fascism Archives - The Automatic Earth

Giorgia Meloni has won the Italian elections and is the next PM. The MSM has been loaded full of terms like Mussolini, ultra right wing and fascist. While she speaks of God, country and family. I don’t know exactly who is behind her, and I don’t need to. I have only to look at the mess Mario Draghi has made of Italy.

And more importantly, I look at the lockdowns and vaccine mandates, the unlimited support for the Ukraine nazis, and the cold and hungry winter many people in Europe, not least Italy, will face because of it.

Want to talk fascism? First learn to identify it.

Second largest food distribution centre in the world
https://twitter.com/i/status/1574124957377777664

“Meloni’s alliance which includes Salvini’s League and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia will win around 43% of the vote..”

• Meloni’s Right-Wing Alliance Wins Clear Majority In Italian Elections (ZH)

Europe’s unelected authoritarian ruler, Ursula von der Leyen, is not going to be happy: according to early exit polls out of Italy’s national election, the right-wing bloc of Giorgia Meloni – which the ultra-left wing press just can’t stop comparing to Mussolini – is set for a historic, if largely expected, victory and a clear majority (if, however, not a super-majority) which will propel Meloni to the top of the Italian government as the country’s next prime minister, ushering in a historic right-wing shift for a country that – like Sweden until two weeks ago – has traditionally been very left-wing. Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which won just 4% of the vote during the last national election in 2018, won the biggest share of the vote in Sunday’s parliamentary elections with around 22.5%-26.5% of the vote according to an exit poll released by Italian national broadcaster Rai.

She is now set to become prime minister but would require approval from junior partners in her coalition to assume the role. According to an exit poll from Rai, Meloni’s alliance which includes Salvini’s League and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia will win around 43% of the vote. The Center-Left alliance will have just 25.5%-29.5% of the vote, while the 5 Star movement has 13.5%-17.5% of the final vote. Italy’s electoral system, which strongly favors parties that run as part of a coalition, is expected to help the right to an ample majority in both houses of Parliament: with 228 votes in the Lower House and 115 seats in the Senate (according to SkyTG24), Meloni will have a majority as just 104 votes are required. As the WSJ notes, the Italian election is “the first big test of the European Union’s political cohesion as it confronts Russia’s attempt to redraw the continent’s post-Cold War order.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s restriction of natural-gas deliveries has sparked an energy-price crunch that, combined with other inflationary pressures, is expected to push much of Europe into a recession this winter.” Meloni replaces former Goldman Sachs partner and ECB technocrat and globalist, Mario Draghi, and will be the country’s first female prime minister. The likely right-wing government will face difficult decisions over how to protect Italian households and businesses from sky-high prices for natural gas and electricity. While Italy’s parlous public finances allow limited scope for fiscal largess, if the UK is any example – and it is – Italy will engage in a similar strategy of targeted and debt-funded fiscal stimulus which will lead to a blowout in Italian debt, a further plunge in the euro and much chaos everywhere.

[..] During the election campaign, Meloni tried to reassure voters and investors that she will keep Italy’s mammoth debt under control and won’t question the country’s foreign alliances or support for Ukraine. Expect all of that to change tomorrow.

Meloni

This is Italy’s new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

I’ve never heard any politician so perfectly explain what we’re up against and why we fight.

When you watch this video, you’ll quickly realize why the establishment is afraid of her.
pic.twitter.com/CswR8o3mjg

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 26, 2022

Where Meloni comes from.

• Thousands Of Firms In Italy On Brink Of Closure (RT)

Over 100,000 businesses in Italy are in danger of closing down due to soaring energy bills, the news outlet Corriere della Sera reported on Saturday, citing Carlo Sangalli, head of the Italian business association Confcommercio. “Already today many companies are reorganizing or reducing services… Between now and the first half of 2023, at least 120,000 small businesses in the service sector are at risk… This is a cautious estimate that does not take into account the largest companies,” Sangalli told the news outlet. According to the official, the situation could lead to the loss of more than 370,000 jobs. Sangalli noted that energy prices in Italy are much higher than in other countries, which puts a strain on small and medium-sized businesses.

“In terms of energy costs, our hotels, bars, restaurants and stores will pay 40-60% more on their bills this year than in Germany, and three times that than in France,” Sangalli said. He noted that the energy crisis may deal the final blow to many businesses that have already been made vulnerable by the Covid-19 pandemic. The official said the country needed “good reforms and good investments” that will “make our country work better and in a simpler way,” and called for some of the support measures introduced during the pandemic to be reinstated. Italy, along with other EU countries, has been battling a record-high inflation. Annual inflation in the country reached 8.4% in August, driven largely by energy costs. Italy relies on imports for nearly 75% of its energy. At the start of this year, it was importing 40% of its gas from Russia, but in July its Russian purchases dropped to 25% due to sanctions.

Chris is getting too old. He’s glued to the rear view mirror.

• The Return of Fascism (Chris Hedges)

Meloni got her start in politics as a 15-year-old activist for the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement, founded after the World War II by supporters of Benito Mussolini. She calls EU bureaucrats agents of “nihilistic global elites driven by international finance.” She peddles the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that non-white immigrants are being permitted to enter Western nations as part of a plot to undermine or “replace” the political power and culture of white people. She has called on the Italian navy to turn back boats with immigrants, which the far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini did in 2018. Her Fratelli d’Italia, Brothers of Italy, party is a close ally of Hungary’s President, Viktor Orban. A European Parliament resolution recently declared that Hungary can no longer be defined as a democracy.

Meloni and Orban are not alone. Sweden Democrats, which took over 20 percent of the vote in Sweden’s general election last week to become the country’s second largest political party, was formed in 1988 from a neo-Nazi group called B.S.S., or Keep Sweden Swedish. It has deep fascist roots. Of the party’s 30 founders, 18 had Nazi affiliations, including several who served in the Waffen SS, according to Tony Gustaffson a historian and former Sweden Democrat member. France’s Marine Le Pen took over 41 percent of the vote in April against Emmanuel Macron. In Spain, the hard-right Vox party is the third largest party in Spain’s Parliament. The far-right German AfD or Alternative for Germany party took over 12 percent in federal elections in 2017, making it the third largest party, though it lost a couple percentage points in the 2021 elections. The U.S. has its own version of fascism embodied in a Republican party that coalesces in cult-like fashion around Donald Trump, embraces the magical thinking, misogyny, homophobia and white supremacy of the Christian Right and actively subverts the election process.

Economic collapse was indispensable to the Nazis’ rise to power. In the 1928 elections in Germany, the Nazi party received less than 3 percent of the vote. Then came the global financial crash of 1929. By early 1932, 40 percent of the German insured workforce, six million people, were unemployed. That same year, the Nazis became the largest political party in the German parliament. The Weimar government, tone deaf and hostage to the big industrialists, prioritized paying bank loans and austerity rather than feeding and employing a desperate population. It foolishly imposed severe restrictions on who was eligible for unemployment insurance. Millions of Germans went hungry. Desperation and rage rippled through the population. Mass rallies, led by a collection of buffoonish Nazis in brown uniforms who would have felt at home at Mar-a-Lago, denounced Jews, Communists, intellectuals, artists and the ruling class, as internal enemies. Hate was their main currency. It sold well.

“..talks between Ukraine and Russia collapsed after then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kiev in April and informed Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.”

• Russia Says US “Wrecked” Ukraine Talks, But Peace Is Still Possible (Maté)

In his Sept. 21 speech announcing an escalation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused NATO states of sabotaging a peace deal that could have ended it months ago. At talks brokered by Turkey in March, Putin said, “Kiev representatives voiced quite a positive response to our proposals… But a peaceful settlement obviously did not suit the West, which is why, after certain compromises were coordinated, Kiev was actually ordered to wreck all these agreements.” Speaking at the United Nations hours later, President Joe Biden criticized the Russian leader but did not address his claim that the US thwarted negotiations. Asked about Putin’s remarks, officials from the White House’s National Security Council (NSC) and the State Department offered differing responses.

An NSC official referred me to the Ukrainian government for comment about “their peace negotiations in the spring.” But overall, the official added, “it is inaccurate that the U.S. discouraged Ukraine from seeking a peace agreement. Throughout this conflict, we have said that it is up to Ukraine to make their own sovereign decisions.” A State Department spokesperson did not address Putin’s rendering of the March-April negotiations, and instead focused on the period before the invasion. “As part of our efforts to deter President Putin from launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine’s sovereign territory on February 24, 2022, the United States consistently spoke of the two paths Russia could choose: dialogue and diplomacy, or escalation and massive consequences,” the State Department wrote. “We made genuine and sincere efforts to pursue the former, which we vastly preferred, but Putin chose war.”

Asked if it had any response to Putin’s account of the peace talks that occurred after the invasion, the State spokesperson did not respond. The Russian government has not offered any additional detail or evidence for Putin’s claim that Ukraine and Russia were close to a “settlement,” and that Kiev’s NATO backers intervened to “wreck” it. But the Kremlin is also not the first to assert it. The claim originated with sources to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who described the episode to Ukrainian media outlet Ukrayinska Pravda. According to their account, talks between Ukraine and Russia collapsed after then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kiev in April and informed Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.”

Johnson also relayed that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on [security] guarantees with Putin,” Western nations “are not.” That report was followed this month by an overlooked disclosure from former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill. Citing “multiple former senior U.S. officials,” Hill wrote that “Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement” in April. Russia would withdraw to its pre-invasion position, while Ukraine would pledge not to join NATO “and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”

I see videos of people ostensibly being forced to vote Russia. Not exactly subtle. But who needs subtlety in an echo chamber?

• Early Turnout Numbers For Referendums On Joining Russia (RT)

The referendums on joining Russia are continuing in the Donbass republics and Russian-controlled regions of southern Ukraine. On Sunday, the turnout already reached the required 50% threshold in the Donetsk and Lugansk republics and Zaporozhye Region, with only Kherson lagging behind. In the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), more than 76% of eligible voters have already cast their votes, according to official figures. The referendum in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) is proceeding at a similar pace, with some 77% of voters having shown up at the polling stations. Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, which were largely seized by Russian forces amid the ongoing conflict, have demonstrated a lower turnout.

Still, the latter region has already met the required legal threshold, with some 51.55% of registered voters already casting their ballots, according to the head of the Zaporozhye electoral committee, Galina Katyshenko. Kherson has so far demonstrated lower turnout, with nearly 49% of voters showing up for the referendum. Polls across the two regions and in the Donbass republics are set to stay open for the next two days. Ukraine and its Western backers have rejected the referendums on joining Russia as illegal and have vowed to not recognize them regardless of their outcome. Speaking to US broadcaster CBS on Sunday, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky warned that should Russia complete the referendums, it would “make it impossible, in any case, to continue any diplomatic negotiations” with Moscow.

It isn’t.

• Russia Says It’s Not Threatening Anyone With Nukes (Antiwar)

On Friday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Russia wasn’t threatening anyone with nuclear weapons and said Moscow doesn’t want a direct conflict with the US and NATO. “We are not threatening anyone with nuclear weapons,” Ryabkov said. “The criteria for their use are outlined in Russia’s military doctrine.” Russia’s doctrine is that it could use nuclear weapons if it is facing an “existential threat,” and Russian officials have made clear throughout the current war in Ukraine that this is still the policy. Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that Moscow could use nuclear weapons to defend its “territorial integrity.” While his comments were a more explicit warning, it still falls in line with the doctrine. But Russian territory is set to expand into Ukraine after referendums that are being held in the Donbas, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia.

Ukraine is planning to launch more counter-offensives against these territories using weapons and intelligence provided by the US and other NATO countries. Ryabkov said that it’s not in Russia’s interest to be in a direct conflict with the US and NATO. “A face-off with the United States and NATO, which is fraught with an open armed conflict, is not in our interests,” he said. “We hope that the Biden administration understands the risks of uncontrolled escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, given the repeated statements by their officials that they don’t plan to send American servicemen to Ukraine,” Ryabkov added. President Biden has repeatedly stated that he won’t send US troops into Ukraine to fight Russia, although there is a CIA presence on the ground, according to a report from The New York Times that was published in June. The report also said special operations forces from Britain, France, Canada, and Lithuania are on the ground in Ukraine.

“..the referendums that begin today in the liberated areas of Ukraine, which without question will succeed, promise to reduce the threat of Armageddon..”

• We Might Be Spared Nuclear War But Threat of Home Grown Tyranny Remains (PCR)

As readers know, I am convinced that Putin’s toleration of insults and provocations has had the effect of encouraging more and worse provocations and not, as he intended, to downplay conflict. As you also know, I am convinced that his “limited military operation” in Donbass designed to protect the Donbass Russians, formerly a part of Russia, from horrible abuse by Ukrainian forces and the neo-Nazi militias, was a mistake. It is a mistake because the West characterized a limited operation as an “invasion of Ukraine,” and used its slow progress as evidence of Russian failure. It is a mistake because the go-slow nature of the Russian offensive in order to minimize the impact on civilian lives and infrastructure gave the West plenty of time to convince itself to get more and more involved with diplomatic support, money, armaments and ammunition, training, and now with satellite information for targeting the Russian forces.

As I see it, Putin has been behaving as British Prime Minister Chamberlain is alleged to have behaved, thus encouraging more aggressive actions. Wanting peace at all costs brings war. As it is no longer possible for the Kremlin to speak of “our Western partners” or to deny that the West is at war with Russia, the Kremlin, trying to avoid a war that it knows would be nuclear, has reached my conclusion of eight years ago that if the areas in today’s artificial borders of Ukraine that require Russian protection were reincorporated into Russia, the conflict would have to cease or become direct Western military aggression against Russia. As Biden says he has no stomach for a war with Russia and will not permit one, and as NATO is incapable of such war, the referendums that begin today in the liberated areas of Ukraine, which without question will succeed, promise to reduce the threat of Armageddon.

Although in my opinion the leadership everywhere in the Western world is Satanic and insane, I do not think the Western governing elites are ready to commit suicide by attacking Russian territory. The West can say it doesn’t recognize the rights of people to self-determination, but if Russia says it is Russian territory, it is. So that you understand, the referendums are Putin’s way of ending the conflict before it widens into nuclear war. Putin’s rescue of the world from nuclear war will not be acknowledged by the Western presstitutes, Washington’s puppet EU and UK governments, or by the puppet who serves as NATO secretary general. But what they think does not matter. Putin, belatedly, is doing his best to save us all from nuclear war. Pray that he succeeds.

“..historic tax cuts funded by huge increases in borrowing..”

• Pound Slumps To All-time Low Against Dollar (BBC)

The pound has fallen to its lowest level against the US dollar since decimalisation in 1971. In early Asia trade, sterling fell by more than 4% to $1.0327 before regaining some ground to around $1.05. That came after UK Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled historic tax cuts funded by huge increases in borrowing. The pound has also been under pressure as the dollar has been boosted by the US central bank continuing to raise interest rates. The euro also touched a fresh 20-year-low against the dollar in morning Asia trade amid investor concerns about the risk of recession as winter approaches with no sign of an end to the energy crisis or the war in Ukraine.

Peter Escho, the co-founder of investment firm Wealthi, said: “All currencies are getting sold off against the US dollar, so there is a large element of US dollar strength. But with the pound, it has really been exacerbated by news that the new government will be cutting taxes, which is inflationary. “Add to that recent energy subsidies and news that the Bank of England might need to have an emergency rate-hike meeting, this all results in a sense of panic,” he added. Some investors think the Bank of England will be forced to take emergency action to halt the pound’s slide. “To stop the bleeding even temporarily, the BOE may well enter ‘whatever it takes’ territory to bring inflation down. An emergency meeting rate hike could happen as soon as this week to regain credibility in the market. We could even see a hike today,” Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management told the BBC.

Add Chucky the Third and you have a crazy winter.

• UK To Double Military Spending Amid Cost-of-living Crisis (RT)

Britain will boost its military spending considerably in the coming years, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has revealed, despite the fact the nation is facing an economic crisis stemming from Covid-19 measures and London’s sanctions on Moscow. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph published on Sunday, Wallace said the British government will shell out at least £52 billion ($56.5 billion) to shore up the military, which is “actually going to grow.” The plans are in keeping with Prime Minister Liz Truss’ campaign promise to boost defense spending. According to the official, Britain’s annual defense budget will amount to £100 billion by 2030. Wallace also took aim at former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and the Treasury for what he described as a “corporate raid” of the armed forces which started back in the 1990s.

He claimed that the Treasury had even tried to “stipulate the size of the Army.” “My department has been so used to 30 or 40 years of defending against cuts or reconciling cuts with modern fighting, they’re going to have to get used to a completely different culture,” the defence secretary noted. Wallace expressed confidence, however, that Sunak’s successor in the office, Kwasi Kwarteng, would show more understanding toward the military’s needs. The defence secretary, who retained his post after Liz Truss defeated Sunak in the race to become prime minister in early September, told journalists that the new leader’s willingness to spend more on the military was one of the key factors for him in deciding which candidate to back for prime minister. “The reason I supported Liz Truss was that the risks we were prepared to tolerate in the middle of the decade are not risks I want to tolerate any more in light of Russian aggression,” Wallace said.

Addressing world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York, Truss reiterated her campaign pledge to spend 3% of GDP on defense by 2030. According to Bloomberg, the new prime minister reversed former PM Boris Johnson’s plans to slash the military by 9,500 personnel. Commenting on the changes, which are expected to be unveiled by the end of 2022, Downing Street clarified that they were needed to “stand firm against coercion from authoritarian powers like Russia and China.” The decision comes despite the UK government’s interest payable on debt hitting the highest level on record, as reported by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) earlier this week. Inflation, food, and energy prices have also soared, while the British pound and consumer confidence have hit the lowest levelsin decades.

“The idea of the cap on bankers’ bonuses was to remove the perverse incentive whereby a banker got a bonus of ten years salary by creating “assets” of bad loans..”

• The Tories Declare Class War (Craig Murray)

The “cap” on bankers bonuses that the Tories have just removed had been set at double their annual salary. Yes, double ptheir annual salary. So a banker on £320,000 a year could only get an annual bonus of £640,000. That has now been lifted so they will be able to get annual bonuses of millions again. On each million of which they will also benefit from a new £55,000 tax cut. The greatest irony of this is that the first multimillion pound bankers’ bonuses will be going this Christmas to bankers who shorted the pound before Kwasi Kwarteng’s “mini-budget”. The cap on bankers’ bonuses was largely a sop to the public who had bailed out the bankers with public money borrowed – with trillions in interest – from the very bankers we were bailing out.

In effect Gordon Brown created sterling and gave it free to the bankers who caused the collapse, so they could lend it to the public purse and we could pay it back over two decades of public austerity. The idea of the cap on bankers’ bonuses was to remove the perverse incentive whereby a banker got a bonus of ten years salary by creating “assets” of bad loans, with no care whether those loans collapsed or not two years later, as he already had his ten years’ bonus. The Tories have just brought back that perverse incentive. Krug all round in the City!! It’s a bonanza for lap dance club owners and cocaine dealers. It’s a disaster for us. This perverse incentive will be needed to keep any money flowing into UK mortgages.

With the Bank rate sure to exceed 5% in the next few months and inflation continuing, mortgage rates will be in double digits by this time next year, and we are only a couple of years away from mass default and repossession. The wealthy will of course be able to use some of their tax cut money to take advantage of the stamp duty cut and snap up the repossessed properties as buy to let. That is what the Tories call growing the economy. Over 50% of the money from the tax cuts will benefit the top 5% of earners. If wealth inequality were the primary driver of economic growth – and that is the basis of Kwarteng’s economic theory – then how do you explain that the UK already has the second highest wealth inequality in the G7, behind only the USA, yet the lowest economic growth?

“.. they are up by a whopping 300% from a few years ago..”

• US Facing Natural Gas Shortage – Reuters (RT)

Shale producers in the United States are struggling to meet growing domestic and international natural gas demand, according to an analysis by Reuters. The report concluded that a hotter-than-expected summer and a lack of alternative energy sources have left the nation’s inventories below the seasonal average. It added that there were no signs of improvement in the level of inventories, despite the rise in gas prices. The latest data showed that the Permian Shale Basin, which contributes some 12% of US total gas output, and the rig count in the Permian, has been down for two weeks in a row. “Less drilling means less associated gas to add to the national total,” the news outlet reported.

While American energy companies have been exporting liquified natural gas (LNG) to Europe at record rates, calls have emerged lately to reduce those supplies to make sure there is enough for the US market. “With heating season around the corner in both Europe and the United States and with a lot of people in both places using gas for heating, the price outlook for gas does not look good from a consumer’s perspective,” Reuters wrote. The report noted that it is unlikely US gas prices will climb anywhere near European levels, “but they are up by a whopping 300% from a few years ago when gas was cheap because it was abundant.”

WEF needs to go.

• New Zealand Prime Minister Calls for a Global Censorship System (Turley)

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is the latest liberal leader to call for an international alliance to censor speech. Unsatisfied with the unprecedented corporate censorship of social media companies, leaders like Hillary Clinton have turned from private censorship to good old-fashioned state censorship. Speech regulation has become an article of faith on the left. Ardern used her speech this week to the United Nations General Assembly to call for censorship on a global scale. Ardern lashed out at “disinformation” and called for a global coalition to control speech. After nodding toward free speech, she proceeded to lay out a plan for its demise through government regulation:

But what if that lie, told repeatedly, and across many platforms, prompts, inspires, or motivates others to take up arms. To threaten the security of others. To turn a blind eye to atrocities, or worse, to become complicit in them. What then? This is no longer a hypothetical. The weapons of war have changed, they are upon us and require the same level of action and activity that we put into the weapons of old. We recognized the threats that the old weapons created. We came together as communities to minimize these threats. We created international rules, norms and expectations. We never saw that as a threat to our individual liberties – rather, it was a preservation of them. The same must apply now as we take on these new challenges.

Ardern noted how extremists use speech to spread lies without noting that non-extremists use the same free speech to counter such views. To answer her question on “how do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists” is that you convince people using the same free speech. Instead, Ardern appears to want to silence those who have doubts. While referring to a global censorship coalition as a “light-touch approach to disinformation,” Ardern revealed how sweeping such a system would likely be. She defended the need for such global censorship on having to combat those who question climate change and the need to stop “hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology.”

“After all, how do you successfully end a war if people are led to believe the reason for its existence is not only legal but noble? How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists? How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld, when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology?” That is the same rationale used by authoritarian countries like China, Iran, and Russia to censor dissidents, minority groups, and political rivals. What is “hateful” and “dangerous” is a fluid concept that government have historically used to silence critics or dissenters. Ardern is the smiling face of the new generation of censors. At least the old generation of censors like the Iranians do not pretend to support free speech and openly admit that they are crushing dissent. The point is that we need to be equally on guard when censorship is pushed from the left with the best of motivations and the worst of means.

Oh, right, MSNBC.

• Psaki : If Midterms Are A ‘Referendum’ On Biden, Democrats Are Doomed (NYP)

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki bluntly admitted that if the November midterm elections are a “referendum” on President Biden, the Democrats will lose. Psaki, who left the White House in May to take a job at MSNBC, said if the midterms focus on the “most extreme” party, mentioning Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene by name, then Democrats will be celebrating on election day. “If it is a referendum on the president, they will lose. And they know that. They also know that crime is a huge vulnerability for Democrats, I would say one of the biggest vulnerabilities,” Psaki said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

She said she has been watching the US Senate race play out in Pennsylvania between Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate, and GOP celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, and noted that Republicans are running ads painting Fetterman as soft on crime. What’s been interesting to me is it’s always you follow the money, and where are people spending money. And in Pennsylvania, the Republicans have been spending millions of dollars on the air on crime ads against Fetterman because that’s where they see his vulnerability , Biden’s one-time chief spokeswoman said. So yes, the economy is hanging over everything. But you do have to look at state-by-state factors, and crime is a huge issue in the Pennsylvania race, she said. While Biden’s approval ratings have recently climbed into the mid-40s from the dregs in recent polls, a Washington Post/ABC News survey released Sunday found it remains below that at 39%. The president’s disapproval rating is at 53%, the poll found.

Peace is not welcome in Krakow.

• Roger Waters Cancels Poland Concerts After Ukraine War Remarks (RFE)

Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters has canceled concerts planned in Poland amid anger over his stance on Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine, Polish media reported. An official with the Tauron Arena in Krakow, where Waters was scheduled to perform two concerts in April, said they would no longer take place. “Roger Waters’ manager decided to withdraw…without giving any reason,” Lukasz Pytko from Tauron Arena Krakow said on September 24 in comments carried by Polish media outlets. The website for Waters’ This Is Not a Drill concert tour did not list the Krakow concerts previously scheduled for April 21 and 22.

City councilors in Krakow were expected to vote next week on a proposal to name Waters as a persona non grata, expressing “indignation” over the musician’s stance on the war in Ukraine. Allowing “Roger Waters, an open supporter of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, to play in Krakow…would be shameful for our city,” city councilor Lukasz Wantuch said last week on social media. “Let him sing in Moscow.” Waters wrote an open letter to Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska earlier this month in which he blamed “extreme nationalists” in Ukraine for having “set your country on the path to this disastrous war.” Waters has also criticized NATO, accusing it of provoking Russia.

Malhotra

Are mRNA vaccines safe & effective? Not according to new peer reviewed papers by @DrAseemMalhotra

'Curing the pandemic of misinformation on Covid-19 mRNA vaccines through real evidence based medicine'

Paper PT 1: https://t.co/53WWgNpWB8

Full interview: https://t.co/6kiMUr261i pic.twitter.com/9JZAr5fHoT

— James Freeman (@JamesfWells) September 26, 2022

This is not stained glass. It’s a dragonfly’s wing seen up close. Dragonfly wings kill bacteria on contact by ripping apart their cell membranes with sharp nanopillars.

Bolt

To be remembered, be the best and put a smile on people’s faces pic.twitter.com/t3yaI2tYq4

— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) September 25, 2022

Hydrosaurus, aka the Sailfin Dragon, is found in the rainforests of the Philippines

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Debt Rattle March 20 2022

Mar 202022

March 20, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:31 am Finance Tagged with: Azov, Biden, China, digital dictatorship, fascism, Halliburton, Hunter Biden, laptop, Mariupol, oilfield service, Putin, Yugoslavia 41 Responses »

Salvador Dali Remorse – Sphinx Embedded in the Sand 1931

• Was Bombing Of Mariupol Theater Staged By Ukrainian Azov Extremists? (GZ)

• US Recklessly Eyes China as Target in Economic War (Lauria)

• Spies Who Lie (NY Post)

• Media That Dismissed Hunter Biden Laptop Story Need To Correct The Record (Fox)

• Biden’s State Department Backed Into a Corner, Forced to Turn on Hunter (WJ)

• Biden Boasted He Proposed NATO’s 78-Day Airstrikes On Belgrade (ZH)

• Halliburton, Schlumberger Draw Back From Russia Amid US Energy Sanctions (R.)

• Defining Fascism (Tweedie)

• Data Scientist Files Internal Appeal Of Bank Of Canada Vaccination Policy (OCLA)

• The Digital Dictatorship Is Coming — Can We Stop It? (Mercola)

“Looking at the earth from afar you realize it is too small for conflict and just big enough for co-operation” – Yuri Gagarin

Kirsch Cole

What in the actual HELL??? Dr Ryan Cole shows what he pulled out of an individual who bowed down at the altar of Big Pharma. If true, some people are gonna have a very interesting future. pic.twitter.com/xsyghVq3L8

— HighImpactFlix (@HighImpactFlix) March 18, 2022

Where did the 80% excess mortality come from?

40% ethnic Russians. Think Russia would bomb them?

• Was Bombing Of Mariupol Theater Staged By Ukrainian Azov Extremists? (GZ)

Western media have reported that Russia’s military deliberately attacked the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, claiming that it was filled with civilians and marked with signs reading “children” on its grounds. The supposed bombing took place just as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to US Congress for a no fly zone, fueling the chorus for direct military confrontation with Russia and apparently inspiring President Joseph Biden to brand Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, as a “war criminal.” A closer look reveals that local residents in Mariupol had warned three days before the March 16 incident that the theater would be the site of a false flag attack launched by the openly neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which controlled the building and the territory around it.

Civilians that escaped the city through humanitarian corridors have testified that they were held by Azov as human shields in area, and that Azov fighters detonated parts of the theater as they retreated. Despite claims of a massive Russian airstrike that reduced the building to ashes, all civilians appear to have escaped with their lives. Video of the attack on the theater remains unavailable at the time of publication; only photographs of the damaged structure can be viewed. The Russian Ministry of Defense has denied conducting an airstrike on the theater, asserting that the site had no military value and that no sorties were flown in the area on March 16.

While the Russian military operation in Ukraine has triggered a humanitarian crisis in Mariupol, it is clear that Russia gained nothing by targeting the theater, and virtually guaranteed itself another public relations blow by targeting a building filled with civilians – including ethnic Russians. Azov, on the other hand, stood to benefit from a dramatic and grisly attack blamed on Russia. In full retreat all around Mariupol and facing the possibility of brutal treatment at the hands of a Russian military hellbent on “de-Nazification,” its fighters’ only hope seemed to lie in triggering direct NATO intervention.

Azov – series of videos

@MapsUkraine Testimony of Mariupol residents: Azov Batallion executed civilians triying to escape the city. pic.twitter.com/Q1BsQiapvj

— Juan Sinmiedo (@Youblacksoul) March 17, 2022

“Adding China as a target of its economic war could drive the populations of the U.S. and Europe against their own governments instead.”

• US Recklessly Eyes China as Target in Economic War (Lauria)

The U.S. already has sanctions on China, as it had earlier on Russia. However, if the United States is seriously planning similar types of sanctions on Beijing that it has leveled on Moscow — against its major banks, against the central bank, removing it from SWIFT and cutting off key exports — the impact on the world economy — including on Europe and the United States — could be catastrophic. The U.S. national security strategy for several years has been aimed at both Russia and China. Knowing it must avoid a direct military confrontation against either, given the potential consequences, the U.S. is turning to economic warfare to ultimately attempt to bring down both governments through popular uprisings. Washington wants to replace them with Western-friendly leaders who would open up their economies to Western exploitation — just like Boris Yeltsin did in the 1990s.

The United States is acting as though the whole world is the West and that this is the China of 30 years ago. In its bull-headed effort to impose its unilateral rule on the world, while its domestic social problems mount, the U.S. has not only driven Russia and China closer together than ever, but it has now brought in India, much of Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, (all of whom have refused to sanction Russia and continues to trade with it), into a new bloc with economic power that exceeds the West. The U.S. has turned the majority of the world’s population against it. And it is now threatening to blow up the world economy. Cutting off trade and finance to Russia has already boomeranged on Western countries, driving up prices, especially at the pump. Instead of prompting a popular uprising in Russia as a result of its sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s popularity has actually risen since the invasion. Adding China as a target of its economic war could drive the populations of the U.S. and Europe against their own governments instead.

“51 ‘intelligence’ experts refuse to apologize for discrediting true Hunter Biden story..”

• Spies Who Lie (NY Post)

They are the supposed nonpartisan group of top spies looking out for the best interest of the nation. But the 51 former “intelligence” officials who cast doubt on The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop stories in a public letter really were just desperate to get Joe Biden elected president. And more than a year later, even after their Deep State sabotage has been shown again and again to be a lie, they refuse to own up to how they undermined an election. The officials, including CNN pundit and professional fabricator James Clapper – a man who was nearly charged for perjury for lying to Congress — signed a letter saying that the laptop “has the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” What proof did they have? By their own admission, none. “We do not know if the emails .. are genuine or not,” the letter said. They’re just “suspicious.”

Why? Because they hurt Biden’s campaign, that’s evidence enough. Keep in mind this was written Oct. 19, 2020, five days after The Post published its first story. Neither Joe Biden nor Hunter Biden had denied the story, they simply deflected questions. Didn’t these security experts think that if this was disinformation, the Biden campaign would have yelled to the heavens that the story was false? Meanwhile, though the letter was advertised as being signed by people who worked “for presidents of both political parties,” a majority of the officials were Democrats. Politico picked up the letter and ran the false headline “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” That headline is still online today, even though the letter clearly says they don’t know if it’s Russian disinformation. That headline was tweeted out by legions of Democrats, including current White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki, as proof that it was all a con.

That tweet also is still up despite being proven false. Thus pure speculation by a group of biased officials became gospel among the media. This was “fake news,” and could be safely ignored. Keep in mind that Twitter already had banned The New York Post a few days before. The rationale was that this was “hacked materials,” even though it wasn’t – and Twitter had no evidence to think it was. A Facebook official, meanwhile, said it wasn’t going to allow the sharing of The Post’s story until it was “fact checked” by a third party — a check that never happened. Thus, Big Tech, former government officials, and the media conspired together to bury a story. No, not just bury — create a false narrative that flipped the script to make Joe Biden the victim of a conspiracy. In short, they peddled online disinformation to sway an election.

But they do not.

• Media That Dismissed Hunter Biden Laptop Story Need To Correct The Record (Fox)

The New York Times on Wednesday subtly confirmed the Hunter Biden laptop story that was largely written off by mainstream news outlets as disinformation when the New York Post first reported it ahead of the 2020 presidential election and media watchdogs want to see the organizations that initially dismissed it correct their reporting and analysis. “Outlets who actively tried to cover up the original New York Post laptop story absolutely need to correct the record,” journalist Drew Holden told Fox News Digital. “These weren’t simple misgivings — they smeared the accurate, significant scoops of a competitor as disinformation, and they absolutely have an obligation to correct the record,” Holden said.

The Post reported the laptop’s contents included emails, text messages, photos and financial documents between himself, his family and business associates that showed how he used his political influence in his foreign business dealings, specifically in his work as a board member of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company. However, voters who relied on the mainstream press for information ahead of the presidential election were told not to believe the report. Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent quickly declared the day after the Post first began reporting on the laptop that it was “Trump’s fake new Biden scandal,” calling the allegations “laughably weak.”

NPR public editor Kelly McBride addressed a listener’s question about the news outlet’s blackout of the Hunter Biden story at the time. After claiming the Post’s reporting had “many, many red flags,” including its potential ties to Russia, NPR determined the “assertions don’t amount to much.” “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions,” NPR managing editor Terence Samuel told McBride. In December 2020, Project Veritas published leaked audio recordings of conference calls featuring CNN’s top executives urging staff to avoid the Biden scandal during the election.

“Obviously, we’re not going with the New York Post story right now on Hunter Biden,” CNN political director David Chalian said during a conference call on Oct. 14, the same day the Post published its first story on Hunter Biden’s emails. MSNBC anchor Katy Tur mocked the Post’s story, saying it “dropped like a bomb,” but to “wither under scrutiny, not really dropping like a bomb,” while MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle attacked those who were covering the Hunter Biden controversy, referring to it as a “so-called story” with “unverified claims.” These are just a small sample of the corporate media’s overwhelming attempt to silence the story, which was even censored on Twitter.

All the hallmarks

FLASHBACK: Media pundits lied to you, falsely claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was "Russian disinformation." pic.twitter.com/fSmQgfIq0N

— MediaResearchCenter (@theMRC) March 18, 2022

The MSM maintain their silence.

• Biden’s State Department Backed Into a Corner, Forced to Turn on Hunter (WJ)

It’s very possible that Kenneth Vogel, a reporter with The New York Times, may actually be practicing journalism. Last year, Vogel filed several Freedom of Information Act requests with the State Department. Among the information he was seeking were copies of all correspondence that “mentioned” Hunter Biden, among officials at the U.S. embassy in Romania, between August 2015 and December 2019, according to Business Insider. Upon learning that the agency wouldn’t start producing these records until April 2023, Vogel filed a FOIA lawsuit in January. A hearing in the case was scheduled for March 17. Last Friday, however, the Times’ attorney David McCraw filed a court motion, which said the State Department had agreed to begin handing over the records next month.

Business Insider reported that, in a letter to the presiding judge in the case, U.S. District Court Judge J. Paul Oetken, McGraw wrote: “The State Department has started identifying records responsive to The Times’s FOIA requests. It has agreed to begin processing records for production as it continues to identify the remaining responsive records.” “The parties are still negotiating the number of pages to be processed in and the frequency of each production. The parties respectfully propose to provide a status report to the Court on March 25, 2022, informing the Court of the results of this negotiation,” McGraw added. In addition, Vogel requested all records mentioning Tony Bobulinski, who made headlines in October 2020 when emails contained on Hunter Biden’s lap top were revealed.

It turned out that Hunter had introduced Bobulinski to now-President Joe Biden in a May 2017 meeting at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, California. He was to serve as CEO of SinoHawk Holdings LLC, a joint venture between the Biden family and Chinese energy company, CEFC. Bobulinski famously confirmed that “The Big Guy” referred to in one of the emails on the laptop, who was to receive 10 percent of the potential profits, was none other than Joe Biden. Vogel has also asked for all correspondence mentioning former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who, according to The New York Post, is alleged to have contributed $100,000 to a trust for Hunter’s children in April 2016 ahead of a meeting with then-Vice President Joe Biden to discuss “some very good and profitable matters.”

The Post published a screenshot of a July 2016 email in which Freeh wrote to Hunter, “I would be delighted to do future work with you.” Apparently, he was very delighted. [..] An October 2019 story published in The New York Times may provide a clue. Vogel wrote about Hunter Biden’s association with a Romanian executive who was facing corruption charges. The headline and lede read: “Giuliani Is Drawing Attention to Hunter Biden’s Work in Romania. But There’s a Problem. … Hunter Biden worked to help a Romanian executive facing corruption charges. But so did the former New York mayor — and a former F.B.I. director.” For whatever the reason, the State Department tried to slow-walk Vogel’s FOIA request, so much so that he was forced to file a lawsuit. We know that Hunter Biden has conducted business with the Chinese and the Ukrainians, but we’ve heard very little about his involvement with anyone in Romania.

Why now?

Media outlets dismissed The Hunter Biden story pic.twitter.com/p7UpA50Bse

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) March 19, 2022

“we will never forget who bombed our embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia”. “We need no lecture on justice from the abuser of international law..”

• Biden Boasted He Proposed NATO’s 78-Day Airstrikes On Belgrade (ZH)

Both Russian and Chinese media and state officials have in the last days been widely circulating a resurfaced video from 1999 wherein then senator Joe Biden bragged about being the first US official to propose bombing Belgrade and destroying the city’s infrastructure. State media in Russia wrote this week while featuring the footage: “The head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, reposted the footage on his social media account, reminding the current US President of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia that is estimated to have killed about 2,500 people, including 89 children.” Russian officials used the clip to blast Biden over his latest description of Vladimir Putin as a “war criminal” and “thug” due to the invasion of Ukraine. It’s also getting wide circulation on Chinese social media.

“I suggested bombing of Belgrade. I suggested that American pilots go there and destroy all bridges on the Drina,” Biden had said at the time. The 78 days of air strikes lasted from 24 March 1999 to 10 June 1999. The bombs kept falling even on Serbia’s Easter – called Pascha – which is the holiest day of the Orthodox Christian year. “I was suggesting very specific action,” Biden said while seeming to praise his own ‘muscular’ proposals which helped lead to the NATO war against the Serbs. China’s mission to the EU also called out prior US action over what was Yugoslavia, condemning the outrageous May NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy – which killed and injured multiple Chinese nationals and journalists.

According to a summary of the incident in The National Review, “Despite the seemingly extensive target vetting, on May 7 the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was struck by five Joint Directed Attack Munition satellite-guided bombs, delivered by U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit bombers. Three Chinese journalists—Shao Yunhuan of Xinhua, and Xu Xinghu and his wife Zhu Ying of the Guangming Daily—were killed in the attack. Twenty other Chinese nationals were injured, five seriously.” On Thursday China’s foreign ministry said in a statement “we will never forget” – and related it to Washington’s outrage over ongoing Russian military action in Ukraine:

The Chinese diplomatic mission in the European Union said on Thursday that Chinese people could fully relate to the suffering of other countries because “we will never forget who bombed our embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia”. “We need no lecture on justice from the abuser of international law,” it said. “As a Cold War remnant and the world’s largest military alliance, Nato continues to expand its geographical scope and range of operations. What kind of role has it played in world peace and stability? Nato needs to have good reflection.”

There’s a reason US oil(field) service companies operate in Russia, and their withdrawal may hurt Russia.

• Halliburton, Schlumberger Draw Back From Russia Amid US Energy Sanctions (R.)

U.S. oilfield services companies Halliburton Co and Schlumberger said on Friday they have suspended or halted Russia operations in response to U.S. sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The disclosures followed widespread departures by energy, retail and consumer goods businesses and a series of European Union and U.S. bans on providing oil technology to Russia or importing its energy products. Halliburton said it immediately suspended future business and would wind down its operations in Russia after earlier ending shipments of sanctioned parts and products to the country.

Schlumberger has ceased new investment and technology deployment while continuing with existing activity in compliance with international laws and sanctions, the company said in a statement late on Friday. “We urge a cessation of the conflict and a restoration of safety and security in the region,” Schlumberger Chief Executive Olivier Le Peuch said. Oilfield services provider Baker Hughes declined to comment on its Russia operations. Energy companies BP PLC, Shell, Equinor ASA and Exxon Mobil have suspended business or announced plans to exit their Russia operations.

“I fear he underestimates the intellect of the nation which did three-quarters of the fighting and dying to defeat fascism 77 years ago.”

• Defining Fascism (Tweedie)

What is fascism? With the Russian ‘de-Nazification operation’ in the Ukraine entering its fourth week and “Black Lives Matter” replaced with “I Stand With Ukraine” as the virtue-signal de jour, now seems like a good time to define it. While I’m a big fan of the Iranian journalist Ramin Mazaheri, I have to disagree with his latest article on The Vineyard of the Saker. Mazaheri says Russia misinterprets Nazism as simply Russophobia. I fear he underestimates the intellect of the nation which did three-quarters of the fighting and dying to defeat fascism 77 years ago. Rather than trying to suck the meaning of the word ‘fascism’ out of our thumbs, let us instead compare two well-known definitions by Georgi Dimitrov and Umberto Eco, a Marxist and a Liberal.

Eco, the Italian author of the historical whodunnit The Name Of the Rose, listed 14 different features in his 1995 essay Eternal Fascism. The problem is, none of them individually are proof that we’re living in a fascist state. Eco admits at the start: “These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism.” But he claims: “it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.” The first item on Eco’s list, ‘the cult of tradition’, is common to most ‘small-c’ social conservatives. The syncretism that Eco speaks of here is found in his own eclectic list. Points three to five, ‘action for action’s sake’, ‘disagreement is treason’ and ‘fear of difference’ are true of the dozens of Trotskyite and anarchist sects jumping on the Ukraine bandwagon.

Points six to eight, ‘appeal to a frustrated middle class’, an ‘obsession with a plot’ and the belief that their ‘enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak’ describe the US ‘Never Trumpers’ and British liberals still desperate to rejoin the European Union (EU). Nine and 11, ‘ life is lived for struggle’ and ‘everybody is educated to become a hero’ apply to the ‘woke’ millennials obsessed with their own perceived victimhood. Dimitrov, the Bulgarian general secretary of the Communist (Third) International, characterised fascism in a speech to the 7th Comintern congress in 1935 as: “the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”

“Fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital,” he elaborated. “Fascism is the power of finance capital itself. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia.”

Data scientist files internal appeal of Bank of Canada’s mandatory vaccination policy. 766-page submission cites more than 1000 peer-reviewed articles showing evidence of harm.

Joseph Hickey is also the OCLA’s (volunteer) ED.

• Data Scientist Files Internal Appeal Of Bank Of Canada Vaccination Policy (OCLA)

Dr. Joseph Hickey, a data scientist at the Bank of Canada (Canada’s central bank) was placed on unpaid leave without benefits by his employer in November 2021, for declining to receive injections of a COVID-19 vaccine. On March 16, 2022, Dr. Hickey submitted an internal appeal of the Bank’s decision. His 766-page submission describes and cites the scientific evidence that demonstrates there are many medical reasons for declining vaccination, including that:

• There was no emergency that caused large amounts of deaths in Canada in 2020-2021 that would justify vaccinating the entire population;
• There is no reliable evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine products provide any health benefit;
• Vaccine products injected via intramuscular routes are in-effect physiologically incapable of preventing infection and transmission of respiratory illnesses;
• There is autopsy, surveillance, and statistical evidence of grave dangers of COVID-19 vaccine products;
• There are more than 1000 peer-reviewed articles providing evidence of harm from COVID-19 vaccine products;
• There is a significantly increased risk of dangerous heart inflammation following injection with a COVID-19 vaccine product, especially for younger males, and this danger is heightened for those who engage in strenuous physical activity;
• Natural immunity provides robust and sufficient protection against respiratory illnesses; and
• It is a fundamental principle of medicine that individual assessment of risk is a personal and confidential choice and the decision to receive or not receive a medical intervention must be made with free and informed consent.

Better be fast: “..we may have only a decade, at most two, to prevent this digital dictatorship from taking over.”

• The Digital Dictatorship Is Coming — Can We Stop It? (Mercola)

According to Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the goal of The Fourth Industrial Revolution is to change what it means to be human by merging man and machine. In short, while the term “transhumanism” is not being used, that’s exactly where the global cabal intends to take us, willing or not. In a November 2019 interview with CNN, history professor and bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari, a Klaus Schwab disciple, warned that “humans are now hackable animals,” meaning, the technology now exists by which a company or government can know you better than you know yourself, and that can be very dangerous if misused.

He predicted that algorithms will increasingly be used to make decisions that historically have been made by humans, either yourself or someone else, including whether or not you’ll be hired for a particular job, whether you’ll be granted a loan, what scholastic curriculum you will follow and even who you will marry. There’s also an ever-increasing risk of being manipulated by these outside forces that you’re not even fully aware of. Looking back over the last two years, it’s rather easy to confirm that mass manipulation is taking place at a staggering scale and that it’s phenomenally effective. As noted by Harari in 2019, the available capabilities already go far beyond Orwell’s “1984” authoritarian vision, and it’s only going to become more powerful from here.

He’s certain that in short order, there will be the ability to monitor your emotional state through something as simple as a wearable wristband. You may dutifully smile and clap when listening to a speech by a government official, but they’ll know you’re angry or don’t agree with what’s being said, and could therefore take action against you based on your most personal, internal emotions rather than what you outwardly express. Importantly, Harari warned that if we allow the establishment of this kind of digital dictatorship, where the system, be it a corporation or a government, knows the most intimate details about each and every person, it will be impossible to dismantle it. Its control will be total and irreversible. And, Harari believes we may have only a decade, at most two, to prevent this digital dictatorship from taking over.

Subtle

pic.twitter.com/KEHiK4pU69

— john (@johnhackerla) March 19, 2022

Imperialism

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Debt Rattle March 10 2018

Mar 102018

March 10, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:26 am Finance Tagged with: Canada, doomsday vault, fascism, free trade, Kim, math, meddling, QE, QT, Trump, Ukraine, Xi 2 Responses »

Pablo Picasso The Roaster 1938

• Trump Tariffs Cause Massive Outflows From US Stocks – BofAML (R.)

• Trump-Kim Meeting Contingent On ‘Concrete Steps’ By North Korea (Ind.)

• What’s Coming Will Be Much Worse Than 2008 (Phoenix)

• 313k Jobs Added? Nice Try But It’s Fake News (IRD)

• QE Unwind Is Too Slow, Says Fed Governor, Thus Launching First Trial Balloon (WS)

• Forget About ‘Free Trade’ (CHS)

• Europe’s Most-Leveraged Stocks Surge (BBG)

• Cash May Disappear in China – PBOC (BBG)

• Canada, Ukraine and Fascism (Carley)

• Letter To America – An Opportunity And A Warning (RTB) /span>

• Xi Jinping Says China’s Political System Can Be A Model For The World (Qz)

• Countries Annoyed Russia Gets All The Credit For 2016 Election Meddling (Onion)

• A Warning Cry From the Doomsday Vault (BBG)

• West Way Behind Iran, Saudi Arabia When It Comes To Women In Science (Qz)

Really? Both the Dow and the S&P were up 1.75% yesterday.

• Trump Tariffs Cause Massive Outflows From US Stocks – BofAML (R.)

A marked shift toward protectionism by President Donald Trump caused sharp outflows from U.S. large-cap stocks this week, Bank of America Merrill-Lynch (BAML) strategists said on Friday. Investors rushed into government bonds and other safer assets amid rising fears of an international trade war after Trump’s plans for tariffs on imported steel and aluminum met barbed responses from allies and trade bodies. Overall, investors pulled money out of equities, though the damage was mostly in the United States where $10.3 billion flowed out of U.S. equity funds, while global equity funds suffered just $0.4 billion of outflows, according to EPFR data cited by BAML. “As QE ends, protectionism begins,” wrote BAML strategists.

The risk-off mood drove investors into money market funds, pushing assets up to $2.9 trillion – the highest level since 2010. Safe-haven gold also drew in $0.4 billion. U.S. small caps were sheltered from the storm, the only U.S. sector to draw inflows, albeit tiny at $0.03 billion. U.S. large-cap stocks lost $10.1 billion. Flows into Japanese equities continued apace, with the market drawing in $4.1 billion in its 14th straight week of inflows, the longest streak of inflows since 2013. European stock funds managed to draw in $0.1 billion. Trump’s exemption of Canada and Mexico from the final tariffs announced late on Thursday soothed investors somewhat, and news the U.S. president would meet with North Korean President Kim Jong Un caused crude prices to rise.

How can Kim say no?

• Trump-Kim Meeting Contingent On ‘Concrete Steps’ By North Korea (Ind.)

Vice President Mike Pence has said the US made “zero concessions” in order to get an invitation to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and talk about a possible end to Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme. Mr Pence said that President Donald Trump has “consistently increased the pressure” on North Korea, which has continued the development of its weapons – including an increasing number of missile tests in the last 12 months – despite numerous resolutions by the United Nations. Later at the White House, the press secretary made it clear that talks would only take place if Washington saw “concrete action” by North Korea towards denuclearisation. Mr Trump and Mr Kim are expected to meet before the end of May, although a date and location has yet to be set.

After months of escalating rhetoric between the nations the prospect of a thaw has been welcomed by world leaders. Ms Sanders said at a briefing on Friday that President Trump was “in a great mood” in the wake of the announcement, saying that the US was having conversations “from a position of strength” – with denuclearisation having always been the goal of the administration. It has taken many by surprise, including US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had said just hours before the announcement that the US was a “long ways from negotiations”. But, Mr Tillerson said the President made the decision to accept the invite “himself”, a move he said was a “dramatic” reversal in posture for North Korea.

“When a stock bubble bursts, investors lose money. When a sovereign bond bubble bursts, entire countries go bust..”

• What’s Coming Will Be Much Worse Than 2008 (Phoenix)

While everyone is “high fiving” over stocks holding up, the bond market is back to imploding. Already Treasury yields have bounced and are soaring higher in one of the nastiest breakouts in over 20 years.

In a world awash in too much debt (global Debt to GDP is over 300%) this is a MAJOR problem. Most investors believe that the 2008 Crisis was the worst crisis of their lifetimes. They’re mistaken… what’s coming down the pike when the Bond Bubble blows up will be many times worse than 2008. The reason is that bonds, not stocks, represent the bedrock of the financial system. When a stock bubble bursts, investors lose money. When a sovereign bond bubble bursts, entire countries go bust (a la Greece in 2010). On that note, I want to point out that bond yields are not just rising in the US… we’re seeing them spike in Germany, Japan, and others.

This is a truly global problem, and if Central Banks don’t move to get it control soon, we’re heading into a MAJOR crisis.

US jobs reports are meaningless. Maybe it’s time to recognize that before they blow up in your faces.

• 313k Jobs Added? Nice Try But It’s Fake News (IRD)

The census bureau does the data-gathering and the Bureau of Labor Statistics feeds the questionable data sample through its statistical sausage grinder and spits out some type of grotesque scatological substance. You know an economic report is pure absurdity when the report exceeds Wall Street’s rose-colored estimate by 53%. That has to be, by far, an all-time record-high “beat.” If you sift through some of the foul-smelling data, it turns out 365k of the alleged jobs were part-time, which means the labor market lost 52k full-time jobs. But alas, I loathe paying any credence to complete fiction by dissecting the “let’s pretend” report. The numbers make no sense. Why? Because the alleged data does not fit the reality of the real economy.

Retail sales, auto sales, home sales and restaurant sales have been declining for the past couple of months. So who would be doing the hiring? Someone pointed out that Coinbase has hired 500 people. But the retail industry has been laying off thousands this year. Given the latest industrial production and auto sales numbers, I highly doubt factories are doing anything with their workforce except reducing it. And if the job market is “so strong,” how comes wages are flat? In fact, adjusted for real inflation, real wages are declining. If the job market was robust, wages would be soaring. Speaking of which, IF the labor market was what the Government wants us to believe it is, the FOMC would tripping all over itself to hike the Fed Funds rate. And the rate-hikes would be in chunks of 50-75 basis points – not the occasional 0.25% rise.

Balloons in a bubble.

• QE Unwind Is Too Slow, Says Fed Governor, Thus Launching First Trial Balloon (WS)

So we have the first Fed Governor and member of the policy-setting FOMC who came out and said that the QE Unwind that began last October with baby steps isn’t fast enough. And because it’s so slow it may actually contribute to, rather than lower, the “financial imbalances.” In her speech, Kansas City Fed President Esther George pointed at the growth of the economy, the tightness in the labor market, the additional support the economy will get from consumers and companies as they spend or invest the tax cuts, etc., etc. And despite this growth, “the stance of monetary policy remains quite accommodative,” she said. She cited the federal funds rate – the overnight interest rate the Fed targets. The Fed’s current target range is 1.25% to 1.50%, which is “well below estimates of its longer-run value of around 3%,” she said.

The Fed would have to raise rates at least six more times of 25 basis points each, for a total of at least 1.5 percentage points, to bring the federal funds rate to around 3% and get back to neutral. If the Fed wanted to actually tighten after that, it would have to raise rates further. So far, so good. And then came her concerns about the Fed’s balance sheet. Under QE, the Fed acquired $1.7 trillion in Treasury securities and $1.78 trillion in mortgage-backed securities, for a total of about $3.5 trillion. After QE ended in October 2014, the Fed then maintained the levels by replacing maturing securities. But in October last year, it commenced the QE-Unwind and started to not replace some maturing securities. This has the effect of shrinking its balance sheet.

Just like the Fed “tapered” QE by phasing it out over the course of a year, it is also ramping up the QE-Unwind over the course of a year. But the pace of the QE-Unwind has been too slow, according to George – and this may be destabilizing the financial markets: “By the end of this year, however, only about a quarter of the increase to the Fed’s balance sheet resulting from the first round of large scale asset purchases will be unwound. These holdings of longer-term assets were intended to put downward pressure on longer term interest rates. Many investors responded, as would be expected, by purchasing riskier assets in a reach for higher yield. As a result, asset prices may have become distorted relative to the economic fundamentals.”

Free trade is a deception tool.

• Forget About ‘Free Trade’ (CHS)

The mobility of capital radically alters the simplistic 18th century view of free trade. In today’s world, trade can not be coherently measured as goods moving between nations, because capital from the importing nation owns the productive assets in the exporting nation. If Apple owns a factory (or joint venture) in China and collects virtually all the profits from the iGadgets produced there, this reality cannot be captured by the models of simple trade described by Ricardo. In today’s globalized version of “free trade,” mobile capital can arbitrage labor, currencies, interest rates, regulatory burdens and political favors by shifting between nations and assets. Trying to account for trade in the 18th century manner of goods shipped between nations is nonsensical when components come from a number of nations and profits flow not to the nation of origin but to the owners of capital.

[..] In a world dominated by mobile capital, mobile capital is the comparative advantage. Mobile capital can borrow billions of dollars (or equivalent) in one nation at low rates of interest and then use that money to outbid domestic capital for assets in another nation with few sources of credit. Mobile capital can overwhelm the local political system, buying favors and cutting deals, all with cash borrowed at near-zero interest rates. Mobile capital can buy up and exploit resources and cheap labor until the resource is depleted or competition cuts profit margins. At that point, mobile capital closes the factories, fires the employees and moves on. Where is the “free trade” in a world in which the comparative advantage is held by mobile capital?

And what gives mobile capital its essentially unlimited leverage? Central banks issuing trillions of dollars in nearly-free money to banks and other financial institutions that funnel the free cash to corporations and financiers, who can then roam the world snapping up assets and arbitraging global imbalances with nearly-free money. There’s nothing remotely “free” about trade based not on Ricardo’s simple concept of comparative advantage but on capital flows unleashed by central bank liquidity. The gains reaped by mobile capital flow to those who control mobile capital: global corporations, financiers and banks. No wonder labor’s share of the economy is stagnating across the globe while corporate profits reach unprecedented heights.

Until the last drop: “A lot of companies have been living off debt and their business model won’t apply to higher interest rates.”

• Europe’s Most-Leveraged Stocks Surge (BBG)

Investors shrugged off trade skirmishes and signals of fading monetary stimulus as they rewarded some of Europe’s most leveraged companies, putting the latter on track for their best weekly advance since December 2016. Stocks with the weakest balance sheets gained 4.5% this week, compared to 3.1% for their less-indebted counterparts, according to a Bloomberg analysis of Morgan Stanley data. Since these risky-debt companies were beaten up earlier in the year, they’re beginning to bounce back thanks to the risk-on rally, buoyed by largely positive earnings reports, said Hugh Cuthbert at SVM Asset Management. “Post the jitters that we saw at the start of February, they are more than likely to be beneficiaries”.

“The market appetite for risk will always benefit those guys when it’s high.” Still, it’s a small reprieve after they dropped more than 10% in the 25 trading days through last week. Even after the recent advance, shares of weak balance-sheet companies sit 7.7% below their January peak. The Morgan Stanley-compiled basket tracks 40 European companies with measures that include net debt to Ebitda and interest coverage ratios. The good times may be short-lived, however, as the ECB pares stimulus, said Cuthbert. “Look out, if we are in a tightening cycle,” he said. “A lot of companies have been living off debt and their business model won’t apply to higher interest rates.”

A control tool Beijing finds hard to resist. Predictably.

• Cash May Disappear in China – PBOC (BBG)

Just because China’s financial regulators are cracking down on cryptocurrencies doesn’t mean they’re souring on the idea of digital money. People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan made that clear at a press conference in Beijing on Friday, saying physical cash may one day become obsolete. Zhou said the PBOC is looking into digital currencies as it pursues faster, cheaper and more convenient payment methods, even as he warned that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin – more often used for speculation than payments – don’t serve the economy.

“We must prevent major mistakes that would lead to irreparable losses, so we are cautious,” Zhou said during what may be one of his last public appearances before his expected retirement. “We don’t like creating products for speculation and making people have the illusion that they can get rich overnight.” China, once home to the world’s most active Bitcoin exchanges, banned the venues last year amid a broad-ranging clampdown on virtual currencies. Yet the country is still the world leader in digital payments, thanks to the popularity of platforms developed by tech giants Alibaba and Tencent.

Ink black history.

• Canada, Ukraine and Fascism (Carley)

The most notorious of the Nazi collaborators who immigrated to Canada was Mykhailo Chomiak, a mid-level Nazi operative in Poland, who came under US protection at the end of the war and eventually made his way to Canada where he settled in Alberta. Had he been captured by the Red Army, he would quite likely have been hanged for collaboration with the enemy. In Canada however he prospered as a farmer. His grand-daughter is the “Ukrainian-Canadian” Chrystia Freeland, the present minister for external affairs. She is a well-known Russophobe, persona non grata in the Russian Federation, who long claimed her grandfather was a “victim” of World War II. Her claims to this effect have been demonstrated to be untrue by the Australian born journalist John Helmer, amongst many others.

In 1940 the Liberal government facilitated the creation of the Canadian Ukrainian Congress (UCC), one of many organisations used to fight or marginalise the left in Canada, in this case amongst Canadian Ukrainians. The UCC is still around and appears to dominate the Ukrainian-Canadian community. Approximately 1.4 million people living in Canada claim full or partial Ukrainian descent though generally the latter. Most “Ukrainian-Canadians” were born in Canada; well more than half live in the western provinces. The vast majority has certainly never set foot in the Ukraine. It is this constituency on which the UCC depends to pursue its political agenda in Ottawa.

After the coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014 the UCC lobbied the then Conservative government under Stephen Harper to support the Ukrainian “regime change” operation which had been conducted by the United States and European Union. The UCC president, Paul Grod, took the lead in obtaining various advantages from the Harper government, including arms for the putschist regime in Kiev. It survives only through massive EU and US direct or indirect financial/political support and through armed backing from fascist militias who repress dissent by force and intimidation. Mr. Grod claims that Russia is pursuing a policy of “aggression” against the Ukraine.

If that were true, the putschists in Kiev would have long ago disappeared. The Harper government allowed fund raising for Pravyi Sektor, a Ukrainian fascist paramilitary group, through two organisations in Canada including the UCC, and even accorded “charitable status” to one of them to facilitate their fund raising and arms buying. Harper also sent military “advisors” to train Ukrainian forces, the backbone of which are fascist militias. The Trudeau government has continued that policy. “Canada should prepare for Russian attempts to destabilize its democracy,” according to Minister Freeland: “Ukraine is a very important partner to Canada and we will continue to support its efforts for democracy and economic growth.”

“It is the US government and NATO, and the people who own and control them, who are the threats and the enemies to the future of Humanity.”

• Letter To America – An Opportunity And A Warning (RTB) /span>

There is no place that the US or NATO has gone into in the last 4 decades that is better off. Not one. In fact, there is no place that NATO or the US have intervened, (usually against international law) that hasn’t become a failed state, hell on Earth for the citizens, and a genuine danger to the surrounding regions and the world. It is the US government and NATO, and the people who own and control them, who are the threats and the enemies to the future of Humanity. But their days of disregarding international law and destroying weaker nations with impunity are now over, as of March 1st, 2018. The good people of America now have a huge opportunity, and a huge challenge. Russia spends less than one tenth what the USA spends on military and defense, but their military and weapons are superior in every measurable way.

The waste, corruption and abject venality of the US military industrial complex has wasted trillions on weapon systems that are now literally useless, and which have left the US military (and by extension the American people) defenseless before the power of Russia’s weapons, which are designed and produced to be effective rather than profitable. The opportunity is this – the USA can now reduce its military spending (the highest in the world) by 90% and still be safer than you are right now, spending almost a trillion dollars a year on useless weapons and a defenseless military. Safer, because as soon as the American People take control of their government enough to reduce your spending to ONLY as much as Russia spends, Russia will stop having reason to see the USA as an existential threat.

The less you spend, the safer you will be. The more you spend, the more likely World War Three, which will see you as the instigators and the losers. This gives the USA, starting as soon as you want, an extra $800 billion, per year, to spend on things that have actual worth, things you really need. Health care, free college education, fixing the rotting economy and infrastructure that are daily becoming more of a threat to the American people than Russia has ever been. Your challenge is that you must root out an entrenched and ruthless kleptocracy, built on deceit and oppression, and which is bent on war, and will stop at nothing to cling to its power. It is a huge task, an historic task, but in it lies your only hope. These parasites must be stopped, and if the American People are not up to the challenge, if they fail in their historic mission, they will leave it to the armies of the world, led by Russia, who will no longer tolerate those who want to rule the world.

So-called democracy is no better.

• Xi Jinping Says China’s Political System Can Be A Model For The World (Qz)

Chinese president Xi Jinping has repeatedly told the world that China is ready to lead on issues like free trade and climate change. Now, he’s ready to extend his leadership to political parties everywhere. At the big annual gathering of Chinese lawmakers and political advisors that kicked off March 3, Xi said that China is offering a “new type of political party system”—a Chinese solution that contributes to the development of political parties around the world, according to state media (link in Chinese). The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has always said the country will never copy the political systems of other countries, in particular the Western notion of democracy.

But under Xi—the most powerful Chinese leader in four decades—China’s own one-party system is one that is ready to be exported to regimes everywhere. The term “new type of political party system” was first put forward by Xi when he delivered a speech to non-party political advisors on March 4. It’s not the first time that Xi has floated the idea that China’s political model can make a contribution to the world. This time, however, Chinese state media churned out a wave of articles to underscore the significance of this new phrase. In the past, “some people lacking self-confidence always use Western political theories to criticize China’s political party system,” wrote Wang Xiaohong at the party-backed Central Institute of Socialism, in a commentary widely circulated by Chinese news outlets.

But as Wang argues, Western political systems are associated, among other things, with fractured societies, inefficient government, and “endless power transitions and social chaos” as in the countries of the former Soviet Union, and in north Africa after the Arab Spring. “The new type of political party system has overcome all sorts of problems that the old [one] can’t overcome,” Wang argued. In China, there are eight so-called “democratic parties” that are allowed to participate in the political system, but they are almost completely subservient to the CCP. Every year in March, members of the minor parties meet with their communist counterparts in Beijing to provide advice on everything from healthcare to poverty reduction—largely for show.

The system—called “multi-party cooperation and political consultation under the CCP’s leadership”—has been used as evidence that China is also a democracy. The internationalization of China’s political system is in fact well underway. Since 2014, the Communist Party has hosted an annual summit in Beijing inviting political party leaders from around the world to hear about how it governs China. In recent years, the party has also brought young African politicians to China for training, in a bid to cultivate allies.

About as valuable as what ‘serious’ press has to report.

• Countries Annoyed Russia Gets All The Credit For 2016 Election Meddling (Onion)

Complaining that U.S. investigations into foreign interference in the election have gotten almost everything wrong, officials from dozens of countries around the world expressed irritation Friday that all of the credit for meddling in the 2016 presidential race was going to Russia. Resentful operatives from Serbia, Uruguay, Swaziland, and 45 other nations said they were incredibly annoyed that Kremlin-backed computer hackers and dark-money financiers were receiving all the media attention, while their own far superior efforts to undermine the U.S. electoral process had so far received no recognition at all.

“Do you have any idea how much more sophisticated our attacks on American democracy were than Russia’s?” Laotian president Bounnhang Vorachith said of his government’s efforts to spread misinformation about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton on social media sites. “We spent millions building a sophisticated bot network that could craft false but believable stories portraying Trump in a good light. And it worked! It’s unbelievably frustrating to pull off something like that and then have all the glory go to someone else.” “Do you really think Russia could’ve hacked into [Clinton campaign chairman] John Podesta’s emails?” Vorachith continued. “Hell no. That was Laos.”

According to sources, every time the American media credits Russian oligarchs with funding election-tampering efforts, numerous foreign agents across the globe throw up their arms and storm out of the room, infuriated because Costa Rican and Nepalese money launderers reportedly did far more to finance such initiatives. These agents have also been known to toss aside newspapers in anger, shouting that Mongolia’s work busing thousands of people with dead voters’ names to cast ballots for Clinton in New Hampshire was more deserving of attention than anything Russia had accomplished.

A bit more attention might go a long way.

• A Warning Cry From the Doomsday Vault (BBG)

On this winter day, the world was upside down: it was raining in the Arctic Circle and snowing in Rome. The contradiction was not lost on those gathered at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located near the top of the world. The scientists, activists, executives and government officials were in Longyearbyen, to mark the 10-year anniversary of what has become known as the Doomsday Vault, which stores seeds of the world’s most important crops deep in a mountain against the apocalyptic consequences of climate change and war. The challenge they’re facing now is that the climate is changing far quicker than they’d imagined. The facility sprung a leak last year after construction had failed to take into account that the permafrost could melt.

Norway is now spending about $20 million to secure and improve the facility. But it’s not just the building. “Biodiversity is the building block to develop new plants and because of climate change we’re in a terrible need to quickly develop new varieties,” said Aaslaug Marie Haga, executive director of Crop Trust, a group established to support gene banks. “The climate is changing quicker than the plants can handle.” Svalbard is the farthest north one can travel commercially, about an 1 1/2 hour flight from northern Norway. The vault is about a 10 minute drive from town, past a coal-fired power plant and up a winding two-lane road. Unless armed with a high-caliber rifle, driving is essential, since leaving town also means venturing into polar bear country.

The site’s entrance, not far from the abandoned coal mine that served as the first Nordic seed vault, shines at night like a green beacon, lit up by an artwork of fiber optics, steel and glass called Perpetual Repercussion. The seeds are kept at minus 18 centigrade (-4 Fahrenheit) more than 100 meters into the mountain behind six steel doors. And in an ideal world, the vault would never have to be used. It’s meant to back up the plant gene banks around the world, organized under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. But many of these facilities are vulnerable. One withdrawal from Svalbard has already been made by the group that ran the seed bank in Aleppo, Syria.

Math as a female field. Nice.

• West Way Behind Iran, Saudi Arabia When It Comes To Women In Science (Qz)

In Iran, nearly 70% of university graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are women—a higher percentage than in any other country. Nearby Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are close, each boasting over 60% female graduates in science, still more of the rest of the world. Young women in science are the rule, not the exception, in the Middle East. At least a third of STEM trained talent across the Muslim world is female, writes Saadia Zahidi in her new book Fifty Million Rising, which tracks the workplace progress achieved by Muslim women since the turn of the century. Only in Jordan, Qatar and the UAE are girls more comfortable with math than boys.

“The Muslim world has put high investment in education, and the payoff is coming now,” argues Zahidi, a World Economic Forum executive who leads education and gender equality initiatives. While observant Muslim societies are often associated with strict social codes for men and women, Western gender stereotypes about work don’t necessarily apply: Several Muslim countries have filled more than half of STEM jobs with female workers. Zahidi adds that in many cases, Muslim women are pioneering their role in the workforce, so they don’t have preconceived stereotypes about whether tech jobs, for example, constitute “feminine” career goals.

A study published in February found that the social and political gender equality typical of Scandinavian countries may be inversely related to women’s representation in STEM fields. This could be in part due to the fact that countries with greater parity between sexes tend to be wealthier, providing better government support to citizens and allowing women to accept less secure jobs.

Catalonia and other Disasters

Oct 012017

October 1, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 2:02 pm Finance Tagged with: Catalonia, democracy, EU, fascism, FEMA, Franco, Puerto Rico, Rajoy, Trump 9 Responses »

Catalunya October 1 2017

I’ve seen a lot of videos and photos of the Catalonia attempt to hold a referendum today (Tyler has a “nice” series of them), and what struck me most of all, apart from the senseless violence police forces were seen to engage in, is the lack of violence on the side of protesters.

So when I see the Interior Ministry claim that 11 policemen were injured, That is hard to take serious. Not that the Catalans had no reason to resist or even fight back. That hundreds of protesters, including scores of grandma’s, are injured is obvious from watching the videos. Since rubber bullets were used in large numbers, fatal injuries are quite possible.

Policemen hitting peaceful older ladies till they bleed is shocking, and we are all shocked. Many of us will be surprised too, but we shouldn’t be. Spain is still the land of Franco, and his followers continue to exert great influence in politics, police and military. And it’s not just them: one video from Madrid showed people singing a fascist theme from the Franco era.

That’s the shape the EU knowingly accepted Spain as a member in, and that shape has hardly changed since. The total silence from Brussels, and from all its capitals, speaks volumes. Belgian PM Michel said earlier today that he doesn’t want to talk about other countries’ politics, and that’s more than I’ve seen anyone else say. It’s of course a piece of gross cowardly nonsense, both Michel’s statement and the silence from all others.

Because this very much concerns the EU. As Julian Assange tweeted “Dear @JunckerEU. Is this “respect for human dignity, freedom and democracy”? Activate article 7 and suspend Spain from the European Union for its clear violation of Article 2.” (Article 7 of the European Union Treaty: “Suspension of any Member State that uses military force on its own population.”) Sure, technically the Guardia Civil is not military, but are Juncker, Michel and above all Merkel really going to try and hide behind that?

Assange also re-tweeted this: “Claude Taylor Breaking: contact with Ecuadorian Govt says they plan on removing Julian Assange from their Embassy in London. Expect his arrest to follow.” Assange’s reaction: “DC based ex-White House claims I’m to be arrested for reporting on Spain’s censorship & arrests in Catalonia. Dirty.”

But that should not be a surprise either. We know from the example of Greece, and the treatment of refugees, what the morals of Europe’s ‘leaders’ are. Their morals are bankrupt. In that sense, they fit in seamlessly with those of Mariano Rajoy’s governing PP party in Spain.

Still, this is not why people want to be part of the EU. So unless very strong statements come from the various capitals, and very soon, given that they’re already way too late, the EU as a whole will find itself in such a deep crisis it might as well pack its bags and go home. Wherever home may be for these career politicians.

If you’re void of any and all ethics and morals, which is what that silence shouts out very loudly, you can’t lay any claim at all to the right to make decisions for anyone at all. That is true for Rajoy and his party, and it’s just as true for all other deadly silent European leaders.

And this is by no means over, it hasn’t started yet. Here’s a map of close vs open polling stations in Catalonia, via Assange. ‘Nuff said. What will Rajoy’s next move be? Locking up everyone? The entire Catalan governing party that organized the referendum? Make no mistake: the Spanish military have long threatened they would destroy Catalonia before allowing it independence.

Catalan polling stations. Green=open. Red=closed

Philosopher Anna M. Hennessey, who has lived in both Spain and in Catalonia, put it this way:

Franco was victorious and did not lose his war, as Hitler and Mussolini lost theirs, but this must not mean that we should let the dictator’s toxic ideological infrastructure persist any further into the twenty-first century. Supporting Catalonia is a necessary step in putting an end to fascism in Europe.

When Fascism Won’t Die: Why We Need to Support Catalonia

People in the United States, especially those from the 1980s onward, know little of Spain’s Civil War (1936-1939) and the long dictatorship that followed. This knowledge is helpful in understanding the situation in Spain and Catalonia right now. The judge (Ismael Moreno) who is set to decide on sedition charges against Catalan activists for attempting to hold a democratic referendum on October 1st, for example, has roots that are deeply connected to Francisco Franco (1892-1975), the military leader who initiated the Civil War, won it, and then went on to rule as Head of State and dictator in Spain for almost forty years.

Franco is a major figure of twentieth-century fascism in Europe. A purge of Francoist government officials never took place when the dictatorship ended in the 1970s, and this leadership has had a lasting impact on how Spain’s government makes its decisions about Catalonia, a region traumatized during and after the war due to its resistance to Franco’s regime. The lingering effects of Franco’s legacy are at this point well-documented and need to be a part of the discourse that surrounds what is quickly unraveling in Barcelona.

[..] Like the Spanish government, the Spanish police force was never purged of its Francoist ties following the dictatorship. It is a deeply corrupt institution [..] Manuel Fraga Iribarne, one of Franco’s ministers during the dictatorship, founded Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party. The party is currently enmeshed in a corruption scandal of its own. Spain’s royal family is similarly linked to Franco and has also been brought to trial for its own set of corruption charges. It is impossible to ignore the fascist bedrock upon which modern Spain is founded, or to ignore the reality that this foundation has to do with the way Spain treats Catalonia.

And so we can see the dream of a united Europe die. At least one that most people will feel comfortable living in. And if you can’t achieve that, why have a union to begin with? Democracy in Europe is dying in Brussels, it’s dying in Greece and the Mediterranean, and it died today in the streets of Barcelona and other Catalan locations.

Are all Europeans simply going to sit back and wait till it dies where they live, too? My bet is they will only do that until they no longer see the EU as economically beneficial to them. And as of today, because of Catalunya, economics will no longer be the only consideration. Because Spain will not be thrown out, not even suspended. There will be lots of empty strong words, but not all Europeans are all that stupid.

Barcelona mayor Ada Colau has called for Rajoy to resign, but she knows as well as anyone that that will not be enough, and it won’t change a thing. Rajoy is merely one representative of a fascist system that is the underbelly of Spain, waiting for its opportunity to raise its ugly head. It’s found that opportunity today, and the whole world is silent. Well, the ‘leaders’ are.

And while we’re talking disaster, I can’t help myself from briefly addressing Puerto Rico. The anti-Trump echo chamber is louder than ever, and it’s getting absurd. I can’t see what part of it is Trump’s doing, and what is due to other sources, but it simply seems not true that help is not moving forward. In a destruction as complete as Puerto Rico, there are limits to what can be done in a limited amount of time.

All the criticism of Trump at some point becomes criticism of other people involved as well. The mayor of San Juan gets lauded as a hero in certain circles, but is she really? How about the US military, how about FEMA? They look to be doing a good job, and FEMA seems to have learned a lot from Katrina 12 years ago.

Again, I don’t know how much of that is Trump, but if I may be cynical, he’s smart enough to know how his response could or would be used against him, so he would be really thick if he let the situation get worse than it should be. Earlier today Cate Long, an expert on Puerto Rico due to its debt fiasco, and hence with a lot of contacts there, tweeted:

“Federal govt has leapfrogged Puerto Rico govt & made direct connection with 78 municipalities. Central to powerful supply chain & relief.”

While the Huffington Post, not exactly Trump cheerleaders, posted this:

US Military On Puerto Rico: “The Problem Is Distribution”

Speaking today exclusively and live from Puerto Rico, is Puerto Rican born and raised, Colonel Michael A. Valle (”Torch”), Commander, 101st Air and Space Operations Group, and Director of the Joint Air Component Coordination Element, 1st Air Force, responsible for Hurricane Maria relief efforts in the U.S. commonwealth with a population of more than 3 million.

Since the ‘apocalyptic’ Cat 4 storm tore into the spine of Puerto Rico on September 20, Col. Valle has been both duty and blood bound to help. Col. Valle is a firsthand witness of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) response supporting FEMA in Puerto Rico, and as a Puerto Rican himself with family members living in the devastation, his passion for the people is second to none. “It’s just not true,” Col. Valle says of the major disconnect today between the perception of a lack of response from Washington verses what is really going on on the ground.

[..] some truck drivers from outside the island have been brought in, and more are coming, however it’s not a fix-all. “We get more and more offers to help, but there is no where to stay, we can’t take any more bodies, there’s no where to put them.” Col. Valle says, adding that their “air mobility” is good, and reiterating that getting more supplies or manpower is not the issue. When asked three times what else Washington can do to help, or anyone for that matter, three times Col. Valle answered, “It’s going to take time.”

Maybe it’s time to exit your echo chamber?

Debt Rattle October 1 2017

Oct 012017

October 1, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:41 am Finance Tagged with: Catalonia, credit freeze, fascism, financialization, Fukushima, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, Trump Comments Off

Edward Hopper Nighthawks 1942

• US Military On Puerto Rico: “The Problem Is Distribution” (HP)

• When Fascism Won’t Die: Why We Need to Support Catalonia (CP)

• David Stockman: Stocks Are Heading For 40-70% Plunge (CNBC)

• The Financialization of America… and Its Discontents

• The US Economy is Failing (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Debt-Slave Industry Frets over Impact of Mass Credit Freezes (WS)

• Hong Kong Economy Most At Risk Of Financial Crisis – Nomura (BBG)

• S&P Says China’s Debt Will Grow 77% by 2021 (BBG)

• China Cuts Reserve Requirements To Boost Lending To Small Firms (R.)

• Fukushima Potentially Leaking Radioactive Water For 5 Months (RT)

An appeal from Puerto Rico via Nicole:

Hurricane Maria destroyed many of Puerto Rico’s local seed and organic food-producing farm crops. Please, if you can, send me seeds. Even fruit seed for the tropics – I can plant them quickly. I will hand them out to those in need – as well as start flats in order to jumpstart their crops. Thank you!

Mara Nieves
PO BOX 9020931
Old San Juan, PR
00901-0931

Just dumping another 10,000 people on the island is not the (whole) answer. Too many people criticize too easily. Time to leave the echo chamber. If HuffPo can do it, so can you.

“As a Puerto Rican, I can tell you that the problem has nothing to do with the U.S. military, FEMA, or the DoD.”

• US Military On Puerto Rico: “The Problem Is Distribution” (HuffPo)

Speaking today exclusively and live from Puerto Rico, is Puerto Rican born and raised, Colonel Michael A. Valle (”Torch”), Commander, 101st Air and Space Operations Group, and Director of the Joint Air Component Coordination Element, 1st Air Force, responsible for Hurricane Maria relief efforts in the U.S. commonwealth with a population of more than 3 million. Since the ‘apocalyptic’ Cat 4 storm tore into the spine of Puerto Rico on September 20, Col. Valle has been both duty and blood bound to help. Col. Valle is a firsthand witness of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) response supporting FEMA in Puerto Rico, and as a Puerto Rican himself with family members living in the devastation, his passion for the people is second to none. “It’s just not true,” Col. Valle says of the major disconnect today between the perception of a lack of response from Washington verses what is really going on on the ground.

“I have family here. My parents’ home is here. My uncles, aunts, cousins, are all here. As a Puerto Rican, I can tell you that the problem has nothing to do with the U.S. military, FEMA, or the DoD.” “The aid is getting to Puerto Rico. The problem is distribution. The federal government has sent us a lot of help; moving those supplies, in particular, fuel, is the issue right now,” says Col. Valle. Until power can be restored, generators are critical for hospitals and shelter facilities and more. But, and it’s a big but, they can’t get the fuel to run the generators. They have the generators, water, food, medicine, and fuel on the ground, yet the supplies are not moving across the island as quickly as they’re needed.

“It’s a lack of drivers for the transport trucks, the 18 wheelers. Supplies we have. Trucks we have. There are ships full of supplies, backed up in the ports, waiting to have a vehicle to unload into. However, only 20% of the truck drivers show up to work. These are private citizens in Puerto Rico, paid by companies that are contracted by the government,” says Col. Valle. Put another way, 80% of truck drivers do not show up to work, and yet again, it’s important to understand why. “There should be zero blame on the drivers. They can’t get to work, the infrastructure is destroyed, they can’t get fuel themselves, and they can’t call us for help because there’s no communication. The will of the people of Puerto Rico is off the charts. The truck drivers have families to take care of, many of them have no food or water. They have to take care of their family’s needs before they go off to work, and once they do go, they can’t call home,” explains Col. Valle.

[..] some truck drivers from outside the island have been brought in, and more are coming, however it’s not a fix-all. “We get more and more offers to help, but there is no where to stay, we can’t take any more bodies, there’s no where to put them.” Col. Valle says, adding that their “air mobility” is good, and reiterating that getting more supplies or manpower is not the issue. When asked three times what else Washington can do to help, or anyone for that matter, three times Col. Valle answered, “It’s going to take time.”

The footage this morning from Catalonia is horrifying.

• When Fascism Won’t Die: Why We Need to Support Catalonia (CP)

People in the United States, especially those from the 1980s onward, know little of Spain’s Civil War (1936-1939) and the long dictatorship that followed. This knowledge is helpful in understanding the situation in Spain and Catalonia right now. The judge (Ismael Moreno) who is set to decide on sedition charges against Catalan activists for attempting to hold a democratic referendum on October 1st, for example, has roots that are deeply connected to Francisco Franco (1892-1975), the military leader who initiated the Civil War, won it, and then went on to rule as Head of State and dictator in Spain for almost forty years. Franco is a major figure of twentieth-century fascism in Europe. A purge of Francoist government officials never took place when the dictatorship ended in the 1970s, and this leadership has had a lasting impact on how Spain’s government makes its decisions about Catalonia, a region traumatized during and after the war due to its resistance to Franco’s regime.

The lingering effects of Franco’s legacy are at this point well-documented and need to be a part of the discourse that surrounds what is quickly unraveling in Barcelona. Over the past week, Spain’s military body, the Guardia Civil, has forcibly taken control of the Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s own police force. It has also detained government officials, closed multiple websites, and ordered seven hundred Catalan mayors to appear in court. Ominously, Spanish police from all over the country have traveled up to Barcelona or are en route to the Catalan capital, holing up in three giant cruise ships, two anchored in the city’s port, one in the port of nearby Tarragona. They are doing this at a time when Spain is on high alert for terrorist attacks, removing their police forces from numerous regions that could be in danger of attack, including Madrid, in preparation to stop Catalan people from putting pieces of paper into voting boxes.

Like the Spanish government, the Spanish police force was never purged of its Francoist ties following the dictatorship. It is a deeply corrupt institution [..] Manuel Fraga Iribarne, one of Franco’s ministers during the dictatorship, founded Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party. The party is currently enmeshed in a corruption scandal of its own. Spain’s royal family is similarly linked to Franco and has also been brought to trial for its own set of corruption charges. It is impossible to ignore the fascist bedrock upon which modern Spain is founded, or to ignore the reality that this foundation has to do with the way Spain treats Catalonia.

No tax reform, says Stockman.

• David Stockman: Stocks Are Heading For 40-70% Plunge (CNBC)

David Stockman is warning about the Trump administration’s tax overhaul plan, Federal Reserve policy, saying they could play into a severe stock market sell-off. Stockman, the Reagan administration’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, isn’t stepping away from his thesis that the 8 1/2-year-old rally is in serious danger. “There is a correction every seven to eight years, and they tend to be anywhere from 40 to 70%,” Stockman said recently on CNBC’s “Futures Now.” “If you have to work for a living, get out of the casino because it’s a dangerous place.” He’s made similar calls, but they haven’t materialized. In June, Stockman told CNBC the S&P 500 could easily fall to 1,600, which at the time represented a 34% drop. This week, the index was trading at record levels above 2,500. Stockman puts a big portion of the blame on the Federal Reserve, and its ultra-loose monetary policy.

“This is a bubble created by the Fed,” he said. “We’re heading for higher yields. We are heading for a huge reset of pricing in the risk markets that’s been based on ultra-cheap yields that the central banks of the world created that are now going to go away because they’re telling you that they’re done.” At the height of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, the S&P 500 Index plummeted as much as 58%. It happened in March 2009. “This market at 24 times GAAP earnings, 21 times operating earnings, 100 months into a business expansion with the kind of troubles you have in Washington, central banks [are] going to the sidelines,” he said. “There’s very little reward, and there’s a heck of a lot of risk.” Stockman argued that President Donald Trump’s business-friendly tax reform bill, which was unveiled Wednesday, won’t prevent a damaging sell-off.

He previously said Wall Street is “delusional” for believing it will even be passed. “This is a fiscal disaster that when they [Wall Street] begin to look at it, they’ll see it’s not even remotely paid for. This bill will go down for the count,” said Stockman. He said White House economic advisor Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin “totally failed to provide any detail, any leadership, any plan. Both of them ought to be fired because they let down the president in a major, major way.” And, it’s not just Washington dysfunction and Fed policy that could ultimately make Stockman’s long-held bearish prediction a reality. He says there will be a catalyst, but it’s unknown exactly what it will be. “You get a black swan in the old days, or maybe you get an orange swan now, the one in the Oval Office who can’t seem to stop tweeting and distracting the whole process from accomplishing anything,” Stockman said of President Donald Trump.

Koyaanisqatsi. “..capital and profits flow to the scarcities created by asymmetric access to information, leverage and cheap credit — the engines of financialization.”

• The Financialization of America… and Its Discontents

Labor’s share of the national income is in freefall as a direct result of the optimization of financialization. The Achilles Heel of our socio-economic system is the secular stagnation of earned income, i.e. wages and salaries. Stagnating wages undermine every aspect of our economy: consumption, credit, taxation and perhaps most importantly, the unspoken social contract that the benefits of productivity and increasing wealth will be distributed widely, if not fairly. This chart shows that labor’s declining share of the national income is not a recent problem, but a 45-year trend: despite occasional counter-trend blips, labor (earnings from labor/ employment) has seen its share of the economy plummet regardless of the political or economic environment.

Given the gravity of the consequences of this trend, mainstream economists have been struggling to explain it, as a means of eventually reversing it. The explanations include automation, globalization/offshoring, the high cost of housing, a decline of corporate competition (i.e. the dominance of cartels and quasi-monopolies), a failure of our educational complex to keep pace, stagnating gains in productivity, and so on. Each of these dynamics may well exacerbate the trend, but they all dodge the dominant driver of wage stagnation and rise income-wealth inequality: our economy is optimized for financialization, not labor/earned income. What does our economy is optimized for financialization mean? It means that capital and profits flow to the scarcities created by asymmetric access to information, leverage and cheap credit — the engines of financialization.

Financialization funnels the economy’s rewards to those with access to opaque financial processes and information flows, cheap central bank credit and private banking leverage. Together, these enable financiers and corporations to get the borrowed capital needed to acquire and consolidate the productive assets of the economy, and commoditize those productive assets, i.e. turn them into financial instruments that can be bought and sold on the global marketplace. Labor’s share of the national income is in freefall as a direct result of the optimization of financialization. Meanwhile, the official policy goal of the Federal Reserve and other central banks is to generate 3% inflation annually. Put another way: the central banks want to lower the purchasing power of their currencies by 33% every decade.

In other words, those with fixed incomes that don’t keep pace with inflation will have lost a third of their income after a decade of central bank-engineered inflation. But in an economy in which wages for 95% of households are stagnant for structural reasons, pushing inflation higher is destabilizing. There is a core structural problem with engineering 3% annual inflation. Those whose income doesn’t keep pace are gradually impoverished, while those who can notch gains above 3% gradually garner the lion’s share of the national income and wealth.

“Unless Robots pay payroll taxes, the financing for Social Security and Medicare will collapse. And it goes on down from there.”

• The US Economy is Failing (Paul Craig Roberts)

Americans carry on by accumulating debt and becoming debt slaves. Many can only make the minimum payment on their credit card and thus accumulate debt. The Federal Reserve’s policy has exploded the prices of financial assets. The result is that the bulk of the population lacks discretionary income, and those with financial assets are wealthy until values adjust to reality. As an economist I cannot identify in history any economy whose affairs have been so badly managed and prospects so severely damaged as the economy of the United States of America. In the short/intermediate run policies that damage the prospects for the American work force benefit what is called the One Percent as jobs offshoring reduces corporate costs and financialization transfers remaining discretionary income in interest and fees to the financial sector.

But as consumer discretionary incomes disappear and debt burdens rise, aggregate demand falters, and there is nothing left to drive the economy. What we are witnessing in the United States is the first country to reverse the development process and to go backward by giving up industry, manufacturing, and tradable professional skill jobs. The labor force is becoming Third World with lowly paid domestic service jobs taking the place of high-productivity, high-value added jobs. The initial response was to put wives and mothers into the work force, but now even many two-earner families experience stagnant or falling material living standards. New university graduates are faced with substantial debts without jobs capable of producing sufficient income to pay off the debts.

Now the US is on a course of travelling backward at a faster rate. Robots are to take over more and more jobs, displacing more people. Robots don’t buy houses, furniture, appliances, cars, clothes, food, entertainment, medical services, etc. Unless Robots pay payroll taxes, the financing for Social Security and Medicare will collapse. And it goes on down from there. Consumer spending simply dries up, so who purcheses the goods and services supplied by robots? To find such important considerations absent in public debate suggests that the United States will continue on the country’s de-industrialization, de-manufacturing trajectory.

Tricks to keep credit flowing.

• Debt-Slave Industry Frets over Impact of Mass Credit Freezes (WS)

“Let’s face it, 143 million frauds won’t be perpetrated right away; it will take some time to filter through,” Steve Bowman, chief credit and risk officer at GM Financial, the auto-lending subsidiary of General Motors, told Reuters. He was talking about the consequences of the Equifax hack during which the most crucial personal data, including Social Security numbers, of 143 million American consumers along with equivalent data of Canadian and British consumers, had been stolen. These consumers have all at once become very vulnerable to all kinds of fraud, including identity theft – where a fraudster borrows money in their name. The day Equifax disclosed the hack, I urged affected consumers to put a credit freeze on their credit data at the three major credit bureaus — Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian — to protect themselves against these frauds.

Soon, the largest media outlets and state attorneys general urged consumers to do the same thing. Financial advisors are recommending it. Even Wells Fargo jumped on the credit freeze bandwagon. As a result, consumers have flooded the websites of the three credit bureaus to request credit freezes in such numbers that the sites slowed down, timed out, or went down entirely for periods of time. This credit freeze frenzy is scaring the credit industry – not just the credit bureaus, but also lenders and companies that rely on easy credit to sell their wares, such as automakers and department stores with instant credit cards. With a credit freeze in place, those consumers cannot be approved for new credit until they lift the credit freeze, which can take up to three business days. The time and extra hoops to jump through before applying for a new loan might deter consumers from buying that car at the spur of the moment.

No one knows how this is going to turn out – and how it will impact the debt-based consumer economy. But fears are mounting. If just 10% of 324 million folks in the US put a credit freeze on their data, the credit industry will feel the impact painfully. Hence the efforts to contain the fallout. On Wednesday, an apology by the interim CEO of Equifax, Paulino do Rego Barros Jr. – he succeeded CEO Richard Smith, who’d been sacked – concluded with tidbits of a service Equifax is hoping to roll out by January 31. It would allow “all consumers the option of controlling access to their personal credit data.” It would allow them to “easily lock and unlock access to their Equifax credit files.” This is going to be “simple,” and “free for life.”

This “credit lock” or whatever Equifax wants to call it is not a “credit freeze.” TransUnion is offering a similar service. Credit freezes are covered by state law, and credit bureaus have to conform to state law. With these “credit locks” credit bureaus can do whatever they want to, and consumers will have to read the fine print to figure out what that is and how well a “credit lock” will protect them. But those credit locks offer the credit industry a huge advantage over a credit freeze: They can be designed to be lifted instantly. And this is a sign of how frazzled the credit industry, including the lenders, are becoming, about the credit freezes.

Interesting methodology.

• Hong Kong Economy Most At Risk Of Financial Crisis – Nomura (BBG)

Hong Kong is the economy most at risk of suffering a financial crisis, with China the second most vulnerable, according to the latest update of an early warning system devised by Nomura. The findings don’t mean there will be a crisis. “It’s not a purely scientific approach that is very precise,” Singapore-based analyst Rob Subbaraman said by phone on Friday. “It doesn’t mean that indicators are always accurate or that because they have worked in the past they will work in the future.” Subbaraman developed the system along with fellow analyst Michael Loo using data going back to the early 1990s. The findings show that emerging markets are more prone than developed markets, and that Asia ex-Japan is the region that is most at risk.

The analysts selected five indicators that flash a signal of a financial crisis happening in the next 12 quarters when they breach set thresholds:
* Corporate and household credit to GDP
* The corporate and household debt-service ratio
* The real effective exchange rate
* Real — or adjusted for inflation — property prices
* Real equity prices

The latest update covers the 12 quarters up to and including the first three months of this year. As there are five indicators, each of the countries studied can have a maximum of 60 signals. Hong Kong has the most signals, 52 — higher than during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. China’s total fell to 40 from 41 in the previous update that covered the period up to the fourth quarter of 2016. “Hong Kong looks to be well in the danger zone,” Subbaraman and Loo wrote in the note. They described the decline in China’s total — the first drop since its number of flashing indicators started a steep ascent from zero in the first quarter of 2013 — as encouraging. “Nonetheless, China is still in the danger zone and without further efforts to drain its credit and property excesses, it will be difficult to arrest the trend slowdown in growth.”

Chinese reality. Shadow banks and local government financing vehicles.

• S&P Says China’s Debt Will Grow 77% by 2021 (BBG)

China’s total debt could rise 77% to $46 trillion by 2021, and its push to rein in heavy corporate borrowing has had “only tentative results so far,” S&P Global Ratings said. While the pace of debt expansion is slowing, it still exceeds economic growth, implying that high credit risks could still “incrementally increase,” the rating company said in a report Friday. “Recent intensification of government efforts to rein in corporate leverage could stabilize the trend of financial risks over the next few years,” credit analyst Christopher Lee wrote. “But we still foresee that credit growth will remain at levels that will gradually increase financial stress.” S&P last week cut China’s sovereign credit rating for the first time since 1999, citing the risks from soaring debt, and revised its outlook to stable from negative.

The Finance Ministry responded that the analysis ignores the country’s sound economic fundamentals and that the government is fully capable of maintaining financial stability. In a separate report Friday, S&P said China’s push to rein in corporate borrowing likely hasn’t produced lasting results because it lacks specific targets and time frames for cuts. Corporate debt, including local government financing vehicles, rose 5% last year to $14.5 trillion and is the highest among large economies at 134% of GDP, S&P said. State-owned enterprises are the heaviest borrowers, S&P said, adding that a focus on maintaining stability contributes to cautious policy making and a bias toward a status quo that prioritizes economic growth.

SOEs produce a fifth of economic output while taking out 40% of the bank loans, and they’re less profitable than private counterparts with double the overall debt leverage ratio, S&P said. “Without bold actions, China’s corporate deleveraging aims won’t be met in the next one to two years,” Lee wrote. “China allows moral hazards to persist by providing implicit or even direct support to highly indebted SOEs.

Caution to the wind!

• China Cuts Reserve Requirements To Boost Lending To Small Firms (R.)

China’s central bank on Saturday cut the amount of cash that some banks must hold as reserves for the first time since February 2016 in a bid to encourage more lending to struggling smaller firms and energize its lackluster private sector. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said on its website that it would cut the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) for some banks that meet certain requirements for lending to small business and the agricultural sector. The PBOC said the move was made to support the development of “inclusive” financial services. The reserve requirement rate will be cut a further 50 bps to 150 bps from the benchmark RRR rate for banks that meet certain requirements for lending to the targeted sectors, the PBOC said. China’s cabinet had in late September flagged a possible move, saying the government will take a number of measures, including tax exemptions and targeted reserve requirement ratio cuts to encourage banks to support small businesses.

Slow death.

• Fukushima Potentially Leaking Radioactive Water For 5 Months (RT)

The Fukushima nuclear power plant may have been leaking radioactive water since April, its owner has admitted. Tokyo Electric Power Company said on Thursday that a problem with monitoring equipment means it can’t be sure if radiation-contaminated water leaked from the reactor buildings damaged in the 2011 nuclear disaster which was sparked by an earthquake and tsunami, the Japan Times reports. The company said there were errors on the settings of six indicators monitoring groundwater levels of wells around reactor buildings 1-4 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power station. The indicators weren’t showing accurate water levels, and the actual levels were about 70 centimeters lower than that which the equipment showed. In May, groundwater at one of the wells sank below the contaminated water inside, NHK reports, which possibly caused the radioactive water to leak into the soil.

The company said it is investigating, and that no abnormal increase of radioactivity has shown up in samples. The problem with the six wells in question was discovered this week when the company was preparing another well nearby. The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster occurred when three of the plant’s reactors experienced fuel meltdowns and three units were damaged by hydrogen explosions as a result of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. TEPCO has kept groundwater levels in wells higher than the contaminated water levels inside the plant, usually a meter higher. It also installed water-level indicators, which have now been revealed to be inaccurate. Last week, the company was ordered to pay damages of 376 million yen ($3.36 million) to 42 plaintiffs for the nuclear disaster in the second case a court has which has seen rulings against the company.

The suit, one of about 30 class actions brought against the plant, was brought by residents forced to flee their homes when three reactor cores melted, knocking off the cooling systems and sending radioactive material into the air. The case examined whether the government and TEPCO could have foreseen the tsunami. A government earthquake assessment made public in 2002 predicted a 20% chance of a magnitude 8 earthquake affecting the area within 30 years. The 2011 quake was a magnitude 9. The case argued that the disaster was preventable as emergency generators could have been placed at a location higher than the plant, which stands 10 meters above sea level. The court found the state wasn’t liable, but another case in March found both TEPCO and the government liable.

Debt Rattle January 9 2017

Jan 092017

January 9, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:34 am Finance Tagged with: bull market, chicken, China, corruption, fascism, Greece, Grillo, iron, Le Pen, Trump, VW 7 Responses »

AFP Photo/Johannes EISELE Giant Trump Chicken

• Locating Fascism on the Home Map (Ford)

• ‘The Bull Market Is In Its Final Inning’ (CNBC)

• Chinese Warns Trump: End One China Policy And China Will Take Revenge (R.)

• It’s Gonna Be Huge: China Factory Hatches Giant Trump Chickens (AFP)

• How Meaningful Will China “Opening Up” Markets To Foreigners Be? (BBG)

• China Tightens Rules After Anti-Corruption Staff Caught Up In Graft (R.)

• China’s Pyrrhic Growth Victory Spurs 2017 Shift To Contain Risks (BBG)

• The Rise, Fall and Comeback Of China’s Economy Over The Last 800 Years (BI)

• Australia Predicts Dramatic Fall In Iron Ore Prices (BBC)

• FBI Arrests Volkswagen Exec on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal (NYT)

• UK Motorists Launch Class-Action Suit Against VW (G.)

• Le Pen: I’ll Come To Brussels And Dismantle France’s Relationship With EU (EUK)

• Beppe Grillo Calls For Five Star Movement Vote On Quitting Farage Bloc (G.)

• New Cold Snap, Heavy Snowfall Causes Problems Across Greece (Kath.)

Hear hear!

• Locating Fascism on the Home Map (Ford)

In decadence and decline, the U,S. has produced two strong strains of fascism that now vie for supremacy. The First Black President, now outgoing, represents the “cosmopolitan, global obsessed” variety of fascist. Donald Trump hails from an older fascist strain, “crude and petty, too ugly for global prime time.” At this stage in history, the two corporate parties seem incapable of producing anything other than fascists of one kind or the other.

Barack Obama was a savior – of a drowning ruling class. Under his administration, Wall Street rose from near-death to new heights of speculative frenzy, awash in capital brutally extracted from the vanishing assets and past and future earnings of the vast majority of the population, or gifted in the form of trillions in free money at corporate-only Federal Reserve windows. The Big Casino, reduced to a rubble of its own contradictions in 2008, ushered in the New Year just shy of the once-fantastical 20,000 mark. Analysts credited Donald Trump’s victory for the bankers’ bacchanal, but it was Obama who made the party possible by overseeing the restructuring of the U.S. economy to accommodate and encourage the hyper-consolidation of capital – another way to describe the deliberate deepening of economic (and political) inequality. Having accomplished the mission assigned him by Wall Street in return for record-breaking contributions to his first campaign, Obama is said to be angling for a hot-money squat in Silicon Valley, the super-rich sector that was most supportive of his presidency.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is melting quicker than the Wicked Witch of the West, principally due to the failure of traditionally Democratic working (and out of work) people of all races to turn out on November 8 – a perfectly understandable response to a party and a system that offers them absolutely nothing but grief, in ever quickening increments. The merciless downsizing of the American worker is a central element of Obama’s legacy. Real wages had been frozen or declining for decades. However, economic restructuring in the Age of Obama demanded that millions of workers be crushed all the way through the floor to a lower level of hell: temporary, contract, not-really-a-job, part-time “gig” employment. If the 1930s squatter shanty-towns called “Hoovervilles” were testaments to President Herbert Hoover’s economic policies, then the maddeningly precarious, no guaranteed hours, no benefits, zero job security, fraction of a shift, arbitrarily scheduled employment of today should be called ObamaJobs. A new study by economists at Princeton and Harvard universities shows that an astounding 94% of the 10 million jobs created during the First Black President’s two terms in office were ObamaJobs.

“Risk has been priced out of the market..”

• ‘The Bull Market Is In Its Final Inning’ (CNBC)

As investors await the Dow Jones 20,000 with baited breath, one widely followed chart watcher believes the current market rally is actually on its last legs. On Friday, blue chip shares in the Dow Industrial Average flirted with the psychologically charged 20,000 level, which have largely been driven higher by anticipation over President-elect Donald Trump’s business-friendly policies. Yet a few observers think the party is nearly over, and the punch bowl is about to run dry. “Risk has been priced out of the market,” said Sven Henrick of NorthmanTrader.com on CNBC’s “Futures Now.” Henrich, who is known online as the Northman Trader, said that despite the abundance of optimism on the part of investors, technical indicators could be pointing to some near-term pain.

According to the Northman’s chartwork, every time the S&P 500 Index has hit new highs, it eventually retreats back towards its 25-day moving average line, which would translate to a 4% pullback from current levels. The S&P 500 has rallied 6% since the election, and hit an intraday record high on Friday. “I would expect that at some point there would be a buying opportunity for people who may want to invest in this market,” said Henrich. “But if this line breaks, we may see significantly more downside that we’ve seen in previous corrections as well.” What’s more, Henrich also believes that the S&P 500 has continued to trade in a “bearish wedge pattern” that began just after the end of the last recession.

The wedge pattern Henrich speaks of consists of two trend lines: One that runs along the S&P’s highs and a second that runs along its lows, that look to meet sometime in 2017. It is at that point that Henrich believes the rally will have run its course, and a downside will soon follow. On a fundamental basis, the Northman Trader is troubled by “record debt levels” that the global governments have incurred. “In 2016, the U.S. government ran a deficit of over $600 billion,” explained Henrich.” “If we now add tax cuts and stimulus spending, you’re either going to have to cut a significant amount of programs somewhere, or you’re going to end up with an even larger deficit.”

For domestic use only?

• Chinese Warns Trump: End One China Policy And China Will Take Revenge (R.)

State-run Chinese tabloid Global Times warned U.S. President-elect Donald Trump that China would “take revenge” if he reneged on the one-China policy, only hours after Taiwan’s president made a controversial stopover in Houston. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met senior U.S. Republican lawmakers during her stopover in Houston on Sunday en route to Central America, where she will visit Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador. Beijing had asked Washington not to allow Tsai to enter the United States and that she not have any formal government meetings under the one China policy. A photograph tweeted by Texas Governor Greg Abbott shows him meeting Tsai, with a small table between them adorned with the U.S., Texas and Taiwanese flags. Tsai also met Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

“Sticking to (the one China) principle is not a capricious request by China upon U.S. presidents, but an obligation of U.S. presidents to maintain China-U.S. relations and respect the existing order of the Asia-Pacific,” said the Global Times editorial on Sunday. The influential tabloid is published by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily. Trump triggered protests from Beijing last month by accepting a congratulatory telephone call from Tsai and questioning Washington’s commitment to China’s position that Taiwan is part of one China. “If Trump reneges on the one-China policy after taking office, the Chinese people will demand the government to take revenge. There is no room for bargaining,” said the Global Times.

“..mimic his signature hand gestures with their tiny wings.”

• It’s Gonna Be Huge: China Factory Hatches Giant Trump Chickens (AFP)

A Chinese factory is hatching giant inflatable chickens resembling Donald Trump to usher in the Year of the Rooster. The five-metre (16-foot) fowls sport the distinctive golden mane of the US president-elect and mimic his signature hand gestures with their tiny wings. Cartoon figures of animals from the Chinese zodiac are ubiquitous around Chinese New Year at the end of this month. The balloon factory is selling its presidential birds for as much as 14,400 yuan ($2,080) on Chinese shopping site Taobao for a 10-metre version.

A golden mane and tiny wings that mimic his hand gestures – the resemblence of inflatable chickens produced for the Chinese New Year to US President-elect is unmistakable (AFP Photo/Johannes EISELE)

“I saw his image on the news and he has a lot of personality, and since Year of the Rooster is coming up I mixed these two elements together to make a Chinese chicken,” factory owner Wei Qing told AFP. “It is so funny, so we designed it and tried to sell it and it turned out to be popular.” The cartoon balloon appeared to be based on a sculpture designed by US artist Casey Latiolais, which was unveiled at a shopping mall last month in Taiyuan, capital of the northern province of Shanxi. Wei said he was not aware that the American designer had created the original, but added that “there are some differences in the facial expression. And that one is glass. Ours is inflatable.”

“If we do get any reforms this year, they are going to be Potemkin reforms. The veneer will look like they are moving to a market economy, and the reality will be anything but.”

• How Meaningful Will China “Opening Up” Markets To Foreigners Be? (BBG)

China’s recent policy of opening its markets to foreigners is expected to continue this year, but there are questions about how meaningful the change will be amid a clampdown on money leaving the country. While China loosened restrictions on its interbank bond market and relaxed rules for offshore investors trading stocks, it also saw $762 billion head overseas in the first 11 months of last year, according to Bloomberg Intelligence estimates, as investors sought safety in foreign assets. That helped push the yuan down 6.5% against the dollar in 2016, the most since 1994. Seeking to stem the flow, mainland authorities tightened rules that contributed to MSCI Inc. refusing to add Chinese-listed shares to its global indexes.

China’s regulators have indicated that this year foreigners might be allowed to access commodity futures and bond derivatives, while MSCI will again consider adding mainland stocks. But concerns remain about how open China’s markets will be, especially on the issue of taking assets out of the country. The contrast highlights the tension authorities face between inviting more investment while keeping control of the financial sector. “I’d describe China’s strategy as a pipeline strategy. Essentially what they do is to create various pipelines of inflows and outflows,” said John Greenwood, London-based chief economist at Invesco Asset Management. “The problem is the flows are always in the opposite direction of what they want.”

Among last year’s steps, Beijing lifted almost all quotas on China’s interbank bond market and scrapped some constraints under the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor program, which governs how offshore funds invest in mainland markets. The Shenzhen-Hong Kong stock exchange link, the second between the mainland and the former British colony, opened in December. Expectations then rose as an official with the People’s Bank of China said the central bank is committed to further opening the interbank market, including giving foreign investors access to foreign-exchange and interest-rate derivatives to hedge risks, and expanding trading hours. Even as China opens up to incoming funds, it has been clamping down on outflows.

Officials have banned the use of friends’ currency quotas, made it more difficult to buy insurance policies in Hong Kong and prepared restrictions on overseas acquisitions by Chinese companies. Grants of new quotas for domestic fund managers to invest overseas were frozen, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The tightening of outflow rules makes it hard for some to say that the country is fully embracing financial reform. “We have already seen in China’s case, markets only work when they go up. You are not allowed to go down,” said Michael Every at Rabobank in Hong Kong. “If we do get any reforms this year, they are going to be Potemkin reforms. The veneer will look like they are moving to a market economy, and the reality will be anything but.”

“500,000-plus corruption investigators..” Who are corrupt.

• China Tightens Rules After Anti-Corruption Staff Caught Up In Graft (R.)

China’s top anti-corruption watchdog has tightened supervision of its 500,000-plus corruption investigators, after some of its own staff were caught in graft probes. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a statement on its website late on Sunday that a new regulation would be applied to procedures such as evidence collection and case reviews, without providing further details. “Trust cannot replace supervision,” the CCDI said in the statement, released after it held an annual 3-day meeting. “We must make sure the power granted by the (Communist) Party and the people is not abused,” it said.

State newspaper the China Daily, which did not indicate its sources, said the new regulation would set clear standards on how to handle corruption tips, how to handle ill-gotten assets, and would encourage audio and video recordings to be made throughout interrogations. More than 7,900 disciplinary officials have been punished for wrongdoing since 2012, the newspaper said, citing CCDI figures. Of those, 17 were CCDI staffers who were put under investigation for graft, it said. On Friday, state news agency Xinhua quoted Chinese President Xi Jinping as saying that the battle against corruption “must go deeper”, and called for the Communist Party to be governed “systematically, creatively and efficiently”.

Stuck.

• China’s Pyrrhic Growth Victory Spurs 2017 Shift To Contain Risks (BBG)

As China’s top leaders tallied the cost of another year of debt-fueled growth at a December meeting, the imperative for stability as a leadership reshuffle loomed later this year prompted an unexpected conclusion. The price was too high, the leaders agreed, according to a person familiar with the situation. The buildup of debt used to fuel smokestack industries from steel to cement had helped win the short-term battle for growth, but the triumph itself undermined the foundations of long-term expansion, the leaders decided, according to the person, who asked not to be named because the meeting was private. What followed was an order to central and local government officials that if they are forced to choose this year, stability must be the priority while everything else, including the growth target and economic reform, is secondary, said another four people familiar with the situation.

Other concerns aired at the meeting that contributed to the policy shift were the short-term risk of a confrontation with the U.S. under President-elect Donald Trump over trade or Taiwan, and longer-term challenges including how to spur the innovation needed to prevent economic stagnation as well as cleaning up toxic air that enrages and poisons citizens, said the person. Left unsaid was that economic growth underpins the legitimacy of Communist Party rule. “China’s reaching the point where it has to pick its poison and giving up a half%age point of growth would be far less politically damaging than instability in the bond or currency markets,” said David Loevinger, a former China specialist at the U.S. Treasury and now an analyst at fund manager TCW in Los Angeles. “Looking past the Party Congress later in the year, President Xi Jinping may realize that unlike his predecessor, Hu Jintao, he can’t kick the can to his successor, even more so if he plans on extending his term” beyond 2022.

At the December meeting, officials expressed alarm over the nation’s rapid accumulation of total debt, with some present noting that other nations have experienced crises after allowing debt to climb to about 300% of gross domestic product, the person said. China’s credit boom may have pushed overall debt at the end of 2016 to 265% of GDP. Also aired at the meeting was the risk that China falls into the so-called Thucydides trap, a theory attributed to the eponymous Greek philosopher that says a rising power will clash with an established force. So menacing is the array of economic and political challenges confronting the nation that some leaders at the meeting said there’s no prospect for yuan appreciation against the dollar until at least 2020, said the person. “Tapping the brakes may help avoid the economy skidding off the road,” said Frederic Neumann at HSBC in Hong Kong.

Interesting point of view.

• The Rise, Fall and Comeback Of China’s Economy Over The Last 800 Years (BI)

China’s economy led its European counterpart by leaps and bounds at the start of the Renaissance. China was so far ahead, in fact, that economic historian Eric L. Jones once argued that the Chinese empire “came within a hair’s breadth of industrializing in the fourteenth century.” At the start of the 15th century, China already had the compass, movable type print, and excellent naval capacity. In fact, Chinese Admiral Zheng He commanded expeditions to Southeast Asia, South Asia, Western Asia, and East Africa from about 1405-1433 – about a century before the Portuguese reached India. He also had ships several times the length of Christopher Columbus’ Santa Maria, the largest of Columbus’ three ships that crossed the Atlantic.

Still, it’s hard to understand the magnitude of the shift China’s economic fortunes have seen just with historical anecdotes. And so, in a recent note to clients, Macquarie Research’s Viktor Shvets included two fascinating charts showing the changes China saw over the last 800 years, which we included below. The first chart shows the estimated percent share of a given country’s economy as a part of the overall world economy. In the 15th and 16th centuries, China was about 25-30% of the global economy, but come 1950-1970, after the destruction of World War II and under the rule of Mao Zedong, it was under 5%. Today, its economy is about 17% of the global economy – roughly the same as the US.

The second chart compares GDP per capita in China, Japan, and the US to the British GDP per capita measured in 1990 US dollars. In this case, the British GDP per capita in each year is 100, so if a number from China, Japan, or the US is above 100, then its GDP per capita is greater than in Britain, and if the number falls below 100, per capita output is lower than that in Britain. As Shvets writes, on a per capita basis, China was the wealthiest part of the world in the 1200-1300s — aside from Italy. Even as late as the 1600s it was roughly on par with the Brits. However, after that, the GDP per capita relative to Britain declines all the way up to the 1970s, when it was below 10% of the British standard of living. Around 1990, it starts to pick up again, but it has yet to recover to levels seen in 1200-1600.

And what does this say about China?

• Australia Predicts Dramatic Fall In Iron Ore Prices (BBC)

Shares in Australian mining companies have fallen after the government forecasted a dramatic decline in iron ore prices. The government forecast an iron ore price of $46.70 a tonne by 2018, almost half the current level of $80. The current price is supported by resurgent demand from China. But the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science said that demand was unlikely to continue over the coming years. The department also lowered its forecast for iron ore exports by 2% to 832.2 million tonnes for the fiscal year 2016-17. Australia is the world’s biggest supplier of iron ore and shares in the country’s main mining companies fell after the report was released. Hardest hit was Fortescue Metals which fell more than 3% in early trade, while commodity giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto also saw their shares prices drop. In its forecast early last year, the department had predicted an iron ore price of $44.10 per tonne, but an increase in Chinese demand spurred the price to above $80.

This guy’s been lying outright to US authorities.

• FBI Arrests Volkswagen Exec on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal (NYT)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested a Volkswagen executive who faces charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, two people with knowledge of the arrest said on Sunday, marking an escalation of the criminal investigation into the automaker’s diesel emissions cheating scandal. Oliver Schmidt, who led Volkswagen’s regulatory compliance office in the United States from 2014 to March 2015, was arrested on Saturday by investigators in Florida and is expected to be arraigned on Monday in Detroit, said the two people, a law enforcement official and someone familiar with the case. [..] In a statement, Jeannine Ginivan, a spokeswoman for Volkswagen, said that the automaker “continues to cooperate with the Department of Justice” but that “it would not be appropriate to comment on any ongoing investigations or to discuss personnel matters.”

Lawsuits filed against Volkswagen by the New York and Massachusetts state attorneys general accused Mr. Schmidt of playing an important role in Volkswagen’s efforts to conceal its emissions cheating from United States regulators. Starting in late 2014, Mr. Schmidt and other Volkswagen officials repeatedly cited false technical explanations for the high emissions levels from Volkswagen vehicles, the state attorneys general said. In 2015, Mr. Schmidt acknowledged the existence of a so-called defeat device that allowed Volkswagen cars to cheat emissions tests. Volkswagen eventually said that it had fitted 11 million diesel cars worldwide with illegal software that made the vehicles capable of defeating pollution tests. [..] James Liang, a former Volkswagen engineer who worked for the company in California, pleaded guilty in September to charges that included conspiracy to defraud the federal government and violating the Clean Air Act. But Mr. Schmidt’s arrest brings the investigation into the executive ranks.

Settling the UK alone could cost VW £3.6 billion.

• UK Motorists Launch Class-Action Suit Against VW (G.)

Thousands of British motorists have launched a lawsuit against Volkswagen over the “dieselgate” emissions scandal, in a claim that could end up costing the carmaker billions of pounds. The group of 10,000 VW owners has filed a class action lawsuit against the German car firm, seeking £30m, or £3,000 each. If VW ends up having to pay the amount to each one of the 1.2 million people in the UK who own affected cars, including its Skoda, Audi and Seat marques, it would cost the company around £3.6bn.The German firm has yet to reach a settlement with British and European owners affected by the scandal, in which the company admitted using “defeat devices” to cheat emissions tests, making its cars appears greener than they were.

It has not compensated British owners despite reaching a £15bn settlement with 500,000 US drivers, offering instead to fix affected vehicles. The class action suit, which is being led by law firm Harcus Sinclair, is expected to claim that drivers should be compensated because they paid extra for what they thought were clean diesel cars. In fact, the claimants will allege, the cars emitted far higher levels of NOx – a mixture of pollutants nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide – than stated. Damon Parker, head of litigation at Harcus Sinclair, told the Daily Mail that claimants were “angry and believe that VW might get away with it”. “They feel that they have been left with no choice but to take legal action,” Parker said. “We have paved the way for consumers who trusted but were let down by VW, Audi, Seat and Skoda to seek redress through our courts.

My guess is pollsters and media will get this as wrong as they got Brexit and Trump.

• Le Pen: I’ll Come To Brussels And Dismantle France’s Relationship With EU (EUK)

Marine Le Pen announced her first foreign visit would be to Brussels to dismantle France’s relationship with the EU if elected president later this year. The National Front leader has been a long-time critic of the EU and has promised to push back the sprawling European superstate and take back sovereignty to France. The 48-year-old said: “I would go to Brussels to immediately launch negotiations allowing me to give back to the French people their sovereignty.” The right-wing leader attacked the faltering euro currency as one of the root problems of the EU and described her main economic proposals as “economic patriotism, intelligent protectionism and a return to monetary independence”. She added: “The euro is a major obstacle to the development of our economy.”

Le Pen mooted that she was in favour of maintaining a form of common currency mechanism between France and the EU to help prevent sharp currency fluctuations. Recent opinion polls predicted that Le Pen would finish second in April’s first round of voting – putting her through to the next round in a run-off against Les Repubicain’s François Fillon. If pollsters are correct, France would be guaranteed a right-wing leader after five years of left-wing leadership from Francois Hollande.

Farage got his price, Grillo still has nothing. Weird to ally himself with Verhofstadt, but it’s how Brussels is set up: you either force yourself into some group or you don’t count.

• Beppe Grillo Calls For Five Star Movement Vote On Quitting Farage Bloc (G.)

The founder of Italy’s populist Five Star Movement (M5S) has asked members to vote on splitting from a Eurosceptic bloc of MEPs co-chaired by Nigel Farage. Beppe Grillo, a comedian turned politician, said in a post on his blog that since Farage had led Ukip to Britain voting to leave the EU, the two parties no longer shared common goals and he recommended leaving the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD). “Recent events in Europe, such as Brexit, have led us to reconsider the nature of the EFDD group,” Grillo wrote. “With the extraordinary success of the leave campaign, Ukip achieved its political objective: to leave the EU. “Let’s discuss the concrete facts: Farage has already abandoned the leadership of his party and British MEPs will leave the European parliament in the next legislature. Until then, our British colleagues will be focused on developing the choices that will determine the UK’s political future.”

Grillo and Farage forged an alliance over lunch in Brussels after 2014’s European elections, in which Ukip took the largest share of the vote in Britain and M5S came second in Italy after winning 17 seats. Both said at the time that the group was aimed at “restoring freedom and national democracy”, with Farage adding: “Expect us to fight the good fight to take back control of our countries’ destinies.” In a move that would see his party mesh with European liberals, Grillo has called an online referendum, scheduled for Sunday and Monday, on breaking away and instead forming a new group with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), led by the former Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, who is also the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator. Grillo has long called for a referendum on Italy’s membership of the euro currency, but not on Italy leaving the EU.

With ALDE’s 68 MEPs, the alliance could become the “third political force in the European parliament”, Grillo wrote, while pointing to the fact that his party had only voted alongside Ukip about 20% of the time within the past few years. He said the two shared values linked to “direct democracy, transparency, freedom and honesty”. “With our vote we can make a difference and influence the result of many important decisions to counter the European establishment,” Grillo added. Farage said in a statement: “In political terms it would be completely illogical for Five Star to join the most Euro fanatic group in the European parliament. The ALDE group doesn’t support referenda or the basic principle of direct democracy. ALDE are also the loudest voice for a EU army. I suspect if Five Star joins ALDE it’s support will not last long.” A Ukip spokesman said: “Both Ukip and Five Star are free to choose to stay or quit a political relationship. While it’s interesting that some Five Star MEPs adamantly wish to stay in the EFDD group, as adults we wish them all the best whatever they do.”

The scandal spreads and deepens. Tens of millions have been handed to NGOs to prepare for winter, and they simply haven’t done it. While those of us that could make it happen don’t have the money. People have to die first?

• New Cold Snap, Heavy Snowfall Causes Problems Across Greece (Kath.)

A new cold snap brought snowfall to many parts of the country, leaving the Sporades islands of Alonissos and Skopelos without a ferry connection to the mainland and the Aegean islands of Lesvos and Chios struggling to care for hundreds of migrants amid freezing temperatures. Schools remained closed in many parts of the country due to heavy snowfall, including in the northern suburbs of Athens. According to meteorologists, the bad weather is set to continue through Wednesday. From Monday evening, the cold snap is forecast to spread to eastern Macedonia, Thrace, Halkidiki, the northern Aegean, the Sporades and across Crete. Storms are also likely at sea.

Moria camp, Lesbos, Jan 7

Temperatures are set to drop to -16 degrees Celsius in western Macedonia. The icy conditions left many households in the Thessaloniki region without water as pipes froze or broke. Most schools in the region were to remain closed on Monday due to heavy snowfall and low temperatures. The cold snap has made road travel risky in many parts of the country with motorists advised to fit their cars with anti-skid chains in northern areas.

Moria camp, Lesbos, Jan 7

Who’s Really The Fascist?

Jun 132016

June 13, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 12:14 pm Finance Tagged with: Brexit, corporatism, fascism, Hillary, Hitler, Le Pen, Mussolini, Trump 19 Responses »

John Vachon Paramount Theater and dairy truck, 44th Street, NYC 1943

Like most of you, I too see an increase in the use of the term ‘fascism’ in the media, and it is -almost- always linked to the rise of Donald Trump in the US and various politicians and parties in Europe, Le Pen in France, Wilders in Holland, Erdogan in Turkey, plus a pretty bewildering and motley crew of ‘groups’ in Eastern Europe (Hungary’s Orban) and Scandinavia. I guess you could throw in Nigel Farage and UKIP in Britain as well.

And while I -sort of- understand why the term is used the way it is, and it’s not possible to say it’s used wrong simply because ‘fascism’ knows so many different interpretations and definitions, very few of which can be classified as definitely wrong, that doesn’t mean that just because you’re not definitely wrong, you’re therefore right, and certainly not comprehensive or complete. And there’s a story in there that deserves to be told. Who is really the fascist? From Wikipedia:

George Orwell wrote in 1944 that “the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless … almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist'”. Richard Griffiths said in 2005 that “fascism” is the “most misused, and over-used word, of our times”. “Fascist” is sometimes applied to post-war organizations and ways of thinking that academics more commonly term “neo-fascist”.

I’m inclined to venture that ‘terrorism’ is a good second for most misused word, but something tells me that once you get into economics and the way terms like ‘stimulus’, ‘unemployment’ and ‘inflation’ are used, this is an argument that would never end. Let’s stick with ‘fascism’ for now.

The prevalent definition -and public notion- of fascism today is connected first and foremost to Adolf Hitler, to the Holocaust, the SS and other German WWII ‘phenomena’. And it’s quite something to link Trump or Le Pen to that, even if they say things at times that may make you shudder. It seems at least a tad hyperbolic, no matter how much you may not like these people. Neither is responsible for the deaths of millions of people.

What’s more interesting, because it can provide perspective, is to look at what fascism is (or was) prior to, and beyond, Hitler and Germany. One man stands out in this: Benito Mussolini, Italian prime minister slash wannabe dictator from 1922 till 1943, who’s even often labeled the founder of fascism (though its roots go back much further). But for Mussolini, fascism was not what Hitler has made us define it as.

For Mussolini, fascism was much more about corporatism (or corporativism, or fascist corporatism), of letting corporations write, define and perhaps even execute a country’s economic policies. And have a strong man -he meant himself- coordinate these policies in government. Where civil servants would inflict them on the people. Mussolini’s idea(l) of fascism was very nationalistic, but also -surprisingly?- anti-conservative. It was “against the backwardness of the right and the destructiveness of the left”.

“Fascism, sitting on the right, could also have sat on the mountain of the center … These words in any case do not have a fixed and unchanged meaning: they do have a variable subject to location, time and spirit. We don’t give a damn about these empty terminologies and we despise those who are terrorized by these words.”

Hitler, in his early days, remained very close to Mussolini’s (and other people’s) definitions. Nazism stands for national socialism.

But what I’m really trying to get at is that if you look closer at these definitions and interpretations, you can made a solid case that it’s not Trump and Le Pen who are the fascists, but instead the present incumbents in our governments, as well as those belonging to the same political class and parties as them, and who aspire to one day fill their seats and shoes.

That the fact that politics and economics (‘politico-economics’) can no longer be seen as separate entities, as I argued recently in “The Only Thing That Grows Is Debt”, conforms pretty much one-on-one to Mussolini’s definition of fascism.

‘Politico-economics’ (a.k.a corporatism) is our present form of government, even of organizing our entire societies, and it’s the very thing people protest against when they vote for Trump and Le Pen (and against Cameron when they vote for Brexit). This would seem to put the claim that Trump is a fascist on its head. Trump is the reaction to fascism as defined by Mussolini, as are le Pen and Orban and Wilders and the others, even as they are accused of being fascists themselves.

Corporations, the elite, govern our societies, no matter that there is still a thin veneer of democratic rights -barely- visible. It makes no difference in the States whether you vote Democratic or Republican, they are the same thing – except for a few intentionally well-conserved minor details.

The same is true all across Europe. In Greece, left-wing Syriza governs in a coalition with very-right-wing Independent Greeks. In Holland, former adversaries from the left and right sit happily in a cabinet and nobody thinks that’s strange. That why people like Le Pen and Wilders and Trump can become what they are today. There is a politico-economic vacuum.

The former differences between parties don’t matter anymore because on major issues politicians have no decision-making voice, they simply do what they are told. And if they do that well, they get handsomely compensated for it. The ultimate paragons of this development are not Trump and le Pen, but Obama, Cameron, both Clintons, Hollande, Merkel, the list is endless because the corporatist takeover is well-nigh complete across the board.

These ‘leaders’ represent a society in which there is no dividing line between politics and economics. They, and their paymasters, have achieved Mussolini’s ideal, something he himself -ironically- never accomplished.

And we could take this argument a step further: even if you would want to talk about the ‘Hitler brand of fascism’, the violence, the large-scale murder, you still have Trump and Le Pen with zero kills to their name, while Obama, Cameron, both Clintons, Hollande, Merkel et al are responsible for hundreds of thousands of lives lost. Just watch what’s coming in the next batch of Clinton emails Wikileaks is set to publish.

In a next step, while we’re at it, we could hold up Mussolini’s fascism ideals and look at what they have in common with trade deals such as TPP and TTiP. Plenty, obviously. Though they are not in sync with the nationalist component of his definition, they do represent a much larger drive than anything that has preceded them in human history, to hand over -the last vestiges of- political power to the corporate sector.

And who’s in favor of these deals? The incumbent politico-economic classes that have taken over our governments. Even as resistance to the deals is surging, they are undoubtedly as we speak scrambling to find ways, legal or not, democratic or not, to push them through. Trump, Le Pen, Wilders want nothing to do with them.

So when I read things like a recent Salon headline:“Fascism is rising in the US and Europe – and Donald Trump is the face of this disturbing new reality”, it makes me think that this is at the very least a little one-sided, if not blind-sided, and for more reasons than one.

Obviously, the sitting parties in Congress want nothing more than for Trump to be branded a fascist. Which is why Hillary Clinton not long ago compared him to Adolf Hitler. Through a wider philosophical and historical lens, there are two issues with that claim. First, Trump hasn’t killed anyone. Second, the person making the claim has.

The problem for Hillary is that a lot of Americans understand this. And that because of this such claims have started to backfire in a 180º turnaround. You can witness the same process in Britain’s Brexit debate, and in many other countries.

I’m not writing this to support Trump or Le Pen, they’re not my kind of people at all. But neither is Hillary. I write it to warn people away from vacuous claims and statements. Which are not only dishonest, they have started to support the very people they’re made against. The political climate is changing, because the economy is tanking.

And I write this to indicate that fascism may well already be amongst us, and it would be a good idea if we learned to recognize it. To suggest that perhaps, if we’re honest, Hillary is closer to Mussolini than Trump is to Hitler.

Look, we could talk our faces blue about the differences and analogies between fascism and racism, something the ‘new right wing’ seems to have plenty of, and something Muhammad Ali’s death and yesterday’s Orlando massacre should teach us yet another lesson about. And we could talk about what they might potentially do if/when they acquire political power. But none of that makes these people fascists. Whereas the other side of the equation, the incumbents…

Life Has Become A Show For Which We Have To Buy A Ticket

Nov 152014

November 15, 2014 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:16 pm Finance Tagged with: Beppe Grillo, debt, ECB, EU, fascism, Greece, Italy, mafia 3 Responses »

Harris & Ewing Gettysburg reunion: G.A.R. & U.C.V. veterans at the encampment July 1913

Because it’s Saturday, and because I‘ve been asked to provide more info on the man, but most of all because I think Beppe Grillo could well hold in his hands the dividing line between a Europe torn to bits and a Europe that may ride the waves of crisis in a more or less civilized way, by all means, let’s do some more, after yesterday’s The Only Man In Europe Who Makes Any Sense.

As you may know by now, I want for the eurozone and the EU to blow up ASAP, because Brussels is a cabal that may have started out from benevolent ideals but has gone completely off the tracks since, and is now inhabited by exactly the sort of people you wouldn’t want to buy a second hand car or home from, nor take care of your grandma, let alone your pre-teen kids. The EU, like NATO, IMF etc, are entities that attract the very wrong kind of people in ‘leading positions’, and that’s no accident.

They’re the sort of positions that have very little in the way of democratic accountability. Democracy in Brussels is like your third cousin twice removed. Not exactly a big deal. Sorry for you non-native English speakers, I know you guys have no idea what ‘third cousin twice removed’ even means. Let’s just say it’s not anything important. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a serious issue. And Beppe Grillo is acutely aware of this. After all, he grew up in the land where organized crime grew up too, Which is why he said in March 2014 in an interview with TIME magazine:

If we fail, [Italy] is headed for violence in the streets. But if we crumble, then they come. Everything started in Italy. Fascism was born here. The banks were born here. We invented debt. The mafia, us too. Everything started here. If violence doesn’t start here, it’s because of the movement. If we fail, we’re headed for violence in the street. Half the population can’t take it anymore.

He wasn’t kidding, and he still isn’t. A few days ago, the Gazzetta Del Sud ran this:

Grillo Says If M5S Fails, ‘The Nazis Are Coming’

Beppe Grillo, leader of the 5-Star Movement (M5S) said his party has brought about a “revolution” in Italy but if his party falls, “the Nazis are coming”. The head of the anti-establishment M5S was in Brussels to drum up support for a public referendum on the single currency euro.

“If we fall, the Nazis are coming,” said Grillo. “Some say that we are the Nazis, but I say ‘remember who they were’?” We have already made a revolution, the (political) parties have disappeared thanks to us”. He also complained that the leadership of multinational companies were no better than criminals, calling them the “sons of mafiosi” in the way they control the world.

“Now we have the sons of mobsters, those with a master’s degree and the multinational companies, these hold the real power in the world,” said Grillo. He also repeated his call for the impeachment of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, blaming the 89-year-old for Italy’s loss of “economic and social dignity”.

Look, Portugal’s being sold to the Chinese, as Tyler Durden pointed out again – belatedly – today, Greece has tons of islands for sale because the troika told them to, before you know it the US will be up for grabs at wholesale prices to the Chinese whose only advantage is they print virtual money at faster rates than us, and the trained accountant Grillo says selling off your nations’ treasures, including its real esate, is a really stupid idea.

Anybody not in Washington or Brussels want to call him on that? Southern Europe has been squeezed by the north ever since they entered the euro, and the squeeze can only get worse, now they can’t devaluate their currencies anymore. Ergo: Japan and the US and China and any other money printing nation gets to buy up Italy’s treasures and Italy’s just supposed to let that happen? Get a life, says Beppe.

Here’s what I wrote one month after the February 2013 piece I quoted yesterday. For all those who want to get to know Beppe. Who may be Europe’s only hope, the only barrier between slavery and freedom, between kow-towing and being your own boss. And no, I ain’t kidding there. Europe as it is in in huge danger, and Italy would be much better off alone, as would most other nations.

But the rest of those guys are just politicians. Nigel Farage is a nincompoop (I like that word), and Tsipras in Greece is doing talks in Brussels already just in case he gets elected. They won’t blow up the EU, not if they get a cushy seat somewhere. Beppe already has a cushy seat, and he’s not running for office to begin with.

Here goes me, March 11 2013:

What’s More Important To You, Italy or the Dow?

During the Italian election weekend two weeks ago, I watched all three Godfather films on a local station. Very convenient, since they can teach you quite a bit about Italy, even if you’ve seen them a dozen times already in the past. The abdication of the pope sort of rounded off the history lesson, and I was thinking: OK, now I’m good to go.

After the results came in and Beppe Grillo and the Five Star movement (M5S) became the single biggest “party”, I was going to simply repost my February 10 article Beppe Grillo Wants To Give Italy Democracy, in which I wrote about my meeting with Beppe and the ideas we talked about which I took away from that. He had won big, but it was clear that most people still had no idea who he is.

But after reading through the lazy sloppy “journalism” in the international press in the days following the elections, it was obvious that wouldn’t have been sufficient anymore. Hardly anyone seems to know who Beppe Grillo is, and more importantly, they don’t seem to care. In their minds, because everybody else does it, they are fine calling him a clown, a dictator and (Italian paper Gazzetta Del Sud) a “foul-mouthed rabble rouser”. Much easier, because it doesn’t require any research.

At the very least, whether you work for a major international news organization or a national paper, if you want to stay on the safe side, since deep down you know you haven’t done your homework, “populist” looks like an acceptable sort of name-calling. Now, one of the definitions of populist is someone who opposes elites, which certainly applies to Grillo, but these days you can’t use the term without implying someone who appeals to the base instincts of the IQ challenged part of the population. And that definitely does not apply. If only because in Italy, Berlusconi’s got that demographic covered.

The name of the game seems to be that Grillo is bad news because he “unnerves” markets and investors. For one thing, he himself would be only too happy with that. Not because he wants mayhem, but because he thinks that what there is now is not working. Grillo’s first and main objective is to rid Italy of the corruption it has been suffering from for ages (which is why the Godfather series is enlightening), so if you want to understand or perhaps even judge him you will first need to look at that whole chapter. And yes, it’s true, he sees the entire political system in Rome as an integral part of that corruption, and so it will have to go. As he put it:

“Who makes up a criminal conspiracy? If you go and look, [you’ll find] they are made up of bankers, politicians, judges and, just perhaps, once in a while, a criminal.”

What is happening in Italy as a consequence of its relationship with the EU and the Eurozone is in Grillo’s eyes also the result of the corrupt system (since it’s all been agreed to by the career politicians who sit in parliament, for all sides of the spectrum). Therefore, he questions the benefits for the Italian people of the existing situation. That’s all. And that’s enough for both Brussels and Rome to vilify him. Nobody is supposed to question the glory of Europe and the Euro, and hardly anyone does, certainly not the press, presumably because nobody wants to unnerve the markets. But if you ask me, if anything needs to be questioned, it’s that one-dimensional religion that says the Euro is the only way to achieve fulfillment.

Grillo, who’s been given the anti-Euro label by the press, puts it this way in a Time Magazine interview:

Do you think Italy should leave the euro?

I’ve never said I want to be in or out of the euro. I said I want correct information. I want a Plan B for survival for the next 10 years. And then, with a referendum we decide. The costs and benefits, let’s know what are they are. But first you need to inform.

If you just hint that you want to leave the euro, you’re crazy. There’s no dialogue. Just hint, and you’re a demagogue, you’re crazy, you want to drag Italy to default, you’re irresponsible. Just because you say, let’s think about this, what would really happen?

For the Europhiles, the Merkel Monti Draghi Van Rompuy clan, there is no Plan B. Or perhaps I should say it’s the plan whose name shall not be mentioned. And that’s untenable; you can do that sort of thing as long as you throw enough bling at people, but when you start taking it away from them, they’ll come looking for answers and explanations. There simply comes a point when unnerving the people will trump unnerving the markets.

First, let’s get up to date with Italy’s economy, to get a better idea of the backdrop against which the Five Stars have risen. On Friday, Fitch downgraded Italian debt. President Napolitano has until March 15, the new parliament, to start pressuring for a new government. Since he’s about to resign, he can’t call new elections. Beppe Grillo has called for his long term supporter, Nobel literature laureate Dario Fo, to be appointed the new president.

Grillo has rejected calls to close a deal with Bersani’s existing left wing coalition, as he always said he would. Napolitano could try to get a new technocrat government in place (Corrado Passera, Monti’s industry minister is named as a new PM), or he could call on Bersani and Berlusconi to work together. Ironically, the main reason for Italy to have a government would be to make sure the Troika austerity demands keep being met, and if that doesn’t work, to file for a new bailout. Whichever choice Napolitano makes, it appears certain it will be short-lived.

“Italy is a nation of tricksters. Yesterday I was in Rome. I got on a bus and stamped my ticket: ‘Click. Clack.’ The driver turned round and said: ‘What the fuck’s that noise?!'”

The Italian economy contracted 2.4% in 2012, almost twice as much as Spain. Italy’s public debt is €2 trillion, or $2.6 trillion, predicted to rise to 130% of GDP this year, the highest level in 100 years. Also in 2012, more than 360,000 Italian businesses folded as a result of what business lobbying group Confindustria labeled a “credit crunch”: on the one hand banks refuse loans, on the other Monti’s tax increases and spending cuts squeeze like a vice. Italy’s official unemployment rate hit a 11.7% record in January, the government said last week, with youth unemployment rising to 38.7%. And that’s just the macro numbers; the real story lies beneath the surface. Like here:

More than 65% of Italian families struggling

More than 65% of Italian families cannot make it to the end of the month with their current salaries, a report by the Bank of Italy said on Tuesday. The alarm launched by the country’s central bank said that those hardest hit are young families and renters whose monthly income is not sufficient to cover living expenses.

Also, in Italy a huge number of young adults live with their parents, like for instance over 70% of men and 50% of women between 25 and 29 years old, and more than half between 18 and 34, lived “at home” in 2010. While part of that is due to stronger family bonds than in other countries, it’s much more importantly an indication of just how poorly the economy is doing. In comparison, in France just 10% of the same age group live with their parents.

Of course you can glaze over these numbers, they’re just more of the same. Where it gets interesting is when you try to see what’s comings next. The Italian economy is bad and getting worse, and the only answer the troika has ever had is double or nothing, in other words: more austerity, more cuts and higher taxes. And that will have to stop somewhere; it should certainly not come as a surprise that Italians vote for someone who says it can be done differently.

It seems clear that no matter what government is tinkered together, Italy will have new elections relatively soon, perhaps late this year. But even before then, Beppe Grillo will demand changes. He will demand a clean-up of parliament, prosecution of the corrupt part of society, and a clean and clear vote of the people in issues like the Euro.

More ominously for the Italian and European status quo, he will launch a nationwide discussion about what to do with the 130% of GDP, $2.6 trillion debt. He’s made clear that in his (accountant) mind, restructuring and default should be on the agenda, in correlation with large scale nationalization of the banking industry. That is the time bomb that has started ticking in Europe when the election results came in. The idea is simply what I’ve said earlier about Greece: if you know you’re going to be miserable whatever you do, you might as well make sure it’s your own misery, and under your own control.

At this point it’s hard to say what’s more likely, Grillo being murdered and renditioned or more Grillo’s raising their heads in other European countries. The more time he gets, the more he will get done. And others will see that and try to copy it. And he’s right, the internet does open a whole new set of democratic opportunities. That may be perceived as more urgent in Italy’s corruption-rotten state, but why would Spain, Greece and Portugal not follow? Because they have no angry comedians?

The EU meanwhile needs to deal with Cyprus, a hard nut to crack, since Dutch, German and Finnish taxpayers must be forced to bail out Russian oligarchs who have billions in funds stashed in bankrupt Cypriot banks. What’s been below the surface thus far is that Brussels has a next case to contend with: Slovenia’s government fell last week over economic issues, and it’s a – small – Eurozone country. Bulgaria’s government is also gone, but they’re “only” EU, not Eurozone.

Nothing like a perfect storm to unnerve financial markets. Which brings me to the Dow. Which is setting records. And I find that peculiar: while pundits try to make us believe these records stem from an economic recovery stateside, when I look at this graph, part of a presentation by Jim Boswell, I just don’t see it:

As is obvious from this graph, trading volume on the NYSE is so low it feels like some kind of singularity is upon us. It’s down at least 50% from the average of the preceding years, and last year doesn’t even have a temporary peak anymore. But prices set records? Really? What other assets are there for which prices go up as trade goes down? Well, yeah, scarcity can do that perhaps, but that’s not the case here. It all looks very volatile to me. It’s easier to prop up prices at low volumes, but they can fall much faster too when whoever it is that still remains in the market goes away. Because he’s found out to hold mainly zombie money, for instance.

So to answer the question what’s more important to you: I sure wouldn’t pick the Dow. That records thing could be over tomorrow. Beppe Grillo’s new democracy, though, has a long way to go. The more the owning class tries to squeeze, the more the debt slaves will demand a vote. They don’t even need to gather in streets and squares anymore, they have representation in parliament. From that same Time interview:

Are you afraid that if you don’t succeed, the same energy that pushed you up could push up darker forces?

If we fail, [Italy] is headed for violence in the streets. But if we crumble, then they come. Everything started in Italy. Fascism was born here. The banks were born here. We invented debt. The mafia, us too. Everything started here. If violence doesn’t start here, it’s because of the movement. If we fail, we’re headed for violence in the street. Half the population can’t take it anymore.

I think he may just be right. That movements like this are the only remaining chance at solving this peacefully. That alone should be worth a lot more than keeping a contraption like the Eurozone together. The problem is, it’s not the ruling religion. Anyone know any German comedians? Do they even have any?

Life has become a show at which we are the audience – and have to buy a ticket.
Beppe Grillo