Dorothea Lange Hoe culture in the South. Poor white, North Carolina July 1936
China supports in different ways.
• China Shouldn’t Risk West’s Large Monetary Easing Of Last Decade – PBOC (SCMP)
The economic problems created by the aggressive monetary policy easing undertaken by Western central banks in response to the global financial crisis a decade ago are a clear warning to China not to go down the same path to combat its current economic slowdown, according to an official from the central bank. China, instead, should use the institutional advantages unique to China to address the country’s economic problems, Zhang Xuechun, deputy director of the People’s Bank of China’s research bureau, said on Friday. The central bank is under continuous domestic pressure to cut its interest rates further and faster to help stabilise economic growth, which is expected to drop below 6 per cent in the fourth quarter this year and fall further next year.
Coming only days ahead of the Central Economic Work Conference, which will set the government’s economic policy priorities for 2020, the comments send the strong signal that the PBOC believes an expansion of fiscal policy and continued economic restructuring, rather than monetary loosening, should play the leading roles in combating the economic slowdown next year. “We must learn the lesson from developed countries that relied heavily on quantitative easing,” said Zhang, citing asset bubbles, the widening of the wealth gap and rising international currency and trade competitions as the negative consequences of those policies. “When we face downward [economic] pressures from shifting to high-quality growth and external uncertainties, monetary policy should not leap forward alone,” Zhang said.
Not looking good. Let’s do another bailout.
• EU Watchdog Tells Banks To Get A Grip On Costs, Merge Or Close (R.)
Banks in the European Union could close branches, merge or leave the market to reverse a “bleak” outlook for profitability, the bloc’s banking watchdog said on Friday. The European Banking Authority’s (EBA) sixth annual dive under the bonnet of top banks found that the average capital ratios for lenders – a key measure of financial health – was 14.4% in June, little changed from the previous year. The percentage of poorly performing loans on bank books has fallen to an average of 3%, down from 3.6% a year earlier, but the return on equity worsened to 7% from 7.2%, still below the average cost of equity, the EBA said. “There are hardly any clear catalysts for an improvement in bank profitability that appear on the horizon,” the EBA said in its report.
“Low profitability limits banks’ capacity to generate capital organically and to fund loan growth as well as to pay dividends.” Only 28% of listed EU banks trade with a price-to-book ratio of more than 1 or where market value exceeds net assets, the EBA said. The equivalent for U.S. banks is 81%. Banks need to streamline operating expenses to lift profitability, such as by merging with a rival or leaving the market if they can’t generate sustainable profits, it said. Deutsche Bank is among European lenders seeking to boost their financial health and this week sold $50 billion in unwanted assets to Goldman Sachs as part of a lengthy restructuring.
Shale distorts.
• But US “Energy Independence” is More Complicated (WS)
US exports of crude oil and petroleum products – this includes gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, naphtha, and many others – exceeded imports in September by 89,000 barrels a day, the EIA reported today, and so the US became a “net exporter” of crude oil and petroleum products for the first time on a monthly basis in the EIA’s data going back to 1973:
The US has exported petroleum products – gasoline, diesel, heating oil, naphtha, propane, etc. – for a long time. This is the business some refineries are in. They buy crude oil from wherever they can get it, including other countries, and sell refined product to customers in the US and other countries. For example, California produces some crude oil and gets some crude oil by tanker from Alaska and some by oil train across the Rockies. But there is no oil pipeline across the Rockies. So refineries in California, including in the San Francisco Bay Area, also import some of their crude oil from other countries, refine it, and then sell gasoline, diesel, and other petroleum products to other countries largely in Latin America.
Texas, the largest oil-producing state in the US, faces a still more complex landscape, with its enormous crude-oil production, its large refinery operations, pipelines connecting oil producers in the state to refineries in other states, and its import and export terminals, via which it both imports and exports various grades of crude oil and all kinds of petroleum products, depending on market conditions and other factors. In other words, some of the crude oil that the US imports is then re-exported as value-added finished petroleum products, such as motor gasoline and diesel. And so imports of crude oil exceed exports of crude oil, given that the US imports some of the crude oil for the purpose of re-exporting it as refined products. But this difference between imports and exports of crude oil has been plunging as well, to 3.4 million barrels per day in September:
[..] US production of crude oil and petroleum products has spiked from 6.8 million barrels per day in 2008 to 17.5 million barrels per day in September, largely due to the ramp-up in shale oil production. Shale wells can also produce large quantities of gases that are counted separately as gas. These production figures here are just crude oil and petroleum products:
In 2019 so far, at least 33 oil and gas drillers in the US have filed for bankruptcy. Since January 2015, over 200 have filed for bankruptcy. Others are now jostling for position at the bankruptcy filing counter.
What are we going to do without consumerism?
Black Friday is undergoing a transformative period where consumers are ditching brick-and-mortar stores for online shopping. Reuters noted Friday, that traffic volumes at stores across the country on Thanksgiving eve were soft — and it’s likely the trend will continue through the weekend. Another report via KeyBanc Capital Markets found traffic “somewhat muted at malls” during Thanksgiving and Black Friday. KeyBanc’s analyst Edward Yruma attributed the decline to more online sales. KeyBanc’s note said Gap, Banana Republic, Express and Zara offered 50% discounts, but that still wasn’t enough to attract shoppers. Though traffic was steady at Walmart, Target, and Lululemon.
As of noon, Salesforce.com observed online sales of $7.4 billion on Black Friday, 16% higher than a year ago. “It speaks to the fact that we’re amidst this digital transformation that’s happening for both the consumers and the retailers,” Rob Garf, vice president of industry strategy and insights at Salesforce, told Bloomberg. Some other possible reasons behind the weak turn out could be due retailers already offered an entire month of aggressive sales leading up to Black Friday. There are often limitations of how much a consumer can purchase as credit card rates soar to 25-year highs. The National Retail Federation (NRF) polled consumers earlier this month who said most of their shopping has already been done, many of whom took advantage of the deals leading up to Black Friday.
[..] There’s also evidence that the US economy is rapidly slowing and the US consumer is pulling back on spending as a recession could be nearing. The chart below shows the industrial recession has likely transmitted weakness into the consumer, which could produce a rather weak holiday spending period.
After 1001 reports on impeachment, CNN changes course.
• Democrats Have A Better Choice Than Impeachment (CNN)
The evidence is mounting daily that President Donald Trump may have committed an impeachable offense in withholding aid to Ukraine as he sought an investigation that would aid his reelection campaign. But with our polarized political system and split party control of Congress — many think impeachment is inevitable in the House, but conviction unattainable in the Senate — we need an alternative to impeachment. And luckily we have one. After amassing the testimony and preparing for the articles of impeachment, the House could change course and introduce a resolution for censure of the President. In it, they would recite all the behavior that would go into articles of impeachment.
But instead of Trump’s removal from office as a remedy, it would essentially place the impeachment process in abeyance until the House can determine whether it will be able to hear from additional key witnesses. This is a viable option for many reasons. As the Democrats make their point that the President’s behavior is unacceptable, the Republicans and the President continue to say that this impeachment inquiry is just another desperate attempt by Democrats to get Trump out of the White House after Robert Mueller’s investigation. So far, several key witnesses have refused to come forward to testify, and some, like John Bolton, have gone to federal court to determine if they must comply with congressional subpoenas over and above a White House order not to testify. A federal judge ruled this week that there is no blanket immunity for officials from a congressional subpoena, but the administration is appealing the ruling.
This will take time that the House does not seem willing to wait for. Even more concerning, though, is that after this process runs its course, it will be extremely difficult as a practical matter for the House to go through an impeachment process for anything the President does in the future, at least in the current term. It is unlikely the populace would stand for another round of divisive impeachment proceedings, as an ongoing matter, unless there is an extremely serious and obvious charge. [..] A censure would issue a formal warning: This is unacceptable behavior for a president, but we will not remove you from office this time. However, pending further testimony or should there be any instance of further wrongdoing, the appropriate remedy is removal from office. Ideally, the Senate would also adopt a resolution of censure, though support for Trump and the politics of the upcoming election would suggest that that is highly unlikely.
“..the US Intel Community organized a coup to overthrow the improbable President Trump.”
• Adam Schiff’s Goat Rodeo (Jim Kunstler)
I wonder if some great fatigue of the mind has set in among the class of people who follow the news and especially the tortured antics of Rep. Adam Schiff’s goat rodeo in the House intel Committee the past month. I wonder what the rest of congress is detecting among its constituents back home during this holiday hiatus. I suspect it is that same eerie absence of chatter I noticed, and what it may portend about the nation’s disposition toward reality. The dead white man Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) famously observed that “all truth passes through three stages: first, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident.”
America has been stuck in stage two lo these thirty-six months since Mr. Trump shocked the system with his electoral victory over She-Whose-Turn-Was-Undoubted, inciting a paroxysm of rage, disbelief, and retribution that has made the Left side of the political transect ridiculous, and repeatedly, ignominiously so, as their fantasies about Russian “collusion” and sequential chimeras dissolve in official proceedings. The astounding failure of Mr. Mueller’s report did nothing to dampen the violent derangement. There was no rethinking whatsoever about the terms-of-engagement in the Left’s war against the populist hobgoblin. The solidarity of delusion remained locked in place, leading to Mr. Schiff’s recent antics over his false “whistleblower” and the enfilade of diplomatic flak-catchers tasked to ward off any truthful inquiry into events in Ukraine.
But then, with the Thanksgiving shut-down, something began to turn. It was signaled especially in the Left’s chief disinformation organ, The New York Times, with a week-long salvo of lame stories aimed at defusing the Horowitz report, forthcoming on December 9. The Times stories were surely based on leaks from individuals cited in the IG’s report, who were given the opportunity to “review” the briefs against them prior to the coming release. The stories gave off an odor of panic and desperation that signaled a crumbling loss of conviction in the three-year narrative assault on the truth — namely, that the US Intel Community organized a coup to overthrow the improbable President Trump.
“If Assange gets extradited to the United States and if he gets punished for exposing the truth, then essentially what’s happening is that telling the truth becomes a crime.”
• Telling The Truth Becomes A Crime (RT)
An array of public figures, among them a retired British ambassador and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, again threw their weight behind Julian Assange, predicting the launch of a massive campaign in his support next year. Pundits, public figures and Julian Assange’s supporters flocked to an event called ‘Free the Truth’ in London. The Ruptly video agency filmed the exhibition of posters decrying Assange’s imprisonment, as well as artworks inspired by him. “So many activists are coming together at a time when I feel there’s been a real change in public sentiment,” Craig Murray, a former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan who now campaigns for the renowned publisher, commented.
Despite the lack of coverage or biased coverage in mainstream media, there is now an understanding that Julian is being extradited to the United States for nothing except for publishing the truth. He’s confident that next year “we will see one of the largest campaigns [in support of Assange] of our time.” It’s extremely important to draw attention to the founder of the WikiLeaks website, because “we are about to set a precedent,” warned Nils Melzer, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. If Assange gets extradited to the United States and if he gets punished for exposing the truth, then essentially what’s happening is that telling the truth becomes a crime.
Years more of Prince Andrew. They’re going to ship him off to Australia or some place.
• Jeffrey Epstein Is Dead But His Legal Legacy May Have Years To Run (G.)
The legal fallout from Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest for sex trafficking and subsequent suicide in jail is likely to go on for years, ensuring that those caught up in the saga – like Prince Andrew – will face scrutiny and negative headlines for years to come. Federal authorities in the US have repeatedly said that the investigation into the sex trafficking case is ongoing, raising the prospect of a lengthy multi-pronged and international inquiry into the wealthy financier’s jet-set lifestyle. There is already one criminal prosecution in relation to Epstein’s death: two Manhattan correctional center guards were indicted for allegedly trying to hide their failure to check on him in his cell the night he killed himself.
About one dozen accusers have also filed lawsuits against the convicted sex offender’s estate, and more litigation is likely, ensuring a multitude of legal cases wending their way through the courts. Finally the whereabouts of Epstein’s alleged procurer, Andrew’s friend and British media heiress Ghislaine Maxwell, remain unknown, sparking a global guessing game about one of the key figures in Epstein’s life. None of this is good news for the Duke of York, whose bumbling BBC Newsnight interview – in which he denied sexual activity with Epstein’s then 17-year-old accuser, Virginia Giuffre – has resulted in chaos for the royal family.
While the disgraced prince has now been removed from public duties, the Epstein affair seems virtually endless for him, both in time and scope, and is likely to make any return to prominence difficult, when at any moment a new wrinkle in the case might spur more bad headlines and tricky legal questions. Those wanting answers are unlikely to get them immediately. The wheels of justice can be grindingly slow, experts told the Guardian. “It’s complicated in knowing when the Epstein cases will come to a close, because we do not yet know all of the cases – both criminal and civil – that could find their way into the courts,” said attorney Robert Gottlieb, who has practiced criminal defense for more than four decades.
Edit reports through cut and paste so people look bad. Only took 4 years to investigate.
• Report On Jeremy Corbyn Inaccurate, Says BBC Trust (BBC)
The BBC broke accuracy and impartiality rules in a News at Six report about Jeremy Corbyn’s view on shoot-to-kill, the BBC’s governing body has said. The item, by BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, was shown three days after the Paris attacks in November 2015. A viewer complained that the report misrepresented the Labour leader’s position on the use of lethal force in the event of such an attack in the UK. BBC News director James Harding said he disagreed with the BBC Trust’s ruling. In the News at Six report, Kuenssberg said she had asked Mr Corbyn “if he were the resident here at Number 10 whether or not he would be happy for British officers to pull the trigger in the event of a Paris-style attack”.
He was seen to reply: “I am not happy with a shoot to kill policy in general. I think that is quite dangerous and I think can often be counter-productive.” The actual question Kuenssberg had asked during the interview was: “If you were prime minister, would you be happy to order people – police or military – to shoot to kill on Britain’s streets?” The previous question in the interview, in a section that was not used on the News At Six, he had been asked specifically about his response to a Paris-style attack if he was prime minister and whether he would “order security services onto the street to stop people being killed”. In answer to that question, Mr Corbyn had replied: “Of course you’d bring people onto the streets to prevent and ensure there is safety within our society.”
The BBC Trust said the BBC “was wrong in this case to present an answer Mr Corbyn had given to a question about ‘shoot to kill’ as though it were his answer to a question he had not in fact been asked”.
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