compromising information on the president-elect, Trump first addressed the question of why he referred to Nazi Germany, saying it is “disgraceful” that intelligence communities would allow the release of any information. “That’s something Nazi Germany would have done and did do,” he says. He then unleashed on Buzzfeed which alone published the 35-page memo behind the Russian allegations, saying “Buzzfeed which is a failing pile of garbage… will suffer the consequences” .
And then, in an even more stunning episode, Trump slammed CNN reporter Jim Acosta, who he also called out during the presser over their report on a two-page synopsis they claim was presented to Trump. With Trump looking to call on other reporters, Jim Acosta yelled out, “Since you are attacking us, can you give us a question?” “Not you,” Trump said. “Your organization is terrible!” Acosta pressed on, “You are attacking our news organization, can you give us a chance to ask a question, sir?” Trump countered by telling him “don’t be rude.” “I’m not going to give you a question,” Trump responded. “Don’t be rude. I’m not going to give you a question. You are fake news!” Trump responded, before calling on a reporter from Breitbart.
A snubbed Jim Acosta then tweeted the following: “Fortunately ABC’s Cecilia Vega asked my question about whether any Trump associates contacted Russians. Trump said no.”These exchanges followed an initial statement by Trump spokesman Sean Spicer who said that “for all the talk lately about ‘fake news,’ this political witch hunt by some in the media…is frankly shameful & disgraceful…. Highly irresponsible for a left-wing blog… to drop highly salacious and flat out false information on the Internet.” Following this, we expect the war between Trump and the media in general, or at least CNN in particular, to reach biblical proportions.
US President-elect Donald Trump, who will officially take office on January 20, held his first press conference since winning the presidency on Wednesday local time. In about an hour, the most questions raised were regarding reports of Russia having compromising information on Trump. He also spent some time responding to how he will handle ties between his business and his presidency. Trump insisted on building a wall on US border with Mexico and the latter is going to pay for it. He also reiterated the future abolishment of Obamacare and will replace it with a new medical reform plan. Trump mentioned China six times on four issues, including describing Jack Ma of Alibaba as an incredible person and that they are going to do tremendous things together.
He said the US is losing hundreds of billions of dollars every year due to trade imbalance with China, Japan, Mexico and other countries. On the issue of Russia hacking the 2016 election, he noted his nation gets hacked by other countries as well, including China, which resulted in the loss of personal information of 22 million employees who work for the US government. He said that “Russia and other countries — and other countries, including China, which has taken total advantage of us economically, totally advantage of us in the South China Sea by building their massive fortress, total. Russia, China, Japan, Mexico, all countries will respect us far more, far more than they do under past administrations.” During the conference, which attracted widespread attention, Trump did not mention the Taiwan question, nor did he articulate how he will handle Sino-US ties. Relevant questions were not raised by reporters either.
It looks like that US mainstream public opinion still finds it hard to accept the fact that Trump has been elected as their new president. They are suspicious about and alert to Trump’s friendly attitude toward Russia, his family businesses and how he would transform Obama’s medical policy. US media outlets are particularly eager to hype Trump’s relations with Russia and the Kremlin’s alleged influence on the election. It seems they are, intentionally or unintentionally, restricting Washington’s ability to improve ties with Moscow under Trump.
Tillerson said many things, but I can’t find a good report on it. Watched the first bit, before the Trump show, wrote some stuff to a friend:
Watching the conformation thing, Unreal. All these senators saying stuff about Russia, and he can’t really tell them they’re wrong, or they won’t confirm him. But he himself knows much more about Russia than they do, yet that’s not what they’re looking for. They just want him to say bad things about Putin.
Marco Rubio asks: Do you think Putin is a war criminal. (Tillerson: I would not use that word.) And now goes off listing all the atrocities Russia is supposed to have committed in Aleppo. As reported by US fake media. Without sources on the ground… Next list of “countless” people supposedly killed by Putin in Russia. All Tillerson can say on all these things is “i don’t have sufficient information”. Next: Sen. Menendez. Topic? Russia!
Tillerson had interesting views on climate change too. Yeah, he has a mind of his own, not a blind Trump follower. Does that surprise anyone? Certainly not Trump.
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state said China must be denied access to artificial islands built in the South China Sea, a move that would raise the risk of conflict between the world’s biggest economies. Hours into a confirmation hearing with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he was grilled extensively about his views on Russia, former Exxon Mobil Corp. chief Rex Tillerson said that a failure to respond to China’s actions had allowed it to “keep pushing the envelope” in the South China Sea. “We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that first the island-building stops and second your access to those islands is also not going to be allowed,” he said when asked whether he would support a more aggressive posture in the South China Sea. He compared China’s actions to those of Russia in the Crimea.
The remark is the latest from Trump’s administration to signal a more aggressive defense posture against China in addition to calls for a tougher line on trade. Trump earlier questioned the U.S.’s policy of recognizing Beijing over the government in Taiwan, and criticized China’s ties with North Korea. China pushed back against Tillerson’s comments on Thursday even while saying it agreed with him on areas of cooperation between the two countries. On Monday, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Chairman Jack Ma met with Trump and discussed plans to create 1 million new jobs in the U.S. by helping small businesses sell goods to China. “Like the U.S., China has the right within its own territory to carry out normal activities,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a regular briefing in Beijing in response to a question on Tillerson’s remarks. “That is within the limits of its sovereignty.”
Tillerson offered no detail about how the U.S. could stop China from building islands, or prevent access, but in recent years the U.S. has consistently conducted freedom of navigation operations throughout the area. “This is the sort of off-the-cuff remark akin to a tweet that pours fuel on the fire and maybe makes things worse,” said Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra. “Short of going to war with China, there is nothing the Americans can do.”
“.. there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless..”
In January, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.” Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach. But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind.
The bamboozlement of the public is nearly complete. The Deep State has persuaded 80% of Americans that all news is propaganda, especially the news emanating from the Deep State’s own intel department. They’re still shooting for 100%. The fakest of all “fake news” stories turns out to be… “Russia Hacks Election.” It was reported conclusively Saturday on the front page of The New York Times, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Deep State: “Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds: WASHINGTON — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directed a vast cyberattack aimed at denying Hillary Clinton the presidency and installing Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office, the nation’s top intelligence agencies said in an extraordinary report they delivered on Friday to Mr. Trump.”
You can be sure that this is now the “official” narrative aimed at the history books, sealing the illegitimacy of Trump’s election. It was served up with no direct proof, only the repeated “assertions” that it was so. In fact, it’s just this repetition of assertions-without-proof that defines propaganda. It can also be interpreted as a declaration of war against an incoming president. The second civil war now takes shape: It begins inside the groaning overgrown apparatus of the government itself. Perhaps after that it spreads to the WalMart parking lots that have become America’s new town square. (WalMart sells pitchforks and patio torches.) Did the Russians make Hillary Clinton look bad? Or did Hillary Clinton manage to do that herself? The NSA propaganda was designed as a smokescreen to conceal the veracity of the Wikileaks releases.
Whoever actually rooted out the DNC and Podesta emails for Wikileaks ought to get the Pulitizer Prize for the outstanding public service of disclosing exactly how dishonest the Hillary operation was. The story may have climaxed with Trump’s Friday NSA briefing, the heads of the various top intel agencies all assembled in one room to emphasize the solemn authority of the Deep State’s power. Trump worked a nice piece of ju-jitsu afterward, pretending to accept the finding as briefly and hollowly as possible and promising to “look into the matter” after January 20th — when he can tear a new asshole in the NSA. I hope he does. This hulking security apparatus has become a menace to the Republic.
A lot of Americans are really struggling. The precarious personal finance situation of Americans has made news for years. It is something we’ve written about a lot at Business Insider. Elevate’s Center for the New Middle Class wanted to look into the issue to find when an unexpected expense becomes a crisis for ordinary Americans. And the results were pretty depressing. Elevate carried out a study based on a 10-minute online questionnaire surveying 502 nonprime (credit score below 700) and 525 prime Americans (credit score of 700 or above). It turns out that nonprime Americans with credit scores below 700 are likely to be hit harder, and more often, by unexpected expenses than prime Americans. 160 million Americans come under the nonprime category, according to the study.
“A bill becomes a crisis for nonprime Americans at $1,400. For Prime, it’s $2,900,” the study said. “An unexpected expense becomes a significant disruption to prime Americans when it is 53% of their monthly income. Nonprime Americans can only swallow a 31% impact to their income.” The study noted that many common expenses, such as covering the out-of-pocket on a broken arm, an apartment security deposit, or replacing a vehicle transmission, cost more than $1,400. “It’s hard for many to believe that unexpected car repairs can cause a major upset in a household’s finances,” Jonathan Walker, executive director of Elevate’s Center for the New Middle Class, said. “Unfortunately, it happens all too often, simply because nonprime Americans don’t have the available resources to help absorb some of these financial shocks. This can cause a downward spiral on their daily finances as well as their credit history.”
Spending months to find the perfect home in your price range, only to have your mortgage application rejected, or a home inspection turn up expensive repairs, is a nightmare—one that is coming true with increasing frequency, according to a new report from real estate listings website Trulia. A Trulia analysis of U.S. listings shows that 3.9% of homes that moved from for-sale to pending moved back to for-sale again, nearly double the rate in 2015. Such “failed sales” increased in 96 of the 100 biggest U.S. metros, with big swings in areas large and small, rich and poor. That includes Los Angeles and Charleston, S.C., as well as San Jose and Akron, Ohio.
In Ventura County, Calif., where the median home value is $548,000, 11.6% of prospective sales failed to close in 2016. That’s the highest in the U.S., up from 3.1% in 2015. Tucson, where the median home price is $176,000, had the second-highest rate of failed sales, at 10.8%, up from 3.5% the year before. The problem of failed sales has been most acute for cheaper homes and older ones: Some 6.3% of sales of starter homes fell through last year, according to Trulia’s analysis, compared with 3.6% of so-called premium home sales. Homes built in the 1960s had the highest fail rates, while sales of newer and older houses were more likely to go through.
The great unknown is where the pain threshold lies in a global system with debt ratios that are now roughly 40pc of GDP higher than just before the Lehman crisis. Bank of America fears a further rise in yields of 50 to 75 basis points may be enough to trigger a “financial event”. HSBC’s latest global outlook is even darker. Indeed, it is astonishing. The bank expects yields on 10-year US Treasuries to push a little higher to 2.5pc before crashing back to historic lows of 1.35pc by the end of the year, taking global yields with them. Markets will conclude by the summer that Trumpian stimulus does not add up to much, and that the reflation narrative is a hoax. “We believe that equities are walking a tightrope, and there is a fairly long way to fall,” said the bank.
While I do not take a view on stock prices, HSBC’s outlook is broadly in line with my own. The world cannot easily withstand the sort of Fed tightening now being etched into forecasts by the macro-economic fraternity. The Institute of International Finance says debt has reached $217 trillion, a record ratio of 325pc of GDP. What is remarkable is that even in mature economies – trying to ‘deleverage’ – the ratio jumped by 6pc of GDP to 390pc over the first nine months of last year. There is almost nowhere left to hide. Corporate debt in emerging markets has risen from $6.5 trillion to $25.5 trillion since Lehman, with the ‘credit gap’ signalling danger in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Turkey, and Indonesia. Total off-shore dollar debt has risen fivefold to $10 trillion since 2000.
The financial system is clearly out of kilter. The pattern of the last 35 years is a steadily falling “natural” rate of interest, requiring ever more radical action by central banks at the trough of each cycle. The policy elites badly misjudged the force of this ‘Wicksellian’ slide in the build-up to the global crisis in 2008. While the subprime saga makes for electrifying Holywood films, it was not the reason why the Western banking system collapsed. The trigger of the crash was overly tight money. The ECB raised rates into the teeth of the storm. Hawkish Fed rhetoric from March to August 2008 pushed up US borrowing costs sharply, ignoring warnings from some of their own staff that the money supply was by then imploding. Both banks under-estimated the fragility of the system.
Central bankers are more alert this time but they have not scrapped their infamous ‘DSGE’ models, and I suspect that political pressure – from Congress, or regional Fed banks, or from Germany – will cause them to over-tighten again. We may find that three US rate rises and even a smidgeon of ECB tapering are all it takes to detonate the next crisis. Markets seem to be betting that Donald Trump’s fiscal largesse will be large enough to break the deflationary grip. HSBC says they are “cherry-picking the good bits” from his campaign. We do not yet know whether his infrastructure plan really exists. There will certainly be tax cuts but circumstances are nothing like the Reagan stimulus of the early 1980s when the US was coming out of recession.
Over the past decade, we have worked diligently to identify anomalies in financial systems, governments, and companies around the world. We have been vigorously studying China over the last year, with the view that the rapid credit expansion in the Chinese banking system will result in significant credit losses that will require the recapitalization of Chinese banks and materially pressure the Chinese currency. This outcome will have many near-term and long-term effects on countries and markets around the world. In other words, what happens in China will not stay in China. The unwavering faith that the Chinese will somehow be able to successfully avoid anything more severe than a moderate economic slowdown by continuing to rely on the perpetual expansion of credit reminds us of the belief in 2006 that US home prices would never decline.
[..] China has allowed (and encouraged) its banking system to grow into a gargantuan $34 trillion behemoth (a whopping 340% of Chinese GDP). For context, consider what the United States banking system looked like going into the GFC of 2007-2009. On-balance sheet, the US banking system had about $1 trillion of equity and $16.5 trillion of banking system assets (100% of US GDP). If non-banks and off-balance sheet assets are included, it would add another $12.5 trillion to get to about 175% of GDP. US banks lost approximately $650 billion of their equity throughout the GFC. We believe that Chinese banks will lose approximately $3.5 trillion of equity if China’s banking system loses 10% of assets.
Historically, China has lost far in excess of 10% of assets during a non-performing loan cycle (The Bank for International Settlements estimated that Chinese banking system losses throughout the 1998-2001 cycle exceeded 30% of GDP). We expect losses in this cycle to exceed prior cycles. Remember, 30% of Chinese GDP approaches $3.6 trillion today. Think about how much quantitative easing (QE) the US Fed had to create in order to entice $650 billion of common and preferred equity into the US banks and prevent a Japanese-style deflationary bust. The Fed had to expand its balance sheet by roughly $4.5 trillion.
How significantly will the Chinese central bank have to expand its balance sheet in order to compensate for $3.5 trillion of lost bank capital? What will that do to the renminbi? What will happen to Chinese credit growth and broader Asian credit growth while this happens? If the US Fed’s experience serves as a proxy for what could happen in China, we believe that China will likely have to print in excess of 10 trillion US dollars’ worth of yuan to recapitalize its banking system. The weakening renminbi is the product of larger banking system problems. By the time the loss cycle has peaked, we believe the renminbi will have depreciated in excess of 30% versus the US dollar.
China is set to consolidate five state media companies to create a “modern financial media group” to increase the state’s voice in economic and financial news coverage, the state-run Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday. Since taking power in 2012, President Xi Jinping, who has called for Beijing to take a bigger role in a global governance system, has stepped up media control and scrutiny to project China’s “soft power” and better communicate its message. The State Council, China’s cabinet, has given Xinhua permission to acquire and consolidate China Securities Journal, Shanghai Securities News, Economic Information Daily and Xinhua Publishing House and launch a new company under the banner China Fortune Media Corporation Group.
The move aims at “deepening the central authority’s reforms of the cultural system” and “increasing mainstream media’s influence in the area of financial information,” Xinhua said in a notice. The new financial news-focused company will be launched in Beijing on Thursday next week, it said. While visiting three major state news agencies in February last year, Xi ordered the organizations to strictly follow the Communist Party’s leadership and focus on “positive reporting”, Xinhua reported at the time. “All news media run by the Party must work to speak for the Party’s will and its propositions and protect the Party’s authority and unity,” Xi was quoted as saying. The three media Xi visited – Xinhua, People’s Daily and state-owned broadcaster CCTV – are considered by the central leadership as the “throat and tongue” of the party.
“No one is going to bail out these folks that got in late and are losing a ton of money on their bitcoin bets, or those that tried to catch that knife and got their fingers sliced off. On the contrary. Learn your lesson – that’s what Chinese authorities seem to say..”
The People’s Bank of China announced on Wednesday that it is probing the major bitcoin exchanges in Beijing and Shanghai – BTCC, Huobi, and OKCoin – for a list of violations, including market manipulation, money laundering, and unauthorized financing. This is part of the PBOC’s efforts to crack down on capital flight, a major escalation from last week, when Chinese officials warned investors – if you can call them “investors” – to be careful with bitcoin. That warning came at the peak of the spike and tipped the whole thing over. Ironically, China’s many other crackdowns on capital flight have pushed the hapless Chinese, who want their capital to flee, into bitcoin. It was seen as a way of converting their yuan into something other than yuan, which they fear will depreciate relentlessly.
The yuan lost 6.5% against the dollar last year, its worst year since 1994, which is nothing compared to some other major currencies, such as the British pound which lost 16.3% against the dollar, and the Mexican peso which lost 17%. But the Chinese are not used to getting whacked by a depreciating currency. It spooks them. So the promise of convenient capital flight along with the lure of bitcoin’s semi-anonymity and the hope of quickly doubling their money have just been too much to resist. The rest of the world lost interest in bitcoin after it transferred a lot of money to those that got in early and got out in time from the latecomers that ended up holding the bag when it began to crash in late 2013. It went from over $1,100 to a range of around $250 in 2015. But recently, the Chinese have picked up the baton and in an insane frenzy drove it to $1,140 all over again.
And just in time, bitcoin crashed again. As of Wednesday evening, as I’m writing this, it plunged 14.5% to $772, just in one day. In the five days since its peak of $1,140 on January 6, it has crashed 32% against the dollar. What a crazy spike! In terms of yuan, it’s even worse: It plummeted 19% against the yuan on Wednesday and 41% over those five misbegotten days! No one is going to bail out these folks that got in late and are losing a ton of money on their bitcoin bets, or those that tried to catch that knife and got their fingers sliced off. On the contrary. Learn your lesson – that’s what Chinese authorities seem to say..
Volkswagen’s nearly decade-old plot to cheat U.S. emissions tests – all while marketing its diesel cars as environmentally friendly – was quickly unraveling by 2015. A campaign to mislead regulators was failing so badly that top executives signed off on a script for employees to use when questioned. It didn’t work. The next day, Aug. 19, 2015, an employee went off script and told regulators for the first time that its diesel cars were designed to behave differently during emissions tests, according to court documents. In the home office in Germany, some executives and engineers began deleting documents related to U.S. emissions and the company’s head of engine development told an assistant to dispose of a hard drive containing e-mails from him and other supervisors.
All this was laid out by U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday as they announced charges against five officials they said had been key to developing and carrying out the scheme. As part of the carmaker’s settlement concluding criminal and civil probes in the U.S., VW agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the government and consumers and obstruction of justice, and to pay $4.3 billion in penalties. Prosecutors continue to look into the roles individuals played and the investigation is still open, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at a press conference Wednesday.
India’s central bank refused to share specific details of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ban on high-value banknotes citing danger to life and national security, as the mystery deepens over who took the unprecedented decision. The Reserve Bank of India recommended the move, which was accepted by the cabinet and announced by Modi on Nov. 8, Power Minister Piyush Goyal told parliament in November. The RBI board approved the ban three hours before Modi’s speech and hadn’t discussed the matter before, a slew of responses to Bloomberg News’s Right to Information requests show. However, the RBI told a lawmakers’ panel this week that the government had “advised” the monetary authority to “consider” the ban a day before the RBI board made its recommendation. The government then “considered the recommendations” and decided to withdraw the notes, culminating in Modi’s address that blindsided the nation.
The cloak of secrecy that has shrouded the currency ban decision is likely to bolster the view that authorities, both on Mint Street and in New Delhi, were not prepared for such a decision and the way it was announced. It risks undermining perceptions of the central bank’s independence and raises questions about Modi’s decision-making style and his communication with the RBI. More clarity may emerge when RBI Governor Urjit Patel deposes before a parliamentary committee on Jan. 20. Details are essential to help assess the success of the shock move as well as gauge the impact of the decision “It is very perplexing that the RBI doesn’t answer questions about how the decision was arrived at,” said Shilan Shah, Singapore-based India Economist at Capital Economics. “There are concerns that in the whole process the RBI has been sidelined by the government and that raises questions about its independence,” he said, adding that authorities have not been transparent.
Greece’s navy has sent a tank landing ship to the island of Lesvos to house refugees and migrants during a cold snap that has triggered public health warnings. The vessel has docked and is due to provide accommodation for about 500 migrants. A medical association on Lesvos said Tuesday that conditions at the main camp there were “inhuman” with migrants in tents exposed to freezing temperatures. Schools have been closed on Lesvos because of the bad weather, as a state of emergency was expanded to other areas in northern Greece, where snow has blocked roads and caused power and water outages.
Transport Minister Christos Spirtzis has ordered an administrative investigation into why hundreds of passengers remained trapped in trains in northern Greece on Wednesday in the freezing weather. Two trains carrying around 600 passengers came to a halt at Thermes and Larissa in central Greece while traveling from Thessaloniki to Athens because of icy conditions, while another Intercity train stopped in Tithorea and Larissa’s suburban railway ran into mechanical problems in Platy Imathias. Rail management company Trainose said on Wednesday that the problems were due to heavy snowfall in northern and central Greece and announced that it will be cancelling several services between Athens and Thessaloniki, as well as local services in the area, on Thursday.
Heavy snowfall has also caused problems with public transport in the northern port city of Thessaloniki, where bus company OASTH said that 11 neighborhoods are too snowed in to allow service. It also said that around 50 buses have been fitted with snow chains so they can navigate icy streets along their routes. Meanwhile on Thursday morning, fog and low-lying clouds led to flight cancellations and delays at Thessaloniki’s Makedonia airport, while freezing temperatures caused problems in the city’s natural gas and electricity network, leaving thousands of residents without heat or power as temperatures dropped to as low as -14 Celsius.
Look, if nobody else helps out, people find ways. But it’s still wholly unnecessary suffering. Konstantinos and his crew have scoured the streets of Athens with tea and bread and blankets.
Temperatures in northern Greece have fallen to -10. Refugees living in camps have been collecting spare food and donating it to those sleeping on the streets – including homeless Greek families.
Just plain nonsense. If people are smart enough to hack into such systems, they are certainly also smart enough to either leave no trace at all, or to leave traces that point to someone else. So if you find something that points to Russia, you know it wasn’t them. And that’s before you pump a story up like this, where one lonely unconnected laptop becomes a threat to the entire US grid.
A story published by The Washington Post Friday claims Russia hacked the electrical grid in Vermont. This caused hysteria on social media but has been denied by a spokesman for a Vermont utility company. The Post story was titled, “Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, officials say.” The story said, “A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials.” The Post published the story before being able to get comment from the two utility companies in Vermont. The Burlington Electric Department would end up putting out a statement showing the premise of The Washington Post story as being untrue.
“Last night, U.S. utilities were alerted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of a malware code used in Grizzly Steppe, the name DHS has applied to a Russian campaign linked to recent hacks,” a spokesman for the Burlington Electric Department said. “We acted quickly to scan all computers in our system for the malware signature. We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop not connected to our organization’s grid systems.” The Vermont Public Service Commissioner Christopher Recchia told The Burlington Free Press, “The grid is not in danger.” However, this false Washington Post story about a Russian intrusion into the American electrical grid has caused panic among journalists.
“CNN claimed that an unnamed US official who was “briefed on the matter..” Yada yada. And Putin’s decision not to expel Russains was not some stunnning reversal either. He saw this one coming from miles away, it wasn’t some last-minute thing. As I said yesterday on Facebook:
“Stunning reversal”? I beg to differ. Lavrov suggesting earlier that Putin expel 35 US diplomats was a clear set-up. And Obama in turn allowed Putin to take the high road by expelling 35 Russians with just 3 weeks left till Trump.“We reserve the right to retaliate, but we will not sink to the level of this irresponsible ‘kitchen’ diplomacy.” Bye bye Barack. You lost.
As mainstream media continues to push a narrative of problematic “fake news,” on Thursday evening CNN falsely accused Russia of retaliating against American children by closing the Anglo-American School of Moscow. Shortly after the announcement of new US sanctions against Russia, CNN claimed that an unnamed US official who was “briefed on the matter” had reported to them that Moscow was closing the school. “Russian authorities ordered the closure of the Anglo-American School of Moscow, a US official briefed on the matter said. The order from the Russian government closes the school, which serves children of US, British and Canadian embassy personnel, to US and foreign nationals,” reported CNN. The lie was rapidly debunked by a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman.
“US officials ‘anonymously informed’ their media that Russia closed the Anglo-American School in Moscow as a retaliatory measure,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote of CNN’s claims on her Facebook page. “That’s a lie. Apparently, the White House has completely lost its senses and began inventing sanctions against its own children.” On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to the new sanctions by “embarrassing” US President Barack Obama and brushing it off, stating that he will wait until President-elect Donald Trump takes office to improve relations between the two countries. Putin also wished Obama a happy new year, and invited US diplomats children to the New Year and Christmas children’s parties at the Kremlin. CNN has not retracted their fake-news story or acknowledged the error.
Even when reporting on it, US media have no qualms about throwing in more false news: ..Edward Snowden, who stole government secrets and later gave them to Russia in exchange for political asylum.. Slander.
President-elect Donald Trump Friday slammed CNN and NBC News for its coverage of the Moscow hacking issue, saying on Twitter that “the Russians are playing” the news organizations “for such fools” and that they “don’t have a clue.” Trump’s post followed an earlier one Friday in which he praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for not expelling American diplomats in retaliation for President Barack Obama’s sanctions on Thursday in response to the breach at the Democratic National Committee and other party operatives. The later post also came as CNN’s Jim Sciutto interviewed former Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra, who once served as a Trump surrogate, on Putin’s response. Sciutto challenged Hoekstra’s assertions that U.S. intelligence agencies have hacked other world leaders.
“Quite a throw-away line there, Congressman Hoekstra,” the CNN anchor said. “I’m an American and I listen to that, I hear that a foreign actor hacked into political organizations in the U.S. – and they strategically leaked it out during an election campaign. “Whether that’s Republican or Democrat or any other party, that sounds serious. “Are you saying, ‘Heck it’s another part of the Wild West in cyberspace and we as a country should let that pass?” Sciutto asked. “I’m not saying we should let it pass,” Hoekstra responded. He then referenced former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who stole government secrets and later gave them to Russia in exchange for political asylum. “Snowden clearly demonstrated that the United States hacked into [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel and that we were listening to her conversations,” Hoekstra said.
The US’ decision to expel 35 Russian diplomats has affected 96 people, including the officials themselves and their families, the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry said. Moscow refrained from responding in kind, to not ruin the New Year for American diplomats. The Russians forced to leave the US includes some pre-school children, Maria Zakharova said. “One can only hope that this was the last thing that the current administration does to spoil bilateral relations – the last strange, unwise decision. It targeted, among other things, ordinary people and their simple human joys – things which unite people all around the world. Practically everyone celebrates the New Year, but this is what the Obama administration did,” she said.
The US declared 35 Russian diplomats accredited in the US persona non grata, giving them 72 hours to leave the country. The foreign ministry spokesperson remarked that while some of the Russian diplomats had been working in the US for years, others arrived as recently as two months ago. This did not prevent Washington from expelling them for allegedly trying to interfere with the US election in 2015 and early 2016, which was the reason stated by the US. The Kremlin decided to send a government plane to the US to evacuate the Russians. Some of them reportedly complained that buying plane tickets on such short notice was problematic.
Zakharova said Moscow hoped that the bad timing of the expulsion and all the troubles it caused to the Russian citizens was an oversight rather than intended malice on the part of the White House. Russia refrained from its usual practice of responding to expulsions of its citizens by a foreign power with mirror expulsions of the respective country’s citizens from Russia. “We took into serious consideration how our American colleagues and their families would feel. Especially their children, who are now preparing for the New Year and are on their Christmas holidays,” Zakharova explained. “They would have been cut off from their school programs and forced to pack their things and go back to their homeland in 72 hours. So we decided against it.”
President Barack Obama granted 78 pardons earlier this month, doubling the total for his presidency – and ensuring that it will not go down as the least forgiving in more than a century. Instead, it will probably end up as the second-least forgiving. It’s a strange legacy for a president who has spoken so eloquently about the need for a more fair and rational criminal-justice system. It’s also a missed opportunity to notch a small victory for another issue the president is passionate about: voting rights. There are 50,000 people released from federal prisons each year, and many return to states that either permanently bar them from voting or require them to apply for restoration of their rights. Most of these felons don’t deserve pardons, of course; only 3,000 have applied. And most ex-offenders without voting rights have committed state, not federal, crimes.
None of this should stop Obama from issuing pardons in deserving federal cases. There are other ways for the president to show clemency besides pardons. A commutation, for example, reduces a prisoner’s sentence. Obama has commuted the sentences of more than 1,000 inmates – more than the last 11 presidents combined, a statistic the administration is fond of citing. A less heralded statistic is that Obama has received far more applications – some 31,000 – than his predecessors. The reason is simple: He invited federal prisoners to apply. A frequent critic of the nation’s harsh sentencing laws, he is the first president to organize an official clemency initiative to address the issue.
They make it up as they go along. “They just say, ‘Oh, this is needed to get to 8%,’ as if we all knew the number was 8%, when in fact that’s a completely new number.”
Deutsche Bank, UniCredit and eight other European Union banks would fall short of the ECB’s capital demands on Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena based on stress-test results, highlighting potential objections to the plan. The ECB told Monte Paschi it needed enough capital to push its common equity Tier 1 ratio to 8% of risk-weighted assets in the adverse scenario of the stress test, the Bank of Italy said in a statement late on Dec. 29. That’s well above the legal minimum of 4.5%. This year’s health check had no pass mark, but in 2014 lenders were held to a CET1 ratio of 5.5%. Monte Paschi was the worst performer in the stress test’s adverse scenario with a CET1 ratio of minus 2.4%, followed by Allied Irish Banks with 4.3%. The Italian government is planning a bailout of Monte Paschi.
Under European Union law, state aid can be given to solvent banks to cover a stress-test shortfall, but the absence of a hurdle means the size of the gap could be disputed when Italy seeks approval for the rescue from the European Commission. “There’s a lot more to be explained,” said John Raymond at CreditSights. “They just say, ‘Oh, this is needed to get to 8%,’ as if we all knew the number was 8%, when in fact that’s a completely new number.” The government in Rome is planning a so-called precautionary recapitalization for Monte Paschi. The Bank of Italy said the ECB’s demands for an 8% CET1 ratio and a total capital ratio of 11.5% translate to a shortfall of 8.8 billion euros ($9.3 billion).
Closing the CET1 gap requires 6.3 billion euros of high-quality capital, 4.2 billion euros of which will come from converting subordinated debt to equity, with the remainder provided by the government, according to the Bank of Italy. Another 2.5 billion euros will be needed to offset capital lost in the debt-to-equity conversion to reach the 11.5% total ratio. A person familiar with the matter said the CET1 premium of 3.5 %age points above the legal minimum is intended to restore market confidence. In the stress test, Deutsche Bank emerged with a CET1 ratio of 7.8%, while UniCredit had 7.1%. The CET1 ratios of Barclays and Societe Generale were 7.3% and 7.5%, respectively.
A private email I got yesterday talked about rumors swirling around in China that the country may ‘close’, and return to the isolation of Mao times, with only ‘official’ companies being allowed to handle dollars, and no Chinese individuals at all, as well as a fixed exchange rate. I don’t see how that would work in a practical sense. As I said a few days ago in my China article, in which I mentioned such capital controls, this too would risk social unrest. People who’ve tasted freedom are not likely to give it up again easily. It would also mean an end to the economic expansion.
China enhanced its ability to stabilize its currency, as the rising dollar threatens to undermine its economy by accelerating the flow of capital out of the country. China’s central bank is adjusting the mix of foreign currencies used in setting the yuan’s official daily value, a change analysts said should help support the weakening currency. The move, which goes into effect Jan. 1, reflects the delicate dance Chinese policy makers face with the yuan. China wants a slightly weaker currency to help exporters and maintain competitiveness with other economies as the dollar rises. But it also worries that a sharp decline in the yuan’s value would raise fears the central bank is losing control, undermine the public’s trust and trigger excessive capital outflows.
By diluting the dollar’s share and bringing in currencies from the Korean won to the Saudi riyal and Swedish krona, the People’s Bank of China is giving itself more room to maneuver to keep the yuan from falling too fast, analysts said. In recent weeks, the yuan has buckled under uncertainty about China’s economic performance, a surging U.S. dollar following Donald Trump’s presidential-election victory and escalating flows of Chinese currency moving offshore. The potential for faster U.S. interest-rate increases could add even more downward pressure on the yuan, with some analysts and investors predicting the currency could break the psychologically important seven-yuan-per-dollar level as soon as next month. The yuan has dropped 7% against the dollar this year, nearly double the decline from the year before.
China’s move is the latest by global policy makers trying to adjust to a powerful dollar rally that has recently lifted the U.S. currency to a 14-year high. In emerging markets, a stronger dollar makes it more expensive for governments and companies to pay back their dollar-denominated loans. In China, how to manage the yuan’s value has become a hot topic in official circles since a nearly 2% devaluation 16 months ago shocked global markets. In the past year the central bank has sought a less abrupt path, constricting channels for moving money out of the country and managing the pace of depreciation.
The central bank controls the mainland trading of the yuan by specifying an official rate against the dollar and then allowing the currency to move 2% above or below the so-called daily fix. Since the beginning of this year, the central bank has been taking into account the yuan’s performance against both the dollar and a wider selection of currencies when determining the daily fix. That move has paved the way for the yuan’s gradual deprecation.
Remember the promises of the imminent global growth recovery ‘next year’? IMF, the leading light of exuberant growth expectations has been at this game for some years now. And every time, turning the calendar resets the fabled ‘growth recovery’ out another 12 months. Well, here’s a simple view of the extent to which the IMF has missed the boat called Realism and jumped onboard the boat called Hope.
Table above posts cumulative 2010-2016 real GDP growth that was forecast by the IMF back in September 2011, against what the Fund now anticipates / estimates as of October 2016. The sea of red marks all the countries for which IMF’s forecasts have been wildly on an optimistic side. Green marks the lonely four cases, including tax arbitrage-driven GDPs of Ireland and Luxembourg, where IMF forecasts turned out to be too conservative. German gap is minor in size – in fact, it is not even statistically different from zero. But Maltese one is a bit of an issue. Maltese economy has been growing fast in recent years, prompting the IMF to warn the Government this year that its banking sector is starting to get overexposed to construction sector, and its construction sector is becoming a bit of a bubble, and that all of this is too closely linked to Government spending and investment boom that cannot be sustained.
Oh, and then there are inflows of labour from abroad to sustain all of this growth. Remember Ireland ca 2005-2006? Yep, Malta is a slightly milder version. Notice the large negative gaps: Greece at -21 percentage points, Cyprus at -18 percentage points, Finland at -15 percentage points and so on… the bird-eye’s view of the IMF’s horrific errors is: • Two ‘programme’ countries – where the IMF is one of the economic policy ‘masters’, so at the very least it should have known what was happening on the ground; and
• IMF’s sheer incomprehension of economic drivers for growth in the case of Finland, which, until the recession hit it, was the darling of IMF’s ‘competitiveness leaders board’.
Median-average miss is between 4.33 and 4.97 percentage points in cumulative growth undershoot over 7 years, compared to IMF end-of-2011 projections. So next time the Fund starts issuing ‘happiness is just around the corner’ updates, and anchoring them to the ‘convincing’ view of ‘competitiveness’ and ‘structural drivers’ stuff, take them with a grain of salt.
This is a talk I gave in Amsterdam to launch the Amsterdam Rethinking Economics critique of the current state of economics “education” in the Netherlands. The text of my slides is reproduced below.
