Jan 012024
 
 January 1, 2024  Posted by at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  48 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Vue de Notre-Dame de Paris 1945

 

Virginia Federal Judge Dismisses Lawsuit to Keep Trump from Ballot (CTH)
Seizure of Trump Phone Data Puts Jack Smith in Unprecedented Legal Waters (ET)
Trump Warns of Market Crash & Great Depression If He Loses White House Bid (ET)
Israeli Minister Makes Case For Depopulation Of Gaza (RT)
Trickery, Humiliation, Death and Timeless Hunger for Honor and Glory (Crooke)
Neo-Fascism Must Be Destroyed In 2024 – Medvedev (RT)
Putin Calls 2023 Year Russia Defended National Interests, Security
‘No Stomach’ in US to Continue Funding Ukraine – Ex-Pentagon Official (Sp.)
Scott Ritter: Belgorod Attack Meant to Provoke Russian Overreaction (Sp.)
Ex-CIA Officer Compares Ukrainian Officials to ‘Rats Fleeing Titanic’ (Sp.)
Reintegration Is a Natural Process for Donbass’ People (Leiroz)
Share of Dollar In Global Reserves Nosedives – IMF (RT)
Eurozone Economy Faces Bleak 2024 – FT (RT)

 

 

 

 

Aboli
https://twitter.com/i/status/1741232720263684464

 

 


RIP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Plaintiffs have totally failed to demonstrate how their alleged injuries are traceable to the conduct of defendants..”

Virginia Federal Judge Dismisses Lawsuit to Keep Trump from Ballot (CTH)

The leftist LAWFARE effort to use the federal and state court system to keep President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot continues. However, in the most recent example, a Democrat appointed federal judge in Virginia has dispatched the effort.

(New York Post) – A federal judge in Virginia on Friday dismissed a lawsuit aimed at removing former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 primary ballot citing the insurrection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. The complaint, filed by activists Roy Perry-Bey and Carlos Howard, alleged that Trump “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US and should therefore be disqualified from seeking the office he once occupied. Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, found that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue to get Trump, 77, off the state’s primary ballot. “At least five additional federal courts have concluded that citizens attempting to disqualify individuals — including former President Trump — from participating in elections or from holding public office based on the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol lacked standing,” Brinkema wrote in her 13-page ruling. “Plaintiffs have totally failed to demonstrate how their alleged injuries are traceable to the conduct of defendants,” the judge added.”

No doubt the Lawfare effort will continue, as the predicate reason for the January 6th “insurrection” narrative continues to surface. Behind the scenes names like Norm Eisen, Barry Berke, Mary McCord, Andrew Weissmann, David Laufman and Benjamin Wittes continue promoting the Lawfare approach. Just as the DOJ and FBI were seeded with ideological lawyers intending to use the national security state and justice system to target their political opposition, the aligned private sector partners and activist groups continue the same effort from outside government.

Big Tech, social media companies, DHS, the DOJ and FBI are all deploying a comprehensive strategy to attack the foundation of our constitutional republic and replace it with a totalitarian dictatorship run by financial interests and collaborators inside government. It is going to get a lot uglier before the final conflict is resolved. Unfortunately, the professional Republican apparatus is a willful participant in the effort. Just as the Tea Party was targeted by Eric Holder and Barack Obama, using weaponized government (DOJ/IRS) with the support and willful blindness of the Republican political apparatus, so too is the America-First movement under constant attack by the same ideologues. The Republican politicians who remain in the primary race are not stupid, blind or naive. They are active and financially rewarded participants in the overall effort.

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“..destructive precedent for the presidency, as it seriously undermines the president’s ability to get his constitutionally protected, confidential and candid advice from his advisers.”

Seizure of Trump Phone Data Puts Jack Smith in Unprecedented Legal Waters (ET)

Special counsel Jack Smith revealed in recent court documents that he obtained data from former President Donald Trump‘s smartphone, which some experts say could provide a means to challenge the case in court on appeal. “The phone records may add to the unease of some judges and justices over the fight over presidential immunities and privileges,” Jonathan Turley, a professor who teaches constitutional law at George Washington University, told The Washington Times. He added that, “however, Smith has the Nixon case to cite for such demands in the investigation of possible criminal acts. What is clear is that the Court may be pushed into a major line-drawing decision over inherent presidential immunities.”

Jamil Jaffer, former associate White House counsel to former President George W. Bush, told the same outlet that the use of President Trump’s cellphone data “raises really hard, complex questions on an unprecedented set of facts.” But Mike Davis, founder and president of the Article III Project, added that the seizure of his data may have crossed “a red line,” adding that it sets a “destructive precedent for the presidency, as it seriously undermines the president’s ability to get his constitutionally protected, confidential and candid advice from his advisers.” The Smith team charged the 45th president earlier this year with four counts, claiming that he illegally tried to overturn the 2020 election. President Trump has denied wrongdoing, pleaded not guilty to the charges, and said it’s part of a longstanding witch hunt to denigrate his political chances in 2024.

Earlier this year, in court filings, the special counsel’s team said that federal investigators gained access to the former president’s phone and White House phone records. It’s not clear what exactly they obtained or how much of it. According to the filing, an individual only described as “Expert 3” had “extracted and processed data from the White House cell phones used by the defendant and one other individual (Individual 1),” referring to President Trump and another person who was not identified. Expert 3 also “specifically identified the periods of time during which the defendant’s phone was unlocked and the Twitter application was open on January 6,” it said. Heavily redacted documents released by the Department of Justice in November, meanwhile, revealed that prosecutors had attempted to gain all information related to President Trump’s Twitter, now X, account, which included who interacted with him, posts, mutes, and direct messages.

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“The stock market is only high because people & institutions believe & expect me to win the presidential election of 2024..”

Trump Warns of Market Crash & Great Depression If He Loses White House Bid (ET)

Former President Donald Trump predicted Friday that if he doesn’t win the 2024 presidential election, America will suffer the biggest stock market crash in history—followed by another Great Depression-style event. President Trump made the remark in a post on social media, in which he said the economy under President Joe Biden is in “terrible” shape as high inflation has hammered American households and eroded their buying power. “The only thing that is keeping the economy ‘alive’ is the fumes of what we accomplished during the Trump administration,” the former president wrote, adding that, by some measures, the cumulative level of inflation since he left office is over 30 percent.

Official government data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that prices have risen by around 17 percent since President Biden took office. However, an alternative measure of inflation that uses the same methodology that the government used to measure inflation in the 1980s puts this figure at roughly twice that figure, so over 30 percent. Even though President Biden’s economic advisers have pointed to cooling inflation and a robust job market as signs that his “Bidenomics” policies are working, there’s been a chorus of economic indicators suggesting otherwise. Some of those indicators include job openings falling to their lowest level since March 2021, new orders for U.S.-made goods suffering their sharpest drop in more than three years, and a closely watched factory activity gauge showing that U.S. manufacturing activity contracted in November for the 13th consecutive month.

Still, with markets expecting the Fed to hit the brakes on more interest hikes as inflation has eased in recent months, stock markets have risen and consumer sentiment saw an uptick in December. The benchmark S&P 500 is up around 24 percent in 2023 and hovering near its all-time high, while the Dow Jones recently rose to a record high. It’s a development President Trump attributed to expectations around next year’s election. “The stock market is only high because people & institutions believe & expect me to win the presidential election of 2024,” he wrote, before adding: “If I don’t win, it is my prediction that we will have a stock market ‘crash’ worse than that of 1929—a Great Depression.” The Wall Street crashes of late October 1929—known as Black Thursday, Black Monday, and Black Tuesday—were the worst in U.S. history.

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While we’re talking neo-fascism…

Israeli Minister Makes Case For Depopulation Of Gaza (RT)

The majority of the Palestinian Arabs living in Gaza should be encouraged to emigrate to other countries, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said. He argued that drastic measures are needed to ensure Israel’s security and avoid further incursions by Hamas. “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” Smotrich told Army Radio on Sunday. “If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be totally different.” The leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party argued that a depopulated Gaza would no longer pose a threat to the Jewish state, given that the Palestinians living there under Hamas’ rule are “growing up on the aspiration to destroy the state of Israel.”

“Most of Israeli society will say ‘why not, it’s a nice place, let’s make the desert bloom, it doesn’t come at anyone’s expense,’” Smotrich said, as quoted by Reuters. He suggested that an international resettlement plan should be devised for the Palestinians who “have been forcibly held against their will in a ghetto for 75 years” and were raised on anti-Israeli propaganda. Up to 1.9 million people – or more than 85% of Gaza’s population – have been displaced since the Israeli Army launched an assault in response to the deadly Hamas attack on October 7, according to the UN. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) first urged people to flee the northern part of the Palestinian enclave, and eventually instructed those staying in the southern city of Khan Younis to relocate farther from the area of combat operations.

Israel continues to reject calls for an immediate ceasefire, despite repeated warnings from the UN about a humanitarian “catastrophe” in the enclave. Israeli officials and the IDF say Hamas bears full responsibility for civilian deaths and accuse the militant group of using civilians as human shields. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Saturday that “the war will continue for many months until Hamas is eliminated and the hostages are returned.” Israel declared war on Hamas and allied groups after the militants invaded the southern part of the country on October 7, leaving around 1,200 people dead and taking over 200 hostages. More than 21,600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the fighting erupted, according to the local Hamas-run government.

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“Tens of thousands of Ukrainian young men had to die between March and now – for what?”

Trickery, Humiliation, Death and Timeless Hunger for Honor and Glory (Crooke)

One major theme of Homer’s Iliad – which somehow seems as fresh and as vivid today as when first written – is its description of how even the greatest of states in Western civilization fail to reclaim what they lose. “Attempts to repair one loss lead only to more losses”, Emily Wilson writes in her introduction to the Iliad (2023). “Loss can never be recouped.” As Wilson sets out her story, one cannot escape the analogy to today – to a Biden seeking to recoup the American ‘reputation’ (Kleos in Greek). In the case of leaders of the ancient world too, the goal of achieving undying kleos runs through the poem. Today, we might refer to it as one’s ‘legacy’. In the Iliad it is definitional and gives mortal leaders the chance to live on after death with honour and glory. For Team Biden, Ukraine was supposed to be their Troy.

Russia, like Hector, was tricked into a fight and (and as Team Biden had hoped) is killed under Troy’s walls. But in today’s world, it didn’t work out that way. And now the U.S. faces the humiliation of a clear Russian victory in Ukraine, and a collective Russian leadership that says it intends to retrieve all lands and cities that were culturally Russian. Western Ukraine, they say, can go ‘wherever it likes’. The military facts on the ground are relentless and cannot be undone. But the White House hopes to keep a morsel of kleos by simply having Ukrainian forces ceasing to fight, falling back onto defensive lines – yet never saying ‘defeat’. The kinetic component to the conflict barely would ‘tick over’ at low revs. And, as Gideon Rachman has written in the Financial Times, to “flip the narrative to one of [repeatedly insisting] that Putin has failed”. The aim being that Washington quietly can ‘steal away’.

Well, there are two big problems: First, Russia doesn’t agree; it doesn’t agree at all. And secondly, Zelensky and his associates were grievously tricked. Not in this case, by the goddess Athena, but by the mortal Messrs Johnson and Blinken. In March 2022 in Istanbul, Zelensky and his negotiators had reached an accord with Russia. But that agreement ‘was killed’ by Boris Johnson urging Zelensky to fight on, and to gain his portion of the ‘honour and glory’ by participating in the slaying of the Russian aggressor. “As long as it takes – and whatever it takes” was the solemn ‘oath’. That is, so to speak, Zelensky was promised an open cheque and whatever weaponry would be needed … So, what happened to that which is now gone? If this were the Iliad, the storyline would at least, in part, focus on Zelensky’s disappointment at his tiny ‘portion of life’. Wilson writes:

“Many of the words in the Iliad are often translated as fortune or fate – literally, these suggest we get a portion or share … It’s as if there is a whole side of beef that is a quantity of human life and each of us gets a particular portion of it, both how long we get to be alive and also our portion of honor and glory”. Zelensky will have wanted a portion of honour to compensate him for fate having dealt-out his present portion of life in an unfair way (i.e. by having been tricked by British and U.S. assurances). The public humiliation Zelensky now suffers will no longer be balanced by a large share of glory gained through a vanquished Moscow. In the Homeric vein, this lays the ground for an act of revenge on Biden – publication of the ‘deal’. When these details emerge – as surely they will (echoing perhaps, the mysterious and reputationally explosive war-time Churchill letters hinting to Mussolini at some ultimate kleos-esque outcome) – then the ‘victory narrative’ may become soured by the insistent question: Tens of thousands of Ukrainian young men had to die between March and now – for what?

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“..an ideology “Russia’s enemies are trying to rekindle” decades after it was dealt a powerful blow during World War II..”

Neo-Fascism Must Be Destroyed In 2024 – Medvedev (RT)

Defeating neo-fascism once and for all should be Russia’s “main goal” in the coming year, former President Dmitry Medvedev said in his New Year’s address on Sunday. The Russian people have already demonstrated unparalleled “strength of mind, will to victory and selflessness” in the outgoing year, he added. The nation’s “hearts and minds” go out to the soldiers on the front lines, Medvedev said, expressing his sincere gratitude to “everyone who defends our great motherland.” This year required “particular resilience and cohesion, determination and power,” as well as “true patriotism” from the Russian people, he added. The coming year should witness the “ultimate defeat” of neo-fascism, an ideology “Russia’s enemies are trying to rekindle” decades after it was dealt a powerful blow during World War II, the former president said.

Russia is now locked in a protracted conflict with Ukraine, which it accuses of promoting ultranationalist ideology and persecuting its Russian-speaking minority. This year saw Russian forces thwart Kiev’s major counteroffensive. The six-month-long operation launched in early June ended in failure with heavy losses on the Ukrainian side. Russian President Vladimir Putin also hailed the feats of Russian soldiers in his New Year’s address and called them “heroes.” The president also said the country had been “steadfast in defending our national interests, our freedom and security, [and] our values that have always been and remain our unshakeable pillar.” Medvedev, who now serves as the deputy head of Russia’s National Security Council and the Military-Industrial Committee, has repeatedly condemned what he called open glorification of Nazism in Ukraine and particularly pointed to an initiative calling for the establishment of the Stepan Bandera Order, which would supposedly be awarded to Ukrainian servicemen.

Bandera was a notorious leader of Ukrainian nationalists during World War II whose organization was responsible for mass killings of Jews and Poles in Ukraine. The former Russian president has also sharply criticized Kiev’s Western backers, calling them a “pro-Nazi coalition” in September. He also insisted Moscow should take a tougher approach to Kiev. On Thursday, he stated that the removal of the Western-backed government of President Vladimir Zelensky is an undeclared but a “most important and inevitable goal” of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. Moscow’s goals also include “the disarmament of Ukrainian troops and the rejection of the ideology of neo-Nazism by the current Ukrainian state,” he added at that time.

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“We are together, and this is the most reliable guarantee of Russia’s future..”

Putin Calls 2023 Year Russia Defended National Interests, Security

2023 was the year Russia firmly defended its national interests. This is how Russian President Vladimir Putin characterized the outgoing year in his televised address Sunday. “We are seeing off 2023, very soon it will become part of history, and we must move forward to create the future,” Putin said. “In the outgoing year, we worked hard and accomplished a great deal, were proud of our common achievements, rejoiced at our successes and remained firm in the defense of our national interests, our freedom and security, our values, which have been and remain an unshakable pillar of support for us,” Putin said.

The president characterized Russians’ concern for Russia’s fate as the main factor which unites the country, saying people have “a deep understanding of the tremendous significance of the historical stage through which Russia is passing” through, and the “colossal responsibility” for the motherland which each Russian feels. “We will ensure the confident development of the fatherland, the well-being of our citizens, and will become even stronger. We are together, and this is the most reliable guarantee of Russia’s future,” Putin said. In the USSR and later Russia and other post-Soviet countries, the tradition of an annual televised New Year’s address just shy of midnight on December 31 began under Leonid Brezhnev in 1971, and was continued by Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev (from 2008-2012) and Vladimir Putin again from 2013 on.

In many families, watching the address as midnight nears has become a firmly established tradition, with between 45 and 55 percent of Russians tuning in to watch each year. Sunday’s address was the second time Putin addressed Russians amid the ongoing full-scale NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. In last year’s address, Putin called 2022 a “year of difficult but necessary decisions,” and “of important steps towards Russia’s full sovereignty and a powerful consolidation of our society” in the face of Western attempts to “cynically use Ukraine and its people as a means to weaken and divide Russia.”

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“We have got to worry about our whether our government is even going to be open for business..”

‘No Stomach’ in US to Continue Funding Ukraine – Ex-Pentagon Official (Sp.)

The reality is that there is “no stomach” any longer in the West to fund Ukraine and the ongoing proxy conflict against Russia there, Michael Maloof, a former Pentagon official, told Sputnik. The Kiev regime is going to have to seriously consider some form of negotiation and look at the realities, he emphasized. “The United States has their appropriations hung up. The US government could shut down by January 17 if the administration and Congress can’t negotiate and work out an arrangement for funding Ukraine and Israel, but at the same time to enforce the border. I think the Republicans to date have held firm, and we’ll see if they’ll hold on. But there’s no stomach right now any longer to fund the Ukrainians. Frankly, the people see that the war is over.

Basically, the [Ukrainian] counteroffensive failed, and there’s no way that they can pick it back up and turn things around, because they’ve gone into total defensive mode. The so-called counteroffensive just does not exist,” said Maloof. Earlier, the US Congress adjourned for the winter holiday break without reaching a deal on security at the US border with Mexico and additional aid for Ukraine. Republican lawmakers have insisted on the inclusion of more stringent border security measures in the Biden administration’s $106 billion supplemental funding request, which includes more than $60 billion in aid for Ukraine. US Senator Chris Murphy said that negotiators hope to have a deal to present to senators by the time they return on January 8.

Looking ahead, Michael Maloof predicted there was going to be a quite “tumultuous” start to 2024 in the United States. “We have got to worry about our whether our government is even going to be open for business,” he pointed out, adding that “there is a second tranche in February that would shut down as well if they have not reached a resolution on funding the government agencies the way the House has dictated.” Furthermore, funding not only for Ukraine, but also for Israel is going to feed into the internal debate, the pundit suggested, because the United States is “pretty fed up” with the extent to which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blown up the current cycle of the Palestine-Israel conflict.

Besides the death of so many civilians in Gaza amid Israel’s war on Hamas, Netanyahu “appears to be trying to pick a fight with the Iranians, and this whole thing could explode,” the expert warned. “I guess he [Benjamin Netanyahu] thinks he can go ahead and start raising all kinds of havoc not only with Iran, but also with Hezbollah up north. So are we going to help fund all of that? I mean, that’s the big question. And I don’t think there’s any stomach for that, considering that, you know, we are entering an election year,” said the former senior security policy analyst in the Office of the US Secretary of Defense.

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“..this was a clear-cut case of the indiscriminate use of military weapons against exclusively civilian targets – a war crime in the extreme..”

Scott Ritter: Belgorod Attack Meant to Provoke Russian Overreaction (Sp.)

24 people were killed and over 100 others injured in the Russian city of Belgorod in a Ukrainian guided missile and MLRS artillery strike Saturday. Russia retaliated by striking “decision-making centers” in neighboring Kharkov Sunday. Veteran military observer Scott Ritter outlines the calculations Kiev likely made in plotting the Belgorod attack. The death toll from the attack on Belgorod continues to rise as doctors fight for the lives of civilians gravely injured during Saturday’s brazen daylight attack on the city center. The Russian military made good on a promise to retaliate, with the MoD reporting Sunday that its forces had launched missile strikes against Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate, Ukrainian Security Service, military and mercenary targets in Kharkov, Khmelnytsky and Zaporozhye.

Security sources told Russian media Sunday that President Zelensky had “personally” ordered Main Intelligence Directorate chief Kyrylo Budanov to strike Belgorod, with the attack said to be carried out by personnel from the Kraken Regiment, a Ukrainian military volunteer unit under the command of avowed ultranationalist Sergey Velichko. Kraken militants were among the forces targeted during Russia’s retaliatory attacks, the MoD said. There will also be a response to all crimes. Ukraine will continue to be strengthened, our defense industry will become more powerful,” Ukrainian Presidential Office head Andrii Yermak wrote in a cryptic social media post Saturday night, just hours after the Belgorod attack, perhaps referring to the fact that the Vilkha missile launcher believed to have been used to target the city is a Ukrainian-made weapons system.

Ukrainian and Western media assured that the Belgorod strikes were aimed only at “military targets,” and that they were a retaliation to Friday’s massed Russian airstrikes across the country. “The Ukrainians claim to fire against military targets, but the use of cluster munitions and the targets they hit…indicate that this was a clear-cut case of the indiscriminate use of military weapons against exclusively civilian targets – a war crime in the extreme,” Scott Ritter told Sputnik in a video commentary responding to Saturday’s cluster bomb attack on Belgorod. “The timing of this, on the eve of a New Year – one of the most widely celebrated holidays in Russia, I think is designed to be both a psychological blow against the Russian people, and in striking such a blow to generate some sort of reaction by the Russian government that would allow Ukraine to create the case or restate the case to their Western allies for the need for continued financial and military support,” the former Marine and UN weapons inspector explained.

“To date, the Russian government has shown an ability to be very mature in their response, not to overreact. Russia has said that it will retaliate against those responsible in a time and place of their choosing. But the bottom line is, as we go into the new year, we see Ukraine becoming increasingly desperate. They’re being abandoned by the West and they’re doing their best to create some sort of catastrophic event that can recapture the imagination of the West, but to no avail,” Ritter stressed. As for Kiev’s motive, Ritter believes it’s simple. “The purpose of this appears to be purely revenge. The day before, Russia had struck exclusively military targets in one of the largest-ever drone and missile barrages since the special military operation began. It embarrassed Ukraine, it showed that their defenses were totally inadequate and also sent a signal to the collective West that continuing to supply Ukraine with arms and munitions would be met with a Russian response. The Ukrainian response was to target Russian civilians,” he said.

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“..it’s like that scene from the movie Titanic. The passengers are moving one direction, the rats are moving the opposite way. That’s what’s going on in Ukraine right now. The rats are heading for the lifeboats.”

Ex-CIA Officer Compares Ukrainian Officials to ‘Rats Fleeing Titanic’ (Sp.)

Russian and independent media have been reporting on Ukraine’s harsh recruitment tactics since early 2022, when President Zelensky announced general mobilization. Nearly two years on and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian casualties later, legacy outlets are finally starting to catch up. Retired CIA intelligence analyst and former State Department official Larry Johnson has compared Ukraine to the Titanic as Ukrainian officials attempt to escape the country to avoid certain death in the Zelensky regime’s meat grinder military campaign against Russia. “The fact that the New York Times is now reporting this tells you how bad the situation is. They’ve realized that this party is over,” Johnson told Redacted host Clayton Morris on Saturday, referencing an unusually frank expose by the newspaper characterizing Ukraine’s recruiters as “people snatchers” and detailing their harsh, corrupt, and illegal practices, from the confiscation of fighting age men’s passports to attempts to recruit the mentally disabled.

“It goes to part of another story that came out last week about members of the Rada – the legislature. They’re trying to get out of Ukraine. So to get out of Ukraine at the border you’ve got to show a passport. So no passport, no leav[ing],” Johnson said. “The fact that the Ukrainian legislators recognize that the end is near, which is why they’re trying to get out, it’s like that scene from the movie Titanic. The passengers are moving one direction, the rats are moving the opposite way. That’s what’s going on in Ukraine right now. The rats are heading for the lifeboats.”

The Ukrainian president’s office was forced to take measures earlier this year to block officials and lawmakers from making “business trips” abroad after a series of scandals involving vacations to luxury resorts while ordinary Ukrainians are mired in conflict and trying to survive. Earlier this month, former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko complained that he too had been blocked from leaving the country on important “diplomatic work,” and called the decision to stop him “an anti-Ukrainian diversion” that would serve as a “blow to Ukraine’s defense capabilities.”

President Zelensky signed laws extending martial law and general mobilization last month, and in early December acknowledged a need for changes to the mobilization system to recruit even more conscripts. Last week, Ukraine’s military leadership proposed the mobilization of an additional 450,000-500,000 people, a task some US observers said may prove impossible as the country has already been drained of fighting-age men. Larry Johnson echoed these sentiments. “A lot of these guys they’re grabbing are like my age, you know 68, 58, they’re not exactly in the prime of their life and able to take an 80 pound ruck on their back and run across 5-10 kilometers,” he said. On top of that, many of these people have no military experience, he said.

Pointing to the recent admission even by Ukraine’s notorious military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov that the current mobilization strategy is bound to fail, Johnson suggested “this lets you know that this thing’s not gonna drag on for two-three years as some have predicted. The end is nigh. I think they’ll be lucky to make it to summer. Because you’ve got the political unrest, the intrigue that’s going on. Like [Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valery] Zaluzhny coming out saying ‘my office was bugged’. That’s like a whole Russian nesting doll right there,” he said. “The story is another indicator of the growing chaos within the Ukrainian government, and the decreasing ability of the United States to control those events,” the observer summarized.

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“We are and will always be Russians by blood, but we could be Ukrainian citizens as well. However, they never gave us any chance..”

Reintegration Is a Natural Process for Donbass’ People (Leiroz)

According to the Western mainstream media, the New Regions of the Russian Federation are “captured” territories. It is said that Moscow “annexed” these areas without taking into account the legitimate interests of the local population. It has become commonplace to say that the 2022 referendums are “illegitimate” and cannot be recognized under international law. The high number of pro-Russian votes are often used as an argument in the West to suggest that the electoral process was fraudulent and manipulated. However, analysis on the ground brings another perspective to observers. On a recent journalistic trip to Donbass, I was able to see how local residents are dealing with the process of reintegration into Russia – and the first possible conclusion is that the Western media is lying about the topic.

I was in the People’s Republic of Lugansk in early December. In that region, the process of adaptation to the new political reality of Donbass – as oblasts of the Russian Federation – is occurring in a completely natural way. For the locals, there is no difficulty in becoming part of Russia – frankly, it seems that nothing has changed for them. Talking to residents of Lugansk, I heard from all of them that being part of Russia is not something “new”. They say that, being ethnic Russians, they have always felt as part of Russia, with the 2022 referendums being a mere bureaucratic formality. The feeling of belonging to Russia has always been a central aspect in the culture of the people of Donbass, which is why there is no difficulty in “adapting” to the region’s new political reality.

Furthermore, local civilians say that life has improved rapidly. According to them, during the years under Kiev’s control, Donbass was “abandoned” – marginalized and excluded from Ukrainian society. Evidence of this exclusion can easily be seen in the region’s infrastructure itself. Roads and buildings are generally either very old or very new. The new ones were built by the Russians since military liberation, while the old ones date back to the Soviet era. When asked about investments in infrastructure during the years of Ukrainian control, locals claim that nothing had been done.

To harm the economy and generate poverty and social instability in Russian-speaking regions, the Ukrainian government deliberately promoted deindustrialization and damaged local infrastructure for years. For example, mining has always been the main economic activity in Donbass, being a region known for coal and iron exploration. However, with the aging of Soviet machinery and the lack of investment by the Ukrainian government, mining productivity in the region was severely affected, harming the lives of many local workers. In a talk with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lugansk, Vladislav Deinego, I heard from him that the promotion of deindustrialization was a strategy by Kiev to affect the Donbass’ people. In fact, although persecution and ethnic cleansing began only in 2014, marginalization against Russian speakers had already been a common practice in Ukraine since the end of the USSR.

In practice, the residents of Donbas never had a chance to feel part of Ukraine. Even though they are ethnically Russian, they could peacefully integrate into Ukrainian society, merging Russian ethnicity with Ukrainian citizenship – in the same way as happens in countries like Belarus. But it seems that this peaceful coexistence was never the desire of the Ukrainian elites. Russians were mistreated and persecuted in Ukraine – and then had no alternative but to seek to be part of the Russian Federation. “We are and will always be Russians by blood, but we could be Ukrainian citizens as well. However, they never gave us any chance,” says a local who I interviewed on the streets of Lugansk. He added: “All the changes [since the reintegration] were for the better. Now we have peace, employment, and security – what we didn’t have in Ukraine. But we always felt part of Russia – this is nothing new.”

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Giant amounts.

Share of Dollar In Global Reserves Nosedives – IMF (RT)

The US dollar’s share of global central bank reserves has continued to decrease, nosediving to 59.2% in the third quarter of 2023, according to the latest data released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The decline comes amid the de-dollarization trend gaining momentum across the globe. IMF statistics show the greenback’s share is down from roughly 70% in 2000. The dollar remains the world’s leading reserve currency with the euro coming second, while the latter’s share has slid to 19.6%. The Japanese yen’s proportion of world reserves grew to 5.5% from 5.3% in the previous three-month period. The Chinese yuan, British pound, Canadian dollar and Swiss franc were little changed.

Meanwhile, according to data compiled by global financial messaging service SWIFT, the yuan’s share of international payments hit a record high in November, with the renminbi becoming the fourth most used currency worldwide. Cross-border yuan lending has risen as well, while the People’s Bank of China holds over 30 bilateral currency swaps with foreign central banks, including Saudi Arabia and Argentina. The growing share of the yuan in cross-border transactions reflects China’s trend of shifting away from the dollar, as well as Beijing’s efforts to promote the use of the renminbi, according to SWIFT.

The global trend towards using national currencies in trade instead of the US dollar began to gain momentum last year, after Ukraine-related sanctions saw Russia cut off from the Western financial system and its foreign reserves frozen. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has warned that Russia’s growing trade in the Chinese yuan as a response to Western sanctions could potentially erode the strength of the US dollar. Economists have been also indicating that Western trade restrictions have led to an increased usage of the Chinese yuan globally at the expense of the greenback.

Read more …

What happens when you deindustrialize..

Eurozone Economy Faces Bleak 2024 – FT (RT)

The 20-nation euro currency bloc is expected to see only moderate economic growth, +0.6% in 2024, according to the results of a survey carried out by the Financial Times among 48 economists. The outlooks issued by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are more optimistic, as analysts from the institutions expect the bloc’s economy to grow 0.8% and 1.2% in 2024, respectively. The experts polled by the FT said that the Eurozone economy won’t be able to exceed 0.6% growth in spite of the fact that wages are expected to grow faster than inflation. Two thirds of the respondents said that they see the economy in the euro area slip into a recession. commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction. According to the economists, wage growth in the single currency area is set to total only 4% in 2024, while consumer prices are projected to rise by over 2.5% on average next year and slightly below 2.1% in 2025.

The ECB had previously forecast wages and inflation next year to grow 4.6% and 2.7% respectively, which would mark the growth of real household incomes for the first time in three years. The regulator expects consumer prices to grow 2.1% in 2025. Meanwhile, unemployment is projected to rise from a record eurozone low of 6.5% in October to 6.9% at the end of next year, according to most economists polled. High interest rates, probable energy market turmoil and geopolitical instability are expected to lead to a deeper recession, the economists warned, saying that the potential election of Donald Trump as US president along with the possibility of Ukraine losing the military conflict with Russia could send the single currency bloc into a period of even weaker growth.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Raven

 

 

Great white

 

 

Windshield

 

 

Deep sea squid
https://twitter.com/i/status/1741456039495483779

 

 

 

 

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Aug 192020
 


Joel Meyerowitz New York City 1963

 

 

No, no matter how much I read and watch, I can’t shake the idea (less so as I go along, actually) that the Democrats don’t really, honestly, want to win the 2020 presidential election. Obviously, there are many in the party who do, and voters too, but not the ones pushing the levers and pulling the strings. Those, whoever they may be, that are picking candidates, setting policy, maintaining media contacts, doctoring spins.

Because is there anyone among you who has ever seen a worse candidate than Joe Biden? I’m not just talking about his dementia and gaffes, but you’d be very hard-pressed to find anyone who can use Biden and enthusiasm -let alone inspiration, or even better: exhilaration- in one sentence that doesn’t include the word “no”. And isn’t that the #1 requirement for a candidate?

They ostensibly went with Kamala Harris to provide some of that, if we may believe the press. She’ll whip up the voters into wild bouts of inspiring enthusiasm! Only, Kamala bowed out of the primaries even before 2020 started, after spending $40 million -part of which is still not paid off- because she was stuck at 2% support and couldn’t generate … any enthusiasm.

What you got is a really old man who couldn’t get a toddler excited about ice cream, and a token black woman who nobody even in her own party likes. Mix those ingredients into a convention that attracts just half the viewers of the 2016 one and generates the excitement level of an infomercial for kitchen appliances, and is it any wonder I doubt that the “behind the curtain party” is in this to win?

As for the political program, the agenda, there is really only one item on it: Donald Trump. And no matter how many millions of times it may be repeated in speeches and news articles, NOT being something is in the end NOT a positive message. You’re supposed to win on your own merit, not someone else’s perceived lack of merit. Newsflash: “MOST BIDEN SUPPORTERS SAY THEIR VOTE IS AGAINST TRUMP RATHER THAN FOR BIDEN – WSJ/NBC News poll”.

This bit from the Guardian on Monday sums it up nicely, and it veers into late night comedy territory while doing it (what more can one ask for?):

Virtual Democratic Convention Kicks Off With Emphasis On Unity

The Democratic national convention begins on Monday with a star-studded lineup and heavy emphasis on unity aimed at presenting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the US’s best hope for healing a deeply divided nation[..]

The Dems have a hard enough time uniting their own party, let alone the nation. And there’s not a Trump supporter who would move into their camp – other than the odd washed up GOP politician.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on the eve of the convention found Biden with a nine-point lead over Trump nationally [..] According to the survey, Biden holds a wide advantage over Trump on nearly every issue except the economy, which voters say is a priority this election.


[..] Biden’s selection of Harris has exhilarated supporters, who showered the campaign with a stunning $48m in the 48 hours after she was announced as his running mate.[..]

What, so now they’re only $50 million or so behind?

Democrats anticipate the excitement around Harris’s historic candidacy as the first Black woman nominated for national office by a major party, will build momentum around the convention [..] Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPac, a super Pac focused on Black Democrats: “I think there is also real relief that there is a ticket people can believe in, and get behind and push over the finish line.”

Excitement, exhilaration are words that don’t seem to mean anymore what they used to.

[..] the people who were in the Bernie campaign, the people in the Biden campaign, and people outside of both of those campaigns – have really worked hard to create an effective and genuine popular front against Donald Trump,” Weaver said, adding: “Trump is a very unifying factor.”


[..] Howard Dean, a former chair of the DNC who has attended every party convention since 1980, said the new format could work in Biden’s favor. Unlike Trump, who feeds off the energy of crowds at rallies but can look wooden and uncomfortable when reading from a teleprompter, Biden, Dean said, “does better on television than he does at a podium”. “This helps him because he will be on TV projecting calmness, reasonableness and thoughtfulness,” he said. “And that’s what people are desperate for right now.”

Isn’t it great that not feeling comfortable reading from a teleprompter 24/7 in your basement has now become a negative quality? I know, it’s hard to keep up.

But then there was the reality check from CNN on Sunday. Double digit leads vanished (coincidence?) just as Kamala caused all that exhilarating excitement:

Biden and Trump Matchup Tightens As Enthusiasm Hits New High

[..] on the eve of the party conventions, a majority of voters (53%) are “extremely enthusiastic” about voting in this year’s election [..] 50% of registered voters back the Biden-Harris ticket, while 46% say they support Trump and Pence, right at the poll’s margin of error [..]

Among the 72% of voters who say they are either extremely or very enthusiastic about voting this fall, Biden’s advantage over Trump widens to 53% to 46%.

It is narrower, however, among those voters who live in the states that will have the most impact on the electoral college this fall. Across 15 battleground states, the survey finds Biden has the backing of 49% of registered voters, while Trump lands at 48%.

The movement in the poll among voters nationwide since June is concentrated among men (they split about evenly in June, but now 56% back Trump, 40% Biden), those between the ages of 35 and 64 (they tilt toward Trump now, but were Biden-leaning in June) and independents (in June, Biden held a 52% to 41% lead, but now it’s a near even 46% Biden to 45% Trump divide).

 

The picture painted, especially amongst the most dedicated anti-Trumpers, is of course that Biden can’t lose; that’s what they all want, right? Well, think about it: CNN lives off of Trump, and so does a large part of the MSM. But then again, they made their beds and they’ll have to lie in them. The Democratic Party, however, does not. They are free to sabotage their own campaign.

And as I said above, there are many signs that MAY indicate that they are doing just that. The selection of Joe Biden, the basement strategy, the subsequent “appointment” of Kamala Harris, the near-dead convention. Do appreciate, please, that we have no idea how Biden and Kamala were “selected”. How did Biden all of a sudden rise to the top of the crop from seemingly nowhere? Where did Kamala come from post-primary mayhem? Did Joe personally pick her? Do you believe that?

But okay, if you don’t think that they would sabotage their own campaign, flip things around: if they WOULD have wanted to make sure they’d lose the election, what would they have done, you know, the donors behind the veil, plus maybe the Obamas and Clintons? Wouldn’t they perhaps have picked Biden and Kamala, whom very few people appeared to actually like, find sympathetic, prior to them being selected for their respective roles? Why not select people that DO resonate with voters without you having to forcefully shove them down their throats?

Why would a bunch of power-hungry folk (as all politicians and their sponsors are) want to screw up their own chance at obtaining power? Well, the lack of good candidates may well be a factor, but there’s something much bigger: the US economy, like most if not all western economies, is wobbling precariously on a precipice, and about to fall off. As I labeled it recently: The Bottom Is Falling Out.

Our entire present reality is still somewhat new, the COVID pandemic, its fallout, the bailouts, the government checks, the sick and the dead, but at some point it will all start to become a “normal” part of life. That doesn’t mean, however, that the economy will return to “normal” (whatever anybody ever thought that meant).

An enormous number of businesses will never reopen, entire fields will be obliterated, re: tourism, airlines, a large swath of retail stores. The unemployment that generates will be with us for many years. The Great Depression will become a mere footnote in most history books.

And the parties in charge in various countries, including the GOP in America, will be the ones blamed for most of the ensuing problems. If you’re a Democrat behind-the-curtain wizard, wouldn’t you at least consider saying: I think I’ll pass for this round, and let Trump take the heat?

Just so, you know, you can continue your cooperation with CNN, NYT, WaPo, FBI, and blame Trump every single day and 1000 times on Sunday for everything that falls apart, while continuing to generate clickbait profits ? If all you got to show for your grand ambitions is Joe Biden, it must seem a really appealing course of action.

Besides, you don’t appear to have any better candidates than Biden -at least not centrist ones-, but don’t forget that neither do the Republicans once Trump is gone. Da Donald is set to leave a huge hole behind where he once pontificated. And just about any Democrat except for Joe Biden could step right into that hole (pun intended).

 

 

 

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Jun 102019
 
 June 10, 2019  Posted by at 9:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  7 Responses »


Georges Seurat Bathers at Asnières 1884

 

Stupidity, Evil and the Decline of the US (Doug Casey)
The Great Depression: A Real Estate Boom Gone Bust (Vague)
Game Over (Sven Henrich)
ECB Floats Rate Cut Trial Balloon (ZH)
Boris Johnson Pledges Major Tax Cut For Wealthy (Ind.)
Boris Johnson Is ‘Poisoning Our Politics’ – Tory Leadership Rival (Ind.)
Mike Pompeo Tells Jewish Leaders He Would ‘Push Back’ Against Corbyn (G.)
Tulsi Gabbard Pushes No War Agenda – And The Media Is Out To Get Her (SCF)
One Million March In Hong Kong To Protest China Extradition Bill (R.)
Hong Kong Plunged Into Political Crisis (R.)
Boeing 737 Max Seen as ‘Airplane Non Grata’ by Wary Travelers (BBG)
Boeing Used To Getting Its Way, Grip On Congress Is Legendary (Ralph Nader)
Chris Hedges Talks To UN Special Rapporteur About Assange (RT)

 

 

“To the Romans, virtues were things like fortitude, nobility and courage. Those virtues are true to the root of the word. When people think of virtues today they think of faith, hope, charity—which are not related to the word’s root meaning. ”

Stupidity, Evil and the Decline of the US (Doug Casey)

Regrettably, the US is no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. It’s become the land of whipped and whimpering dogs that roll over on their backs and wet themselves when confronted with authority. Now, why are Americans this way? Let me give you two reasons—though there are many more. First, there’s a simple absence of virtue. Let’s look at the word virtue. It comes from the Latin vir, which means manly, even heroic. To the Romans, virtues were things like fortitude, nobility and courage. Those virtues are true to the root of the word. When people think of virtues today they think of faith, hope, charity—which are not related to the word’s root meaning. These may pass as virtues in a religious sense.

But, outside a Sunday school, they’re actually vices. This deserves a discussion, because I know it will shock many. But I’ll save that for another time. An absence of virtues and the presence of subtle vices is insinuated throughout society. Worse, overt vices like avarice and especially envy are encouraged. Envy, in particular will become a big vice in the years to come. It’s similar to jealousy, but worse. Jealousy says “You have something I want; I’ll try to take it from you”. Envy says “You have something I want. If I can’t take it from you, I’ll destroy it, and hurt you if I can.” Jealousy and envy seem to motivate most Democratic Party presidential candidates. No wonder America is in rapid decline.

A second reason is unsound philosophy. The reigning philosophy in the US used to be based on individualism and personal freedom. It’s now statism and collectivism. But most people don’t think about philosophy—or even have a consistent worldview. More than ever, they do what seems like a good idea at the time. The average American has problems. But his rulers are something else again. Most of the people running the US are either knaves or fools. How do we know if we are dealing with a knave or a fool? In other words, are you dealing with somebody who is evil or just stupid? To give a recent, but classic, example, are you dealing with a Dick Cheney or a George W. Bush? Do you prefer the knavish Obama, or the knavish Biden? The foolish Trump, or the foolish Pence. Not much of a real choice anywhere…

Read more …

Excerpt from A Brief History of Doom by Richard Vague.

The Great Depression: A Real Estate Boom Gone Bust (Vague)

Contrary to the explanation found in many histories of the Great Depression, that calamity was a massive real estate boom gone bust. Residential construction more than tripled, and the housing boom was every bit as large as in the Great Recession on a per capita basis. In Manhattan more skyscrapers were built in the late 1920s than during any other comparable span in its history, and the skylines of most major U.S. cities are still testimony to the excesses of that era: “The Great Depression brought a level of misery rarely seen in American history. … [and] was a massive residential and commercial real estate crisis. The financial records of the 1920s, which have largely been overlooked, indelibly show this. During the 1920s, annual housing and commercial real estate construction almost tripled — and nearly all of it was financed by debt.

“This explosion in residential and commercial construction lending, aug≠mented by lending for utilities and stock purchases, created the euphoria of the Roaring Twenties, the jazz age of robust spending and celebration. Com≠panies used the new money from loans to expand and employ more people. “The acceleration in construction resulted in such extensive overbuilding that by the final years of the decade, before the stock market crash, thousands of newly erected office buildings, houses, and apartments sat empty. Office vacancy rates rose, and residential mortgage foreclosures nearly doubled in the final years of the decade.’ As in other cases, this crisis was inevitable be≠fore it was obvious. The only question, and the only area where the president and the Federal Reserve could still have a discretionary impact, was the length and severity of that correction. …

“The iconic structures of American skylines form the silhouette of the Great Depression: New York’s Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, and RCA Building; Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, Wrigley Building, and Tribune Tower; Philadelphia’s PSFS Building; Los Angeles’s City Hall; Dallas’s Cotton Exchange Building; Detroit’s Fischer Building; and Houston’s Gulf Building. These are enduring architectural feats of the 1920s, vestiges of the real estate eruption that came before the fall. Many were speculative projects, unsupported by actual real estate demand; begun toward the end of the 1920s, when loans were still available; and finished after the crash, when lenders had little choice but to make funds available to complete construction or else see their entire loan go bad. None was financially successful for its original investors. They remained partly or largely empty for a decade or more after completion, as would hundreds of others.”

Read more …

“Everything every central banker has uttered last year was completely wrong. ”

Game Over (Sven Henrich)

Game over. The grand central bank experiment of the last 10 years has ended in utter and complete failure. The games of cheap money and constant intervention that have brought you record global debt to the tune of $250 trillion and record wealth inequality are about to embark on a new round of peddling blue meth again. Australia has already cut, so has India. The ECB is talking about it, markets are already pricing in multiple Fed cuts. The new global rate cutting cycle begins anew before the last one ever ended. Brace yourselves as no one, absolutely no one, can know how this will turn out. Absolutely staggering. We are witnessing a historic unraveling here. Everything every central banker has uttered last year was completely wrong.


Every projection they made over the last 10 years has been wrong. No wonder Jay Powell wants to toss the dot plot. It’s a public record of failure. Why place confidence in people who are staring at the ruins of the policies they unleashed on the world and are about to unleash again? All the distortions of 10 years of cheap money, debt, wealth inequality, zombie companies, negative debt, TINA, you name it, will all be further exacerbated by hapless and scared central bankers whose only solution to failure is to embark on the same cheap money train again. All under the banner to “extend the business cycle” at all costs. Never asking whether they should nor considering the consequences. But since they are not elected by the people and face zero consequences for failure they don’t have to consider the collateral damage they inflict.

Read more …

Take away their powers or else.

ECB Floats Rate Cut Trial Balloon (ZH)

Last week’s non-committal ECB announcement caught markets by surprise, with the Euro jumping despite Mario Draghi’s best attempts to signal further easing even as he hinted at growing “downside risks”, prompting speculation that the ECB may have lost the last shreds of its credibility and leading Rabobank to publish a piece titled “Whatever It Takes” > “Whatever”.” Not used to being spurred by markets, Mario Draghi refused to take such aggression against his legacy quietly – especially as the former Goldman partner is set to retire shortly – and on Sunday, the European Central Bank used its traditional trial balloon conduit, Reuters, which reported that ECB policymakers “are open to cutting the ECB’s policy rate again” if economic growth weakens in the rest of the year and a strong euro hurts a bloc already bearing the brunt of a global trade war, clearly hoping that this jawboning would be sufficient to slam the euro (it wasn’t with the EURUSD basically unchanged from its Friday close).

As a reminder, last Thursday the ECB said that its interest rates would stay “at their present levels” until mid-2020 but President Mario Draghi added rate setters had started a discussion about a possible cut or fresh bond purchases to stimulate inflation. This conflicting message failed to convince some investors, who saw it as too tenuous a commitment to more stimulus, sending the euro rallying to a nearly 3 month high of $1.1347 against the U.S. dollar. So in an attempt to convince the skeptics, Reuters cited its traditionally anonymous “two sources” familiar with the ECB’s policy discussions, who said a rate cut was firmly in play if the bloc’s economy was to stagnate again after expanding by 0.4% in the first quarter of the year.

“If inflation and growth slow, then a rate cut is warranted,” said one of the sources, who requested anonymity because the ECB’s deliberations are confidential. The problem is that no matter what Draghi says, or “floats”, the market is concerned that the ECB is approaching the end of its credible ammo: with the ECB’s deposit rate already negative 40 bps and Germany’s yield hitting all time low. In this context, countering the euro’s strength, rather than lowering already rock-bottom borrowing costs, would be the main reason for a further cut to that deposit rate, one of the sources said.

Read more …

Because the Tory members, and they’re wealthy, decide who is the next PM.

Boris Johnson Pledges Major Tax Cut For Wealthy (Ind.)

Boris Johnson has pledged to cut income tax for three million higher earners, in a move that would cost £9.6bn a year. The current frontrunner in the Tory leadership contest said he would raise the threshold for the 40p tax band from £50,000 to £80,000 if he becomes prime minister. The move would be paid for through money currently set aside for no-deal Brexit planning and by rises in National Insurance. Mr Johnson said: “We should be raising thresholds of income tax – so that we help the huge numbers that have been captured in the higher rate by fiscal drag.” But the announcement sparked immediate criticism, including from senior Conservatives.


Nicky Morgan, the chair of the Commons Treasury committee, said: “The question for Boris is why is this a priority when you could be obviously lifting more people out of paying income tax – the lower rate taxpayers – or you could be give people receiving child benefit an extra £15 a week.” And Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, said: “If you want to badge yourself as a One Nation Conservative, you focus on tax cuts and investment in infrastructure to help the lowest paid and the people in most difficulty in all parts of this country. That’s not what he’s doing.”

Read more …

Can it be more severely poisoned yet?

Boris Johnson Is ‘Poisoning Our Politics’ – Tory Leadership Rival (Ind.)

Conservative leadership contender Rory Stewart has launched a furious broadside at rival Boris Johnson, accusing the former foreign secretary of not being honest about his Brexit plans and challenging him to rule out suspending parliament to force no deal through. Speaking to The Independent, Mr Stewart said the leadership front-runner was trying to “out-Farage Farage” with an undeliverable plan to renegotiate Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement which was designed to usher in no-deal Brexit but would instead trigger a disastrous general election. And he blasted Johnson’s “swaggering machismo” over Brexit, which he said risked poisoning the UK’s relations with Europe.

The verbal assault came ahead of the formal launch of the contest to replace Ms May at No 10, with the official line-up of candidates to be confirmed after nominations close on Monday. Previously-fancied Michael Gove found his campaign mired in controversy over his admission of past cocaine use, with the environment secretary forced to fend off allegations of hypocrisy and deny having lied on security forms when entering parliament and travelling to the US. He dismissed as “foolish” suggestions that he might be barred from going to the US as prime minister.

Meanwhile, Mr Johnson – who picked up backing from cabinet ministers Chris Grayling and Alun Cairns and former Tory deputy chair James Cleverly – broke his campaign silence with a Sunday Times interview in which he said he would withhold Britain’s £39 billion Brexit divorce bill until Brussels agreed better terms for the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. The threat brought an immediate response from France, where a source close to President Emmanuel Macron said it would be regarded as “a failure of international commitments equivalent to a sovereign debt default” – something that could send the UK’s credit rating tumbling.

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Guess they couldn’t get him with sex smears.

Mike Pompeo Tells Jewish Leaders He Would ‘Push Back’ Against Corbyn (G.)

Labour has accused Donald Trump’s top official, Mike Pompeo, of trying to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister, after he was caught on tape telling Jewish leaders that he would “push back” against the party’s leadership. In a recording leaked to the Washington Post, the US secretary of state was asked what he would do if Corbyn were to be elected as prime minister, after sustained criticism over Labour’s handling of accusations of antisemitism within the party. The questioner said: “Would you be willing to work with us to take on actions if life becomes very difficult for Jews in the UK?” In response, Pompeo appeared to suggest that he would seek to intervene in the debate before Corbyn had a chance to become prime minister.

“It could be that Mr Corbyn manages to run the gauntlet and get elected,” he said on the recording. “It’s possible. You should know, we won’t wait for him to do those things to begin to push back. We will do our level best. It’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.” A Labour spokesman said: “President Trump and his officials’ attempts to decide who will be Britain’s next prime minister are an entirely unacceptable interference in the UK’s democracy.” He added that the party was “fully committed to the support, defence and celebration of the Jewish community and is implacably opposed to antisemitism in any form”.

Pompeo’s comments emerged after Trump turned down Corbyn’s request for a meeting during his state visit to the UK last week, saying the leader was “somewhat of a negative force”. Corbyn joined protests outside Trump’s press conference with Theresa May, where he pledged to oppose the US president’s drive for greater access for US health companies to NHS contracts. The comments come at a time when Corbyn’s team are nervous about the latest attempts to oust him from within the party over the issues of antisemitism and Brexit, after several senior figures came out in support of a second referendum.

Read more …

No sex smears for Tulsi either, but Russia might do.

Tulsi Gabbard Pushes No War Agenda – And The Media Is Out To Get Her (SCF)

Tulsi Gabbard could well be the only genuine antiwar candidate that might truly be electable in the past fifty years, and that is why the war party is out to get her. Two weeks ago, the Daily Beast displayed a headline: “Tulsi Gabbard’s Campaign Is Being Boosted by Putin Apologists.” The article also had a sub-headline: “The Hawaii congresswoman is quickly becoming the top candidate for Democrats who think the Russian leader is misunderstood.” The obvious smear job was picked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, television’s best known Hillary Clinton clone, who brought it up in an interview with Gabbard shortly thereafter. He asked whether Gabbard was “softer” on Putin than were some of the other candidates.


Gabbard answered: “It’s unfortunate that you’re citing that article, George, because it’s a whole lot of fake news.” Politico the reported the exchange and wrote: “’Fake news’ is a favorite phrase of President Donald Trump…,” putting the ball back in Tulsi’s court rather than criticizing Stephanopoulos’s pointless question. Soon thereafter CNN produced its own version of Tulsi the Russophile, observing that Gabbard was using a Trump expression to “attack the credibility of negative coverage.” Tulsi responded “Stephanopoulos shamelessly implied that because I oppose going to war with Russia, I’m not a loyal American, but a Putin puppet. It just shows what absurd lengths warmongers in the media will go, to try to destroy the reputation of anyone who dares oppose their warmongering.”

Read more …

Impressive crowds.

One Million March In Hong Kong To Protest China Extradition Bill (R.)

Organizers said the turnout outstripped a demonstration in 2003 when 500,000 hit the streets to challenge government plans for tighter national security laws. Those laws were later shelved and a key government official forced to resign. Sunday’s outpouring was already raising the pressure on the administration of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam and her official backers in Beijing. “She has to withdraw the bill and resign,” veteran Democratic Party lawmaker James To told crowds outside the city’s parliament and government headquarters on Sunday night. “The whole of Hong Kong is against her.” After To spoke, thousands were still arriving, having started the march five hours earlier, filling four lanes of a major thoroughfare.


Some sat in a nearby park singing “Hallelujah” while police increased their numbers around the area. Lam had yet to comment on the rally. The demonstration capped weeks of growing outrage in the business, diplomatic and legal communities, which fear corrosion of Hong Kong’s legal autonomy and the difficulty of ensuring basic judicial protections in mainland China. The protest descended into violence in the early hours of Monday as several hundred protesters clashed with a similar number of police outside the city’s parliament. Protesters charged police lines to try to force their way into the Legislative Council building, and police charged back, using pepper spray, after warning the protesters. The standoff ended in the early hours of Monday.

Read more …

What say you, Xi?

Hong Kong Plunged Into Political Crisis (R.)

Riot police surrounded Hong Kong’s parliament early on Monday after what had been a peaceful million-strong protest against an extradition bill descended into running clashes between police and protesters. Several hundred riot police armed with batons, shields, tear gas guns and pepper spray sealed off the Legislative Council as a similar number of protesters charged their lines shortly after midnight, Reuters witnesses said. Police used batons and fired pepper spray at protesters, who still managed to close off part of a nearby road. Several people on both sides appeared to be injured, and ambulances were called. Metal barriers were left twisted and torn in the clashes.


The Legislative Council is where debates will start on Wednesday to pass a new government bill that will allow suspects wanted in mainland China to be sent across the border for trial. Earlier on Sunday, hundreds of thousands had jammed Hong Kong’s streets to protest the bill in the biggest demonstration in years. Many said they feared it put the city’s vaunted legal independence at risk. The rallies — and the violence — plunge the global financial hub into a fresh political crisis, with marchers and opposition leaders demanding the bill be shelved and that the city’s Beijing-backed Chief Executive Carrie Lam resign. After seven hours of marching, organisers estimated 1,030,000 people took part, far outstripping a demonstration in 2003 when half that number hit the streets to successfully challenge government plans for tighter national security laws.

Read more …

“Travelers aren’t merely scared of the 737 Max, they’re terrified of it..”

Boeing 737 Max Seen as ‘Airplane Non Grata’ by Wary Travelers (BBG)

U.S. airlines have their work cut out for them in trying to coax frightened travelers back onto Boeing Co.’s 737 Max once a worldwide grounding ends. At least 20% of U.S. travelers say they will definitely avoid the plane in the first six months after flights resume, according to a study led by consultant Henry Harteveldt. More than 40% said they’d be willing to take pricier or less convenient flights to stay off the Max. A separate UBS Group AG survey found that 70% would hesitate today to book a flight on Boeing’s best-selling jet. “Travelers aren’t merely scared of the 737 Max, they’re terrified of it,” Harteveldt, president of Atmosphere Research Group, said in the report, which was released Tuesday.


“The 737 Max is, for now, an ‘airplane non grata’ — a plane passengers do not want to fly.” The surveys underscore the challenge looming for Boeing as it seeks to regain public trust after two deadly crashes and a global flying ban that’s nearing the three-month mark. Boeing is finalizing a software fix for a flight-control system malfunction linked to the accidents, as well as proposed new pilot training. Regulators in the U.S. and other countries say there’s no timeline for when the plane will resume flights. Only 14% of U.S. passengers would definitely fly on a 737 Max within six months of its return, according to the online study for Atmosphere of 2,000 U.S. airline passengers from April 27 to May 1.

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They have to fire the CEO and many others. Nader is not going away.

Boeing Used To Getting Its Way, Grip On Congress Is Legendary (Ralph Nader)

The Boeing-driven FAA is rushing to unground the notorious prone-to-stall Boeing 737 MAX (that killed 346 innocents in two crashes) before several official investigations are completed. Troubling revelations might keep these planes grounded worldwide. The FAA has a clearly established pro-Boeing bias and will likely allow Boeing to unground the 737 MAX. We must demand that the two top FAA officials resign or recuse themselves from taking any more steps that might endanger the flying public. The two Boeing-indentured men are Acting FAA Administrator Daniel Elwell and Associate FAA Administrator for Aviation Safety Ali Bahrami. Immediately after the crashes, Elwell resisted grounding and echoed Boeing claims that the Boeing 737 MAX was a safe plane despite the deadly crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

Ali Bahrami is known for aggressively pushing the FAA through 2018 to further abdicate its regulatory duties by delegating more safety inspections to Boeing. Bahrami’s actions benefit Boeing and are supported by the company’s toadies in the Congress. Elwell and Bahrami have both acquired much experience by going through the well-known revolving door between the industry and the FAA. They are likely to leave the FAA once again for lucrative positions in the aerospace lobbying or business world. With such prospects, they do not have much ‘skin in the game’ for their pending decision.

[..] Boeing has about 5,000 orders for the 737 MAX. It has delivered less than 400 to the world’s airlines. From its CEO, Dennis Muilenburg to its swarms of Washington lobbyists, law firms, and public relations outfits, Boeing is used to getting its way. Its grip on Congress – where 300 members take campaign cash from Boeing – is legendary. Boeing pays little in federal and Washington state taxes. It fumbles contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense but remains the federal government’s big vendor for lack of competitive alternatives in a highly concentrated industry.

[..] Time is not on the side of the 737 MAX 8. A comprehensive review of the 737 MAX’s problems is a non-starter for Boeing. Boeing’s flawed software and instructions that have kept pilots and airlines in the dark have already been exposed. New whistleblowers and more revelations will emerge. More time may also result in the Justice Department’s operating grand jury issuing some indictments.

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One of Melzer’s many interviews. Where is the UN suppoort for him?

Chris Hedges Talks To UN Special Rapporteur About Assange (RT)

Chris Hedges discusses with UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer the conditions of Julian Assange’s detention, his psychological and physical health as well as the judicial proceedings against the WikiLeaks founder.

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Jun 022015
 
 June 2, 2015  Posted by at 9:49 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  5 Responses »


Lewis Wickes Hine Berrie pickers, Seaford, Delaware. ‘Seventeen children and five elders live here’ 1910

Velocity of Money Below Great Depression Levels (Martin Armstrong)
From Whence Cometh Our Wealth – Labor Or Printing Press? (David Stockman)
Fed’s QE Policy Helped Most Where Needed Least (MarketWatch)
The Winners and Losers of the Fed’s QE
“The Fed Has Been Horribly Wrong” Deutsche Bank Admits (Zero Hedge)
Easy Access to Money Keeps US Oil Pumping (WSJ)
Rate Hike Needed To Pop Bubbles: Robert Shiller (CNBC)
“By Almost Every Measure Stocks Are Overvalued” Warns Goldman (Zero Hedge)
China Stocks Nearly A Quarter Overvalued: Credit Suisse (CNBC)
Don’t Trust Asia’s Booming Stock Markets (Pesek)
Four Recent Bubble Warnings That You Need To Worry About (Jesse Colombo)
Robert Shiller: ‘There Is A Bubble Element To What We’re Seeing’
Goldman Sachs Asked Two Famous Economists If Stocks Are in a Bubble (Bloomberg)
Greece Said To Offer Pension Reform As Debt Talks Near Crunch (Reuters)
Greek Crisis: 2,400 Hours Of Brinkmanship (CNBC)
Audit: Dutch and EU Taxpayers Likely To Lose All Money Lent To Greece (NLTimes)
In Conversation With John Nash On Ideal Money (Yanis Varoufakis)
Russia Accuses EU of Stirring Political Tensions Over Blacklist (Bloomberg)
New York City Task Force to Investigate ‘Three-Quarter’ Homes (NY Times)
At Least 3,900 Medicare Millionaires Revealed in U.S. Data
HSBC Poised To Unveil Thousands More Job Cuts (Sky)
US Supreme Court Hands Defeat To Struggling Homeowners (MarketWatch)
Germany Dominance Over As Demographic Crunch Worsens (AEP)
Let God Be A ‘She’, Says Church Of England Women’s Group (Guardian)

“This is the destruction of Capitalism, and I fear the response against the banks on the next downturn will lead to authoritarianism.”

Velocity of Money Below Great Depression Levels (Martin Armstrong)

The New York banks have been my adversary, to say the least. Alan Cohen, the court receiver put in charge of running Princeton Economics, was simultaneously on the board of directors of Goldman Sachs. When the SEC said the contempt should end, Cohen lied to the court to keep the contempt going, without even receiving a complaint or charges since the original charges were dropped. The New York banks destroyed banking when Robert Rubin of Goldman Sachs managed to get the Clinton Administration to repeal Glass-Steagall. Even Mario Draghi, head of the ECB who is taking interest rates negative, was a vice chairman and managing director of Goldman Sachs International and a member of the firm-wide management committee (2002–2005). So, the tentacles of NY spread wide and far.

The corruption in New York controlling Congress, the Justice Department, and the courts, has allowed the NY bankers to rise to the top of the world from a power elite perspective. They even control much of the media and Hollywood. This power that has transformed banking has been emulated by other banks around the world, insofar as Transactional Banking has displaced Relationship Banking as the “new” way to make money. However, the banks outside the USA do not control their governments as fully as they do in the USA. Who does Hillary run to for money? The NY bankers. Yet, the battle over the banking industry’s reputation is emerging everywhere but New York. It intensified last Friday in Australia when two of Australia’s top regulators took a simultaneous shot at the “culture” at the heart of the nation’s largest financial institutions.

The banking industry suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), which typically only affects 1% of the population, but they all seem to be working at the top of the banks. NPD is when someone has unrealistic fantasies of success, power, and intelligence. That seems to be a qualification to be on the board of the major New York banks. Ever since the repeal of Glass-Steagall by Bill Clinton in 1999, this “new” way of making money by transforming banking from Relationship to Transactional Banking has destroyed the economy in ways we are soon to discover. The VELOCITY of money has fallen to BELOW Great Depression levels. This is the destruction of Capitalism, and I fear the response against the banks on the next downturn will lead to authoritarianism.

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Stockman comments on the Shorpy picture I posted yesterday in the Debt Rattle.

From Whence Cometh Our Wealth – Labor Or Printing Press? (David Stockman)

It is hard to believe that in these allegedly enlightened times this question even needs to be asked. Are there really educated adults who believe that by dropping helicopter money conjured from thin air, the central bank can actually make society wealthier? Well, yes there are. They spread this lunacy from the most respectable MSM platforms. And, no, I’m not talking about professor Krugman and his New York Times column. At least, he pontificates from a Keynesian framework that has a respectable, if erroneous, intellectual heritage. What I am talking about here is the mindless bunkum issued by so-called financial journalists who swish around Wall Street and Washington exchanging knowing tidbits with policy-makers, deal-makers and each other.

Call it the bubble finance “narrative”, and recognize that its gets more uncoupled from economic facts, logic and plausibility with each passing day in the casino. The estimable folks at The Automatic Earth put a bright spotlight on this crucial matter this morning, even if not by design. Their trademark daily vintage photo was a 1911 picture of a family including all the kids picking berries in the field; they were making GDP the old fashioned way. In the usual manner the site’s “debt rattle” list of links to timely reads followed, and the first was a Bloomberg View opinion piece called“QE For The People: Monetary Policy For The Next Recession” by one Clive Crook. It was actually a case for literally dropping central bank money from the skies to enable policy-makers to better “support demand and keep their economies running”.

In thoughtfully supplying a photo of a helicopter in full flight to accompany Crook’s discourse, the Bloomberg graphics department crystalized the essential economic issue of our times. Namely, whether wealth is made by the Berry Pickers or the Money Printers.

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That’s what it’s designed for.

Fed’s QE Policy Helped Most Where Needed Least (MarketWatch)

The first round of the Federal Reserve’s controversial bond-buying program helped most in parts of the country that needed it least, new research released Monday showed. Conversely, metro areas hit hardest by the recession received the smallest amount of Fed stimulus. At issue was the Fed’s desire with its first round of asset purchases to boost mortgage activity. Mortgage originations, mostly refinancing existing loans, did boom after the Fed announced in November 2008 that it would purchase $500 billion of agency mortgage-backed securities and $100 billion of direct obligations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

But the research, conducted by a team of economists from the University of Chicago and the New York Fed to be presented at a Brookings Institution conference, found mortgage refinancings increased mainly in parts of the country with the fewest underwater homeowners. Loan-to-value ratios varied widely across regions, the study found. Refinancing activity increased most in places where there were few mortgage holders with a loan-to-value ratio above 0.8%, areas including Buffalo, N.Y., and Philadelphia. Most places that experienced large declines in home prices had loan-to-value ratios well above that level, including Las Vegas, Miami and Orlando. So the smallest refinancing response for “QE1” took place in the locations that were hit hardest by the recession.

Areas where borrowers refinanced the most in early 2009 were the same areas in which car purchases increased the most. A separate paper to be presented at the Brookings conference said the Fed’s quantitative-easing programs did not exacerbate income inequality. Josh Bivens, research and policy director of the Economic Policy Institute, said it’s not even clear whether the Fed’s programs were slightly regressive or progressive. While stock-price gains benefited the top 1%, home prices increases helped the bottom 90%, he said. But Bivens warned that the Fed would foster inequality if it rushes to tighten monetary policy before the labor market returns to full employment. “The recent debate about the proper future path of Fed tightening in the next couple of years … is one in which distributional concerns should rightly be front and center,” Bivens said.

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Unbelievable: Carl Riccadonna, chief U.S. economist at Bloomberg Intelligence: “You had equity markets benefit from QE, but eventually QE also jump-started the broader recovery..” “Ultimately everyone’s benefiting.”

The Winners and Losers of the Fed’s QE

The jury’s still out on how history will treat the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented stimulus program. After the central bank pushed its main policy rate to zero in December 2008, it started buying hundreds of billions of government debt and mortgage-backed securities to keep longer-term interest rates low. That became known as quantitative easing. The real punch of the strategy wasn’t in the quantity of money the Fed was putting in the banking system. It was in the amount of bonds it was taking out of the market, which forced yields down. Total assets on the Fed’s balance sheet today stand at $4.5 trillion compared with $891 billion at the end of 2007.

Some argue the policy brought the U.S. economy closer to full employment and helped stimulate growth. Others say it exacerbated inequality by inflating the prices of financial assets. At the very least, we can say it created some winners and losers, using data from a batch of papers released this morning from the Brookings Institution. (Ben S. Bernanke and Donald Kohn, the former Fed chairman and vice chairman, are both Brookings fellows.)

Who Wins
• Middle-aged, middle-class households, according to a paper by Matthias Doepke, Veronika Selezneva and Martin Schneider. These folks are more likely to have mortgages, and as borrowers they’d benefit from lower interest rates as well as policies that boost inflation. For example, a woman takes out a fixed-rate mortgage to buy a home. As inflation rises over time, the value of the house increases while the cost of the debt does not.
• The equity class. Households that owned financial assets, especially stocks, made out very well thanks to QE. Markets tend to react positively to expansionary policy, and lower interest rates also send more people into the stock market in search of higher returns. The stock market more than doubled from when the Fed started its first round of quantitative easing back in 2008 through the end of asset purchases in October. “Generally, the higher the income level, the greater the exposure to the financial markets in general and equity markets in particular,” said Carl Riccadonna, chief U.S. economist at Bloomberg Intelligence. [..]

To be sure, the issue is nuanced. In the end, the record will probably be kind to quantitative easing, said Bloomberg’s Riccadonna. “You had equity markets benefit from QE, but eventually QE also jump-started the broader recovery,” he said. “Ultimately everyone’s benefiting.”

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Depends what you think the intentions were.

“The Fed Has Been Horribly Wrong” Deutsche Bank Admits (Zero Hedge)

The reason why Zero Hedge has been steadfast over the past 6 years in its accusation that the Fed is making a mockery of, and destroying not only the very fabric of capital markets (something which Citigroup now openly admits almost every week) but the US economy itself (as Goldman most recently hinted last week when it lowered its long-term “potential GDP” growth of the US by 0.5% to 1.75%), is simple: all along we knew we have been right, and all the career economists, Wall Street weathermen-cum-strategists, and “straight to CNBC” book-talking pundits were wrong. Not to mention the Fed.

Indeed, the onus was not on us to prove how the Fed is wrong, but on the Fed – those smartest career academics in the room – to show it can grow the economy even as it has pushed global capital markets into a state of epic, bubble frenzy, with new all time highs a daily event across the globe, while the living standard of an ever increasing part of the world’s middle-class deteriorates with every passing year. We merely point out the truth that the propaganda media was too compromised, too ashamed or to clueless to comprehend. And now, 7 years after the start of the Fed’s grand – and doomed – experiment, the flood of other “serious people”, not finally admitting the “tinfoil, fringe blogs” were right all along, and the Fed was wrong, has finally been unleashed. Here is Deutsche Bank admitting that not only the Fed is lying to the American people:

Truth be told, we think the Fed is obliged to talk up the economy because if they were brutally honest, the economy what vestiges of optimism remain in the domestic sectors could quickly evaporate.

But has been “horribly wrong” all along:

At issue is whether or not the Fed in particular but the market in general has properly understood the nature of the economic problem. The more we dig into this, the more we are afraid that they do not. So aside from a data revision tsunami, we would suggest that the Fed has the outlook not just horribly wrong, but completely misunderstood. … the idea that the economy is “ready” for a removal of accommodation and that there is any sense in it from the perspective of rising inflation expectations and a stronger real growth outlook is nonsense.

And the kicker: it is no longer some “tinfoil, fringe blog”, but the bank with over €50 trillion in derivatives on its balance sheet itself which dares to hint that in order to make a housing-led recovery possible, the Fed itself is willing to crash the housing market!

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Textbook: How QE distorts markets and ends up destroying them.

Easy Access to Money Keeps US Oil Pumping (WSJ)

Wall Street’s generous supply of funds to U.S. oil drillers helped create the American energy boom. Now that same access to easy money is keeping them going, despite oil prices that are languishing around $60 a barrel. The flow of money into oil has allowed U.S. companies to avoid liquidity problems and kept American crude production from falling sharply. Even though more than half of the rigs that were drilling new wells in September have been banished to storage yards, in mid-May nearly 9.6 million barrels of oil a day were pumped across the country, the highest level since 1970, according to the most recent federal data. Helped by a ready supply of money, the flow of oil from the U.S. could keep crude prices low for the remainder of 2015 and beyond.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. As crude prices began to plunge last year, many energy experts predicted a repeat of 1986 when U.S. oil companies lost their funding and the industry collapsed into a yearslong bust. Without money, companies had to slow or even stop drilling for the crude that helped create a global glut. Many were forced to sell out to rivals or go bankrupt. But the gloomy scenario of that downturn hasn’t played out on a large scale this time. That is because banks, private- equity firms and institutional investors have continued to pour money into the sector even as oil companies slashed billions of dollars in spending from their budgets and laid off more than 100,000 workers. “What makes this downturn different is there is a lot more capital available,” says Pearce Hammond at investment bank Simmons & Co.

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Bubbles pop anyway. They always do.

Rate Hike Needed To Pop Bubbles: Robert Shiller (CNBC)

The U.S. Federal Reserve should consider lifting interest rates sooner rather than later to tackle speculative bubbles in the housing and stock markets, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller told CNBC on Monday. “I’m thinking they (Fed policy makers) ought to be considering that, because that is the mistake they made in the past,” the Yale University professor told CNBC Europe’s “Squawk Box” when asked whether he believed the Fed should raise interest rates soon or later on. “They didn’t deal with the housing bubble that led to the present crisis. There’s a suggestion in my mind that they should be raising rates now, (but) unfortunately the latest news looks a little weak on the demand side,” Shiller added.

Friday’s economic news painted a dim picture for the U.S. economy: gross domestic product declined at a 0.7% annual rate in the first quarter of the year compared with an initial estimate of 0.2% growth. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment for May, meanwhile, marked a fall and the May Chicago Purchasing Manager’s Index dropped unexpectedly. Against a weaker tone in economic data, markets have pushed back expectations for the first U.S. rate rise since 2006 from June to later this year. “If I was asked to testify before them (the Fed) I might reconsider, but there is a tendency for central banks to ignore speculative bubbles until it’s too late,” Shiller said, talking about the need for higher interest rates. “It may already be too late. Stock markets in the U.S. are quite high and prices in the real estate market are getting high.”

The Dow Jones hit a record high last month, lifted by a perception that disappointing economic news would encourage the Fed to keep interest rates low for longer than anticipated. Shiller said that some parts of the U.S. — such as San Francisco and California — were in “bubble territory,” with house prices growing rapidly. Shiller, who won the Nobel prize for economics two years ago for research that has improved the forecasting of long-term asset prices, said a recent boom around the world was driven by anxiety. “I call this this the ‘new normal’ boom – it’s a funny boom in asset prices because it’s driven not by the usual exuberance but by an anxiety,” said Shiller. “This is an anxiety driven world – the whole world is driven by anxiety. It is anxiety about the aftermath of the global financial crisis, it’s anxiety about inequality and about computers replacing jobs,” he added.

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Do you really need a hundred sets of numbers to figure that out?

“By Almost Every Measure Stocks Are Overvalued” Warns Goldman (Zero Hedge)

Over the weekend, we first reported that none other than Nobel prize winner Robert Shiller said that in his opinion, unlike 1929, this time everything – stocks, bonds and housing – was overvalued. Curiously, none other than Goldman’s chief equity strategist, David Kostin echoed this sentiment when in his latest weekly note to clients he said that “by almost any measure, US equity valuations look expensive. The typical stock in the S&P 500 trades at 18.1x forward earnings, ranking at the 98th%ile of historical valuation since 1976. For the overall index, the aggregate forward P/E multiple equals 17.2x, a rise of 63% since September 2011, compared with the median expansion of 48% during 9 previous P/E expansion cycles.

Financial metrics such as EV/EBITDA, EV/Sales, and P/B also suggest that US stocks have stretched valuations. With tightening on the horizon, the P/E expansion phase of the current bull market is behind us.” Don’t tell that to the SNB, the BOJ or any of the other central banks once again buying Emini futures hands over fist with freshly printed money and a complete disregard to cost basis or downside and losses. Of course, for Goldman to say all of this, it means either the bank is already full to the gills with ES puts, or is just hoping to buy up the S&P to 3000 and above. Here is what else Kostin says on record valuation: US equity valuations are also historically extended when adjusted for the extremely low interest rate environment.

For example, during the past 40 years when the real interest rate (10-year Treasury less core CPI) was between 0% and 1%, the S&P 500 forward P/E multiple averaged 11.2x, well below the current level. Moreover, since 1921 (94 years) when real interest rates have been 0%-1%, the trailing P/E multiple has averaged 13.5x, which is 27% below the current trailing S&P 500 index multiple of 19x. Valuation looks even more striking in the context of current profit margins—the highest in history. Since 2011, margins for S&P 500 (ex-Financials and Utilities) have hovered around the current 9% level. Information Technology has been the driving force for the overall margin expansion.

Profits are highly sensitive to small changes in margins: every 50 basis point shift in S&P 500 margin translates into a roughly $5 per share swing in EPS. Given the current P/E multiple, a $5 shift in EPS would translate into a swing of nearly 90 points to the valuation of the S&P 500. The current P/E expansion cycle has lasted 43 months, the second longest since 1982, but will likely end when interest rates rise. After each of the three prior “first” Fed hikes, P/E multiples contracted by an average of 8%. In the meantime, we expect the 2% dividend yield to generate the entirety of the total return we forecast the S&P 500 index will deliver during the next 12 months. We expect the market will rise to 2150 around mid-year but fade after Fed liftoff in September and end the year at 2100.

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The opposite of sound.

China Stocks Nearly A Quarter Overvalued: Credit Suisse (CNBC)

Whether China shares are in a bubble depends on which data bit catches the fancy, but the market has outstripped its fundamentals and is 23% overbought, Credit Suisse said. “Margins, profitability and value creation continue declining as productivity growth lags real wage growth and product selling prices are eroded,” Credit Suisse said in a note Friday. “Moreover, equity market price momentum has decoupled away from earnings revisions which remain deeply embedded in negative territory.” Its models indicate the market is 23% overbought and has potential downside of 15% in U.S. dollar terms by year-end. The mainland’s shares have rallied sharply this year, despite a brief drop into correction territory last week.

The Shanghai Composite is up around 50% year-to-date, even after last week’s one-day 6.5% plunge. The Shenzhen Composite is up around 111% year-to-date. Credit Suisse attributes the rally to factors including the People’s Bank of China injecting liquidity through its easing measures, retail investors re-allocating assets to stocks and away from bank savings, wealth management products and property. Apart from some restrictions on margin trading, the securities regulator also appears to be letting the rally ride, the bank noted. But is it a bubble? “The evidence for is largely participation and technicals related,” the bank said. “The evidence against is principally valuation related.”

Supporting the bubble view, new share-trading account openings remain elevated and the markets’ average daily trading value has surged to records, it noted. In addition, technical indicators such as deviations from the 200-day moving average and the relative strength index are now comparable to the 2007 A-share bubble, it said. The Shanghai Composite hit its all-time high of 6124 in October of 2007, as the Global Financial Crisis was brewing. However, while the current relative valuation of the mainland-listed A-shares and Hong Kong-listed H-shares is elevated, it remains far below peaks hit in 2008, Credit Suisse noted. Other metrics, such as earnings yield-to-bond-yield, price-to-earnings and price-to-book, are actually significantly more favorable than their 2007 levels, it noted.

Some are more certain about which indicator will call a bubble. “Looking at the market cap to GDP (gross domestic product) ratio as a measure of risk in equity markets, it now seems to us that the recent sharp rise in the Chinese market is the first sign of a bubble without the support of fundamentals,” Societe Generale said in a note Monday. The ratio grew by 124% over the past 12 months, similar to the climb in 2006-2007, it noted. “The Chinese equity market should therefore be closely monitored this summer,” it said.

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“..everyone caught in the same crowded trades needs to get out fast.” And won’t.

Don’t Trust Asia’s Booming Stock Markets (Pesek)

Could a lack of liquidity soon cause Asia’s stock markets to crash? That question might seem fanciful at first glance. Central banks in Frankfurt, London, Tokyo and Washington, by keeping policy rates near or below zero, have been responsible for the arrival of unprecedented waves of cash on Asian financial markets. It’s no accident that Shanghai stocks are up 137% over the last 12 months even as the Chinese economy has slowed; that the Nikkei stock exchange is up 41% surge even as deflation returns to Japan; and that South Korea’s Kospi index is near record highs even as that country’s exports are slumping. But, as economist Nouriel Roubini recently pointed out, macro liquidity, of the sort created by central banks, can easily be accompanied by illiquidity on financial markets.

And when that’s the case, he writes, it creates a “time bomb” by intensifying traders’ tendency toward adopting a herd mentality. Consider last week’s sudden 6.50% drop on the Shanghai stock market. Those panicky hours resembled other “flash crash” moments of recent years: a 10% plunge in U.S. stocks in less than one hour in May 2010; the Fed “taper tantrum” in spring 2013; the Oct. 14 jump in U.S. yields; and last month’s mini meltdown in 10-year German bonds. The common thread between each episode was a sudden wave of fear among traders that, even with unprecedented liquidity injections from central banks, markets might still be too illiquid. And today’s fears about market illiquidity are, in fact, justified.

As Roubini pointed out, “many investments are in illiquid funds and the traditional market makers who smoothed volatility are nowhere to be found.” High-frequency traders and their algorithmic programs account for a growing share of transactions, as do open-ended funds that can exit markets quickly. Meanwhile, banks, which traditionally intervened to stabilize financial markets, are playing a reduced role in trading. These shifts are turbocharging investors’ natural tendency to herd mentality. For now, central banks are reducing stock market volatility by keeping bond yields low. But when surprises occur, Roubini argues, “the re-rating of stocks and especially bonds can be abrupt and dramatic – everyone caught in the same crowded trades needs to get out fast.”

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I don’t need a warning.

Four Recent Bubble Warnings That You Need To Worry About (Jesse Colombo)

I’ve been sounding the alarm in recent years about dangerous new bubbles that have been inflating since the Global Financial Crisis. As I wrote in a viral report last month, I believe that record low interest rates and central bank stimulus programs are the main fuel behind these bubbles and that they will lead to a crisis that is even worse than 2008. In the meantime, these bubbles are creating artificial economic strength and activity that is manifesting itself in the form of our economic recovery. While it often feels lonely and frustrating to warn about such a poorly understood truth, I’m not the only person who has made these observations. Here are four recent bubble warnings made by prominent economists and businesspeople:

\"CAPE\"
Source: VectorGrader.com

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Huh? “I’m not sure that the current situation is a classic bubble because I’m not certain that most people have extravagant expectations.”

Robert Shiller: ‘There Is A Bubble Element To What We’re Seeing’

There isn’t a full-on stock market bubble breaking out, but it sort of looks like it. In an interview with Goldman Sachs’ Allison Nathan this weekend, Yale professor and Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller was asked if the stock market is currently in a bubble. Shiller wouldn’t go so far as to say we’re definitely in a bubble, but said there are some things about today’s current market that look an awful lot like one. Here’s Shiller: “I define a bubble as a social epidemic that involves extravagant expectations for the future. Today, there is certainly a social and psychological phenomenon of people observing past price increases and thinking that they might keep going. So there is a bubble element what we see. But I’m not sure that the current situation is a classic bubble because I’m not certain that most people have extravagant expectations.”

On Saturday, Business Insider’s Henry Blodget argued that stock prices right now look awfully high and said he thinks returns going forward are going to be lousy. In that post, Blodget cites Shiller’s CAPE ratio, or cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio, a measure of inflation-adjusted earnings over the last 10 years, which is currently at around its third-highest level ever. The only times Shiller’s CAPE ratio was higher was ahead of the 1929 and 2000 stock market crashes. The Shiller CAPE ratio is about equal where it was before the 2007 crash. In his comments to Goldman Sachs, however, Shiller again echoes something he’s said in the past, which is that the current stock market rally is driven in part by fear. And this behavior makes the current boom a bit different from a “classic bubble,” and is part of what keeps Shiller hedging when characterizing the current market environment.

Shiller again: “In fact, the current environment may be driven more by fear than by a sense of a new era. I detect a tinge of anxiety and insecurity now that is a factor in markets, which is quite different from other market booms historically.” In 2000, Shiller published the first edition of his famous book “Irrational Exuberance” right at the top of the Nasdaq bubble. And so when Shiller talks about bubbles people listen. It seems then, to Shiller, that though we’re not in a classic bubble, the US market is at levels where we should be worried, at least a little bit, about how expensive stock are right now.

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Because Goldman didn’t know?

Goldman Sachs Asked Two Famous Economists If Stocks Are in a Bubble (Bloomberg)

When asked how worried he is about the prospects for the market over the next six months, Professor Shiller says that his concern has risen with the market and that there could very well be a correction in the next year, although the timing of such market events is inevitably difficult. He advised people to both save more and diversify their investments because their portfolios probably won’t do as well as they had hoped — even over the longer-term. Next Goldman talks to Wharton Professor Jeremy Siegel, who has continued to be on the bullish side with his buy and hold strategy.

Professor Siegel says he believes stocks are only slightly above their historical valuations today and the level is “completely justified” due to low interest rates. To those that claim the stock market is in a bubble, Professor Siegel says he is in complete disagreement. “In no way do current levels that are nowhere near those highs (of March 2000) qualify as a bubble,” he says. Professor Siegel adds that there isn’t much that would dissuade him from holding equities over the medium term and recommended investors allocate 50% of their portfolios to the U.S., 25% to non-U.S. developed markets and 25% to emerging markets.

Of course Shiller and Siegel are also well-known friends so there is at least one place where they are in agreement and that is the bond market. Both economists said it was fair to say bonds are overvalued and some concern is justified, although neither of them would commit to calling it a bubble. Shiller said that historically, the bond market doesn’t tend to crash like the stock market. Siegel steered away from calling it a bubble due to his expectation that both short- and long-term rates will remain low.

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Something tells me Moscovici hasn’t been paying attention. Or this serves to discredit Syriza. Either way, there’s nothing new on the table.

Greece Said To Offer Pension Reform As Debt Talks Near Crunch (Reuters)

Greece’s leftist government has put forward first proposals for pension reform as debt talks with international creditors reach a crunch point this week with Athens’ cash running out, the European Union’s economics chief said on Tuesday. The report came after the leaders of Germany, France, the EC, the IMF and the ECB agreed at an emergency meeting in Berlin on Monday night to work with “real intensity” to try to wrap up the long-running negotiations in the coming days. [..] EU Economy Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said in a radio interview the talks were making progress at last, citing what he said were new Greek proposals on pensions, a core issue for the creditors, who are demanding some cuts and a crackdown on early retirement to make the complex system financially sustainable.

“We are starting to work in depth on pensions. The Greek government has made some first proposals and the pros and cons are being considered,” Moscovici told France Inter radio. Greek officials played down talk of new pension proposals and EU officials close to the talks have said progress is very slow and they remain a long way from convergence. “Greece has been flexible for a long time on pension reform, willing to scrap incentives for early retirement and proceed with merging pension funds. This is what is still on the table,” a Greek government official said.

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2400 hours Greece could have spend improving its economy.

Greek Crisis: 2,400 Hours Of Brinkmanship (CNBC)

I frequently hear the point made that Tsipras’ support is dwindling. Support for his stance may have halved in recent polls, but we shouldn’t underestimate his popularity at home and the lack of appetite to accept further austerity. The opposition pro-Europe New Democracy party have not seen any gains in support even as the economy dwindles. Tsipras has got plenty of reasons to drag this out. European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Pierre Moscovici reiterated to CNBC that there is no Plan B. Maybe the European Commission don’t need to consider one but investors, governments and central banks do. Last week, ECB vice President Victor Constancio warned CNBC of the turbulence that will ensue if a deal isn’t reached quickly.

Even if you believe a Greek default or exit can be contained and the euro zone will survive, isn’t the greater fear here what this will mean for sentiment, risk assets and markets? U.S. equities are trading around record highs after a lackluster earnings season and as data on Friday confirmed U.S. GDP contracted by 0.7% in the first quarter. Second-quarter data is already showing signs of recovery but it follows Fed Chair Janet Yellen saying she’s still looking to raise rates this year in any case. We can’t rely on bad news being good news for stimulus any more. We should also consider whether Janet Yellen’s more afraid of potential market turbulence created by the start of rate rises or that something else like a Grexit blows any U.S. recovery off course and she’s not taken the opportunity to raise rates while she had it.

It isn’t just about the U.S. China’s Shanghai market snapped a seven-day winning streak on Thursday last week falling 6.5%. The tech-heavy Shenzhen Composite, which had more than doubled this year alone, lost 5.5% – its third-biggest fall in five years. The Chinese Central Bank providing liquidity to offset the growth slowdown with one hand and trying to temper enthusiasm with the other. Japanese equities meanwhile are also trading at 15 year highs despite the concerns regarding the efficacy of Abenomics. Japan’s central bank governor Haruhiko Kuroda told CNBC last week he’s not concerned about brewing bubbles.

That’s just the equity markets. Never mind for the bonds markets. With all the liquidity sloshing around you’d be forgiven for questioning investors ability to gauge fair value any more. Even without the Greek woes it is enough to make any risk taker cautious. So while investors grapple with value, economic recovery and the calibration of extraordinary monetary policy the question is whether Greece could trigger a more significant reassessment of current pricing? Maybe, maybe not. But each day these negotiations drag on that risk becomes more likely and investors would surely be wise to expect decent volatility while we wait.

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Note: “Research shows that only 11% of the bailout money ended up in the Greek economy..” Ergo: taxpayers should blame the banks and EU politicians, not the Greeks.

Audit: Dutch and EU Taxpayers Likely To Lose All Money Lent To Greece (NLTimes)

Dutch taxpayers will probably not recover any of the money used for Greece’s financial rescue, said Kees Vendrik, chairman of the Court of Audit in the Netherlands. Dutch people should be realistic about repayment given the current situation, Vendrik told on a television program Radar Extra. “As it now stands, I have to be honest, it’s going to be very difficult,” Vendrik said. In 2010, the former Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager expressed full confidence in Greece repaying the money with interst that the Netherlands lent. Greece received emergency assistance twice. The country received €110 billion in 2010 and €130 in 2012.

The Dutch contribution to the amount was €11.9 billion, according to Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Last year, Vendrik was chairman of the Dutch delegation that participated in an international program to support Greek investigators. In that role, he offered his Greeks colleagues assistance in audits there. Vendrik did not research the financial situation in Greece, but he understands the situation in which the country now finds itself, a spokesman for the organization said.

[From Algemeen Dagblad: Vendrik stated that in all likelihood the entire €240 billion in bailout money will not be paid back. Research shows that only 11% of the bailout money ended up in the Greek economy; the rest went to international banks who had loans outstanding in Greece]

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Behind the theory.

In Conversation With John Nash On Ideal Money (Yanis Varoufakis)

A conversation I was privileged to have with John Nash in June 2000 is posted below as a small tribute to a great man. (The conversation was motivated by a talk John Nash Jr gave in Athens in 2000 entitled IDEAL MONEY. The text of the conversation below was published in 2001 as a chapter in a volume, available only in Greek, entitled Game Theory: A volume dedicated to John Nash, edited by K. Kottaridi and G. Siourounis)

Yanis Varoufakis: Professor Nash, in your talk on Ideal Money, June 2000, at the Old Parliament House in Athens, you commented, in relation to the Eurozone, that membership of a club makes sense only if it is exclusive. (Greeks know this well enough since the earlier consensus among experts that Greece would not be allowed in, made the project of entry into the Eurozone particularly popular here.) Then you strengthened your claim by suggesting that if everyone joins an alliance, the alliance is absurd. But is it? Does a Grand Alliance not gain meaning if its establishment entails unanimous agreement by all members regarding its institutions? Is it not akin to a Grand Bargain over the precise mechanism for distributing gains? (Something like agreeing on the properties a cooperative solution should possess?) And if so, does a Grand Alliance not make sense as a framework for conflict resolution?

John Nash Jr: The words ‘club’ and ‘alliance’ do not have the same meaning. This is why in game theory we use a third word which also differs conceptually from the first two words: ‘coalition’ . It is of course true that it is possible to have a coalition between all the nations (or the states) of the world. The Universal Postal Union, with its Berne headquarters, is a good example. Mind you, it would be far fetched to refer to this union as a ‘club’ . I am not sure I can recall the precise phrase I used in my talk. Nevertheless, a truly Grand Coalition, that includes everyone , is an important and natural concept of game theory. It is the means by which an efficient (in the context of Pareto s definition) agreed resolution to disputes can be imagined following mutual concessions.

Yanis Varoufakis: Regarding your specific proposal (that is, a new Gold Standard based not on Gold but on a basket of suitably weighted material commodities), is your ‘ideal money’ meant as a proxy for transferable utility (such that the outcome of exchanges can become genuinely independent of the way payoffs are calibrated)?

John Nash Jr: The value of effective transferable utility is obvious. However, as far as contemporaneous transactions within the walls of a domestic economy are concerned, the transferability of values can be eased equally well by ideal and non-ideal money. But when it comes to inter-temporal, long-term transactions, e.g. mortgages, the difference between ideal money and typical European currencies would be somewhat intense, if not dramatic.

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Nothing new about the list. Political ploy.

Russia Accuses EU of Stirring Political Tensions Over Blacklist (Bloomberg)

Russia said it’s “deeply disappointed” by the EU’s response to being sent a blacklist of 89 people barred from entering the country. The list was sent “in confidence” to the EU’s permanent representative office in Moscow after “repeated requests” so that they could inform those banned after “several cases when we have been obliged to refuse entry,” Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov told reporters in Moscow on Monday. Russia began compiling the blacklist more than a year ago and “a separate decision was taken in each case, with concrete reasons,” Meshkov said. “The list was handed over at the technical level” through consular officials and “we didn’t consider it some sort of political step,” he said.

The European External Action Service, the 28-nation EU’s diplomatic arm, said in a statement on Saturday that Russia had responded to demands for transparency by providing the “confidential ‘stop list’” of 89 people barred from the country. The EEAS called the list “totally arbitrary and unjustified.” When the EU crosses “all boundaries” by its actions, “how can one trust such partners?” Meshkov said. The ban is in response to EU measures targeting officials from Russia imposed over the conflict in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, accusing the bloc of seeking confrontation over the issue. Russia showed compromise by sharing the list and she was “shocked” at European efforts to make political capital out of it, she said on her Facebook account.

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That’s a moral low alright.

New York City Task Force to Investigate ‘Three-Quarter’ Homes (NY Times)

Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday he had formed an emergency task force to investigate so-called three-quarter houses in New York City for potentially exploiting addicts and homeless people by taking kickbacks on Medicaid fees for drug treatment while forcing them to live in squalid, illegal conditions. Mr. de Blasio’s announcement came a day after The New York Times published an investigation examining the abuses of the operator of some of the most troubled three-quarter houses. The mayor also called on the state to increase the shelter allowance it gives single people receiving public assistance. The allowance, which has been $215 a month since 1988, has left many homeless people with no options beyond three-quarter housing.

“We will not accept the use of illegally subdivided and overcrowded apartments to house vulnerable people in need of critical services,” Mr. de Blasio said in a statement on Sunday. Thousands of people live in three-quarter homes, which fall somewhere between regulated halfway houses and permanent housing. Also called sober or transitional homes, three-quarter homes are an offshoot of the murky world of outpatient substance abuse treatment for the poor. The number of such homes has grown over the past decade, as the administration of the previous mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, pushed to reduce homeless shelter rolls. No one has an exact number of three-quarter homes, which are considered illegal because they violate building codes on overcrowding.

And no government agency regulates them, even though the city Human Resources Administration pays landlords the monthly $215 shelter allowance and the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services pays millions of dollars in Medicaid money for the residents’ outpatient treatment. The Times story focused on one landlord, Yury Baumblit, a two-time felon accused by tenants and former employees of treating poor people as instruments for bilking the government. Tenants said that reputable hospitals and nonprofit organizations had referred them to Mr. Baumblit’s operations, as had city shelters.

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Transparency is a good thing.

At Least 3,900 Medicare Millionaires Revealed in U.S. Data

A small group of doctors accounted for a large chunk of Medicare payments once again, data released today by the U.S. government show. Medicare paid at least 3,900 individual health-care providers at least $1 million in 2013, according to a Bloomberg analysis of data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Overall, the agency said it released data on $90 billion in payments to 950,000 individual providers and organizations. On average, doctors were reimbursed about $74,000, though five received more than $10 million. The U.S. has been increasing transparency for Medicare, which accounts for the largest portion of federal spending after defense and Social Security.

CMS also released information Monday about $62 billion in Medicare payments to hospitals and outpatient facilities in 2013, reflecting more than 7 million discharges. Monday’s data exclude the privately run program known as Medicare Advantage, which accounted for about 30% of beneficiaries last year, and the drug prescription benefits of Medicare Part D. Payments in the drug program were released for the first time earlier this year. Some payments were sent to organizations rather than individuals. There are about 897,000 active physicians in the U.S., according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The two highest-paid doctors in 2013 are now under legal scrutiny. Cardiologist Asad Qamar, who was No. 1, has since been accused by the Justice Department of billing for unnecessary tests and cardiovascular procedures. He received about $15.9 million in payments in 2013. In a video released in January, Qamar called the government’s claims baseless. “I assure you that these accusations are a fiction,” he said.

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They will be free to seek honorable employment.

HSBC Poised To Unveil Thousands More Job Cuts (Sky)

HSBC will next week set out plans to cut thousands more jobs across its global workforce as it tries to reassure shareholders that its focus on costs remains undiminished after a series of reputational crises. Sky News understands that Stuart Gulliver, HSBC’s chief executive, will set out a revised target for headcount reductions that will be implemented by the end of 2017 at an investor day next week. The precise job cuts number that will be outlined by Mr Gulliver on June 9 was unclear on Monday, although insiders said that it was likely to be between 10,000 and 20,000. One source said the numbers were still being worked on and had yet to be finalised.

Europe’s biggest lender employed 258,000 people at the end of last year, but it has already abandoned a target set two years ago to reduce its employee base to between 240,000 and 250,000 by 2016 because of the fast-changing nature of bank regulation. It is understood that the headcount reductions figure announced next week will exclude the potential impact of the sale of HSBC’s operations in Brazil and Turkey, where the bank does not disclose how many people work for it. Sky News revealed in April that HSBC had hired Goldman Sachs to find a buyer for the Brazilian business, which is expected to be worth several billion dollars.

The new jobs figure will also not take account of a possible eventual separation of HSBC’s UK arm, which Mr Gulliver said last month was conceivable because of a requirement for big UK lenders to create separate ring-fenced entities by 2019. Shareholders will be anxious for an update next week on the methodology for reviewing the location of its headquarters, which will conclude by the end of the year. Hong Kong, where HSBC was domiciled until its takeover of the Midland Bank in the early 1980s, is seen by analysts as the likeliest destination if it does decide to relocate.

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“The true economic impact of the Supreme Court’s decision may not be seen until the next economic downturn..”

US Supreme Court Hands Defeat To Struggling Homeowners (MarketWatch)

Underwater homeowners who file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection are still on the hook for secondary loans tied to their properties, the Supreme Court said Monday. In a nine-to-zero decision, the court said in Bank of America, N.A. v. Caulkett that borrowers whose homes are completely underwater — debtors owe more on a mortgage than the home is worth — cannot void or “strip off” a junior lien when they file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. A junior lien, such as a home-equity loan, is taken after a first mortgage, and uses a home as collateral. In the case, two borrowers each had two mortgages on their homes, with Bank of America holding the junior liens. Both borrowers were underwater and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy two years ago. The borrowers wanted to “strip off” the junior mortgages, shedding those debts.

On Monday the Supreme Court cited a decision from a prior case, Dewsnup v. Timm, finding that lenders still have a secured claim, “regardless of whether the value of that property would be sufficient to cover the claim.” The decision “is a clear victory for mortgage lenders” said Isaac Boltansky at Compass Point Research & Trading. “It clarifies the path to recoveries for second lien holders in bankruptcy,” “This decision will undoubtedly make the bankruptcy process more difficult for impacted borrowers.” [..] Given the current economy — home prices are rising and the labor market is strengthening — the court’s decision “is likely to be muted in the near-term,” Boltansky said. But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be consequences, he added. “The true economic impact of the Supreme Court’s decision may not be seen until the next economic downturn,” Boltansky said.

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Getting old fast. “The German government expects the population to shrink from 81m to 67m by 2060..”

Germany Dominance Over As Demographic Crunch Worsens (AEP)

Germany’s birth rate has collapsed to the lowest level in the world and its workforce will start plunging at a faster rate than Japan’s by the early 2020s, seriously threatening the long-term viability of Europe’s leading economy. A study by the World Economy Institute in Hamburg (HWWI) found that the average number of births per 1,000 population dropped to 8.2 over the five years from 2008 to 2013, further compounding a demographic crisis already in the pipeline. Even Japan did slightly better at 8.4. “No other industrial country is deteriorating at this speed despite the strong influx of young migrant workers. Germany cannot continue to be a dynamic business hub in the long-run without a strong jobs market,” warned the institute.

The crunch is aggravated by the double effect of a powerful post-war baby boom followed by a countervailing baby bust – the so-called “Pillenknick”. The picture in Portugal (nine) and Italy (9.2) is almost as bad. The German government expects the population to shrink from 81m to 67m by 2060 as depressed pockets of the former East Germany go into “decline spirals” where shops, doctors’ practices, and public transport start to shut down, causing yet more people to leave in a vicious circle. A number of small towns in Saxony, Brandenburg and Pomerania have begun to contemplate plans for gradual “run-off” and ultimate closure, a once unthinkable prospect. Chancellor Angela Merkel warned in a speech in Davos earlier this year that Germany will lose a net 6m workers over the next 15 years, shrinking gradually over the rest of this decade before going into free-fall.

The IMF expects the decline in the 2020s to be more concentrated – and harder to handle – than the gentler paces of decline seen in Japan so far. Britain and France are in far better shape, with an average of 12.5 births per 1,000 in from 2008-2013. The IMF expects both countries to overtake Germany in total GDP by the middle of century and possibly even by 2040, implying a radical shift in the European balance of power. Germany’s leaders are themselves acutely conscious that their current hegemonic position in Europe is largely a mirage, certain to fade as more powerful historical currents come to the fore.

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I’m all for it. A great idea. Male dominance leads to mayhem.

Let God Be A ‘She’, Says Church Of England Women’s Group (Guardian)

A group within the Church of England is calling for God to be referred to as female following the selection of the first female bishops. The group wants the church to recognise the equal status of women by overhauling official liturgy, which is made up almost exclusively of male language and imagery to describe God. Rev Jody Stowell, a member of Women and the Church (Watch), the pressure group that led the campaign for female bishops, said: “Orthodox theology says all human beings are made in the image of God, that God does not have a gender. He encompasses gender – he is both male and female and beyond male and female. So when we only speak of God in the male form, that’s actually giving us a deficient understanding of who God is.”

Stowell said discussions over terminology arose out of a Westminster faith debate on whether the consecration of female bishops would make a difference in the Church of England. The matter has been discussed within the transformation steering group, a body that meets in Lambeth Palace to “explore the lived experience of women in ordained ministry”. The group has issued a public call to bishops to encourage more “expansive language and imagery about God”. The Rev Emma Percy, chaplain of Trinity College Oxford and a member of Watch, said the effect of using both male and female language would be to get rid of “the notion that God is some kind of old man in the sky”. She said many people in the church had been having this debate for a long time. “It’s just the church moves slowly.

[The debate] caught the imagination now because we’ve got women bishops so in a sense the church has accepted that women are equally valued in God’s sight and can represent God at all levels. We want to encourage people to be freer, and we want to get the Liturgical Commission to understand that people are actually quite open to this and there is room for richer language to be used.” In her role at the university, Percy said she had noticed people had become more open to modern terminology. “In the last two or three years we’ve seen a real resurgence and interest in feminism, and younger people are much more interested in how gender categories shouldn’t be about stereotypes. We need to have a language about God that shows God can be expressed in lots of diverse terms,” she said.

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