Apr 082023
 
 April 8, 2023  Posted by at 8:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  46 Responses »


John William Waterhouse It’s Sweet Doing Nothing / Dolce Far Niente 1879

 

Iran and Saudi Arabia: A Chinese win-win (Pepe Escobar)
Xi Divides And Conquers During Macron’s China Visit (Fomenko)
The Hero’s Journey (Kunstler)
More Classified US Documents Shared In New Leak – NYT (RT)
The Leaked ‘Secret Plan’ For A Ukrainian Military Offensive Doesn’t Add Up (MC)
NATO Should Not Be Near Russian Borders – Lula (TASS)
West Didn’t Allow Time For Peace In Ukraine – Lula (RT)
West In No Position To Issue Instructions On Ukraine To Beijing – Envoy (TASS)
Moscow Reacts To Blinken’s Counteroffensive Claim (RT)
Kiev Prepares Provocation To Discredit Russia – Russian Defense Ministry (TASS)
US Resumes Biolabs Program In Ukraine – Russian MOD (RT)
How Was ERIC Used to Steal Elections? (Emerald)
Attack of the Censorship Karens! (Shellenberger)
Proud Boys Attorney Wants to Unmask Informants During Jan. 6 Trial (NW)
‘A Silver Lining’: How Covid Ushered In A Vaccines Golden Era (G.)
Cancer And Heart Disease Vaccines ‘Ready By End Of The Decade’ (G.)

 

 

 

 

Habba


Byron Donalds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get MAD

 

 

 

 

Gonzalo

 

 

 

 

Pepe on Twitter:
“5,000 years of civilization. Against a bunch of upstart barbarians. BRIICSS is already on. Led by RICs. With Iran and Saudi close to the front seat. Bring it on, suckers.”

Iran and Saudi Arabia: A Chinese win-win (Pepe Escobar)

The idea that History has an endpoint, as promoted by clueless neoconservatives in the unipolar 1990s, is flawed, as it is in an endless process of renewal. The recent official meeting between Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Beijing marks a territory that was previously deemed unthinkable and which has undoubtedly caused grief for the War Inc. machine. This single handshake signifies the burial of trillions of dollars that were spent on dividing and ruling West Asia for over four decades. Additionally, the Global War on Terror (GWOT), the fabricated reality of the new millennium, featured as prime collateral damage in Beijing.

Beijing’s optics as the capital of peace have been imprinted throughout the Global South, as evidenced by a subsequent sideshow where a couple of European leaders, a president, and a Eurocrat, arrived as supplicants to Xi Jinping, asking him to join the NATO line on the war in Ukraine. They were politely dismissed. Still, the optics were sealed: Beijing had presented a 12-point peace plan for Ukraine that was branded “irrational” by the Washington beltway neocons. The Europeans – hostages of a proxy war imposed by Washington – at least understood that anyone remotely interested in peace needs to go through the ritual of bowing to the new boss in Beijing.

Tehran-Riyadh relations, of course, will have a long, rocky way ahead – from activating previous cooperation deals signed in 1998 and 2001 to respecting, in practice, their mutual sovereignty and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. Everything is far from solved – from the Saudi-led war on Yemen to the frontal clash of Persian Gulf Arab monarchies with Hezbollah and other resistance movements in the Levant. Yet that handshake is the first step leading, for instance, to the Saudi foreign minister’s upcoming trip to Damascus to formally invite President Bashar al-Assad to the Arab League summit in Riyadh next month. It’s crucial to stress that this Chinese diplomatic coup started way back with Moscow brokering negotiations in Baghdad and Oman; that was a natural development of Russia stepping in to help Iran save Syria from a crossover NATO-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) coalition of vultures.

Then the baton was passed to Beijing, in total diplomatic sync. The drive to permanently bury GWOT and the myriad, nasty ramifications of the US war of terror was an essential part of the calculation; but even more pressing was the necessity to demonstrate how the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, had become irrelevant. Both Russia and China have experienced, inside and out, how the US always manages to torpedo a return to the JCPOA, as it was conceived and signed in 2015. Their task became to convince Riyadh and GCC states that Tehran has no interest in weaponizing nuclear power – and will remain a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Then it was up to Chinese diplomatic finesse to make it quite clear that the Persian Gulf monarchies’ fear of revolutionary Shi’ism is now as counter-productive as Tehran’s dread of being harassed and/or encircled by Salafi-jihadis. It’s as if Beijing had coined a motto: drop these hazy ideologies, and let’s do business.

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“Beijing is by no means out of the game, because as much as the US can play divide and conquer against EU countries, so can China – and the outcome of the visit demonstrates that very well..”

Xi Divides And Conquers During Macron’s China Visit (Fomenko)

French President Emmanuel Macron has wrapped up a three-day visit to China, accompanied partly by European Commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen, who went home a day earlier. The dual visit came at a time when EU nations, worried about a growing Sino-Russian partnership, are looking for ways to strengthen their own diplomatic engagement with Beijing. Von der Leyen’s presence on the trip was widely seen as a “check” on Macron, there to ensure he complied with “European unity” on the matter of the EU’s relationship with China. Before the visit, she gave a hawkish address warning China against supporting Russia in the Ukraine conflict and slamming Beijing for becoming “more repressive at home and more assertive abroad.”

[..] the US has long been pushing very aggressively to undermine China’s prospects in the EU. It has been waging a public opinion war against Beijing, using its own state-sponsored think-tanks, and pushing issues such as human rights to create negative sentiment and to block engagement, such as on the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), which was proposed back in 2013 and is still pending ratification a decade later. Similarly, the US uses bilateral and unilateral diplomacy to undermine China’s relationships with specific European countries in a bid to wreck its attempts to engage with the bloc as a whole. For example, the US explicitly supported Lithuania in undermining the ‘One China’ principle by opening a “Taiwan representative office.” It also forced the Netherlands to agree to new export controls on sending advanced lithography machines (used for making computer chips) to China.

Similarly, because the EU could never agree to a comprehensive ban of Huawei’s application in 5G networks in 2020, the US simply resorted to bilaterally approaching countries one by one, making them agree to the ban until those states that were not on board, such as Germany, were effectively isolated and could not drive the EU agenda. Ultimately, the EU is a bloc which can only operate by consensus between all of its member states, but if the US can undermine that consensus, it can throw a spanner in the works and break the entire machine. This is why it is so difficult for Europe to truly create an “autonomous” foreign policy capable of serving coherent “European interests.” This means when nations such as France and Germany declare their desire for engagement with China, they of course have influence, but the overall effect is never truly consistent.

The bloc is being subjected to a constant tug of war in its foreign policy direction, which ultimately shows that Europe remains more of a passenger, rather than a player, in the world of US-China competition. However, despite the traditional dominance of the US over Europe, Beijing is by no means out of the game, because as much as the US can play divide and conquer against EU countries, so can China – and the outcome of the visit demonstrates that very well. Having given von der Leyen and her message of “unity” a noticeably cooler reception, the Chinese hosted a cordial tea ceremony for Macron, after signing a joint communique that spoke at length about improving trade, economic and cultural ties, but made barely any mention of the main political sticking point between China and the EU – Beijing’s good relations with Moscow and Xi’s refusal to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine crisis.

For China, this is a clear win. For France, this is a win in terms of enduring business and economic relations with China, but a loss in that all of Macron’s attempt to change Xi’s mind on Putin and Ukraine were comprehensively stonewalled. For von der Leyen, whose mission in Beijing was purely political, it was a complete failure. Not only did her message fall on deaf ears, the wooing of France continued unabated under her nose. But perhaps most importantly, the result of this visit dealt a blow to US agenda, showing that positive relations between China and the EU are worth working towards and Washington’s attempts to drive wedges between them are, so far, futile.

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“I’m aboard for the ride. It’s going to be goshdarn interesting and I hope the bastards don’t try to kill him, because that will really be the end for us.”

The Hero’s Journey (Kunstler)

There is a deep, primal wish in the American psyche to correct the damage to our country caused by the murders of John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. November 22, 1963 was exactly when this nation went off the rails, and many Americans understand that. RFK, Jr. has stated unambiguously that he believes the CIA killed his uncle, the president. And he recently supported the parole of his father’s killer, Sirhan B. Sirhan, suggesting that there was a whole lot more to Bobby’s assassination than that patsy. Here’s the heart of the matter: that wish to correct the abominations of history is a sentiment much stronger than anything else currently whirring in the fog of emotion that grips a nation in extremis, certainly stronger than all the bullshit embedded in equity, diversity, and inclusion and the bad faith aspirations of the climate change / Great Reset claque. RFK, Jr., represents a way out of all that. He may be strong enough and honorable enough to make that our new national reality.

Then there is Mr. Trump. He’s been on his own even stranger hero’s journey, considering his origins in real estate and showbiz, and his personal peccadillos. Mr. Trump also recognized the evil afoot in our country and he set out to correct all that. He was attacked unfairly and incessantly by people of bad character and ill intent, even to this day as he faces an absurd political prosecution in Manhattan. You have to admire his fortitude and resilience in the face of such massed official bad faith. His first time around in the White House, though, Mr. Trump kind of muffed the job. He had many opportunities to disarm and fire antagonists like Christopher Wray and the perfidious generals who kept backstabbing him, but he just didn’t do it. He got played on the whole Covid fraud and still hasn’t renounced the killer “vaccines” developed in the Warp Speed flimflam.


While I consider the New York case brought by DA Alvin Bragg to be a disreputable shuck and jive, over which Mr. Trump will prevail, and while I recognize him as the current leader in the battle against a Globalist putsch, I think Mr. Kennedy would be a far better choice to clean up the mess that has been made of us. I was particularly unnerved by Mr. Trump’s speech at Mar-a-Lago the night of his indictment. I know many find his manner charming, but to me his mode of speaking seems childish and weirdly inarticulate — and the last thing this country needs is more rhetorical confusion. And I’m also disturbed by the histrionic trappings that went with it — the grandiose music, the myriad flags and seals. It actually has a banana republic flavor. Mr. Kennedy, on the other hand, brings a solemn humility to the scene. Even in his quavering voice, he speaks clearly and with insight. He’s an excellent writer. He reminds me much more of what was good about our country and the men it once produced than the flamboyant Golden Golem of Greatness. I’m aboard for the ride. It’s going to be goshdarn interesting and I hope the bastards don’t try to kill him, because that will really be the end for us.

RFKjr Camus

Watters RFK jr

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“..the new leak does not stop with Ukraine and covers a variety of other subjects, including “sensitive briefing slides on China, the Indo-Pacific military theater, the Middle East and terrorism..”

More Classified US Documents Shared In New Leak – NYT (RT)

Scores of secret US national security files have appeared online after another major leak, the New York Times reported, noting that the new documents include “sensitive” material related to Ukraine, China, the Middle East and terrorism. The breach comes just one day after other “top secret” papers showing US and NATO war plans in Ukraine made the rounds on social media. The new trove of documents was spotted on Twitter and other sites on Friday afternoon, in what one senior US intelligence official described as a “nightmare” for Western security services, according to the Times. While the full scope of the leak has yet to be determined and the authenticity of the files remains unverified, the outlet suggested the latest breach could include “more than 100 documents” in total.

Similar to another classified disclosure first reported on Thursday, some of the files detail intelligence related to the conflict in Ukraine. One “top secret” document shows a US assessment of the situation in the city of Artyomovsk (known as Bakhmut in Ukraine), which has largely come under Moscow’s control after months of bitter fighting. However, the new leak does not stop with Ukraine and covers a variety of other subjects, including “sensitive briefing slides on China, the Indo-Pacific military theater, the Middle East and terrorism,” the Times added, stating that the scale of the breach appears to have caught the White House “off guard.”

The Pentagon said on Thursday that it would investigate the matter, while the Justice Department later announced its own separate probe. It said it was in communication with military officials, but neither have shared any additional details. Following the prior leak earlier this week, officials said they were working to remove the material from the internet, though those efforts appear to have been unsuccessful so far, as many of the documents remain accessible on social media. According to one unnamed official cited by the Times, determining the source of the breach would begin with “identifying which officials had access to them.” Staffers at several national security agencies described a “rush” to find the leaker, voicing concerns that this week’s disclosures would turn into a “steady drip of classified information” published online.

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A “processed”, “prepared” leak?

From ‘Military Chronicle’ Telegram channel.

The Leaked ‘Secret Plan’ For A Ukrainian Military Offensive Doesn’t Add Up (MC)

On Friday, photos appeared of a document allegedly containing details on a planned imminent Ukrainian offensive on territories controlled by Russia. The ‘leak’ coincided with suggestions that the NATO Defender 2023 exercises – planned for the end of this month – could be a cover for an operation to supply and support Ukrainian units. However, upon closer examination, doubts arise concerning the document’s authenticity. When did it appear? The supposed secret plans to support an offensive by Kiev’s forces hit the internet the day before Anthony Blinken made a statement on the subject. The US Secretary of State said the operation will begin “within a few weeks.”

What information does it contain?There hasn’t been a leak of this nature since Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine began, over 13 months ago. It is noteworthy that the published plans contain not only a schedule for supplying Ukrainian units with NATO weapons and ammunition, but also information about the structure of the brigades and battalions allegedly preparing for the offensive. The document, dated March 1, says Kiev’s brigades need 253 tanks, more than 380 infantry fighting vehicles and APCs, 480 vehicles, 147 artillery pieces, and 571 HMMWV armored vehicles to carry out the offensive.

Which information is most suspect? The probable locations of Russian units, indicated on the combat map in red, appear to have been collected from open sources. Several pro-Kiev resources that track military operations contain almost identical information. Also, the ratios of killed and wounded for the Ukrainian and Russian Armed Forces which initially appeared in these ‘secret plans’ have since been changed. When first posted, the losses for the Ukrainian side were underestimated at about 16,500 –17,000 people. Then (probably to be more realistic), they increased almost fivefold, up to 65,000 – 75,000. At the same time, the numbers given for Russia’s purported losses of vehicles and equipment coincide with data published by Kiev’s Ministry of Defense.

What else is wrong with the published AFU offensive plans? The blatant falsification of data on the readiness of Ukrainian military formations catches the eye. The document states that, of the nine supposedly to be trained up to US and NATO standards by March 31 and April 30, five of Kiev’s brigades have had zero training: these are the 82nd Airborne, the 32nd, 117th, and 118th Territorial Defense, as well as the 21st separate mechanized. Even if only two or three companies in these brigades were trained, and self-preparation wasn’t completed, their level of training couldn’t be zero. At the same time, the highest percentage of readiness was recorded only in the 47th mechanized(40%) and the 46th airborne assault (60%).

What’s the upshot? The plan also gives perplexing figures for military equipment. For example, out of 109 M2 Bradley BMPs sent to armed forces, for some reason only 99 are to participate in the offensive. Moreover, the vehicles are not distributed among the brigades and only assigned to one formation – Kiev’s 47th mechanized brigade, which doesn’t have heavy tanks. Rather than Soviet T-72s or T-64BVs, this grouping has only Slovak T-55Ss with 105mm guns, which are difficult to use in a large-scale offensive. The small, but important, errors and inaccuracies in the calculations of equipment, the adjusted accounting of losses, as well as the presence of units with ‘zero’ readiness, indicate that this document, which was issued as a ‘secret plan,’ was probably prepared and distributed not by the military but by a group of civilians, probably pro-Kiev analysts.

The purpose of this planted misinformation may be to underreport the actual number of combat-ready Ukrainian units to be deployed for the offensive or to distract attention from other events related to the real operation.

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“Lula da Silva said that Russia was the guarantor of a long-lasting peace in the world..”

NATO Should Not Be Near Russian Borders – Lula (TASS)

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva insists that the North Atlantic Alliance should not be close to Russia’s borders and that this issue could be a provision at peace talks on Ukraine. “NATO should not be able to deploy [its forces] on [Russia’s] borders,” he said at a press breakfast on Thursday. However, he said, all parties to the conflict should make concessions. According to him, the ownership of Crimea, “perhaps, must not be discussed at all,” while the new Russian regions are worth understanding. “But [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky may not count on anything he wants,” the politician argued. Earlier, Lula da Silva said that Russia was the guarantor of a long-lasting peace in the world. He has come up with an initiative to develop a new international format for the potential Moscow-Kiev talks, as he stressed he was ready to mediate direct negotiations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky, if need be.

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“We think that the developed world, especially the EU and the US, had the option not to enter the war the way they did, so fast, without spending time trying to negotiate..”

West Didn’t Allow Time For Peace In Ukraine – Lula (RT)

Neither Ukraine nor Russia can achieve every goal they’ve set in their conflict, but they need a mediator to facilitate peace talks, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has told journalists. The EU and the US were too quick to back Kiev, he has concluded, instead of trying to deescalate the situation. “It is not necessary to have a war,” Lula said on Thursday, during a media breakfast at the Palacio do Planalto, the official presidential workplace. He also criticized the US and its allies for their role in the conflict. “We think that the developed world, especially the EU and the US, had the option not to enter the war the way they did, so fast, without spending time trying to negotiate,” he explained. “Negotiating peace is very complicated.”

The Brazilian leader is set to travel next week to China, a nation with a similar position on Ukraine to his own. He said he hoped that his contacts with President Xi Jinping will help bring about a conversation “that we should have had a year ago.” India and Indonesia may have a role, too, he added. Explaining his view on how the hostilities could end, he suggested that the status of Crimea should be excluded from the discussion, but stressed that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot keep the land in Ukraine.” Citizens in Crimea voted in 2014 to break away from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, after an armed coup in Kiev. A similar drive for independence arose in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, but Moscow urged the breakaway Donbass to remain part of Ukraine. Kiev deployed military force in an attempt to quash the rebellion but failed.

Moscow has cited continued Ukrainian military attacks against the then-self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Kiev’s stonewalling of an EU-brokered reconciliation plan, as key reasons for the deployment of troops against Ukraine in February 2022. Later in the year, the two Donbass regions, along with the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, held referendums on rejoining Russia. Kiev dismissed the ballots, which voted to rejoin, as “sham,” but Moscow said the status of its new parts was not subject to negotiation. Lula believes that Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky “can’t want everything either.” Kiev has declared a military victory over Russia and a return of all lands, including Crimea, as preconditions for entering peace talks.

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“What China is doing can be described in a single phrase: calling for peace and facilitating negotiations. We will continue to stand steadfastly for peace, dialogue and historical justice..”

West In No Position To Issue Instructions On Ukraine To Beijing – Envoy (TASS)

The West is not in any position to give instructions to Beijing concerning the situation in Ukraine, Chinese Ambassador to Russia Zhang Hanhui said in an interview with the Izvestia daily, published on Friday. “The West is in no position to be issuing instructions to China, the more so since it doesn’t have any authority to shift responsibility over to Beijing. Since the crisis began, China has consistently put forward [for discussion] ‘four needs,’ ‘four commonalities’ and ‘three topics for consideration,’ as well as a position paper titled ‘China’s Position on a Political Solution to the Ukrainian Crisis,’ [and has] actively been promoting efforts to resolve the issue through dialogue and negotiations,” the envoy pointed out, commenting on the West’s accusations that China is supporting Russia in the conflict in Ukraine.


The diplomat also stressed that Beijing had not provided weapons to any party to the conflict. “China does not have its own interests in the Ukraine issue, but it is not merely an outside observer and certainly does not seek to add fuel to the fire, or seize an opportunity to benefit from the situation. What China is doing can be described in a single phrase: calling for peace and facilitating negotiations. We will continue to stand steadfastly for peace, dialogue and historical justice,” the Chinese ambassador noted.

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“..Blinken’s remarks appeared to be “a statement that is a subject for examination by our military.”

Moscow Reacts To Blinken’s Counteroffensive Claim (RT)

The Russian military will likely scrutinize comments made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken after he predicted a potential timeframe for a Ukrainian counteroffensive, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. In an interview on Friday with Ouest-France and German media group Funke, Blinken stated that the US and its allies should “do everything… to help Ukraine reconquer the territories taken by Russia, including through a counteroffensive, expected in the coming weeks.” In response, Peskov noted that Russia uses all available information in planning its operations in the conflict with Ukraine, and that Blinken’s remarks appeared to be “a statement that is a subject for examination by our military.” “They thoroughly track all the relevant information and take it into account when planning the continuation of the special military operation,” the presidential spokesman explained.

Kiev and its Western backers have increasingly talked up a major counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces, supposedly set to take place sometime during the spring. The operation will reportedly involve tanks and other hardware provided by the West, as well as Ukrainian troops trained abroad. The advance would purportedly be aimed at restoring Ukraine’s borders as they were before 2014. This includes the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, which all voted to become part of Russia in referendums last autumn, as well as Crimea, which reunited with Moscow nine years ago.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy head of the Security Council, previously cast doubt on Ukraine’s ability to carry out such a large-scale operation, arguing that the claims by officials in Kiev were merely “propaganda.” On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon had launched an investigation after a trove of classified data on US and NATO activities to prepare Kiev for a counteroffensive were leaked online. The papers, whose source is unclear, assessed areas such as troop strengths, timelines for arms shipments, and ammunition expenditure. However, they did not state when exactly the operation was scheduled to start.

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“..to divert the attention of the international community from the facts of numerous war crimes published by the UN, committed by the Ukrainian army and militants of nationalist groups.”

Kiev Prepares Provocation To Discredit Russia – Russian Defense Ministry (TASS)

Kiev is preparing a large-scale information campaign to discredit Russia on the international arena. A representative of the interdepartmental coordination headquarters of Russia for humanitarian response in Ukraine said this to reporters on Saturday. “According to available data, confirmed by several independent sources, a large-scale provocation aimed at discrediting the Russian Federation on the international arena is being prepared under the leadership of the office of the President of Ukraine,” the headquarters said. They specified that the Kiev regime would hold a special information campaign to divert the attention of the international community from the facts of numerous war crimes published by the UN, committed by the Ukrainian army and militants of nationalist groups.

Lavrov
https://twitter.com/i/status/1644286793057968130

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What a surprise. Maybe they should hire Fauci.

US Resumes Biolabs Program In Ukraine – Russian MOD (RT)

The US has quietly resumed its controversial biolabs program in Ukraine and is focusing on the construction of secretive new facilities and the training of personnel, the Russian Defense Ministry has claimed. A new trove of documents on alleged US-funded biological programs in Ukraine was presented by the commander of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense Forces, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, during a media briefing on Friday. Kirillov cited the protocol from a meeting dated October 20, 2022, which was attended by representatives of the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and multiple Ukrainian officials, as well as figures from the Jacobs/CH2M engineering company. The meeting reportedly focused on the resumption of biological research in Ukraine, which was “paused” due to the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev.

“Now, the project has been resumed with focus on renewal of legislative support, revision of training schedule, as well as conclusion and resumption of construction work,” the Ukrainian-language protocol stated, citing Jacobs/CH2M’s David Smith. The program was previously known as ‘Joint biological research’ but has been rebranded as ‘Biological control research’, the document indicated. It cited concerns over an alleged “Russian disinformation campaign” on the issue. The US has engaged in damage control efforts to prevent potential leaks from Ukrainian specialists on the true nature of the biological research programs, Kirillov asserted. “Hiding from responsibility for participating in military biological projects, many suspects left the territory of Ukraine. To prevent a possible leak of information about the illegal activities of the Pentagon, the US administration is taking emergency measures to search for and return them,” the commander argued.

US damage control began shortly after the outbreak of the conflict in February 2022, another document suggested. The Russian military presented a draft memo titled ‘Reducing the Threat of Ukrainian Expertise Proliferating to US Adversaries’, penned by Laura Denlinger, a senior counterproliferation adviser with the US State Department. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine has resulted in… the exodus of highly capable technical experts from Ukrainian facilities that produce missile components and advanced conventional weapons (ACW), as well as those with expertise that could be redirected and exploited by others for a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) weapon,” reads the memo, dated March 11, 2022. Moscow raised allegations of a sprawling network of secretive US-funded biological laboratories in Ukraine early in the conflict, and has since frequently published troves of documents on the matter. Russia took the issue of biolabs to the UN last October, requesting an international probe. The motion, however, was turned down by the UN Security Council, with the US, UK, and France voting against it.

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“In other words, ERIC was a Democrat activist group pretending to be a non-partisan voting rights organization.”

How Was ERIC Used to Steal Elections? (Emerald)

Did you know that a system called the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) was used in America’s recent elections to subvert our democracy? What is ERIC, you ask?This is how its designers describe the system in a short video.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1625671317910441985

Seems helpful, doesn’t it? Keeping America’s voter rolls “up to date” seems a worthy mission for a non-profit. That’s why 30 states signed up (at one point) to use this supposedly “non-partisan” system.It turns out that ERIC was not really a “non-partisan” system of course — since it was used by Democrats to cheat in our recent elections. How was ERIC used maliciously in recent elections exactly?

In a bombshell report, Hayden Ludwig has uncovered records full of coordination between state election officials using ERIC and Mark Zuckerberg’s Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) going back to 2020. Emails showed election officials in Georgia and Rhode Island sharing voter information from ERIC with Zuckerberg’s Democrat activists. Georgia elections officials actually sent ERIC data to CEIR to generate a list of eligible-but-unregistered individuals (to target with registration mailers) that was sent back to ERIC and then sent along to Georgia! In other words, ERIC was a Democrat activist group pretending to be a non-partisan voting rights organization. In fact, ERIC was apparently created by a Democrat lawyer named David Becker in 2012 — and that same David Becker left ERIC to work for Zuckerberg’s CEIR in 2016.


Convenient, isn’t it? Now you know why some blue states don’t want to clean up their voter rolls at all. In fact, election integrity groups have been forced to sue states like Michigan to clean up their rolls against the wishes of election officials. The good news is that Florida, West Virginia, and Missouri just announced they were leaving the ERIC partnership last month — following Louisiana, Alabama, Ohio, and Iowa out the door. That’s seven states. Texas and Alaska may soon follow.This groundswell of resistance has created a panic in the corrupt corporate media too. That should tell you everything you need to know. Election officials in notoriously corrupt Georgia and Utah (a mail-in ballot state!) vowed to keep using the system of course. South Carolina still won’t quit ERIC either. There’s still plenty of work to do — even in red states.

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Maybe Elon Musk should speak out on this.

Attack of the Censorship Karens! (Shellenberger)

In the early afternoon yesterday, we heard from a whistleblower: “There will be a full court press coming up against the Twitter files and the reporters,” the person said. “The press will also be targeting each of you, your histories, and your personal and business connections. This by resistance network folks at the NGO’s and think-tanks.” Not exactly a message we were happy to hear. But we can’t say we were surprised, either. On Wednesday night, “disinformation researcher” Joan Donovan, who was forced to leave the Harvard Kennedy School earlier this year, hinted that an attack on us was imminent. It turned out that the counter-offensive had already begun.

MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan tweeted out videos from an interview with Twitter Files reporter Matt Taibbi, who Hasan claimed had overestimated the number of tweets censored by the “Election Integrity Project” of the Stanford Internet Observatory. The actual number, Hasan claimed, was only 3,000 tweets, not 22 million tweets. Then, like clockwork, Stanford Internet Observatory’s Alex Stamos, who revealed that his colleague, Renee DiResta, had worked for the CIA, weighed in. “Taibbi’s claim is false,” Stamos tweeted. “The core role of the EIP was to document and analyze election misinformation. 22M is the number we calculated *after* the election of the number of Tweets regarding false claims.” But what Stamos said was “misleading” and thus “malinformation” of the exact same kind that he and DiResta seek to censor.

“Stamos & EIP worked to get entire NARRATIVES banned outright,” explained Mike Benz, the State Department official-turned-whistleblower. “Those narratives, by EIP’s own math, had millions of associated posts.” Taibbi pointed out that the 3,000 number was chosen to hide the full extent of the censorship. “They’re playing games with terms like ‘unique original URL,’” tweeted Taibbi, “where more than 1000 tweets can be “collapsed” into one ‘incident.’” Here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter how many posts they censored. No amount is acceptable. What’s more, trying to normalize censorship, as both Stamos and DiResta are constantly doing, is anathema to the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. Stamos, of course, insists that he and his colleagues did not violate the Constitution. “The EIP is an academic coalition with the 1st Amendment-protected right to analyze the election-related claims of others and to publish our findings, as we did, publicly, over and over again,” he said.

And if that were all they did, they might be okay, but it wasn’t. Instead, Stanford worked hand-in-glove with the Department of Homeland Security’s “Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,” CISA, to pressure Twitter and Facebook to censor American citizens. Violations of the First Amendment by government proxy are still violations of the First Amendment, which CISA knows perfectly well, and is the reason the agency recently scrubbed its website of its description of its domestic censorship efforts.

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“..two other law enforcement agencies outside of the FBI had undercover agents at the January 6 riots [..] there were at least 40 undercover agents at the riots..”

Proud Boys Attorney Wants to Unmask Informants During Jan. 6 Trial (NW)

An attorney for a member of the Proud Boys recently called on the U.S. government to unmask all of the informants and undercover agents involved in the January 6 Capitol riots. In a motion filed on Wednesday, the attorney for Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola compelled the government “to reveal all informants, undercover operatives and other Confidential Human Sources (CHSs) relating to the events of January 6.” “Pezzola recently learned that a federal agency other than FBI—the Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) unit—was handling and running undercover CHSs on Jan. 6,” the motion said. “The federal prosecutors in this case are refusing to disclose information regarding these non-FBI informants. The existence, and likely conduct of these CHSs is almost certainly exculpatory for Pezzola.”

The motion this week comes amid the ongoing trial for the Proud Boys, where members including Pezzola, as well as Ethan Nordean, Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, have been accused of seditious conspiracy and several other charges, in connection to the January 6 riots at the Capitol. The trial has faced several hiccups over the past few months as the attorneys for the Proud Boys have filed numerous motions. Last month, the trial was halted after the government revealed that one witness scheduled to testify was an informant. “During this period of time, the CHS [Confidential Human Source] has been in contact via telephone, text messaging and other electronic means, with one or more of the counsel for the defense and at least one defendant. During this period of time, the CHS also participated in prayer meetings with members of one or more of the defendants’ families,” Carmen Hernandez, an attorney for Rehl, wrote in a motion on March 23.

Additionally, an attorney for Nordean previously filed a motion after “hidden messages” between two FBI agents were revealed. According to the motion filed in early March, government witness Special Agent Nicole Miller provided the court all digital messages related to her testimony; however, a further review of an Excel sheet showed additional messages that appeared to be hidden. In the motion filed this week, Pezzola’s attorney, Roger Roots wrote that two other law enforcement agencies outside of the FBI had undercover agents at the January 6 riots, including “13 undercover plain-clothes agents” with the Washington D.C. Metro Police Department. In total, there were at least 40 undercover agents at the riots, the motion said. “Some of these undercover Metro officers marched with the Proud Boy march. And some appear to have played roles of instigators, in that they are seen on body-worn videos chanting ‘Go! Go!,’ ‘Stop the Steal!,’ and ‘Whose house? Our house!’ on Jan. 6. Others generally followed demonstrators toward the Capitol,” the motion said.

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Two pieces from the Guardian on vaccines to show you how wide the divide is on the topic.

‘A Silver Lining’: How Covid Ushered In A Vaccines Golden Era (G.)

The Covid-19 pandemic has been awful for many reasons. But if there is a bright side to the past three years, it is vaccines. Development and testing has advanced at an unprecedented pace since the arrival of Covid-19, enabling technologies that might otherwise have taken another decade to undergo late-stage clinical testing, regulatory approval and manufacturing scale-up to prove their mettle in millions of people. These advances have set the stage for further breakthroughs in the next five to 10 years that could help to combat some of the greatest scourges of humanity, from common respiratory infections to cancer. “We were anticipating the arrival of a golden era for vaccines before the pandemic, but like during a war, technology tends to develops a lot quicker during a pandemic. I guess a silver lining has been the rapid development of different vaccine technology platforms,” said Prof Brendan Wren, a molecular biologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Much of the excitement centres on mRNA-based vaccines, which use the same platform as the Covid-19 shots developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. Unlike traditional vaccines, which are manufactured in biological systems such as yeast or chicken’s eggs, mRNA vaccines are synthesised chemically, similar to most drugs. “It’s a huge advance, because it is essentially the same synthetic process every time, which means we can scale it,” said Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccines Group at the University of Oxford. Although often sold as a new technology, companies had, in fact, been working on mRNA vaccines for about 20 years, mostly in the context of cancer. However, the pandemic provided the funding and political power to drive this technology over the finish line and prove its worth in hundreds of millions of people.

Since then, the number of trials exploring mRNA vaccines for other diseases has exploded. Last month, the National Institute of Health in the US launched early-stage trials of three experimental mRNA vaccines for HIV. BioNTech is already running trials of mRNA vaccines for malaria, shingles and influenza. Moderna is also testing mRNA vaccines against flu, plus RSV, Zika virus, cytomegalovirus (a leading cause of childhood birth defects) and Nipah virus, a potential pandemic threat. It is also planning clinical trials of an inhaled mRNA therapy for cystic fibrosis, in collaboration with Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

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If you ask me, someone should file a complaint against the Guardian for these Big Pharma puff pieces. People wind up injured, disabled, dead.

Cancer And Heart Disease Vaccines ‘Ready By End Of The Decade’ (G.)

Millions of lives could be saved by a groundbreaking set of new vaccines for a range of conditions including cancer, experts have said. A leading pharmaceutical firm said it is confident that jabs for cancer, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, and other conditions will be ready by 2030. Studies into these vaccinations are also showing “tremendous promise”, with some researchers saying 15 years’ worth of progress has been “unspooled” in 12 to 18 months thanks to the success of the Covid jab. Dr Paul Burton, the chief medical officer of pharmaceutical company Moderna, said he believes the firm will be able to offer such treatments for “all sorts of disease areas” in as little as five years. The firm, which created a leading coronavirus vaccine, is developing cancer vaccines that target different tumour types. Burton said: “We will have that vaccine and it will be highly effective, and it will save many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives. I think we will be able to offer personalised cancer vaccines against multiple different tumour types to people around the world.”


He also said that multiple respiratory infections could be covered by a single injection – allowing vulnerable people to be protected against Covid, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) – while mRNA therapies could be available for rare diseases for which there are currently no drugs. Therapies based on mRNA work by teaching cells how to make a protein that triggers the body’s immune response against disease. Burton said :“I think we will have mRNA-based therapies for rare diseases that were previously undruggable, and I think that 10 years from now, we will be approaching a world where you truly can identify the genetic cause of a disease and, with relative simplicity, go and edit that out and repair it using mRNA-based technology.” But scientists warn that the accelerated progress, which has surged “by an order of magnitude” in the past three years, will be wasted if a high level of investment is not maintained.

Ladapo

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Parrot

 

 

French revolution
https://twitter.com/i/status/1644081399304187905

 

 

CATTREE

 

 

Moose

 

 

 

 

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Jun 092017
 
 June 9, 2017  Posted by at 9:27 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  5 Responses »


Labour Campaign Poster 1922

 

Trump Accuses Comey Of Lying About Leaked Memo (ZH)
Chris Matthews: “There’s No ‘There’ There” On Trump-Russia ‘Collusion’ (ZH)
Theresa May Has ‘No Intention Of Resigning’ After Losses (BBC)
This Is Where Theresa May’s Arrogance Will Lead Us Next (Ind.)
UK’s Shock Election Result May Hamper Brexit Talks, EU Leaders Warn (G.)
The Myth of “Cash on The Sidelines” (Roberts)
US Household Net Worth Hits Record $95 Trillion… There Is a Catch (ZH)
Opioid Overdoses The Leading Killer Of American Adults Under 50 (ZH)
Trump’s $110 Billion Arms Deal With Saudis Mostly Speculative (RT)
Defense Minister Kammenos Says US Is Greece’s Best International Ally (K.)
European Court Of Justice: Refugee Crisis Trumps Dublin Regulation (K.)
The Shield of Law and Humanism (K.)

 

 

I know the echo chamber won’t agree, but after watching quite a bit of it, four things stood out for me in the Comey testimony, other than the somewhat too loud remarks about how the entire White House lied about him and the FBI:

1) He admitted to leaking information of his private talk with Trump in the Oval Office. Comey said he didn’t understand why Trump asked everyone to leave the room, but, well, perhaps it’s this: that if anything leaked, it would be clear whodunnit. And leaking info about a private talk with your president is not an obvious thing to do. Illegal? Borderline? Comey stated that he did it because he thought it would lead to a special counsel being appointed. But who is he to ‘promote’ such a thing?

2) He finally said in public that Trump himself had not been under investigation, something the president had asked him to do on three occasions. There was some excuse about not doing it because he might have to walk that back later, but the fact remains: no Trump investigation, and despite all other leaks, no public acknowledgement of that.

3) Comey insisted in no uncertain terms that the entire US intelligence community is convinced that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections, and Russia here means the Kremlin, re: Putin. Well, let’s finally see the proof.

4) He recounted how then-AG Loretta Lynch pushed him to relabel the criminal investigation into the Clinton server as a “matter”, a term the Clinton campaign used. But why would an AG do it too, and push the FBI to do the same? Very odd. And then Comey added that this was a reason to call the press conference in which he advised the Department of Justice not to indict Clinton.

Trump Accuses Comey Of Lying About Leaked Memo (ZH)

As we detailed earlier, during his testimony today, former FBI Director Comey testified that he only leaked the memo about his contact with the President AFTER he saw President Trump’s tweet…
COMEY: I asked — the president tweeted on Friday after I got fired that I better hope there’s not tapes. I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night because it didn’t dawn on me originally, that there might be corroboration for our conversation. There might a tape. My judgement was, I need to get that out into the public square. I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons. I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. I asked a close friend to do it. [..] A close friend who is a professor at Columbia law school.

Pretty clear – it was a response to a tweet. But, as President Trump’s personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz states: “Today, Mr. Comey admitted that he unilaterally and surreptitiously made unauthorized disclosures to the press of privileged communications with the President. The leaks of this privileged information began no later than March 2017 when friends of Mr. Comey have stated he disclosed to them the conversations he had with the President during their January 27, 2017 dinner and February 14, 2017 White House meeting. Today, Mr. Comey admitted that he leaked to friends his purported memos of these privileged conversations, one of which he testified was classified.

He also testified that immediately after he was terminated he authorized his friends to leak the contents of these memos to the press in order to “prompt the appointment of a special counsel.” Although Mr. Comey testified he only leaked the memos in response to a tweet, the public record reveals that the New York Times was quoting from these memos the day before the referenced tweet, which belies Mr. Comey’s excuse for this unauthorized disclosure of privileged information and appears to entirely retaliatory. We will leave it the appropriate authorities to determine whether this leak should be investigated along with all those others being investigated”

So the question is – having called President Trump a liar, did Comey just get caught in an even bigger lie… ?

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At least on his personal involvement.

Chris Matthews: “There’s No ‘There’ There” On Trump-Russia ‘Collusion’ (ZH)

If you count yourself among the die-hard, disaffected Hillary supporters still holding out hope that President Trump will be impeached for conspiring with Russian spies to stage a coup in the United States, then you may want to sit down because earlier today one of your biggest cheerleaders just threw in the towel on that whole narrative. Yes, MSNBC’s very own Chris Matthews, the same man who confessed he “got a thrill up his leg” from simply watching Obama speak, admitted today that Comey’s testimony pretty much confirmed that “there’s no ‘there’ there” when it comes to Trump colluding with the Russians.

“The assumption of the critics of the President, of his pursuers, you might say, is that somewhere along the line in the last year is the President had something to do with colluding with the Russians … to affect the election in some way. Some conversation he had with Michael Flynn or Pual Manafort or somewhere.” “And yet what came apart this morning was that theory in two regards…the President said, according to the written testimony of Mr. Comey, go ahead and get any satellites of my operation and nail them. I’m with you on that…” “And then also, Comey said that basically Flynn wasn’t central to the Russian investigation.” “And I’ve always assumed that what Trump was afraid of was that he had said something to Flynn and Flynn could be flipped on that and Flynn would testify against the President that he’d had some conversation with Flynn in terms of dealing with the Russians affirmatively.” “And if that’s not the case, where’s the there-there?”

And when Chris Matthews throws in the towel on a liberal narrative, you know the gig is up. Oh, and by the way, this probably doesn’t help your case either… Burr: “Director Comey, did the President at any time ask you to stop the FBI investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. elections?” Comey: “Not to my understanding, no.” Burr: “Did any individual working for this administration, including the Justice Department, ask you to stop the Russian investigation?” Comey: “No.”

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Theresa May can stay until the Tories throw her out; she’s proven to be an awful liability, not a leader. Far too risky. How much would she lose next time around? Their problem is there’s no-one else who’s obvious, there must be dirty fights in dark and rainy alleys first.

So: Tories will throw out May, while Corbyn will have to throw the Blairites out of Labour who made his position a living hell.

Most likely seems Corbyn as PM of a minority government. But that’s a big risk going into Brexit talks.

Theresa May Has ‘No Intention Of Resigning’ After Losses (BBC)

The UK faces the prospect of a hung parliament with the Conservatives as the largest party after the general election produced no overall winner. With nearly all results in, Theresa May faces having fewer seats than when she called the election. The Tories are projected to get 318 seats, Labour 261 and the SNP 35. Jeremy Corbyn has urged the PM to resign but the BBC understands she has no intention of doing so at this stage and will try to form a government. The prime minister has said the country needs stability after the inconclusive election result and the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg said Mrs May intended to try and govern on the basis that her party had won the largest number of votes and seats.

Labour is set to make 29 gains with the Tories losing 13 seats – and the SNP down by 22 seats in a bad night for Nicola Sturgeon, with her party losing seats to the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems. The Conservatives are forecast to win 42% of the vote, Labour 40%, the Lib Dems 7%, UKIP 2% and the Greens 2%. Turnout so far is 68.7% – up 2% up on 2015 – but it has been a return two party politics in many parts of the country, with Labour and the Conservatives both piling up votes in numbers not seen since the 1990s. UKIP’s vote slumped dramatically but rather than moving en masse to the Tories, as they had expected, their voters also switched to Labour.

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New elections? One positive for the former Empire: the threat of Scottish independence was wiped out.

This Is Where Theresa May’s Arrogance Will Lead Us Next (Ind.)

Despite a lot of the good news streaming out of counts everywhere right now, make no mistake: this is going to be chaos. A deep and growing sense of frustration is about to ripple through the country, because what May has essentially done in her arrogance is take a gamble that could cost us decades of stability and prosperity. It is likely that what awaits us over the next few weeks is, to put it bluntly, a mess. Hung parliament. No clear majority. No willingness to form a coalition. A possible resignation from the Prime Minister (whether she’s pushed or jumps is yet to be seen) and then yet another leadership contest. Boris Johnson is said on the Westminster grapevine to already be positioning himself as a candidate, yet his reputation has turned increasingly sour over the last few years.

Many now regard him as a cynical power-grabber without much regard for the people he claims to represent. The Tories have spent the last two years playing Russian roulette with the electorate in the hope of cementing their credibility, and causing utter shambles along the way. Having barely recovered from a referendum result which caused deep divisions and painful rifts within our society, and as Europe watches us scramble for any sort of political legitimacy, who will now head into the talks that will determine our economic and political future? Theresa May has now shoved us off a cliff into political unknowns just when what we actually needed was, ironically enough, some strong and stable leadership.

Any reassurance from Westminster that the lives of ordinary people in this country mattered more than political point-scoring would be welcome. What we’ll get instead, despite the Labour surge, is yet another election, whether that be in two months’ or two years’ time. It feels inspiring and hopeful that we have so many progressive and wonderful MPs back in the Commons. But until we have a government and a plan of how to get ourselves through this, that hope is limited to a symbolic step in the right direction. In the words of one particularly concise campaign poster: strong and stable, my arse.

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It’s going to get terrible no matter what. But for now the EU has no-one to talk to. They’re not going to sit down with May if she may last only a few more weeks.

UK’s Shock Election Result May Hamper Brexit Talks, EU Leaders Warn (G.)

The EU will force a humiliated Theresa May to explain her intentions at a face-to-face meeting in Brussels as senior diplomats and politicians warned that the hung parliament resulting from the UK election was a “disaster” that hugely increases the chance of a breakdown in the Brexit negotiations. The result is likely to delay the point at which Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, has someone with whom to negotiate. Sources said a meeting of the European council on 22 June was the deadline by which time the EU27 would want to know the prime minister’s plans. Guenther Oettinger, the German member of the European commission, said: “We need a government that can act. With a weak negotiating partner, there’s the danger than the negotiations will turn out badly for both sides … I expect more more uncertainty now.”

It had been hoped that officials from both sides would have informal talks next week over the logistics of the negotiations, before formal talks began on the week starting 19 June. With the prime minister needing to both seek to form a minority or coalition government, as well as potentially revise her goals for the talks in the light of the election result, the original timetable seems unrealistic to officials in Brussels. The EU had, until now, believed it understood that May wanted to take the UK out of both the single market and the customs union, but in the early hours of Friday morning the Brexit secretary, David Davis, had suggested the election result could prompt a rethink.

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All on red.

The Myth of “Cash on The Sidelines” (Roberts)

[..] despite 8-years of a bull market advance, one of the prevailing myths that seeming will not die is that of “cash on the sidelines.” To wit: “Underpinning gains in both stocks and bonds is $5 trillion of capital that is sitting on the sidelines and serving as a reservoir for buying on weakness. This excess cash acts as a backstop for financial assets, both bonds and equities, because any correction is quickly reversed by investors deploying their excess cash to buy the dip,” Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, the managing director of global market strategy at JPMorgan, wrote in a client note. This is the age old excuse why the current “bull market” rally is set to continue into the indefinite future. The ongoing belief is that at any moment investors are suddenly going to empty bank accounts and pour it into the markets.

However, the reality is if they haven’t done it by now after 3-consecutive rounds of Q.E. in the U.S., a 200% advance in the markets, and ongoing global Q.E., exactly what will that catalyst be? However, Clifford Asness previously wrote: “There are no sidelines. Those saying this seem to envision a seller of stocks moving her money to cash and awaiting a chance to return. But they always ignore that this seller sold to somebody, who presumably moved a precisely equal amount of cash off the sidelines.” Every transaction in the market requires both a buyer and a seller with the only differentiating factor being at what PRICE the transaction occurs. Since this must be the case for there to be equilibrium to the markets there can be no “sidelines.”

Each month, the Investment Company Institute releases information related to the mutual fund industry. Included in this data is the total amount of assets invested in mutual funds, ETFs and money market funds. As a rough measure of investor sentiment, this indicator looks at the total assets invested in equity mutual funds and ETFs, and compares it to the total assets invested in the safety of money market funds. The higher the ratio, the more comfortable investors have become holding stocks; the lower the ratio, the more uncertainty there is in the market. Currently, with the ratio at the highest level on record there is little fear of holding stocks. Negative free cash balances also suggest the same as investors have piled on the highest levels of leverage in market history.

Furthermore, with investors once again “fully invested” in equities, it is not surprising to see cash and bond allocations near historic lows. Cash on the sidelines? Not really. Everyone “all in the boat?” Absolutely. Historical outcomes from such situations? Not Great.

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The No Price Discovery Bubble.

US Household Net Worth Hits Record $95 Trillion… There Is a Catch (ZH)

In the Fed’s latest Flow of Funds report, today the Fed released the latest snapshot of the US “household” sector as of March 31, 2017. What it revealed is that with $110.0 trillion in assets and a modest $15.2 trillion in liabilities, the net worth of the average US household rose to a new all time high of $94.835 trillion, up $2.4 trillion as a result of an estimated $500 billion increase in real estate values, but mostly $1.78 trillion increase in various stock-market linked financial assets like corporate equities, mutual and pension funds, as the stock market continued to soar to all time highs . At the same time, household borrowing rose by only $36 billion from $15.1 trillion to $15.2 trillion, the bulk of which was $9.8 trillion in home mortgages.

And the historical change of the US household balance sheet.

And while it would be great news if wealth across America had indeed risen as much as the chart above shows, the reality is that there is a big catch: as shown previously, virtually all of the net worth, and associated increase thereof, has only benefited a handful of the wealthiest Americans. As a reminder, from the CBO’s latest Trends in Family Wealth analysis, here is a breakdown of the above chart by wealth group, which sadly shows how the “average” American wealth is anything but.

While the breakdown has not caught up with the latest data, it provides an indicative snapshot of who benefits. Here is how the CBO recently explained the wealth is distributed: In 2013, families in the top 10% of the wealth distribution held 76% of all family wealth, families in the 51st to the 90thpercentiles held 23%, and those in the bottom half of the distribution held 1%. Average wealth was about $4 million for families in the top 10% of the wealth distribution, $316,000 for families in the 51st to 90th percentiles, and $36,000 for families in the 26th to 50th percentiles. On average, families at or below the 25th percentile were $13,000 in debt In other words, roughly three-quarter of the $2.4 trillion increase in assets went to benefit just 10% of the population, who also account for roughly 76% of America’s financial net worth,

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Trump and Congress had better go out and do something.

Opioid Overdoses The Leading Killer Of American Adults Under 50 (ZH)

The opioid crisis that is ravaging urban and suburban communities across the US claimed an unprecedented 59,000 lives last year, according to preliminary data gathered by the New York Times. If accurate, that’s equivalent to a roughly 19% increase over the approximately 52,000 overdose deaths recorded in 2015, the NYT reported last year. Overdoses, made increasingly common by the introduction of fentanyl and other powerful synthetic opioids into the heroin supply, are now the leading cause of death for Americans under 50. And all evidence suggests the problem has continued to worsen in 2017. One coroner in Western Pennsylvania told a local newspaper that his office is literally running out of room to store the bodies, and that it was recently forced to buy a larger freezer. The initial data points to large increases in these types of deaths in states along the East Coast, particularly Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania and Maine.

In Ohio, which filed a lawsuit last week accusing five drug companies of abetting the opioid epidemic, the Times estimated that overdose deaths increased by more than 25% in 2016. In some Ohio counties, deaths from heroin have virtually disappeared. Instead, the primary culprit is fentanyl or one of its many analogues. In Montgomery County, home to Dayton, of the 100 drug overdose deaths recorded in January and February, only three people tested positive for heroin; 97 tested positive for fentanyl or another analogue. In some states in the western half of the US, data suggest deaths may have leveled off for the time being – or even begun to decline. Experts believe that the heroin supply west of the Mississippi River, traditionally dominated by a variant of the drug known as black tar which is smuggled over the border from Mexico, isn’t as easily adulterated with lethal analogues as the powder that’s common on the East Coast.

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Fake News.

Trump’s $110 Billion Arms Deal With Saudis Mostly Speculative (RT)

That $110 billion arms deal President Donald Trump signed with Saudi Arabia isn’t much of a deal at all, according to reports which found the majority of the agreement was based on memos, rather than contracts. On May 20, Trump negotiated an arms deal with Riyadh. The State Department said it was worth nearly $110 billion to support “the long-term security of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region in the face of malign Iranian influence and Iranian related threat.” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer hailed it the “largest single arms deal in US history.” The State Department then released a general list of the weapons that were included in the deal. However, many experts have said that most of the arms sales had not been cleared by the State Department, Congress or even the industries themselves.

On Thursday, Defense News released a more detailed list of the weapons included in the deal, according to documents they obtained from the White House. The ‘deal’ lists $84.8 billion under memos of intent (MOI) “to be offered at visit,” and $12.5 billion under letters of agreement (LOA), rather than contracts. NPR also obtained a list of commercial deals from a White House spokeswoman and found that it added up to $267 billion, but said most of the deals were listed as “memoranda of understanding” (MOU). “There is no $110 billion deal,” Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel wrote in blog post Monday. “Instead, there are a bunch of letters of interest or intent, but not contracts,” Riedel said. “Even then the numbers don’t add up. It’s fake news.”

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So what did they do to prove that?

Defense Minister Kammenos Says US Is Greece’s Best International Ally (K.)

Washington is Greece’s only true international ally, Defense Minister Panos Kammenos insisted on Thursday, and accused the country’s European partners of showing a lack of respect. “The Greek people are well aware that the United States has been the country’s only genuine ally,” Kammenos said. “The others are allies, but they are [allies] only in the form of creditors, without [any sense of] respect and this is because some of them will never forget that they lost World War II to this country,” Kammenos, who is also leader of junior coalition partner Independent Greeks, added during a speech marking the 70th anniversary of the US Office of Defense Cooperation in Athens yesterday. “For this reason, we welcome US support at this very difficult moment for our country,” said Kammenos, who also called for the strengthening of the Hellenic Navy with US help so “that it can operate from Crete to the Suez.”

Bolstering the navy and the country’s military aviation capabilities are necessary, he said, to intercept the flow of drugs, weapons and fuel through which terrorism is funded. He also said that Greece is positively inclined to extend the time frame of the defense agreement between the two countries, adding that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his government are working in that direction. He also referred to the latest developments in the Gulf states and stressed that he supports describing the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Aiming his fire at Turkey, he said that each country must choose “whose side they want to be on.” It is certain, he said, that “Greece will be on the side of the US.” For his part, US Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt praised relations between Athens and Washington, adding that as Greece’s economy stabilizes, it will become even more active in its role as a bridge between countries of the region.

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Nobody cares unless you hold their feet to the fire.

European Court Of Justice: Refugee Crisis Trumps Dublin Regulation (K.)

Any countries in the European Union receiving asylum requests from refugees have an obligation to process them irrespective of where the applicants first entered into the bloc, an advocate general at the European Court of Justice said on Thursday. Eleanor Sharpston said in a non-binding opinion that under the “exceptional circumstances” of the refugee crisis, member states should not be bound by the Dublin Regulation’s requirement that first-entry states handle all asylum applications, even after a refugee or migrant has moved on to a different country. “The words ‘irregular crossing’ in the Dublin III Regulation do not cover a situation where, as a result of the mass inflow of people into border member states, those countries allowed third-country nationals to enter and transit through their territory in order to reach other member states,” she wrote.

Sharpston referred to the case of a Syrian national who traveled to Slovenia via Croatia and that of an Afghan family that entered Europe in Greece and then made its way to Austria. Slovenia and Austria should be responsible for examining their asylum applications, she said. “If border member states… are deemed to be responsible for accepting and processing exceptionally high numbers of asylum seekers, there is a real risk that they will simply be unable to cope with the situation,” Sharpston wrote. “This in turn could place member states in a position where they are unable to comply with their obligations under EU and international law,” she added.

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The last thing Greece has left is rumored to be on the way out.

The Shield of Law and Humanism (K.)

It is difficult to believe that after Greece’s judiciary offered protection to eight members of the Turkish military, rejecting Ankara’s request for their extradition, the government would agree to the illegal, secret and inhuman expulsion of people who requested asylum here. Yet unease grows. On Wednesday the government spokesman stated, “The Greek government does not engage in pushbacks.” Let us hope that is so. The Hellenic League for Human Rights cites two instances where groups of Turkish citizens who requested asylum in Greece appear to have been handed over illegally to Turkish authorities. The Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Nils Muiznieks, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the head of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, have expressed concern at the possibility.

There is also the strange story of three Turkish military men who where arrested in Edirne last month, accused of being part of a group that intended to kidnap President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the failed coup last July. Turkish media said the men were arrested while on their way to Greece; some Greek lawyers, however, claim that the three had crossed into Greece when they disappeared, only to turn up in Turkish custody. The Citizens’ Protection Ministry in Greece scoffed that the claims were “fairy tales.” The case of the eight servicemen who arrived in Alexandroupoli in a helicopter the day after the coup attempt shows how difficult it is for any country to withstand Ankara’s pressure. It is understandable that no government would like to open a new front with a neighbor who can cause problems at will. But it is of paramount importance that Greece withstand such pressures.

In the past few years, among our country’s very few victories were the welcome provided to refugees and the institutional way in which it dealt with the “Eight.” Our great wound, though, is the lack of strategy, of method, of goals – of follow-up. On the refugee issue, government incompetence undermined the initial, heroic efforts of citizens. In the case of Turkish asylum seekers, the difficulties of handling the case of the Eight should not lead to cynicism, to injustice, to the violation of international conventions. Greece has a responsibility toward its own people and toward the Turkish people, to serve the principles of humanism, to abide by the law. Strenuous defense of these principles is part of the identity we aspire to but also our shield. And it is the best thing that we can offer our neighbors – the hope that there is something better than that which they are now enduring.

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May 252017
 


Alfred Buckham Edinburgh c1920

 

Toronto Homeowners Are Suddenly in a Rush to Sell (BBG)
$100 Increase In Mortgage Payments Would Sink 75% Of Canadian Homeowners (CBC)
Average Asking Price for Homes in UK Hits Record High of £317,000 (G.)
The Great London Property Squeeze (Minton)
UK Police ‘Stop Passing Information To US’ Over Leaks Of Key Evidence (G.)
The Bubble That Could Break the World (Rickards)
A Bailout Is Coming In China, One Way Or Another (BBG)
China “National Team” Rescues Stocks As Downgrade Crushes Commodities (ZH)
China Says Credit Downgrade ‘Inappropriate’, ‘Exaggerates Difficulties’ (CNBC)
China’s Downgrade Could Lead To A Mountain Of Debt (BBG)
Chinese Banks Dominate Ranking Of World’s Biggest Public Companies (Ind.)
EU Declared Monsanto Weedkiller Safe After Intervention From EPA Official (G.)
Factory Farming Belongs In A Museum (G.)
Eurogroup Confronts Own Deficit: Governance (Pol.)
Podcast: Steve Keen’s Manifesto (OD)
No Greek Debt Relief Need If Primary Surplus Over 3% of GDP For 20 Years (R.)
Deadliest Month For Syria Civilians In US-Led Strikes (AFP)
30 Migrants, Most of Them Toddlers, Drown in Mediterranean (R.)

 

 

Getting out is getting harder. A crucial phase in any bubble.

Toronto Homeowners Are Suddenly in a Rush to Sell (BBG)

Toronto’s hot housing market has entered a new phase: jittery. After a double whammy of government intervention and the near-collapse of Home Capital Group Inc., sellers are rushing to list their homes to avoid missing out on the recent price gains. The new dynamic has buyers rethinking purchases and sellers asking why they aren’t attracting the bidding wars their neighbors saw just a few weeks ago in Canada’s largest city. “We are seeing people who paid those crazy prices over the last few months walking away from their deposits,” said Carissa Turnbull, a Royal LePage broker in the Toronto suburb of Oakville, who didn’t get a single visitor to an open house on the weekend. “They don’t want to close anymore.”

Home Capital may be achieving what so many policy measures failed to do: cool down a housing market that soared as much as 33% in March from a year earlier. The run on deposits at the Toronto-based mortgage lender has sparked concerns about contagion, and comes on top of a new Ontario tax on foreign buyers and federal government moves last year that make it harder to get a mortgage. “Definitely a perception change occurred from Home Capital,” said Shubha Dasgupta, owner of Toronto-based mortgage brokerage Capital Lending Centre. “It’s had a certain impact, but how to quantify that impact is yet to be determined.”

Early data from the Toronto Real Estate Board confirms the shift in sentiment. Listings soared 47% in the first two weeks of the month from the same period a year earlier, while unit sales dropped 16%. Full-month data will be released in early June. The average selling price was C$890,284 ($658,000) through May 14, up 17% from a year earlier, yet down 3.3% from the full month of April. The annual price gain is down from 25% in April and 33% in March. Toronto has seen yearly price growth every month since May 2009. The last time the city saw gains of less than 10% was in December 2015.

Brokers say some owners are taking their homes off the market because they were seeking the same high offers that were spreading across the region as recently as six weeks ago. “In less than one week we went from having 40 or 50 people coming to an open house to now, when you are lucky to get five people,” said Case Feenstra, an agent at Royal LePage Real Estate Services Loretta Phinney in Mississauga, Ontario. “Everyone went into hibernation.” Toronto real estate lawyer Mark Weisleder said some clients want out of transactions. “I’ve had situations where buyers are trying to try to find another buyer to take over their deal,” he said. “They are nervous whether they bought right at the top and prices may come down.”

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Tyler: “..given that the average house in Canada costs roughly $200,000 and carries a monthly mortgage payment of $1,000, that means that most Canadians couldn’t incur a $100 hike in their monthly mortgage payments “

$100 Increase In Mortgage Payments Would Sink 75% Of Canadian Homeowners (CBC)

Almost three quarters of Canadian homeowners would have difficulty paying their mortgage every month if their payments increased by as little as 10%, a new survey from Manulife Bank suggests. The bank polled 2,098 homeowners — between the ages of 20 to 69 with household incomes of $50,000 or higher — online in the first two weeks of February. Because they aren’t randomized samples, polling experts say online polls don’t have a margin of error, but the survey nonetheless highlights just how tight the budgets are for many Canadians. 14% of respondents to Manulife’s survey said they wouldn’t be able to withstand any increase in their monthly payments, while 38% of those polled said they could withstand a payment hike of between 1 and 5% before having difficulty.

An additional 20% said they could stomach a hike of between six and 10% before feeling the pinch. Add it all up, and that means 72% of homeowners polled couldn’t withstand a hike of just 10% from their current record lows. That’s a dangerous place to be with interest rates set to rise at some point. “What these people don’t realize is that we’re at record low interest rates today,” said Rick Lunny, president and CEO of Manulife Bank. If mortgage rates increase by as little as one percentage point, some borrowers could be facing a hike of 10% on their monthly bills. A bigger mortgage rate hike would bring more pain.

In the survey, 22% said they could handle a payment increase of between 11 to 30%, while the remaining 7% didn’t know or were unsure. Overall, nearly one quarter (24%) of Canadian homeowners polled said they haven’t been able to come up with enough money to pay a bill in the past year. And most are not in good shape to weather any sort of financial storm — just over half of those polled had $5,000 or less set aside to deal with a financial emergency, while one fifth of them have nothing saved for a rainy day. “When you put it into that context, they’re not really prepared for what is inevitable. Sooner or later, interest rates are going to rise,” Lunny said.

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You might have thought Brexit would have led to caution.

Average Asking Price for Homes in UK Hits Record High of £317,000 (G.)

Asking prices for UK homes hit a new record high over the past month as families in search of bigger properties brushed aside uncertainty caused by Brexit and June’s general election. Prices sought by sellers rose 1.2% in the four weeks to 13 May, pushing the average asking price to a fresh peak of £317,281, according to the property website Rightmove. Families with children under the age of 11 were twice as likely as the average person to be moving home, as they looked for bigger properties in school catchment areas. Asking prices for typical family homes – with three or four bedrooms but excluding detached properties – rose by 5.4% year-on-year over the last month, to £270,953.

Miles Shipside, a Rightmove director and housing market analyst, said such families were more willing to ignore any uncertainty caused by Brexit and the general election. “As well as that shrinking house feeling, parents with young children also have the pressures of travelling times to amenities as well as the weekday school commute. These have to be balanced against under-pressure finances, even more so when the sector with the property type that suits them best is seeing the biggest price jump. “What seems to be happening is that moving pressures are understandably taking priority over electioneering and Brexit worries. For many in this group, it seems that moving is definitely on their manifesto.”

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Bubble effects: the servant class the rich need can’t afford to live close enough to them.

An edited extract from Big Capital by Anna Minton, which will be published 1 June by Penguin.

The Great London Property Squeeze (Minton)

There is a direct link between the wealth of those at the top and the capital’s housing crisis – which affects not just those at the bottom but the majority of Londoners who struggle to buy properties, or pay extortionate rents. The 2008 financial crash created a new politics of space, in which people on low incomes are forced out of their homes by rising rent and the wealthy are encouraged to use property for profit. These trends are not limited to London. The same currents of global capital are also transforming San Francisco, New York and Vancouver, European cities from Berlin to Barcelona and towns and cities in the UK from Bristol and Manchester to Margate and Hastings. This isn’t gentrification, it’s another phenomenon entirely. Global capital is being allowed to reconfigure the country.

The major concern for the government and employers in London is that people who do not earn enough to meet extortionate rents will leave, hollowing out the city and threatening its labour market and culture. “We see this with employers saying they’re having a really hard time retaining professional level jobs, let alone cleaners. London is losing teachers – they’re commuting from Luton and they’re giving up – it’s having a massive knock-on effect,” Dilner said. The vacancy rate for nurses at London’s hospitals is 14-18%, according to a report from the King’s Fund thinktank, and the number of entrants to teacher training has fallen 16% since 2010, according to Ofsted. But it’s not just carers, nurses, teachers, artists and university lecturers who can’t afford to live in London. Fifty Thousand Homes is a business-led campaign group – including the RBS, the CBI and scores of London businesses – formed to push the housing crisis up the political agenda.

Its research shows that on current trends, customer services and sales staff at almost every level are being pushed out of the capital. Three-quarters of business owners believe that housing costs are a significant risk to London’s economic growth and 70% of Londoners aged 25 to 39 report that the cost of their rent or mortgage makes it difficult to work in the city. Vicky Spratt is a 28-year-old journalist who worked as a producer of political programmes at the BBC but left because she felt the issues affecting her generation, such as the housing crisis, were not being covered properly. “A lot of issues were dismissed by the older generation – it didn’t affect them. They all owned their own homes,” she told me. Spratt joined the digital lifestyle magazine The Debrief, aimed at twentysomething women, and began an online petition against lettings agents’ fees that gathered more than 250,000 signatures.

Spratt describes herself as a reluctant campaigner, but her circumstances pushed her into it. She currently pays £1,430 per month, not including bills, for a one-bedroom flat which she can afford because she shares with her boyfriend, but she used to live in a room “which was literally the size of a bed”. “The walls were very thin because it had originally been part of one room, which the landlord split into two. I noticed after about six weeks my mental health deteriorated. If I wasn’t in a relationship I would be looking at going back to that,” she said. Spratt earns enough to get a mortgage but, because rents are so high, not enough to save for the 20–30% deposit required. “The common thread for people my age is that we don’t own our own homes and potentially we never will. The housing crisis is older than me and it shocks me that nobody did anything about this, and I want it on the news agenda,” she said. “This is structural neglect. The buy-to-let boom and the unregulated market have a lot to answer for.”

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For some reason nobody blames the New York Times for publishing the info.

UK Police ‘Stop Passing Information To US’ Over Leaks Of Key Evidence (G.)

Police hunting the terror network behind the Manchester Arena bombing have stopped passing information to the US on the investigation as a major transatlantic row erupted over leaks of key evidence in the US, according to a report. Downing Street was not behind any decision by Greater Manchester police to stop sharing information with US intelligence, a Number 10 source said, stressing that it was important police operations were allowed to take independent decisions. “This is an operational matter for police,” a Number 10 spokesman said. The police and the Home Office refused to comment on the BBC report. The Guardian understands there is not a blanket ban on intelligence sharing between the US and the UK.

Relations between the US and UK security services, normally extremely close, have been put under strain by the scale of the leaks from US officials to the American media. Theresa May is expected to confront Donald Trump over the stream of leaks of crucial intelligence when she meets the US president at a Nato summit in Brussels on Thursday. British officials were infuriated on Wednesday when the New York Times published forensic photographs of sophisticated bomb parts that UK authorities fear could complicate the expanding investigation into the lethal blast in which six further arrests have been made in the UK and two more in Libya. It was the latest of a series of leaks to US journalists that appeared to come from inside the US intelligence community, passing on data that had been shared between the two countries as part of a long-standing security cooperation.

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“..today’s CAPE ratio is 182% of the median ratio of the past 137 years..”

The Bubble That Could Break the World (Rickards)

Before diving into the best way to play the current bubble dynamics to your advantage, let’s look at the evidence for whether a bubble exists in the first place… My preferred metric is the Shiller Cyclically Adjusted PE Ratio or CAPE. This particular PE ratio was invented by Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller of Yale University. CAPE has several design features that set it apart from the PE ratios touted on Wall Street. The first is that it uses a rolling ten-year earnings period. This smooths out fluctuations based on temporary psychological, geopolitical, and commodity-linked factors that should not bear on fundamental valuation. The second feature is that it is backward-looking only. This eliminates the rosy scenario forward-looking earnings projections favored by Wall Street.

The third feature is that that relevant data is available back to 1870, which allows for robust historical comparisons. The chart below shows the CAPE from 1870 to 2017. Two conclusions emerge immediately. The CAPE today is at the same level as in 1929 just before the crash that started the Great Depression. The second is that the CAPE is higher today than it was just before the Panic of 2008. Neither data point is definitive proof of a bubble. CAPE was much higher in 2000 when the dot.com bubble burst. Neither data point means that the market will crash tomorrow. But today’s CAPE ratio is 182% of the median ratio of the past 137 years. Given the mean-reverting nature of stock prices, the ratio is sending up storm warnings even if we cannot be sure exactly where and when the hurricane will come ashore.

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It’s starting to look like China cannot afford the bailout. It’s not just SOEs and LGFVs, it’s the entire banking system too, and Chinese banks are behemoths.

A Bailout Is Coming In China, One Way Or Another (BBG)

On Tuesday night, Moody’s downgraded China’s sovereign credit rating for the first time in 28 years. In doing so, the rating agency is acknowledging the dragon in the room: China will have to pay the price for its epic debt binge, whatever policymakers do from here. [..] “The downgrade,” the agency explained, “reflects Moody’s expectation that China’s financial strength will erode somewhat over the coming years, with economy-wide debt continuing to rise as potential growth slows.” The downgrade was slight, and China remains well within investment grade. Still, Moody’s concerns should wake up those investors who have decided, based on the apparent calm in Chinese stock and currency markets, that the country isn’t experiencing financial strain. What’s happening today may not look like the meltdowns suffered by South Korea or Indonesia in the 1990s.

But that might be only because the state retains so much more control in China. If officials hadn’t stepped in last year to curtail escalating outflows of capital, the picture would likely have looked much grimmer. This “crisis with Chinese characteristics” features all of the seeds of a much more serious downturn: still-rising debt, unrecognized bad loans and a government paying lip service to the severity of the problem. Brandon Emmerich of Granite Peak Advisory noted in a recent study that more and more new debt is being used to pay off old debt, and “a subset of zombie issuers borrowed to avoid default.” As he explains, “even as Chinese corporate bond yields have rebounded (in 2017) and issuance stalled, the proportion of bond volume issued to pay off old debt reached an all-time high – not the behavior of healthy firms taking advantage of a low-yield environment.”

Efforts to curtail credit will thus inflict serious pain on corporate China. And given that the economy remains largely dependent on debt for growth, deleveraging will also make it harder for such firms to expand and service their debt. The one-two punch could push more companies toward default, punishing bank balance sheets. What’s more, if Beijing policymakers respond by ramping up credit again, all they’ll do is delay the inevitable. Larger dollops of debt simply allow zombie companies to stay alive longer and add to the debt burden on the economy. Sooner or later, the government is going to have to bail out local governments and state-owned enterprises, and recapitalize the banks. The only question is how expensive repairing the financial sector will be for taxpayers once Chinese leaders realize the game is up. Looking at past banking crises, the tab could prove huge. South Korea’s cleanup after the 1997 crisis cost more than 30% of gross domestic product. Applying that to China suggests the cost would reach some $3.5 trillion.

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How much of China’s economy stands on its own feet?

China “National Team” Rescues Stocks As Downgrade Crushes Commodities (ZH)

Iron ore led a slump in industrial commodities after Moody’s Investor Service downgraded China’s credit rating and warned that the country’s debt position will worsen as its economic expansion slows. However, one glance at the divergence between industrial metals’ collapse and the sudden buying panic in Chinese stocks confirms what Asher Edelman noted yesterday about the US markets, China’s so-called “National Team” was clearly intervening… As Bloomberg reports, Iron ore futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange fell as much as 5.6% to 452 yuan a metric ton, almost by the daily limit, before closing at 455.50 yuan, extending Tuesday’s 3% loss. Nickel led a broad slump among base metals, dropping as much as 2.4% to $9,125 a ton on the London Metal Exchange. Nickel stockpiles rose the most in more than a year.

In context, the overnight reversal in Chinese stocks is even more obvious… Moody’s move, downgrading China’s debt to A1 from Aa3, adds to concerns about the effects of a slowdown in the country’s economic growth, following on from downbeat manufacturing readings and weak commodity imports, Simona Gambarini, an analyst at Capital Economics, said. “We’re not particularly concerned about credit growth getting out of hand, but in regards to industrial metals, we have been negative on the outlook for some time on the basis that Chinese growth will slow.” Will The National Team be back tonight?

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They would, wouldn’t they? Isn’t it perhaps more accurate to say the downgrade is long overdue?

China Says Credit Downgrade ‘Inappropriate’, ‘Exaggerates Difficulties’ (CNBC)

China has rejected a move by Moody’s to lower its credit rating, saying the downgrade exaggerates the difficulties facing the economy and underestimates the government’s reform agenda. The country’s finance ministry claimed the credit rating agency used “inappropriate methodology” in its decision to lower long-term local and foreign currency issuer ratings from “Aa3” to “A1”. “Moody’s views that China’s non-financial debt will rise rapidly and the government would continue to maintain growth via stimulus measures are exaggerating difficulties facing the Chinese economy,” the finance ministry said in a statement Wednesday, translated by Reuters. It added that the moves are “underestimating the Chinese government’s ability to deepen supply-side structural reform and appropriately expand aggregate demand.”

Moody’s said that the downgrade reflects its expectation that China’s financial strength will “erode somewhat” over the coming years. The one-notch downgrade marks the first time Moody’s has lowered China’s credit rating in almost 30 years. It last downgraded the country in 1989. It comes as the government moves ahead with its ambitious reform agenda, which it hopes will move the country away from its traditional dependence on manufacturing and towards a services-led economy. Moody’s argues, however, that these aims will be hampered somewhat by the country’s “economy-wide debt”, which it says is set to rise as economic growth slows. Though the new rating will likely modestly increase the cost of borrowing for the Chinese government, it remains within the investment grade rating range.

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Not could, will. Actually the debt is already there.

China’s Downgrade Could Lead To A Mountain Of Debt (BBG)

China’s first credit rating downgrade by Moody’s since 1989 couldn’t have come at a worse time for the nation’s companies, which have never been more reliant on the overseas bond market for funding. While Chinese companies’ foreign-currency debt is only a fraction of the $9 trillion local bond market, China Inc. is on pace for record dollar bond sales this year after the authorities’ crackdown on financial leverage drove up borrowing costs at home. Overseas borrowing has also been part of the government’s strategy to encourage capital inflows in a bid to ease the depreciation pressure on the yuan. Airlines and shipping companies, which finance the costs of new aircraft and vessels with debt, are particularly vulnerable to higher borrowing costs, according to Corrine Png, CEO of Crucial Perspective in Singapore.

Khoon Goh, head of Asia research for Australia & New Zealand Bank, sees state-owned enterprises among firms feeling the biggest impact. Companies including State Grid and China Petroleum & Chemical raised $23 billion in bond sales in April, an increase of 141% from a year earlier. With additional $8.9 billion issuance so far in May, the sales this year totaled $69 billion, representing 71% of the record $98 billion in 2016. Moody’s lowered China’s rating to A1 from Aa3 on Wednesday, citing a worsening debt outlook. Moody’s also downgraded the ratings of 26 non-financial corporate and infrastructure government-related issuers by one level. China’s Finance Ministry blasted the move as “absolutely groundless,” saying the ratings company has underestimated the capability of the government to deepen reform and boost demand.

“The economy is dependent on policy stimulus and with that comes higher leverage,” Marie Diron, associate managing director, Moody’s Sovereign Risk Group, said. “Corporate debt is really the big part.” [..] For major Chinese airlines, every percentage-point increase in average borrowing costs can cut net profit by 5% to 9%, said Crucial Perspective’s Png. For shipping companies, cuts to net profit may reach 15% to 30%. Hainan Airlines, controlled by conglomerate HNA Group Co., plans to buy 19 Boeing aircraft, using the proceeds of a convertible bond sale of up to 15 billion yuan ($2.2 billion), according to a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange on May 19. HNA itself has been one of China’s most acquisitive companies, with more than $30 billion worth of announced and completed deals since 2016.

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After all of the above info on debt and bailouts, there’s this. What will save Chinese banks, does anyone think Beijing can afford to bail them out too?

Chinese Banks Dominate Ranking Of World’s Biggest Public Companies (Ind.)

Despite an explosive rise in the power and market capitalisation of technology firms over the last year, China’s banking giants have defended their dominance of Forbes magazine’s annual global ranking of the world’s biggest public companies. The list, released on Wednesday, places Industrial & Commercial Bank of China at the top for a fifth consecutive year, followed by compatriot China Construction Bank. Agricultural Bank of China and Bank of China – the other two that make up China’s “Big Four” of finance – slipped down the list but remained in the top 10, qualifying as public companies despite largely being owned by the state. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which is the largest public company in the US, took third spot, followed by JPMorgan Chase in fifth.

Although Forbes in a separate list earlier this week named Apple the most valuable brand of 2017, the tech giant only managed to secure ninth spot in the overall list of the biggest public companies. Companies that made it into this year’s list faced a slew of pressures stemming from an unsteady geopolitical climate and slowing economies. But Forbes said that in aggregate the 2,000 companies analysed managed to come out stronger than last year, with increased sales, profits, assets and market values. “This list illustrates that in spite of headwinds, the world’s dominant companies remain a steady force in an unpredictable and challenging environment,” said Halah Touryalai of Forbes. She said that despite slowing GDP figures, companies in China and the US make up more than 40% of the 2017 and dominate the top ten.

Notable gainers this year included General Electric, at 14th from 68th place in 2016, Amazon, up to 83rd from 237th, Charter Communications, at 107th from 784th and Alibaba, at 140th from 174th in 2016. The US dominated the ranking with 565 companies, followed by China and Hong Kong with 263 companies, Japan with 229. The UK had 91 companies in the top 2,000. But one of the UK’s highest ranked companies last year, banking giant HSBC, fell to 48th spot from 14th in 2016, with Forbes citing “economic malaise, low interest rate, paying fines, ongoing regulatory expenses and your usual dose of political uncertainty”. Elsewhere Forbes said that low oil prices had continued to put pressure on companies in the energy sector, reflected in PetroChina falling 85 spots to 102nd place in this years’ ranking. Exxon Mobil slipped four spots to 13th while Chevron tumbled to just 359th from 28th.

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Think the EU is not corrupt?

EU Declared Monsanto Weedkiller Safe After Intervention From EPA Official (G.)

The European Food Safety Authority dismissed a study linking a Monsanto weedkiller to cancer after counsel from a US Environmental Protection Agency officer allegedly linked to the company. Jess Rowlands, the former head of the EPA’s cancer assessment review committee (CARC), who figures in more than 20 lawsuits and had previously told Monsanto he would try to block a US government inquiry into the issue, according to court documents. The core ingredient of Monsanto’s RoundUp brand is a chemical called glyphosate, for which the European commission last week proposed a new 10-year license. Doubts about its regulatory passage have been stirred by unsealed documents in an ongoing US lawsuit against Monsanto by sufferers of non-hodgkins lymphoma, who claim they contracted the illness from exposure to RoundUp.

“If I can kill this, I should get a medal,” Rowlands allegedly told a Monsanto official, Dan Jenkins, in an email about a US government inquiry into glyphosate in April 2015. In a separate internal email of that time, Jenkins, a regulatory affairs manager, said that Rowlands was about to retire and “could be useful as we move forward with [the] ongoing glyphosate defense”. Documents seen by the Guardian show that Rowlands took part in a teleconference with Efsa as an observer in September 2015. Six weeks later, Efsa adopted an argument Rowlands had used to reject a key 2001 study which found a causal link between exposure to glyphosate and increased tumour incidence in mice. Rowlands’ intervention was revealed in a letter sent by the head of Efsa’s pesticides unit, Jose Tarazona, to Peter Clausing, an industry toxicologist turned green campaigner.

In the missive, Tarazona said that “the observer from the US-EPA [Rowlands] informed participants during the teleconference about potential flaws in the Kumar (2001) study related to viral infections.” Efsa’s subsequent report said that the Kumar study “was reconsidered during the second experts’ teleconference as not acceptable due to viral infections”. Greenpeace said that news of an Efsa-Rowlands connection made a public inquiry vital. “Any meddling by Monsanto in regulatory safety assessments would be wholly unacceptable,” said spokeswoman Franziska Achterberg. “We urgently need a thorough investigation into the Efsa assessment before glyphosate can be considered for re-approval in Europe.”

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But the profits are huge.

Factory Farming Belongs In A Museum (G.)

We can feed an extra 4 billion people a year if we reject the bloated and wasteful factory farming systems that are endangering our planet’s biodiversity and wildlife, said farming campaigner Philip Lymbery on Monday night, launching a global campaign to Stop the Machine. At present, 35% of the world’s cereal harvest and most of its soya meal is fed to industrially reared animals rather than directly to humans. This is a “wasteful and inefficient practice” because the grain-fed animals contribute much less back in the form of milk, eggs and meat than they consume, according to Lymbery, the chief executive of Compassion in World Farming (CIWF). “The food industry seems to have been hijacked by the animal feed industry,” he said.

In recent years the developing world in particular has seen significant agricultural expansion. According to independent organisation Land Matrix, 40m hectares have been acquired globally for agricultural purposes in the last decade and a half, with nearly half of those acquisitions taking place in Africa. The impact of that expansion is still unclear, but meanwhile the world’s wildlife has halved in the past 40 years. “Ten thousand years ago humans and our livestock accounted for about 0.1% of the world’s large vertebrates,” said Tony Juniper, the former head of Friends of the Earth. “Now we make up about 96%. This is a timely and necessary debate, and an issue that is being debated more and more.” An exhibition at the Natural History Museum by the campaigners aims to draw explicit links between industrial farming and its impact on wildife.

The Sumatran elephant, for example, has been disastrously affected by the growing palm oil industry, with more than half of its habitat destroyed to create plantations, and elephant numbers falling rapidly. The old argument that we need factory farming if we are to feed the world doesn’t hold true, says Lymbery, who argues that ending the wasteful practice of feeding grain to animals would feed an extra 4 billion people. Putting cattle onto pasture and keeping poultry and pigs outside where they can forage, and supplementing that with waste food is far more efficient and healthy, he says. According to his calculations, based on figures from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the total crop harvest for 2014 provided enough calories to feed more than 15 billion people (the world’s population is currently 7.5 billion), but waste and the animal feed industry means that much of that is going elsewhere.

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It confronts no such thing.

They actually argue that the Eurogroup can only function without transparency, checks and balances.

Eurogroup Confronts Own Deficit: Governance (Pol.)

For the past seven-plus years, as Greece’s debt crisis plays out in public in painful, blow-by-blow detail, the European body charged with its rescue has conducted its affairs away from prying eyes. Now there are growing calls to change the way the Eurogroup operates. Critics of the gathering of finance ministers from the 19 countries in the euro and officials from the ECB and European Commission accuse it of acting like a private club. They want greater transparency in keeping with the influence it wields over issues of vital importance to many of the eurozone’s 350 million citizens. “The euro crisis changed everything,” said Leo Hoffmann-Axthelm, an advocacy coordinator with the NGO Transparency International. “The Eurogroup should be institutionalized, with proper rules of procedure, document handling and a physical address with actual spokespeople. We can no longer be governed by an informal club.”

Although it can impose tough conditions for bailing out struggling member countries or rescuing banks, it publishes no official minutes, has no headquarters, and the people who function as its secretariat have other day jobs. Its public face is a eurozone finance minister, who works for no salary: The current president is Jeroen Dijsselbloem, a Dutch Socialist with conservative views on fiscal matters. Legally, it is governed by a single sentence in Article 137 of the EU treaty which says “arrangements for meetings between ministers of those Member States whose currency is the euro are laid down by the Protocol on the Euro Group.” Emily O’Reilly, the EU’s ombudsman, is among those calling for reform. While she credits Dijsselbloem for his efforts to peel back the curtain on Eurogroup proceedings, she said: “It is obviously difficult for Europeans to understand that the Eurogroup, whose decisions can have a significant impact on their lives, [isn’t] subject to the usual democratic checks and balances.”

Indeed, when a group of citizens from Cyprus who disagreed with the terms of the 2013 Cypriot bank bailout took their case to the European Court of Justice, the court’s response was that the Eurogroup is not “capable of producing legal effects with respect to third parties” because it is just a discussion forum. Last year, Dijsselbloem used the ECJ ruling to justify the Eurogroup avoiding standard EU transparency rules, though he did commit to individual transparency requests on an informal basis. But some of those who participate in Eurogroup meetings argue that its informality is precisely what makes it useful. The last thing they want is another bureaucratic EU institution, and if the Eurogroup were reformed out of existence, they say, a new version would pop up in its place, without the minimal accountability it currently offers in the form of meeting agendas and press conferences.

“It’s the informal nature of the Eurogroup that makes it possible to have an open exchange that you will not find in more formal bodies,” said Taneli Lahti, a former head of cabinet for European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis. “This is crucial for policymaking, negotiating, finding agreements and understanding each other.”

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Why government surpluses are the worst thing for an economy.

Podcast: Steve Keen’s Manifesto (OD)

The only times the US government ran a surplus, it was followed by the 1929 and 2008 crashes.

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First you make growth impossible be demanding surpluses till the cows come home, and then you demand growth.

No Greek Debt Relief Need If Primary Surplus Above 3% of GDP For 20 Years (R.)

Greece will not need any debt relief from euro zone governments if it keeps its primary surplus above 3% of GDP for 20 years, a confidential paper prepared by the euro zone bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), showed. The paper, obtained by Reuters, was prepared for euro zone finance ministers and IMF talks last Monday, which ended without an agreement due to diverging IMF and euro zone assumptions on future Greek growth and surpluses. A group of euro zone finance ministers led by Germany’s Wolfgang Schaeuble insists that the issue of whether Greece needs debt relief can only be decided when the latest bailout expires in mid-2018. The IMF says the need for a bailout is already clear now.

Under scenario A, the paper assumes no debt relief would be needed if Athens kept the primary surplus – the budget balance before debt servicing – at or above 3.5% of GDP until 2032 and above 3% until 2038. The ECB says such long periods of high surplus are not unprecedented: Finland, for example, had a primary surplus of 5.7% over 11 years in 1998-2008 and Denmark 5.3% over 26 years in 1983-2008. A second option under scenario A assumes Greece secures the maximum possible debt relief under a May 2016 agreement. Greece would then have to keep its primary surplus at 3.5% until 2022 but could then lower it to around 2% until mid-2030s and to 1.5% by 2048, giving an average of 2.2% in 2023-2060.

The paper says the maximum possible debt relief under consideration is an extension of average weighted loan maturities by 17.5 years from the current 32.5 years, with the last loans maturing in 2080. The ESM would also limit Greek loan repayments to 0.4% of Greek GDP until 2050 and cap the interest rate charged on the loans at 1% until 2050. Any interest payable in excess of that 1% would be deferred until 2050 and the deferred amount capitalized at the bailout fund’s cost of funding. The ESM would also buy back in 2019 the €13 billion that Greece owes the IMF as those loans are much more expensive than the euro zone’s. All this would keep Greece’s gross financing needs at 13% of GDP until 2060 and bring its debt-to-GDP ratio to 65.4% in 2060, from around 180% now.

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44 children.

Deadliest Month For Syria Civilians In US-Led Strikes (AFP)

US-led air strikes on Syria killed a total of 225 civilians over the past month, a monitor said on Tuesday, the highest 30-day toll since the campaign began in 2014. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the civilian dead between April 23 and May 23 included 44 children and 36 women. The US-led air campaign against the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria began on September 23, 2014. “The past month of operations is the highest civilian toll since the coalition began bombing Syria,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. “There has been a very big escalation.” The previous deadliest 30-day period was between February 23 and March 23 this year, when 220 civilians were killed, Abdel Rahman said. The past month’s deaths brought the overall civilian toll from the coalition campaign to 1,481, among them 319 children, the Britain-based monitoring group said. Coalition bombing raids between April 23 and May 23 also killed 122 IS jihadists and eight fighters loyal to the Syrian government, the Observatory said.

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Well over 100 children.

30 Migrants, Most of Them Toddlers, Drown in Mediterranean (R.)

More than 30 migrants, mostly toddlers, drowned on Wednesday when about 200 people without life jackets fell from a boat into the sea off the Libyan coast before they could be hauled into waiting rescue boats. The boat was near a rescue vessel when it suddenly listed and many migrants tumbled into the Mediterranean, Italian Coast Guard commander Cosimo Nicastro told Reuters. “At least 20 dead bodies were spotted in the water,” he said. The rescue group MOAS, which also had a ship nearby, said it had already recovered more than 30 bodies. “Most are toddlers,” the group’s co-founder Chris Catrambone said on Twitter. The coast guard called in more ships to help with the rescue, saying about 1,700 people were packed into about 15 vessels in the area.

The transfer from these overloaded boats is risky because desperate migrants in them sometimes surge to the side nearest a rescue vessel and destabilise their flimsy craft, which then list dangerously or capsize. More than 1,300 people have died this year on the world’s most dangerous crossing for migrants fleeing poverty and war across Africa and the Middle East. Last Friday, more than 150 disappeared at sea, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday, citing migrant testimony collected after they disembarked in Italy. In the past week, more than 7,000 migrants have been plucked from unsafe boats in international waters off the western coast of Libya, where people smugglers operate with impunity.

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