Gulen Archives - The Automatic Earth

Ron Paul is warning this year’s corrections could be a precursor to an epic market collapse that may come sooner than investors think. According to the former Republican presidential candidate, Wall Street is becoming more vulnerable to near-depression conditions within the next 12 months. “Once this volatility shows that we’re not going to resume the bull market, then people are going to rush for the exits,” Paul said Thursday on CNBC’s “Futures Now.” The relentlessly bearish former congressman added that “It could be worse than 1929.” During that year, the stock market began hemorrhaging, falling almost 90 percent and sending the U.S. economy into a tailspin.

Paul, a well-known Libertarian, has been warning Wall Street a massive market plunge is inevitable for years. He’s currently projecting a 50 percent decline from current levels as his base case, citing the ongoing U.S.-China trade war as a growing risk factor. “I’m not optimistic that all of the sudden, you’re going to eliminate the tariff problem. I think that’s here to stay,” he said. “Tariffs are taxes.” The scenario is exacerbating Paul’s chief reason behind his bearish call: 2008 financial crisis easy money policies. He contended the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing has caused the “biggest bubble in the history of mankind.” “It’s so important to understand the original cause of the problem, and that is the Federal Reserve running up debt and letting politicians spend money,” he added.

Damn vigilantes!

• For The First Month Since 2008, Not A Single Junk Bond Prices (ZH)

Late last week, we reported that in the aftermath of a dramatic drop in loan prices, a record outflow from loan funds, and a general collapse in investor sentiment that was euphoric as recently as the start of October, the wheels had come off the loan market which was on the verge of freezing after we got the first hung bridge loan in years, after Wells Fargo and Barclays took the rare step of keeping a $415 million leveraged loan on their books after failing to sell it to investors. The two banks now “plan” to wait until January – i.e., hope that yield chasing desperation returns – to offload the loan they made to help finance Blackstone’s buyout of Ulterra Drilling Technologies, a company that makes bits for oil and gas drilling.

The reason the banks were stuck with hundreds of millions in unwanted paper is because they had agreed to finance the bridge loan whether or not there was enough demand from investors, as the acquisition needed to close by the end of the year. The delayed transaction means the banks will have to bear the risk of the price of the loans falling further, as well as costs associated with holding loans on their books. The pulled Ulterra deal wasn’t alone. As we reported previously, in Europe the market appears to have already locked up, as three loans were scrapped over the last two weeks. To wit, movie theater chain Vue International withdrew a 833 million pound-equivalent ($1.07 billion) loan sale.

While the deal was meant to mostly refinance existing debt, around 100 million pounds was underwritten to finance the company’s acquisition of German group CineStar. More deals were pulled the prior week when diversified manufacturer Jason Inc. became at least the fourth issuer to scrap a U.S. leveraged loan. Additionally, Perimeter Solutions also pulled its repricing attempt, Ta Chen International scrapped a $250MM term loan set to finance the company’s purchase of a rolling mill, and Algoma Steel withdrew its $300m exit financing. Global University System in November also dropped its dollar repricing.

[..] the FT picks up on the fact that the junk bond market – whether in loans or bonds – has frozen up, and reported that US credit markets have “ground to a halt” with fund managers refusing to fund buyouts and investors shunning high-yield bond sales as rising interest rates and market volatility weigh on sentiment (ironically it is the rising rates that assure lower rates as financial conditions tighten and the Fed is forced to resume easing in the coming year, that has been a major hurdle to floating-rate loan demand as the same higher rates that pushed demand for paper to all time highs are set to reverse). Meanwhile, things are even worse in the bond market, where not a single company has borrowed money through the $1.2tn US high-yield corporate bond market this month according to the FT. If that freeze continues until the end of the month, it would be the first month since November 2008 that not a single high-yield bond priced in the market

“About a third of all kids are in “Dickensian” poverty.”

• Starvation, Homelessness And More REAL Problems Pushed Aside By Brexit (Mi.)

I watched the ultimate damp squib -my friend’s mum says squid but I m pretty sure it’s squib- as it unfolded on Wednesday night. Theresa May had it confirmed that only 117 of her own MPs hate her. So, on she limps. She said she was going anyway but won’t say when -maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of our lives. In the process she revealed what this is really all about. Brexit must be delivered at all costs and it must be HER that does it. If not, she slinks off into the night with a legacy that adds up to nothing.

I watched it in one of the House of Commons bars with a friend of mine from Scotland. Good bloke. Hibs fan.And as we watched the ‘drama’ unfold we were talking about the real problems in the country. His mate helps direct people to foodbanks in Scotland. In one afternoon they saw five families, hungry and without food, seek help. Five different families. A mixture of out-of-work and in-work poverty. And across these five families there were 27 children. That is, in 2018, in Britain, 27 children going to bed hungry each night. It gets, as you can imagine, worse. One of the kids couldn’t go to school. Not through illness, mercifully, but because he didn’t have any shoes. One of the mums hadn’t eaten for three days. Three days without food. Starving so she could feed her kids.

There are lots more stories like this, about 4.1 million, in fact. About a third of all kids are in “Dickensian” poverty. In Britain, in the winter, in 2018. About 1.9 million pensioners live the same way. Last winter 94 people died on Scotland’s streets. Universal Credit has hit so hard some are turning to prostitution, others are eating out of bins. What happened this week is not going to make any of that better. Look at Scotland. Everything is viewed through the prism of independence and talk of a “second independence referendum”. That is the central aim of the Scottish National Party, so you can’t blame them for concentrating on it. But what it means is that, in the real world, people suffer. [..] here’s the thing about parliamentary sovereignty, and backstops, and Brexit, and independence, and the future of the Union: You can’t eat them.

Only fools would buy homes in the UK right now. But yeah, there are lots of those over there.

• Average UK Home Asking Price Dips £10,000 From October (G.)

Asking prices for homes coming on to the market in the UK are nearly £10,000 lower than they were in October, as the property market headed for its worst annual performance in almost a decade. The average asking price of a UK home dipped by 3.2%, or £9,719, between October and December to £297,527, according to the property website Rightmove, with prices dipping 1.7% and 1.5% in November and December respectively. A softening of prices at the end of 2018 meant that asking prices rose by just 0.7% over the year as a whole, the weakest rate of growth since 2010. The traditional hotspots of London and south-east England became the weakest spots this year, recording the biggest annual falls in asking prices.

This followed a 1% rise in UK asking prices in 2017. Rightmove is predicting zero growth in UK prices in 2019, against a backdrop of stretched affordability and Brexit uncertainty. The property market is a cornerstone of the British economy and drives a large proportion of consumer spending, from DIY to carpets and furniture. But with buyers and sellers reluctant to pay the current market prices, especially in the east and south of England where prices have rocketed in recent years, analysts expect the difficult conditions to radiate out from the property market to other areas of spending. And while a slowdown in prices will be welcomed by younger buyers and those on lower incomes, any falls in values are expected to add the pressure on MPs to agree a Brexit deal.

That can’t NOT do it.

• No 10 Denies Making Plans For Second Brexit Referendum (G.)

Theresa May will summon EU27 ambassadors to No 10 this week as she continues to seek reassurances over the Irish backstop, with Downing Street vehemently denying drawing up contingency plans for a second referendum. The education secretary, Damian Hinds, said on Sunday: “Government policy couldn’t be clearer. We are here to act on the will of the people clearly expressed in the referendum.” He added: “A second referendum would be divisive. We had the people’s vote, we had the referendum, and now we’ve got to get on with implementing it. Any idea that having a second referendum now would break through an impasse is wrong. It might postpone the impasse, but then it would extend it.”

May attacked the former Labour prime minister Tony Blair this weekend for advocating a second vote, saying: “There are too many people who want to subvert the process for their own political interests rather than acting in the national interest. “For Tony Blair to go to Brussels and seek to undermine our negotiations by advocating for a second referendum is an insult to the office he once held and the people he once served.” The prime minister appears determined to pursue her strategy of seeking legal guarantees on the backstop and then putting her deal to MPs after Christmas. She is sending the government’s most senior legal officer, Jonathan Jones, to Brussels this week.

As millions of her people starve, May focuses on her legacy.

• May To Urge MPs Not To ‘Break Faith’ By Demanding People’s Vote (G.)

Theresa May will urge MPs on Monday not to “break faith with the British people” by demanding a second referendum, as she faces intense pressure to give parliament a say on Brexit before Christmas. The prime minister will make a statement to MPs on last week’s European council summit in Brussels, from which she returned with little evidence of progress in securing legal reassurances on the Irish backstop. Jeremy Corbyn will take the opportunity to call on her to hold a vote on her Brexit deal this week, and senior Labour figures refuse to rule out an imminent no-confidence motion if she fails to do so. May, however, will use her appearance at the dispatch box to strongly reject the idea of a second referendum after Downing Street was forced to deny reports on Sunday that some of her key aides were secretly considering the idea.

“Let us not break faith with the British people by trying to stage another referendum,” the prime minister will tell MPs. “Another vote which would do irreparable damage to the integrity of our politics, because it would say to millions who trusted in democracy, that our democracy does not deliver. Another vote which would likely leave us no further forward than the last.” Her message is aimed partly at Conservative MPs, and some ministers, who have become increasingly convinced that a referendum is the only way out of the impasse at Westminster after the prime minister abruptly pulled plans for a vote on her deal last week. She also faces growing demands from within cabinet to present MPs with alternatives in non-binding indicative votes that might help to find options that could command a majority.

[..] May’s reluctance to hold a second referendum put her in rare agreement with her former foreign secretary, Boris Johnson. In his column in Monday’s Telegraph, he said the public would be “utterly infuriated” if Britain were to be put through the “misery and expense” of another referendum. However, the former Labour foreign secretary Margaret Beckett said: “It is highly significant that Downing Street felt it had to issue these advance extracts of Theresa May’s statement to the House of Commons on Sunday night, because officials know the prospect of a people’s vote is being discussed, not just in Westminster, but in the corridors of Whitehall, too. “The case for the public being given the final say is becoming so overwhelming that people from all parties, and of none, now recognise that this is the best way forward for our country.”

They’re only too happy when the interference benefits them., as it has for many decades.

• Saudi Arabia Rejects US Senate ‘Interference’ In Kingdom’s Affairs (AFP)

Saudi Arabia has rejected as “interference” a US Senate resolution to end American military support for a Riyadh-led war in Yemen, and another holding its crown prince responsible for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia rejects the position expressed recently by the United States Senate, which was based upon unsubstantiated claims and allegations, and contained blatant interferences in the Kingdom’s internal affairs, undermining the Kingdom’s regional and international role,” the statement carried by Saudi Press Agency on Sunday said.

“The Kingdom hopes that it is not drawn into domestic political debates in the United States of America, to avoid any ramifications on the ties between the two countries that could have significant negative impacts on this important strategic relationship.” On Thursday, the US Senate passed a resolution calling for an end to American military support to the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemen war, and asserted Congress’s right to decide on matters of war and peace. The measure, which passed by 56 votes to 41, marked the first time the Senate had invoked the 1973 War Powers Resolution to seek to curb the power of the president to take the US into an armed conflict. It marked a significant bipartisan rebuke to the Trump administration, which lobbied intensively against it.

Maybe the US Senate can ask where the body is.

• Turkey FM Says Saudis ‘Didn’t Share Anything’ On Khashoggi Murder (CNBC)

Turkey still hasn’t received actionable information on the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, its foreign minster Mevlut Cavusoglu told CNBC Sunday. “So far we haven’t been provided any information from the ongoing investigation in Saudi Arabia. Their chief prosecutor got everything from us, he didn’t share anything with us. We want a transparent, credible, swift investigation on Saudi side as well,” Cavusoglu told the network’s Hadley Gamble at the annual Doha Forum in Qatar. The minister has previously vowed to get to the bottom of the case and hold those responsible to account. [..] Among the many questions remaining unanswered is that of the whereabouts of Khashoggi’s remains.

“We don’t know where the body is,” the minister said. “This is the main question – we need to find out. They said they had local collaborators; they haven’t provided the names of collaborators.” [..] Meanwhile, Cavusoglu said Saudi officials have listened to tapes of Khashoggi’s murder, contradicting earlier statements by Saudi foreign minister Adel al Jubeir that the Saudis had not heard them. [..] “You can hear very clearly that they planned in advance to kill him,” Cavusoglu said, reminding the audience that a forensic expert had been brought into the consulate to cut Khashoggi’s body apart. “From the beginning we’ve been willing to cooperate with Saudi Arabia as well, since all these perpetrators came from Saudi Arabia and now they are arrested there and we accepted immediately the proposal coming from them for cooperation with our prosecutors.”

If true, that would be a really bad thing.

• Turkey FM: Washington Is ‘Working On’ Gulen Extradition (CNBC)

Ankara and Washington have discussed the extradition of Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen from the United States, Turkey’s foreign minister told CNBC Sunday. Turkey’s government has demanded Gulen’s return since the failed Turkish coup of 2016, which it accuses the cleric of orchestrating. “Last time when they met in Buenos Aires, Trump told Erdogan that they have been working on that, but we need to see concrete steps because it’s been already two years, almost three years,” Mevlut Cavusoglu told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble at the Doha Forum on Sunday. A former ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Gulen has lived in self-imposed exile in the U.S. for nearly 20 years.

He denies any involvement in the coup attempt, which saw rogue Turkish military personnel commandeer helicopters, jets and tanks, attack parliament and seize television stations. Political analysts suspected Trump might use Gulen as a bargaining chip in exchange for Turkish compliance in the scandal of Jamal Khashoggi. [..] But Trump told press last month that he was not considering extraditing the preacher to meet those ends.

Ann Garrison interviews George Szamuely, a Hungarian-born scholar and Senior Research Fellow at London’s Global Policy Institute.

• US Ready To Fight To Last Brit (Garrison)

GS: Well, of course Ukraine can ask for anything it likes. There’s no way in the world Turkey would try to stop Russian ships going through the Bosporus Strait. That would be a violation of the 1936 Montreux Convention and an act of war on the part of Turkey. It isn’t going to happen. As for the Kerch Strait, it is Russian territorial water. Ukraine is free to use it and has been doing so without incident since 2014. The only thing the Russians insist on is that any ship going through the strait use a Russian pilot. During the recent incident, the Ukrainian tug refused to use a Russian pilot. The Russians became suspicious, fearing that the Ukrainians were engaged in a sabotage mission to blow up the newly constructed bridge across the strait. You’ll remember that an American columnist not so long ago urged the Ukrainian authorities to blow up the bridge. That’s why the Russians accuse Kiev of staging a provocation.

AG: There’s a longstanding back channel between the White House and the Kremlin, as satirized in Dr. Strangelove. Anti-Trump fanatics keep claiming this is new and traitorous, but it’s long established. Obama and Putin used it to keep Russian and US soldiers from firing on one another instead of the jihadists both claimed to be fighting in Syria. Kennedy and Khrushchev used it to keep the Bay of Pigs crisis from escalating into a nuclear war. Shouldn’t Trump and Putin be talking on that back channel now, no matter how much it upsets CNN and MSNBC?

GS: Well, of course, they should. The danger is that in this atmosphere of anti-Russian hysteria such channels for dialogue may not be kept open. As a result, crises could escalate beyond the point at which either side could back down without losing face. What’s terrifying is that so many US politicians and press now describe any kind of negotiation, dialogue, or threat-management as treasonous collusion by Donald Trump.

Remember Trump’s first bombing in Syria in April 2017. Before he launched that attack, Trump administration officials gave advance warning to the Russians to enable them to get any Russian aircraft out of harm’s way. This perfectly sensible action on the part of the administration—leave aside the illegality and stupidity of the attack—was greeted by Hillary Clinton and the MSNBC crowd as evidence that the whole operation was cooked up by Trump and Putin to take attention off Russia-gate. It’s nuts.

Why would there be a sit down with so much water under the bridge? What are the odds that Mueller would be impartial?

• Trump Will Sit Down With Mueller ‘Over My Dead Body’ – Giuliani (Ind.)

Donald Trump will sit and talk to special counsel Robert Mueller “over my dead body”, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani has said, in the latest pushback against the investigation into possible collusion between the president’s election campaign and Moscow. As Mr Trump called his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen “a rat” for cooperating with the FBI, Mr Giuliani made clear Mr Mueller would not be offered an interview with the president. Mr Trump recently provided Mr Mueller’s team written answers to a series of questions, but on Friday CNN said the special prosecutor was still interested in an in-person interview. “Nothing has changed in that sense from the first day,” said a source.

Mr Giuliani, the former New York mayor who now serves as the president’s personal lawyer, on Sunday again firmly pushed back at such a notion. Asked on Fox News whether Mr Trump would take part in an interview, Mr Giuliani said: “Yeah, good luck, good luck – after what they did to [Michael] Flynn, the way they trapped him into perjury, and no sentence for him.” He added: “Over my dead body. But you know, I could be dead.” Mr Giuliani also attacked Mr Mueller’s investigation, saying the probe was a “joke”. “I am disgusted with the tactics they have used in this case,” he said. “What they did to Gen Flynn should result in discipline. They’re the ones who violated the law. They’re looking at a non-crime, collusion.”

And WaPo declined to follow up on it. That’s American media for you.

• FBI, CIA Told WaPo They Doubted Key Allegation In Steele Dossier (ZH)

FBI and CIA sources told a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter that they didn’t believe a key claim contained in the “Steele Dossier,” the document the Obama FBI relied on to obtain a surveillance warrant on a member of the Trump campaign. The Post’s Greg Miller told an audience at an October event that the FBI and CIA did not believe that former longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen visited Prague during the 2016 election to pay off Russia-linked hackers who stole emails from key Democrats, reports the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross. “We’ve talked to sources at the FBI and the CIA and elsewhere — they don’t believe that ever happened,” said Miller during the October event which aired Saturday on C-SPAN.

“We literally spent weeks and months trying to run down… there’s an assertion in there that Michael Cohen went to Prague to settle payments that were needed at the end of the campaign. We sent reporters to every hotel in Prague, to all over the place trying to – just to try to figure out if he was ever there, and came away empty.” -Greg Miller. Ross notes that WaPo somehow failed to report this information, nor did Miller include this tidbit of narrative-killing information in his recent book, “The Apprentice: Trump, Russia, and the Subversion of American Democracy.”

Britian is as bad as the US.

Not the Onion, not April 1.

Guardian still hasn’t apologized for making up the Manafort-Assange story from scratch.

• Guardian Most Trusted Newspaper In Britain – Report (G.)

The Guardian is the most trusted newspaper in Britain as well as being the most read quality news outlet, and the most popular quality news outlet among younger readers, according to industry figures released on Monday. The Guardian is now reaching more than 23 million British adults every month, with the organisation’s articles being read by 12 million Britons in a typical week and 4.1 million on the average day, aided by the decision to keep the website free for all readers. In addition, more than 97% of online readers think that reading the Guardian is time well spent, which is the highest score among all national publishers in the country. The figure rises to 99% among Guardian print readers.

Readers of the Guardian website were also substantially more likely to say that they felt a close connection to the outlet, that it offered them something they could not get elsewhere, and that they trusted its reporting. The Observer topped the equivalent rankings for Sunday newspapers. “This fantastic set of results demonstrates the Guardian’s unique position in the media,” said the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner. “We see consistently high scores for trust and engagement from both our digital and print readers, and it is excellent news that the Guardian resonates so strongly with younger audiences, too.”

Debt Rattle November 18 2018

Nov 182018

November 18, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:35 am Finance Tagged with: APEC, Brexit, CIA, climate change, extinction, Gulen, Kerry, Khashoggi, Pence, press pass, silica, supernova, Trump 8 Responses »

Gabriel Loppé The Eiffel tower struck by lightning 1902

• Habitat And Species Loss Threatens All Our Futures (G.)

• John Kerry: ‘People Are Going To Die Because Of The Decision Trump Made’ (G.)

• Bear Market Growls (Roberts)

• APEC Leaders Divided After US, China Spat (AFP)

• Pence Vows No End To Tariffs Until China Bows (R.)

• Trump Calls CIA Assessment Of Khashoggi Murder Premature But Possible (R.)

• Trump ‘Not Considering’ Extraditing Gülen to Turkey (Ind.)

• White House Press Pass Has Nothing To Do With The First Amendment (McMaken)

• Brussels Tells Theresa May Delaying Brexit Will Cost UK £10 Billion (O.)

• Tory MPs Warn Hardliners They May Abandon Brexit (Ind.)

• Activists Who Blocked Migrant Deportations Face Life in Prison In UK (IC)

• Glass Was Forged Inside The Heart Of An Exploding Ancient Star (AFP)

Why does climate change get so much more attention than species extinction? Because people see more profit in it.

• Habitat And Species Loss Threatens All Our Futures (G.)

As a UN conference convenes to work out a new deal for protecting the planet’s biodiversity, the focus falls on the nations that are not attending. Amid the worst loss of life on Earth since the demise of the dinosaurs, the agenda at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh could hardly be more important, but the spirit of international collaboration appears to be as much at risk of extinction as the world’s endangered wildlife. The United States has never signed up and Brazil is among a growing group of countries where new nationalist leaders are shifting away from global cooperation.

The two-week meeting of the CBD is its first in two years. It has always been the neglected sibling of its twin, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The two organisations were conceived amid great hope at the Rio Earth summit in 1992 but while the energy transition has attracted heads of state interested in billion-dollar renewable projects, the effort to save the natural world has been left to weak environment ministries, conservation NGOs and underfunded scientists. Media research suggests there is only one news story about UN biodiversity talks for every 20 about UN climate negotiations. Coverage tends to focus on a few totemic species, such as lions, chimpanzees and pandas, rather than the collapsing ecosystems on which we depend.

[..] Since 1970 humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles, according to the latest Living Planet report by WWF, which warned that the loss of wildlife was now an emergency that is threatening our civilisation. This followed a report earlier this year that one in eight bird species is threatened with global extinction. Recent studies have also tracked calamitous declines of pollinating insects in the US, Costa Rica and Germany, promoting warnings of ecological Armageddon. Cristiana Pasca Palmer, the head of the CBD, says we must stem the loss of biodiversity or face the prospect of our own extinction. But the global mechanics to do that are missing.

Part of the reason for the low level of interest is that the last two major biodiversity agreements – in 2002 and 2010 – have been ineffectual. At Nagoya in Japan eight years ago, the 196 signatory nations to the CBD signed up to the Aichi biodiversity targets: to at least halve the loss of natural habitats, ensure sustainable fishing in all waters, and expand nature reserves from 10% to 17% of the world’s land by 2020. With two years left in the Aichi plan, the conference this year will show that many of the 20 targets have been missed. And even apparent progress in the creation of new protected areas is misleading because governments from Brazil to China have done little to police these “paper reserves”.

The level of sociopathy here is blinding. Just count the dead on Kerry’s watch. But again, he’s talking about climate change. Because that’s where the money is. Makes you wonder what the real issue is: rising temperatures or people looking to get rich off of them. Remember the braindead Michael Bloomberg/Mark Carney paper I wrote about when it came out, on getting rich while saving the planet. Who’s your enemy, really?

• John Kerry: ‘People Are Going To Die Because Of The Decision Trump Made’ (G.)

“Here’s my feeling. And I’m certain of this.” He slows down. “I. Do. Not. Take. It. Personally. I’m sorry for the world. I’m sorry for my country, which looks ridiculous. Look, I’ve known all my life that this is a tough business, that politics is hard – that there are ups and down and if you personalise them you’re never going to survive.” Also, he points out, “I feel better than a lot of people think”, because Trump cannot affect the 194 countries still “doing Paris”, or even the 38 US states (plus Washington DC) committed to renewable energy portfolios regardless of the president’s edicts. The Iran deal is wounded, but still exists, he says. “In fact France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China all met few weeks ago in New York with the foreign minister of Iran, to talk about how to keep the deal moving forward.”

Surely he is angry, though? “You know what I’m angry about? People are going to die because of the decision Donald Trump made. My kids and my grandkids are going to face a difficult world because of what Donald Trump has done. But if you sound angry all the time, people aren’t going to listen to you.” Anger boiled over into a tweet last week, when he could not bear the farrago unfolding on Remembrance Day. “It was just a sad moment, for our country and for the presidency. The president of the United States did not go to an event because of rain, when those guys died in the rain, died in the snow, died in the gas, died in the mud, and not to honour them I thought was brutal.”

I’d say you don’t need to know much more than this. It’s just that the game of guessing which straw breaks the camel’s back doesn’t strike me as particularly useful.

• Bear Market Growls (Roberts)

Fortunately, up to this point, there has not been a triggering of margin debt, as of yet, which remains the “gasoline” to fuel a rapid market decline. As we have discussed previously, margin debt (i.e. leverage) is a double-edged sword. It fuels the bull market higher as investors “leverage up” to buy more equities, but it also burns “white hot” on the way down as investors are forced to liquidate to cover margin calls. Despite the two sell-offs this year, leverage has only marginally been reduced.

If you overlay that the S&P 500 index you can see more clearly the magnitude of the reversions caused by a “leverage unwind.”

The reason I bring this up is that, so far, the market has not declined enough to “trigger” margin calls. At least not yet. But exactly where is that level? There is no set rule, but there is a point at which the broker-dealers become worried about being able to collect on the “margin lines” they have extended. My best guess is that point lies somewhere around a 20% decline from the peak. The correction from intraday peak to trough in 2015-2016 was nearly 20%, but on a closing basis, the draft was about 13.5%. The corrections earlier this year, and currently, have both run close to 10% on a closing basis.

Does China think Trump will give in?

• APEC Leaders Divided After US, China Spat (AFP)

Leaders from 21 Asia-Pacific nations failed Sunday to bridge gaping divisions at a summit overshadowed by a war of words over the US and China as they vie for influence in the region. For the first time in the history of the APEC grouping, leaders were unable to agree on a formal written declaration amid sharp differences over trade policy. “The leaders agreed that instead of a traditional leaders’ declaration, they would leave it to the hands of PNG as the chair to issue a chair statement on behalf of all the members,” said Zhang Xiaolong, a spokesman from the Chinese foreign ministry. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau admitted there were “different visions on particular elements with regard to trade that prevented full consensus on a communique document.”

The annual gathering, held for the first time in Papua New Guinea, was overshadowed by speeches from Chinese President Xi Jinping and US Vice President Mike Pence, which appeared to represent competing bids for regional leadership. Pence warned smaller countries not to be seduced by China’s massive Belt-and-Road infrastructure programme, which sees Beijing offer money to poorer countries for construction and development projects. The “opaque” loans come with strings attached and build up “staggering debt”, Pence charged, mocking the initiative as a “constricting belt” and a “one-way road”. He urged nations instead to stick with the United States, which doesn’t “drown our partners in a sea of debt” or “coerce, corrupt or compromise your independence”.

In a speech to business leaders just minutes before Pence, Xi insisted the initiative was not a “trap” and there was no “hidden agenda” – amid criticism that it amounts to “chequebook diplomacy” in the region. Xi also lashed out at “America First” trade protectionism, saying it was a “short-sighted approach” that was “doomed to failure”. [..] Trump — and Russian President Vladimir Putin – both decided to skip the gathering, leaving the spotlight on Xi who arrived two days early to open a Chinese-funded school and road in Papua New Guinea’s dirt-poor capital Port Moresby.

Putin and Trump were both absent. Why have the summit then? So Xi can shoot himself in the foot?

• Pence Vows No End To Tariffs Until China Bows (R.)

The United States will not back down from its trade dispute with China, and might even double its tariffs, unless Beijing bows to U.S. demands, Vice President Mike Pence said on Saturday. In a bluntly worded speech at an Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit in Papua New Guinea, Pence threw down the gauntlet to China on trade and security in the region. “We have taken decisive action to address our imbalance with China,” Pence declared. “We put tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods, and we could more than double that number.” “The United States, though, will not change course until China changes its ways.”

The stark warning will likely be unwelcome news to financial markets which had hoped for a thaw in the Sino-U.S. dispute and perhaps even some sort of deal at a G20 meeting later this month in Argentina. U.S. President Donald Trump, who is not attending the APEC meeting, is due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Argentina. Pence’s warning on Saturday contrasted with remarks made by Trump on Friday, when he said he may not impose more tariffs after China sent the United States a list of measures it was willing to take to resolve trade tensions. [..] There was no hint of compromise from Pence.“China has taken advantage of the United States for many years. Those days are over,” he told delegates gathered on a cruise liner docked in Port Moresby’s Fairfax Harbour.

Killing the petrodollar is a big responsibility. But the CIA wouldn’t have issued the assessment without strong evidence.

• Trump Calls CIA Assessment Of Khashoggi Murder Premature But Possible (R.)

President Donald Trump on Saturday called a CIA assessment blaming Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi “very premature” and said he will receive a complete report on the case on Tuesday. Trump, on a trip to California, said the killing “should never have happened.” The report on Tuesday will explain who the U.S. government believes killed Khashoggi and what the overall impact of his murder is, Trump said. It was unclear who is producing the report. Trump also said the CIA finding that bin Salman was responsible for the killing was “possible.” Trump made the remarks hours after the State Department said the government was still working on determining responsibility for the death of Khashoggi.

“Recent reports indicating that the U.S. government has made a final conclusion are inaccurate,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. “There remain numerous unanswered questions with respect to the murder of Mr. Khashoggi.” Nauert said the State Department will continue to seek facts and work with other countries to hold those involved in the journalist’s killing accountable “while maintaining the important strategic relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia.” Trump discussed the CIA assessment by phone with the agency’s director, Gina Haspel, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo while flying to California on Saturday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.

The CIA had briefed other parts of the U.S. government, including Congress, on its assessment, sources told Reuters on Friday, a development that complicates Trump’s efforts to preserve ties with the key U.S. ally. A source familiar with the CIA’s assessment said it was based largely on circumstantial evidence relating to the prince’s central role in running the Saudi government. The CIA’s finding is the most definitive U.S. assessment to date tying Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler directly to the killing and contradicts Saudi government assertions that Prince Mohammed was not involved.

NBC egg on face. ‘T is the season?

• Trump ‘Not Considering’ Extraditing Gülen to Turkey (Ind.)

President Donald Trump said on Saturday he is “not considering” extraditing an Islamic cleric self-exiled in the United States to Turkey. The extradition of Fethullah Gulen, accused of plotting a failed coup in 2016 to overthrow Turkish President Tayipp Erdogan, would be a strategic effort to persuade Turkey to lessen scrutiny on Saudi Arabia over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In recent months, the Trump administration has been vigorous in its defence and flattery of its close ally Saudi Arabia – and the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman – in hopes Riyadh will serve its role in carrying out the president’s Middle East foreign policy.

“No, it’s not under consideration,” Mr Trump said when pressed on whether or not he would extradite the Turkish cleric, a political opponent of Erdogan, to his home country. “We are looking, always looking at whatever we can do for Turkey.” Mr Trump’s statement comes three days after NBC News reported that his administration is looking into whether or not extraditing Mr Gulen could convince the Turkish president to soften pressure on Saudi Arabia for reportedly killing Mr Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist critical of Riyadh, in its Istanbul consulate earlier last month.

The Jim Acosta show continues. CNN should cancel it.

• White House Press Pass Has Nothing To Do With The First Amendment (McMaken)

It’s difficult to see how something so limited and so unavailable to nearly everyone could be called a right. After all, not even all reporters can hope to secure a White House press pass. And non-reporters have even less chance of ever getting access. Access to White House media facilities and forums are a privilege reserved for a select few —and most of those few are wealthy operatives of extremely powerful media corporations. A press pass is clearly not a right in the same sense as a trial by jury, a right to be secure in one’s personal property, or a right to peaceably assemble. In theory at least, those rights apply to everyone unless voluntarily waived, or unless revoked through some sort of public due process.

Nor is it the case that just anyone who is recognized as a journalist gets access to the White House press room. The room, of course, is of a finite size — there are 49 seats — and access is limited. Only a select group of people is allowed in, and the credentialing process is controlled in part by the White House Correspondents’ Association which hardly hands out credentials as if they were a human right. [..] even if everyone who wanted it were somehow magically given space in the White House press room, it’s hard to see how hobnobbing with the White House communications staff forms a pillar of a free press or free inquiry. In other words, the very premise that a White House press pass is a critical component of a free press is questionable at best. After all, the press room, the communications staff, and the entire White House media apparatus exists to make the president look good.

It’s not there to offer a frank exchange of information, or to divulge any information the White House doesn’t want released. To find that sort of information, one would have to engage in real investigative journalism in which journalists uncover facts that powerful government officials would rather not be uncovered. That, of course, is what Julian Assange has done. But you won’t find many establishment American journalists defending him. No, in the minds of the Jim Acostas of the world, “journalism” consists of repeating the official talking points released at official press conferences. And this is a lucky thing for presidents, many of whom have long understood that the purpose of White House communications is to manipulate the press.

Delay will be at least a year if it happens.

• Brussels Tells Theresa May Delaying Brexit Will Cost UK £10 Billion (O.)

The latest Opinium poll for the Observer on Sunday delivers more bad news for May, with Labour opening up a three-point lead. It shows Tory Leave supporters appear to be deserting May’s party in droves. Compared with a month ago, the Conservatives have dropped five points to 36% while Labour has gained three to stand on 39%. The proportion of Leavers backing the Tories has dropped by 10 points in one month. As May’s allies sprang to her defence and said she was “winning over the country”, Brussels threw a new spanner in the works by saying any extension of the 21-month transition period designed to smooth the UK’s exit must last at least a year beyond the end of December 2020.

May told an EU leaders summit last month that she might ask for a “few months” extra time if that was what was needed to complete an EU-UK trade deal and prevent the Irish backstop from coming into force. But on Saturday night Brussels was making clear that if the UK wants an extension of the transition – during which it is tied to the EU economic system but with no say over its rules – it must last at least a further year. A year-long extension would cost about £10bn on top of the £39bn divorce bill already agreed. Such a prospect will appal hardline Brexiters who already complain that the UK will have to spend almost two more years tied to the EU after Brexit on 29 March next year.

No Brexit at all is also still an option. The problem may well be that Brexit means something different to every single person.

• Tory MPs Warn Hardliners They May Abandon Brexit (Ind.)

Moderate Conservatives have warned they will push Britain towards tighter relations with the EU or even turn against Brexit altogether if “purists” in their party tear down Theresa May’s draft withdrawal deal. A string of Tory MPs told The Independent that Eurosceptic colleagues who have begun a sustained push to bring down both Ms May and her Brexit plans, should not be mistaken that a no-deal exit risking the livelihoods of British people is obtainable. The moderates say the only remaining option if Brexiteers block Ms May’s approach will mean being more closely bound to the single market or even revisiting the 2016 referendum result. Their warning comes as the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservatives launched a coordinated campaign against the draft deal to be signed off at an EU summit next weekend, and pushed for a vote of no confidence in the prime minister.

Ms May is set to continue her media offensive defending the deal on Sunday with a live interview in the morning, but Eurosceptics have also been in force attacking it. The pushback from Tory moderates began with pointed words from serving frontbencher Alistair Burt, who indicated that if Ms May’s plans fell, Brexiteers could not expect Remain-voting MPs to continue to go along with the result of the 2016 referendum regardless of the consequences. He wrote on Twitter: “Be very clear. If an agreed deal on leaving between the Govt and the EU is voted down by purist Brexiteers, do not be surprised if consensus on accepting the result of the referendum by Remain-voting MPs breaks down. “Parliament will not support no deal.”

Picking people up just to fill seats on a plane. Morals we have none.

• Activists Who Blocked Migrant Deportations Face Life in Prison In UK (IC)

Smoke is a founding member of Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, a group created in 2015 to stand in solidarity with migrant communities in the U.K., and also part of End Deportations, a group campaigning to end deportations that originally formed around the Stansted action. They chose to focus on one particular aspect of the U.K.’s deportation system: charter flights. While some migrants and asylum-seekers are deported on commercial flights alongside passengers traveling for business or pleasure, others are deported via private flights chartered by the Home Office, the government department responsible for immigration, security, and law and order. The Titan plane around which the Stansted 15 locked themselves in March 2017 was one of the latter.

[..] Freedom of Information requests have revealed that the Home Office chartered 93 deportation flights from January 2016 through May 2018, including the flight grounded by the Stansted 15. Most of these flights went to Pakistan, Albania, Nigeria, and Ghana, although a few also flew to Germany, France, and Bulgaria. Some carried over 50 deportees; most had less than 20 passengers being deported because of a criminal conviction. These destinations have shifted over time as the population of asylum-seekers has changed: Charter deportation flights in 2014 also frequented Afghanistan and Kosovo. The Stansted 15, along with many others who research or campaign around deportation, take issue with numerous aspects of deportation charter flights, starting with the way in which migrants and asylum-seekers are notified of them.

“It’s a weird numbers game where the government needs to fill seats on this plane to make it economically viable,” says Morten Thaysen, one of the co-founders of Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants. There will often be “raids in the weeks leading up to the flight,” according to Thaysen. “People [are] being taken from marketplaces, workplaces, their home, and put in detention centers – these kind of immigration prisons – and then taken in the middle of the night on these secret flights where there are no witnesses. So it’s the brutality of how they function.” Some people, activists also argue, are not notified of their impending deportation with enough time to appeal the decision. “We see so many people on these flights whose cases haven’t been properly finished, haven’t had their cases heard properly,” says Thaysen.

“Silica makes up around 60 percent of the Earth’s crust..”

• Glass Was Forged Inside The Heart Of An Exploding Ancient Star (AFP)

The next time you’re gazing out of the window in search of inspiration, keep in mind the material you’re looking through was forged inside the heart of an exploding ancient star. An international team of scientists said Friday they had detected silica — the main component of glass — in the remnants of two distant supernovae billions of light years from Earth. Researchers used NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to analyse the light emitted by the collapsing mega-cluster and obtain silica’s “fingerprint” based on the specific wavelength of light the material is known to emit. A supernova occurs when a large star burns through its own fuel, causing a catastrophic collapse ending in an explosion of galactic proportions.

It is in these celestial maelstroms that individual atoms fuse together to form many common elements, including sulphur and calcium. Silica makes up around 60 percent of the Earth’s crust and one particular form, quartz, is a major ingredient of sand. As well as glass windows and fibreglass, silica is also an important part of the recipe for industrial concrete. “We’ve shown for the first time that the silica produced by the supernovae was significant enough to contribute to the dust throughout the Universe, including the dust that ultimately came together to form our home planet,” said Haley Gomez, from Cardiff University’s School of Physics and Astronomy. “Every time we gaze through a window, walk down the pavement or set foot on a sandy beach, we are interacting with material made by exploding stars that burned millions of years ago.”

Debt Rattle November 16 2018

Nov 162018

November 16, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:32 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, austerity, Brexit, Corbyn, Easter Island, Gulen, IMF, John Kerry, leveraged loans, May, Monsanto, Mueller, paranoid 5 Responses »

David Hockney Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) 1972

• Julian Assange Has Been Charged, Prosecutors Reveal Inadvertently (WaPo)

• IMF Issues Stark Warning On Leveraged Loans (F.)

• Elizabeth Warren Says Fed Makes Same Mistakes As Before The Crisis (CNBC)

• Global Auto Industry Collapse Continues (ZH)

• Brexit Poll: Remain Takes Big Lead Over Leave, 60% Back 2nd Referendum (Ind.)

• Theresa May Braced For More Cabinet Resignations After Day Of Chaos (Ind.)

• Pound Tumbles As UK Markets Suffer Brexit Deal Volatility (G.)

• The Paranoid Fantasy Behind Brexit (Fintan O’Toole)

• Easter Island People To Head To London To Request Statue Back (G.)

• It Took A UN Envoy To Hear How Austerity Is Destroying Lives (G.)

• Rage Against The Cruelty Of So-Called Austerity (G.)

• US Studying Turkey’s Demands To Extradite Preacher Gülen (AFP)

• California Judge Orders Next Monsanto Weed-Killer Cancer Trial For March (R.)

• John Kerry: Europe Must Tackle Climate Change Or Face Migration Chaos (G.)

Every single news outlet seems to carry a piece on this, and not a single one of them has bothered to do due diligence. They all just stick to the narrative, even if it’s been exposed as false. Every story mentions Mueller and Russia (some even mention terrorism), though it’s crystal clear that Mueller has nothing that links Assange to Russia, least of all that he got files from Russians. Fabricating an Assange-Russia link is needed for US intelligence and media lest the entire collusion story falls to bits. Mueller issued indictments against Russians he knew would never show up to deny or confirm, and he didn’t even have the guts to mention WikiLeaks, but labeled them Company 1. As Mueller knew Assange was safely incommunicado, and wouldn’t be able to deny or confirm. Mueller’s a liar and a coward. A common profile at the FBI, it seems. And the media; they stand up for Khashoggi and let Assange rot.

• Julian Assange Has Been Charged, Prosecutors Reveal Inadvertently (WaPo)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged under seal, prosecutors inadvertently revealed in a recently unsealed court filing — a development that could significantly advance the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and have major implications for those who publish government secrets. The disclosure came in a filing in a case unrelated to Assange. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer, urging a judge to keep the matter sealed, wrote that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.” Later, Dwyer wrote the charges would “need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested.”

Dwyer is also assigned to the WikiLeaks case. People familiar with the matter said what Dwyer was disclosing was true, but unintentional. Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, said, “The court filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing.” Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia have long been investigating Assange and, in the Trump administration, had begun taking a second look at whether to charge members of the WikiLeaks organization for the 2010 leak of diplomatic cables and military documents that the anti-secrecy group published. Investigators also had explored whether WikiLeaks could face criminal liability for the more recent revelation of sensitive CIA cybertools.

Horse, barn.

• IMF Issues Stark Warning On Leveraged Loans (F.)

An unusually blunt warning about the massive market in leveraged loans from a normally-circumspect IMF should give investors pause at a time of rising concern about global financial stability. Fund economists Tobias Adrian, Fabio Natalucci and Thomas Piontek have published a new blogpost highlighting some fairly alarming trends. “We warned in the most recent Global Financial Stability Report that speculative excesses in some financial markets may be approaching a threatening level. For evidence, look no further than the $1.3 trillion global market for so-called leverage loans, which has some analysts and academics sounding the alarm on a dangerous deterioration in lending standards. They have a point.

“This growing segment of the financial world involves loans, usually arranged by a syndicate of banks, to companies that are heavily indebted or have weak credit ratings. These loans are called ‘leveraged’ because the ratio of the borrower’s debt to assets or earnings significantly exceeds industry norms.” Adrian, a former New York Fed economist and now Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department, alluded to some of these risks during a presentation at the CATO Institute’s 36th Annual Monetary Conference held on Thursday in Washington.

“With interest rates extremely low for years and with ample money flowing though the financial system, yield-hungry investors are tolerating ever-higher levels of risk and betting on financial instruments that, in less speculative times, they might sensibly shun,” Adrian and his colleagues write. “Speculative-grade companies have been eager to load up on cheap debt. Globally, new issuance of leveraged loans hit a record $788 billion in 2017, surpassing the pre-crisis high of $762 billion in 2007. The United States was by far the largest market last year, accounting for $564 billion of new loans.”

Why speak out now? She’s had 10 years to do it.

• Elizabeth Warren Says Fed Makes Same Mistakes As Before The Crisis (CNBC)

Ahead of the financial crisis, a buildup of leverage on bank balance sheets that went largely undetected by regulators helped cause the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is afraid the same thing is happening again a decade later. The Massachusetts Democrat said Thursday that she thinks the Federal Reserve and its fellow watchdogs of the financial system are overlooking a dangerous buildup of loans going to companies that are already deeply in debt. The so-called leveraged loans helped undermine the financial system before and are building up again, now totaling $1.1 trillion. In a face-to-face hearing with Fed Governor Randal Quarles, vice chairman of supervision and thus the central bank’s leading bank regulator, Warren said she is worried about a lack of oversight.

“I’m not sure that I see much distinction between what you’re doing now and what the Fed was doing in pre-2008, and I think that’s deeply worrisome,” she said. “I’m very concerned that the Fed dropped the ball before and they may be dropping it one more time.” Leveraged lending actually has declined in 2018 from its blistering pace the year before. Total volume in the third quarter hit $177 billion, a 40 percent slide compared with the record pace of the same period in 2017, according to Thomson Reuters. Issuance so far this year is tracking at $930 billion, which is a 12 percent decline from a year ago. Institutional share of leveraged loans edged lower to 58 percent in the third quarter, against 60 percent from 2017.

Yeah, we can never have enough cars.

• Global Auto Industry Collapse Continues (ZH)

The outlook for the global automobile market has been increasingly dire lately, especially after a third quarter that saw sales drop in many major markets across the globe, including China. Now, the latest data from Europe suggests that the difficulties may be nowhere close to over despite optimistic fourth quarter guidance by companies like Volkswagen and Daimler AG. Deliveries of new passenger cars were down 7.4% in the EU and the European Free Trade Association in October from the year prior. This adds to a 23% drop that occurred during September according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, and which was so acute it led to the first negative GDP print for Germany since 2015.

Despite the ongoing sales weakness, which many attribute to one-time events, some analysts – like those at EY Consultancy – still expect the market to turn around in the fourth quarter. They argue that new emissions testing cited by many companies as the reason for disappointing sales, will only have a temporary effect. At the same time, Citigroup analyst Angus Tweedie thinks the downside is not over for companies like BMW and Daimler AG, according to Bloomberg. In a note titled “The Golden Age Ends With a Crash”, Tweedie wrote that “Heading into 2019 we see few remaining avenues of maneuver, and with volume growth slowing in most markets believe the scale of pressures will become obvious.”

Lots of Brexit stories again today. May has left open an open vote for her allies.

• Brexit Poll: Remain Takes Big Lead Over Leave, 60% Back 2nd Referendum (Ind.)

A growing majority of voters would back the UK remaining in the European Union if a fresh referendum was held, a poll suggests. Support for the UK staying in the bloc was at 54 per cent, according to a YouGov survey carried out after Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement text was published on Wednesday night. The poll found 46 per cent would back the Leave side – down two percentage points compared with a survey conducted in August. Almost six in ten (59 per cent) also backed holding a fresh referendum – once “don’t knows” were discounted – the poll, commissioned by the People’s Vote and published in the Evening Standard, found. If Ms May’s deal is voted down by MPs, that gap widened to 64 per cent to 36 per cent, excluding don’t knows.

She’s going to face a confidence vote. And then another.

• Theresa May Braced For More Cabinet Resignations After Day Of Chaos (Ind.)

Theresa May is braced for further cabinet resignations that would spark a challenge to her premiership, after a day of drama that left her Brexit strategy on the verge of collapse. Michael Gove was considering whether to quit, after apparently refusing to take the job of Brexit secretary – dramatically vacated by Dominic Raab – when the prime minister rejected his demands. The environment secretary is believed to have called for Ms May’s draft agreement to be ripped up and renegotiated, and for the cancellation of the 25 November summit with the EU which is intended to seal the deal. Mr Gove left a meeting with the prime minister without an appointment being made – with Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, also thought to be still considering quitting.

A defiant Ms May staged a press conference at which she vowed to fight any vote of no confidence in her, saying: “Am I going to see this through? Yes.” Likening herself to the famously stubborn England batsman Geoffrey Boycott, her cricketing hero, she told reporters: “What do you know about Geoffrey Boycott? Geoffrey Boycott stuck to it and he got the runs in the end.”Earlier, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leading Tory Brexiteer, announced he had submitted a letter of no confidence in the prime minister – creating an expectation that the trigger point of 48 letters would be reached.

However, the threshold was not breached, putting off a vote of no confidence by all 314 other Conservative MPs until Monday at the earliest. Although Ms May is still expected to win such a contest, a large number of Tories rejecting her leadership – perhaps 100 – might still damage her fatally. His position was rocked by seven resignations, with Esther McVey, the work and pensions secretary, quickly following Mr Raab out of the cabinet. Two junior ministers, two unpaid aides and a trade envoy also quit.

Once people begin to understand how deep the hole is that the UK is in, the pound will really be pounded.

• Pound Tumbles As UK Markets Suffer Brexit Deal Volatility (G.)

Britain’s financial regulator has been in contact with City firms as a raft of resignations over Theresa May’s Brexit deal hit markets, sending the pound lower and putting UK housebuilders on track for their worst one-day drop since 2016. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is understood to have been in touch with stock exchanges, bigger banks, and asset management companies regarding market volatility. An FCA spokesman said: “As you would expect in this type of situation we have regular contact with firms and will continue to engage with them.” Investors were offloading shares in FTSE-quoted companies with large domestic businesses and UK currency holdings in an effort to reduce their exposure to the British economy.

Royal Bank of Scotland was the biggest faller on the FTSE 100, with shares closing down 9.6% at 224p. The market value of the bank, still 62% owned by the government, fell by £2.8bn in Thursday’s sell-off. Housebuilders Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey and Barratt Developments all closed down more than 7%, with Berkeley Group falling more than 6%. The four FTSE 100 housebuilders lost £1.6bn collectively from their market capitalisations. The pound also took a tumble against major international currencies, dropping from above $1.30 to less than $1.28 against the US dollar by Thursday afternoon, a drop of 1.9%. Against the euro, sterling fell by 2% to just under €1.13.

Excellent and scary Brexit background. The stupid idea of empire just won’t die. Britain is either an empire or a colony. There’s nothing in between.

• The Paranoid Fantasy Behind Brexit (Fintan O’Toole)

Before the narrative of Len Deighton’s bestselling thriller SS-GB begins, there is a “reproduction” of an authentic-looking rubber-stamped document: “Instrument of Surrender – English Text. Of all British armed forces in United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland including all islands.” It is dated 18 February 1941. After ordering the cessation of all hostilities by British forces, it sets down further conditions, including “the British Command to carry out at once, without argument or comment, all further orders that will be issued by the German Command on any subject. Disobedience of orders, or failure to comply with them, will be regarded as a breach of these surrender terms and will be dealt with by the German Command in accordance with the laws and usages of war.”

Written amid the anxieties of Britain’s early membership of the European Communities and published in 1978, Deighton’s thriller sets up two ideas that will become important in the rhetoric of Brexit. Since there is no sense that Deighton has a conscious anti-EU agenda, the idea seems to arise from a deeper structure of feeling in England. One is the fear of the Englishman turning into the “new European”, fitting himself into the structures of German domination. His central character is a harbinger of the “rootless cosmopolitan” who cannot be trusted to uphold English independence and English values, and who therefore functions as the enemy within, the quisling class of pro-Europeans. This is the treason of the elite, the puppet politicians and sleek mandarins who quickly accommodate themselves to the new regime.

Deighton was building on real historical memories of the appeasers whose prewar conduct makes the notion that they would have quickly become collaborators in the event of a defeat to the Nazis highly credible. This idea of a treacherous elite would later ferment into a heady and intoxicating brew of suspicion that the Brexiteers would both dispense to the masses and consume themselves. The other crucial idea here is the vertiginous fall from “heart of Empire” to “occupied colony”. In the imperial imagination, there are only two states: dominant and submissive, coloniser and colonised. This dualism lingers. If England is not an imperial power, it must be the only other thing it can be: a colony.

More of the idiotic empire stuff. Just give back what you’ve stolen, you morons. Yeah, the Parthenon marbles too. You stole them from a European Union member. Put your Stonehenge thingy in the British Museum, not other people’s rightful possessions. Bunch of ordinary thieves.

• Easter Island People To Head To London To Request Statue Back (G.)

Towering at the entrance of the British Museum’s Wellcome gallery is a 2.5-metre basalt statue from Easter Island. For indigenous Rapa Nui islanders, such statues – known as moai – carry the spirit of prominent ancestors and are considered the living incarnation of their relatives. Next week, a delegation from the island – which has been part of Chile since 1888 and is officially known as Rapa Nui – will travel to London to request the moai’s return, emboldened by the backing of the Chilean government and the museum’s willingness to engage in talks for the first time since it acquired the statue in 1869.

“We want the museum to understand that the moai are our family, not just rocks. For us [the statue] is a brother; but for them it is a souvenir or an attraction,” says Manutomatoma, who serves on the island’s development commission. “Once eyes are added to the statues, an energy is breathed into the moai and they become the living embodiment of ancestors whose role is to protect us.” Having spent 150 years away from its home, the statue – known as Hoa Hakananai’a –has become the focal point of a movement to return the moai which has steadily gathered momentum since August, when the island’s mayor, Pedro Edmunds, wrote to the museum requesting the statue’s return. Among the proposals the delegation will bring to the table is the idea of a replica statue being carved by artisans on the island to take the place of Hoa Hakananai’a.

Hoa Hakananai’a (‘lost or stolen friend’) c. 1000-1200 AD

Brexit is playing out in a 3rd world nation. That explains a lot. But it doesn’t explain why Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t lead in the polls.

• It Took A UN Envoy To Hear How Austerity Is Destroying Lives (G.)

Over the weekend, I asked Alston whether he heard any echoes between British experiences and the testimonies he heard last December while investigating Donald Trump’s US. “In many ways, you in the UK are far ahead of the US,” he said. He thinks “the Republicans would be ecstatic” to have pushed through the kind of austerity that the Tories have inflicted on the British. Like others at the Guardian, I have been writing on the debacle of austerity Britain for years now. Rather than the goriest details, what strikes me is how normalised our country’s depravities have become over the course of this decade. Ordinary people speak in ordinary voices about horrors that are now quite ordinary.

They go to food banks, which barely existed before David Cameron took office. Or they go days without food even in London, the city that has more multi-millionaires than any other. They spend their wages to rent houses that have mice or cockroaches or abusive landlords. Any decent society would see these details are shocking; yet they no longer shock anyone in that hall. What will remain with me of that afternoon is the sheer prosaic weight of the abuse being visited on ordinary people who could be my friends or family. Alston has heard so many stories about the toxic failings of universal credit and the malice that is the disability benefits assessment scheme that he is in no doubt about the truth.

The question for McVey, who is due to meet the UN party this week, will be how she responds to the weight of people’s lived experience. None of those giving evidence this afternoon want victim status. They are, as Trinity says, “survivors”. What they want is to be heard – and after that they want remedies. [..] the government, like most of the press, didn’t want the truth to be acknowledged – because then it would be compelled to act. This is what Britain has been reduced to: hoping that a foreigner has the stomach and integrity to hear and record our decade of shame.

This is the rage that Corbyn should be talking about 24/7. Instead of giving interviews on how Brexit can’t be stopped.

• Rage Against The Cruelty Of So-Called Austerity (G.)

Outrage, anger, despair, shame, impotence [..] The truths consequent on the savage, unnecessary, uncaring cuts to public services are not hidden away but confront us daily. Welfare benefits slashed, millions dependent on food banks. Libraries, museums, childcare centres, youth clubs, swimming pools consigned to the scrapheap; road repairs and park budgets cut, bus routes terminated. In Darley Dale a helpful notice tells us that the lavatory is closed and the nearest one is 2.1 miles away. The true story is that of a government that has chosen private profit over civic services, while it wreaks an assault on the services that make towns and communities good places to live.

In a 2015 Guardian article about benefits, sanctions and food banks, Ken Loach called for “public rage” and spoke about “conscious cruelty”. The word “austerity” has allowed the government to disguise both intent and outcome. In its original meaning “austerity” suggests plainness and simplicity, a cosy view of cutting back, perhaps a mythical wartime pulling together. “Austerity” is now a weasel word used to promote the Tory rhetoric that there is no alternative, that anaesthetises public anger as we are led to believe that there is no choice. There must be a new script. We should ban the word.

Want to lose credibility? This is an excellent way. Assange and Gülen turned into trade objects.

• US Studying Turkey’s Demands To Extradite Preacher Gülen (AFP)

The United States is studying Turkey’s demands for the extradition of preacher Fethullah Gulen, who is accused by Ankara of orchestrating a failed 2016 coup attempt, the State Department said Thursday. But spokeswoman Heather Nauert rejected the allegation in an NBC report that the White House is seeking a way to extradite Gulen — who reportedly has a US Green Card — in a bid to reduce Turkish pressure on Saudi Arabia over the murder of a dissident journalist. “We have received multiple requests from the Turkish government… related to Mr Gulen,” Nauert said.

“We continue to evaluate the material that the Turkish government presents requesting his extradition,” she said. But Nauert insisted that “there is no relation” between the Gulen extradition issue and Turkish pressure on Saudi Arabia over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul. The White House “has not been involved in any discussions related to the extradition of Fetullah Gulen,” she said. NBC, citing four anonymous sources, reported that Trump administration officials had asked law enforcement agencies about “legal ways of removing” Gulen, 77, from the US to persuade Turkey’s president “to ease pressure on the Saudi government.”

9,300 more lawsuits to go. Better combine a few.

• California Judge Orders Next Monsanto Weed-Killer Cancer Trial For March (R.)

A California judge on Thursday granted an expedited trial in the case of a California couple suffering from cancer who sued Bayer AG’s Monsanto unit, alleging the company’s glyphosate-containing weed killer Roundup caused their disease. The order by Superior Court Judge Ioana Petrou in Oakland, California, comes on the heels of a $289 million verdict in the first glyphosate trial in San Francisco, in which a jury found Monsanto liable for causing a school groundskeeper’s cancer. Damages were later reduced to $78 million, and Bayer, which denies the allegations, said it would appeal the decision. Its share price, however, has dropped nearly 30 percent since the Aug. 10 jury verdict and the company faces some 9,300 U.S. glyphosate lawsuits.

Petrou’s ruling clears the way for the second California jury trial over glyphosate, the world’s most widely used weed killer. The trial of California residents Alva and Alberta Pilliod is scheduled to begin on March 18, 2019, according to a court filing. Glyphosate jury trials will ramp up next year. The company is scheduled to face jurors in a Missouri state court in St. Louis, where the first trial was set to begin in early February. That date, however, was vacated by a judge, Bayer said, and the trial is likely to be postponed to later in 2019. A trial in San Francisco federal court, where federal Roundup lawsuits are consolidated, is scheduled to begin at the end of February.

If it wasn’t clear yet what a worthless piece of dung John Kerry has always been: it’s not the climate that drives African to Europe, it’s US warfare, interventions and arms sales.

• John Kerry: Europe Must Tackle Climate Change Or Face Migration Chaos (G.)

Europe faces even deeper political turmoil and the possibility of mass migration from Africa unless the world urgently addresses the threat of climate change, the former US secretary of state John Kerry said on Thursday. Speaking at a Guardian Live event, he said he was deeply disturbed at how issues such as climate change, cyber wars and the future of the oceans were not ballot box issues, admitting it was hard to translate these issues into an acceptable set of choices for voters. Kerry said: “We are heading for catastrophe unless we respond to some life-threatening challenges very rapidly. We have a climate-denying president that pulls us out of the the Paris climate change agreement at a time when literally every day matters.

“Europe is already crushed under this transformation that is taking place due to migration. In Germany Angela Merkel is weakened. Italian politics is significantly impacted. “Well, imagine what happens if water dries up and you cannot produce food in northern Africa. Imagine what happens if Nigeria hits its alleged 500 million people by the middle of the century … you are going to have hordes of people in the northern part of the Mediterranean knocking on the door. I am telling you. If you don’t believe me, just go read the literature.” The former secretary of state for the Obama administration reminded his audience that climate change scientists had just warned that historically unprecedented steps were needed to prevent an extra 0.5C (32.9F) degrees increase.

Debt Rattle August 5 2016

Aug 052016

August 5, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:46 am Finance Tagged with: bonds, elite, EU, evergreen, Gulen, Ike, peace, rate cut, Trump, Tsipras, war 1 Response »

G.G. Bain Three-ton electric sign blown into Broadway, New York. 1912

• New Tool for Central Banks: Buying Corporate Bonds (WSJ)

• UK Interest Rate Cut Is A ‘Hammer Blow’ For Workplace Pensions (G.)

• UK Labor Market Enters “Freefall” After Brexit Vote (R.)

• China Regulator Tells Banks to Evergreen Loans of Troubled Companies (ET)

• For Europe’s Elite the Party Lives On After Brexit (BBG)

• Tsipras Eyes Southern EU Alliance To Back Debt Deal (Kath.)

• The 60-Year Decay of American Politics (Bacevich)

• US Unlikely To Extradite Imam Turkey Blames For Coup (CNBC)

• How Europe Is Getting Rich by Fueling Its Own Terror Epidemic (TAM)

• War Or Peace: The Essential Question For American Voters On November 8th (RI)

Maybe we need to remind ourselves from time to time that we do NOT have functioning markets. Central banks buying up corporate bonds is of course about as distorting for markets as it comes.

We will yet take debt to its inevitable conclusion.

• New Tool for Central Banks: Buying Corporate Bonds (WSJ)

Central banks have a new favorite tool for boosting lackluster growth: corporate-debt purchases. Two months after the ECB started buying corporate bonds, the Bank of England said Thursday that it would adopt a similar strategy. It will buy as much as £10 billion ($13.33 billion) of U.K. corporate debt starting in September as part of a larger package of stimulus measures, including £60 billion of additional government-bond purchases. The move, investors and analysts say, is likely to drive down borrowing costs even further around the globe for large companies already benefiting from ultralow interest rates.

But the decision again raises concerns about possible side effects of unconventional monetary policies, including excessive risk taking by investors, and faces substantial skepticism from investors who doubt such programs meaningfully address the global economy’s core deficiencies, centering on soft demand for goods and services. Already this year, negative-interest-rate policies and aggressive bond buying by central banks in Japan and Europe have helped create trillions of dollars of negative-yielding government bonds. That in turn has driven down corporate-bond yields, leading to robust debt issuance among companies in the U.S., if not all developed countries.

In the U.S., the average yield of investment-grade corporate bonds was 2.85% Wednesday, compared with 3.67% at the end of 2015, according to Barclays data. The average spread to Treasury yields also has shrunk, to 1.48 percentage points from 1.72. Companies have issued $519.2 billion of investment-grade corporate bonds this year, just below their pace at this time last year when issuance ultimately reached a record $794.6 billion, according to Dealogic.

Wait till the stock market crashes, that’s when pensions will be hit.

• UK Interest Rate Cut Is A ‘Hammer Blow’ For Workplace Pensions (G.)

Pension savers could be big losers from the Bank of England rate cut, as critics warned of a “hammer blow” to workplace schemes and forecast that pension payouts would fall to record lows. Within minutes of the Bank’s decision to cut the base rate to 0.25%, yields on government bonds, otherwise known as gilts, dived to all-time lows. Companies that still offer final salary pension schemes will as a result see the cost of maintaining them soar. Hymans Robertson, a pensions consultancy, said the rate cut meant a £70bn increase in the amount company schemes needed to meet their commitments to scheme members, to a total of £2.4trn. “To put this in context, UK GDP currently stands at £1.8trn. This has pushed the aggregate UK [company scheme] deficit up to £945bn – the worst it has ever been,” it said.

Companies will have to find the money to fill the gap in their pension schemes, or like most already have, close them to new members. In extreme cases, some may attempt to redraw pension contracts to cap their future liabilities. Patrick Bloomfield of Hymans Robertson said: “Pension schemes are being hit hard by recent events, but we need to remember that the impact will not be felt equally by all … There are schemes with robust funding plans that don’t take more risk than they need to, which will be able to weather this. The gap between pension schemes that hedged their risks and those that haven’t is starker than ever before.”

A forced reset is not necessarily a bad thing.

• UK Labor Market Enters “Freefall” After Brexit Vote (R.)

Britain’s labour market entered “freefall” after the vote to leave the European Union, with the number of permanent jobs placed by recruitment firms last month falling at the fastest pace since May 2009, a survey showed on Friday. The monthly report from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) showed starting salaries for permanent jobs rose in July at the slowest pace in more than three years. Overall, the survey added to evidence that business confidence and activity slowed sharply after the June 23 vote to leave the European. “The UK jobs market suffered a dramatic freefall in July, with permanent hiring dropping to levels not seen since the recession of 2009,” said REC chief executive Kevin Green. “Economic turbulence following the vote to leave the EU is undoubtedly the root cause.”

Different countries have different ways of hiding their debt.

• China Regulator Tells Banks to Evergreen Loans of Troubled Companies (ET)

On the surface, China is talking the reform talk. But is it also walking the walk? There are many examples to demonstrate it isn’t. The most recent one is a directive from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) to not cut off lending to troubled companies and evergreening bad loans. This first reported by The Chinese National Business Daily on Aug. 4. “A Notice About How the Creditor Committees at Banks and Financial Institutes Should Do Their Jobs” tells banks to “act together and not ‘randomly stop giving or pulling loans.’ These institutes should either provide new loans after taking back the old ones or provide a loan extension, to ‘fully help companies to solve their problems,’” the National Business Daily writes.

“It’s big news. A couple of weeks ago they were threatening Liaoning Province to cut off all lending to them if they didn’t tighten loan standards,” said Christopher Balding, a professor of economics at Peking University in Shenzen. “This is a pretty significant turn-around for them to do and it indicates how significant the problem is.” The official reform narrative is espoused in this Xinhua piece which claims China has to reform because there is no Plan B. “Supply-side structural reform is also advancing as the country moves to address issues like industrial overcapacity, a large inventory of unsold homes and unprofitable ‘zombie companies.’” Clearly resolving the bad debt of zombie companies is not high on the priority list.

Goldman Sachs complained in a recent note to clients that companies can default on payments and often nothing happens. The investment bank notes that companies like Sichuan Coal default on payments of interest and principal for weeks or months and then maybe pay creditors later. The company in question defaulted on 1 billion yuan ($150 million) worth of commercial paper in June but made full payments later during the summer, a somewhat arbitrary process. Another case is Dongbei Special Steel, which missed at least five payments on $6 billion of debt since the beginning of the year, but has done nothing to resolve the problem. This is why creditors wrote an angry letter to the local government to help resolve the issue.

Why the EU can’t be reformed.

• For Europe’s Elite the Party Lives On After Brexit (BBG)

Europe’s political elite may have missed the Brexit memo. Six weeks since U.K. voters rebuked the ruling class by choosing to leave the European Union, the region’s establishment has reacted by carrying on as before. The revolving door of former policy makers joining the finance industry has spun again, with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso signing up with Goldman Sachs and former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King joining Citigroup. Meanwhile departed Prime Minister David Cameron is facing criticism for nominating numerous aides for honors, including his wife’s stylist.

The perception of elite coziness risks further disenfranchising those backing Brexit, and peers across the continent who share the feeling of being left behind by the powerful and wealthy in the era of globalization and financial crises. A potential upshot is more support for populist parties that tap into alienation such as the U.K. Independence Party or France’s National Front. “Anything that doesn’t show government or public institutions in a good light merely confirms some of the attitudes that probably contributed to the Brexit vote,” said Chris Roebuck, a visiting professor at London’s Cass Business School. For some voters, “there is a group of people out there who aren’t normal people like you or me, who have benefited since the financial crisis – because they’re an elite.”

Tsipras already lost the ‘fight’. Beppe Grillo may lead such an alliance, not Tsipras.

• Tsipras Eyes Southern EU Alliance To Back Debt Deal (Kath.)

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is planning to forge an alliance with the leaders of other countries in Southeastern Europe in a bid to bolster Greece’s bid for a debt restructuring and lower the primary surplus targets set by creditors. Tsipras is expected to explore the prospects for such an alliance at a meeting of European socialist heads of state scheduled to take place in Paris on August 25, particularly with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and French President Francois Hollande. The meeting had originally been planned for May 20 in Rome but was postponed after an Egyptian passenger plane crashed in the Mediterranean. The Greek premier’s aim, according to sources, is to arrange a subsequent meeting in Athens, probably on September 9, and in any case before a scheduled European Union leaders’ summit on September 16, to further explore the prospect of forming a Southeastern European alliance.

Tsipras and Renzi had agreed at their last meeting on the sidelines of an EU summit on June 28 on the need for southern states to create their own growth-focused agenda, compared to the austerity prescribed by Northern European countries. At the time, Hollande and Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa had appeared open to the prospect of such an alliance. In Athens, sources close to Tsipras believe the time is right to pursue the creation of a strong southern “axis” to counter the stance of countries in Northern Europe. The idea of a united front of Southern European countries was first mooted by leftist SYRIZA before the general elections of January 2015 that brought it to power.

At the time, Tsipras thought Athens would attract the solidarity of Southern European countries in SYRIZA’s rhetoric against austerity and that those countries would stand by Greece in its negotiations with international creditors. That solidarity did not transpire then. However, sources close to Tsipras believe the current situation is potentially more beneficial for Athens as the protracted imposition of austerity on Greece and elsewhere has increased the pressure on countries in Southern Europe. Athens is also hopeful about forming a common front on another crucial issue that has divided Southern and Northern European countries: the ongoing refugee crisis. Indications by Turkey that it might not honor a migrant deal with the EU have fueled concerns in Greece that a slowed migrant influx could pick up again.

Nostalgia. “And don’t kid yourself that things really can’t get much worse. Unless Americans rouse themselves to act, count on it, they will.”

• The 60-Year Decay of American Politics (Bacevich)

Presidential campaigns today are themselves, to use Boorstin’s famous term, “pseudo-events” that stretch from months into years. By now, most Americans know better than to take at face value anything candidates say or promise along the way. We’re in on the joke — or at least we think we are. Reinforcing that perception on a daily basis are media outlets that have abandoned mere reporting in favor of enhancing the spectacle of the moment. This is especially true of the cable news networks, where talking heads serve up a snide and cynical complement to the smarmy fakery that is the office-seeker’s stock in trade. And we lap it up. It matters little that we know it’s all staged and contrived, as long as — a preening Megyn Kelly getting under Trump’s skin, Trump himself denouncing “lyin’ Ted” Cruz, etc., etc. — it’s entertaining.

This emphasis on spectacle has drained national politics of whatever substance it still had back when Ike and Adlai commanded the scene. It hardly need be said that Donald Trump has demonstrated an extraordinary knack — a sort of post-modern genius — for turning this phenomenon to his advantage. Yet in her own way Clinton plays the same game. How else to explain a national convention organized around the idea of “reintroducing to the American people” someone who served eight years as First Lady, was elected to the Senate, failed in a previous high-profile run for the presidency, and completed a term as secretary of state? The just-ended conclave in Philadelphia was, like the Republican one that preceded it, a pseudo-event par excellence, the object of the exercise being to fashion a new “image” for the Democratic candidate.

The thicket of unreality that is American politics has now become all-enveloping. The problem is not Trump and Clinton, per se. It’s an identifiable set of arrangements — laws, habits, cultural predispositions — that have evolved over time and promoted the rot that now pervades American politics. As a direct consequence, the very concept of self-government is increasingly a fantasy, even if surprisingly few Americans seem to mind.

At an earlier juncture back in 1956, out of a population of 168 million, we got Ike and Adlai. Today, with almost double the population, we get — well, we get what we’ve got. This does not represent progress. And don’t kid yourself that things really can’t get much worse. Unless Americans rouse themselves to act, count on it, they will.

Can’t see US handing Gulen over on a platter, but Turkey is not done demanding his head. And many others.

• US Unlikely To Extradite Imam Turkey Blames For Coup (CNBC)

U.S. officials weren’t likely to extradite Fethullah Gulen, an imam Turkey blames for plotting the recent failed coup, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the discussion. Those people said the evidence presented so far by Turkey wasn’t convincing and U.S. officials were also concerned about Turkish officials’ threatening public statements, which made the fairness of his potential treatment questionable, the report said. Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, has denied wrongdoing, the report said.

Separately, Reuters reported that Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan pledged on Thursday to cut off revenues from businesses tied to the 75-year-old Gulen, which include schools, firms and charities. Even before the failed coup, authorities in Turkey had seized Islamic lender Bank Asya, closed media businesses and arrested businessmen on accusations of funding the imam’s movement, Reuters reported. The failed coup, which took place on July 15, left more than 230 dead. Since then, more than 60,000 people across various branches of government have been detained, suspended or put under investigation, Reuters reported. That’s spurred concerns Erdogan was cracking down on all dissent.

“68 flights that took place within 13 months transported weapons and ammunition to the Middle East, including to NATO member Turkey, which in turn “funnelled arms into brutal civil wars in Syria and Yemen.”

• How Europe Is Getting Rich by Fueling Its Own Terror Epidemic (TAM)

Though Europe does not have the rates of gun violence the United States continues to grapple with, European governments have made over a billion euros by fueling gun violence in the Middle East and North Africa. A report conducted by a team of reporters from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) found a group of European nations has been funneling arms into the Middle East region since 2012, making at least 1.2 billion euros in the process. According to the report, 68 flights that took place within 13 months transported weapons and ammunition to the Middle East, including to NATO member Turkey, which in turn “funnelled arms into brutal civil wars in Syria and Yemen.”

The report also notes that these flights make up only a small portion of the 1.2 billion euros in arms deals between Europe and the Middle East since 2012. The report’s conclusions are horrifying, to say the least. The report states: “Arms export licenses, which are supposed to guarantee the final destination of the goods, have been granted despite ample evidence that weapons are being diverted to Syrian and other armed groups accused of widespread human rights abuses and atrocities.” Considering Europe is battling a continually rising terrorist threat, they seem to be going about tackling this issue the wrong way. Surely the best way to counter terrorism is to cease funding it in the first place.

One astounding aspect of the report is that the lucrative war-profiteering business involves nations the world would not usually regard as overly-interested in war. The countries contributing to the rising terror threat, as identified by the report, are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Romania, among others. This report adds to the already glaring problem of European countries making billions of dollars off the death and destruction of Middle Eastern civilian life. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) found the United Kingdom was second only to the United States in arms sales, making up 10.4% of the total $401 billion worth of arms sold around the world for the 2014 period.

Trump for Peace. We have 3 months left to get used to that.

• War Or Peace: The Essential Question For American Voters On November 8th (RI)

In matters of substance as opposed to character assassination that both parties’ candidates have engaged in freely, what separates the candidates and makes it worthwhile to register and vote on November 8th is the domain of international relations. This, as a general rule, is the only area where a president has free hands anyway, whatever position his party holds in the Congress. Here the choice facing voters is stark, I would say existential: do we want War or Peace? Do we want to pursue our path of global hegemony, which is bringing us into growing confrontation with Russia, meaning a high probability of war, (the policy of Hillary Clinton), or do we want a harmonious international order in which the U.S. plays its role at the board of governors, just like other major world powers (the policy of Donald Trump).

Let me go one step further and explain what “war” means, since it is not something that gets much attention in our media, whereas it is at the top of the news each day in Russia. “War” does not mean Cold War-II, a kind of scab you can pick to indulge a pleasure in pain that is not life threatening. War means what our military like to call “kinetics” to mask the horror of it all. It means live ammunition, ranging from conventional to thermonuclear devices that can devastate large swathes of the United States if we play our hand badly, as would likely be the case for reasons I explain below should Hillary and her flock of Neocon armchair strategists take the reins of power in January 2017.