Nov 132023
 
 November 13, 2023  Posted by at 9:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  42 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Vineyards with a View of Auvers 1890

 

The End of the Era of Justice (Paul Craig Roberts)
The Horror, The Horror (Chris Hedges)
The War According to Hamas (Chris Hedges)
Israel Seeks To Appoint Tony Blair As Gaza Humanitarian Coordinator (ToI)
‘Immoral’ US Warfare ‘Never Sought to Minimize Civilian Deaths’ (Sp.)
Zelensky May Be Ousted – Ex Presidential Aide (RT)
Former NATO Chief Suggests Ukraine Joins Bloc Without Lost Territory (TASS)
Ukraine Should Eye ‘Land-For-Peace’ Deal – Ex-NATO Admiral (Sp.)
The EU Praises Ukraine’s ‘Achievements,’ But They Are Laughable (Marsden)
The DC Establishment Thinks RFK Could Win, And They’re Panicking (Hill)
Trump Lawyers to Mount Counterattack in NY Civil Case (ET)
Trump’s Veterans Day Message Was Quite Different From Biden’s (ET)
Moody’s US Credit Warning Will Accelerate Dedollarization (Sp.)
EU Moves Forward With Digital ID Despite Security Concerns (AmG)

 

 

 

 

Alex Jones on RFK

 

 

 

 

Judaism

 

 

Or Joe Biden.

 

 

Pepe

 

 

The 40th Original Marathon in Athens yesterday was filled with Palestine flags.

 

 

 

 

“..if he had the opportunity to market Mar-a-Lago, it would be sold to someone with “net worths in the multiple billions,” the likes of Elon Musk, kings, emperors, and heads of state..”

The End of the Era of Justice (Paul Craig Roberts)

In the year 2023 Justice Is Nowhere to be Found in the Western World. Examples are numerous. I have written about the injustices inflicted on Julian Assange, Trump supporters, and those forced to submit to Covid “vaccination.” This time I will illustrate the point with the “fraud case” against Trump for allegedly overstating the value of his real estate holdings and with the entire world standing aside, the genocide of Palestinians under the rubric of Israel’s “self-defense.” The “fraud case” against Trump consists of an unsupported allegation against Trump by George Soros’ disciple NY attorney general Letitia James who is on record as a Trump-hater. It is not a trial. There is no jury. The staged proceeding is only for the judge to determine how big a fine Trump has to pay for allegedly–no proof is supplied, only Letitia’s accusation–overstating the value of his holdings.

The judge, Engoron, in my opinion, is indulging his publicly-avowed hatred of Trump. It is the judge who should be indicted and placed on trial. He is guilty of ignoring an appellate court’s ruling that set a statute of limitations on the case. He granted a summary judgment against Trump of $250,000,000 before the process of determining Trump’s fine began. Engoron and his staff are hardcore Democrats. They have made political contributions to the Democrat Party that are against the rules of conduct for judges and their law clerks. Additionally, the biased judge has ruled against Trump’s ability to speak his mind and has prevented Trump’s attorneys from pointing out the ridiculous nature of the charges. The charge that Trump overstated the value of his real estate holdings is only the unsupported opinion of the biased Trump-hater Letitia James who claims that New York State was damaged by Trump’s alleged overstatement of the value of his holdings.

The judge, who has no qualification as a real estate appraiser, says Trump’s Mar-a-Lago is only worth $18 million. Forbes magazine gives it a minimum value of $350,000,000. Neither New York nor anyone suffered from the alleged and unsupported claim that Trump overstated the value of his holdings. As US Representative Elise Stefanik stated in her ethics compliant filed against judge Engoron in New York, “no evidence was presented on trial to suggest fraud, and in fact material evidence suggested the opposite.” “The defendant paid back the sophisticated Wall Street banks, on time, in full, with interest, as agreed. No insurance company paid a penny. And these banks and insurance companies, allegedly defrauded, continue to do business with the defendant.” “Indeed, two banks had done their own analyses of President Trump’s net worth, as revealed in testimonies, and for some development projects the bank had courted President Trump’s business, not the other way around.”

Trump Organization had valued Mar-a-Lago between $426 million and $612 million in these statements, while Ms. James and the judge valued it at $18 million to $27.6 million, prompting ridicule from prominent real estate brokers who regarded the Trump-hating judge’s claim as “ludicrous.” The judge, who declared Trump to be “a bad man” dismissed from the record exculpatory evidence for Trump in the form of a sworn affidavit from Lawrence Moens, the top Palm Beach luxury broker, who said if he had the opportunity to market Mar-a-Lago, it would be sold to someone with “net worths in the multiple billions,” the likes of Elon Musk, kings, emperors, and heads of state. Engoron called the statement an “unsubstantiated dream,” but admitted testimony from someone on the attorney general’s side who helped come up with the $250 million disgorgement figure, suggesting banks lost out on more than $100 million in interest because the financial statements were inflated. THIS IS ONLY THE JUDGE’S AND LETITIA’S CLAIM, NOT THE BANKS’ CLAIM. THERE ARE NO INJURED PARTIES.

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“Israel and the United States are sending a chilling message to the rest of the world. International and humanitarian law, including the Geneva Convention, are meaningless pieces of paper..”

The Horror, The Horror (Chris Hedges)

DOHA, Qatar: I am in the studio of Al Jazeera’s Arabic service watching a live feed from Gaza City. The Al Jazeera reporter in northern Gaza, because of the intense Israeli shelling, was forced to evacuate to southern Gaza. He left his camera behind. He trained it on Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex. It is night. Israeli tanks fire directly towards the hospital compound. Long horizontal red flashes. A deliberate attack on a hospital. A deliberate war crime. A deliberate massacre of the most helpless civilians, including the very sick and infants. Then the feed goes dead. We sit in front of the monitors. We are silent. We know what this means. No power. No water. No internet. No medical supplies. Every infant in an incubator will die. Every dialysis patient will die. Everyone in the intensive care unit will die. Everyone who needs oxygen will die.

Everyone who needs emergency surgery will die. And what will happen to the 50,000 people who, driven from their homes by the relentless bombing, have taken refuge on the hospital grounds? We know the answer to that as well. Many of them, too, will die. There are no words to express what we are witnessing. In the five weeks of horror this is one of the pinnacles of horror. The indifference of Europe is bad enough. The active complicity by the United States is unfathomable. Nothing justifies this. Nothing. And Joe Biden will go down in history as an accomplice to genocide. May the ghosts of the thousands of children he has participated in murdering haunt him for the rest of his life. Israel and the United States are sending a chilling message to the rest of the world. International and humanitarian law, including the Geneva Convention, are meaningless pieces of paper.

They did not apply in Iraq. They do not apply in Gaza. We will pulverize your neighborhoods and cities with bombs and missiles. We will wantonly murder your women, children, elderly and sick. We will set up blockades to engineer starvation and the spread of infectious diseases. You, the “lesser breeds” of the earth, do not matter. To us you are vermin to be extinguished. We have everything. If you try and take any of it away from us, we will kill you. And we will never be held accountable. We are not hated for our values. We are hated because we have no values. We are hated because rules only apply to others. Not to us. We are hated because we have arrogated to ourselves the right to carry out indiscriminate slaughter. We are hated because we are heartless and cruel. We are hated because we are hypocrites, talking about protecting civilians, the rule of law and humanitarianism while extinguishing the lives of hundreds of people in Gaza a day, including 160 children.

[..] Israel and Washington’s cynicism is breathtaking. There are no differences in intent. Washington only wants it done quickly. Humanitarian corridors? Pauses in the shelling? These are vehicles to facilitate the total depopulation of northern Gaza. The handful of aid trucks allowed through the border at Rafah with Egypt? A public relations gimmick. There is only one goal – kill, kill, kill. The faster the better. All Biden officials talk about is what comes next once Israel has finished its decimation of Gaza. They know Israel’s slaughter will not end until Gazans are living in the open without shelter in the southern part of the strip and dying because of a lack of food, water and medical care.

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“We are far more capable of bearing the costs, so there is no need to compare or be alarmed by the magnitude of the numbers..”

The War According to Hamas (Chris Hedges)

Basel al-Araj, a Palestinian resistance leader, shortly before Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza, laid down the fundamental rules for warfare against the Israel. The rules by al-Araj, not a member of Hamas, provide the Palestinian lens for the incursion by Israeli forces in Gaza. While Israel’s superior firepower — its air force, missiles, tanks, armored personnel carriers, drones, naval forces, mechanized units and artillery — make it possible to inflict huge numbers of Palestinian casualties, most of them civilians, while Israel can level whole neighborhoods and turn hospitals, schools, power stations, water treatment plants, bakeries, mosques and churches into piles of concrete, this does not translate into a defeat of the Palestinian resistance groups.

Al-Araj argued that the fight with Israel cannot be measured with body counts. The Israelis will be able to kill far greater numbers of Palestinians. Resistant movements, he wrote, always suffer disproportionate losses. In the independence war in Algeria, between 1954 and 1962, upwards of 1.5 million Algerians — or around 10 percent of the population — were killed by the French. In the airport in Algiers, the country’s capital, is a huge sign that reads: “Welcome to Algeria. Land of a million Martyrs.” “We are far more capable of bearing the costs, so there is no need to compare or be alarmed by the magnitude of the numbers,” he wrote. Al-Araj, who led hunger strikes while in Palestine Authority prisons, was long a target for Israel. Israel’s counter-terrorism unit, Yamam, pursued him for months before raiding his home on March 6, 2017 in el-Bireh. After a two-hour gun battle, Israeli forces, which fired rockets into the building, burst inside and executed him at close range. He was 31.

The fight with Israel, al-Araj reminded Palestinians, must “follow the logic of guerrilla warfare or hybrid warfare, which Arabs and Muslims have become masters of through our experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza.” Never defend “fixed points and borders.” Draw the enemy into an ambush, accomplished by light resistance and tactical withdrawals. Strike the flanks and the rear. The calculus of asymmetric warfare is very different from conventional war. And what Israel defines as success, including the seizing of territory, numerous deaths and the destruction of infrastructure and buildings, matters little to the resistance fighter.The goal of Palestinian fighters is to remain elusive, to carry out lightning strikes and recede back into the rubble or the vast tunnel network under Gaza.

[..] Israel has banned the foreign press from reporting from Gaza. It has killed over 40 Palestinian journalists and media workers. It also has instituted prolonged blockages of the internet and cell phone service. No doubt, this heavy handed censorship is done to limit the horrific images of civilian casualties. But I suspect it is also intended to block images of a ground offensive that is tougher, more protracted and more costly than Israel anticipated. Israel invests tremendous resources in its propaganda campaign, getting networks such as CNN to repeat back its talking points. Jake Tapper should be an honorary Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman. Al-Araj warned about the attempt by Israel to demoralize fighters by posting photos and videos of Israelis occupying landmarks and public spaces.

A video being shared on social media shows the raising of the Israeli flag on a beach in Gaza. A group of soldiers surround the flag and sing the Israeli national anthem. In October last year, Jewish settlers occupied the Ibrahimi mosque in the West Bank town of Hebron, where a Jewish settler, Barach Goldstein, gunned down 29 Palestinians in 1994 as they prayed. The settlers held a music festival and dance party in the mosque. They hung an Israeli flag from the roof. Videos have circulated that denigrate and ridicule Palestinians.

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The Undertaker.

Israel Seeks To Appoint Tony Blair As Gaza Humanitarian Coordinator (ToI)

Israel is seeking to install former British prime minister Tony Blair as a humanitarian coordinator for the Gaza Strip, according to a report Sunday, out of a desire to improve the humanitarian situation inside the Palestinian enclave and reduce international pressure as it continues to wage its war on Hamas. The Ynet news outlet, citing unnamed senior officials, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes to leverage Blair’s experience as former envoy to the region for the Middle East Quartet to temper international concerns over the civilian cost of Israel’s campaign in Gaza. The report indicated Blair has been contacted on the matter and talks have been ongoing in recent weeks. The former British leader’s office told Ynet in response that “he has not been given or offered a position,” but did not directly deny any contact.

Ynet said the exact definition, scope and authority of the proposed role had not yet been clearly defined, adding that there would be an emphasis on “providing medical treatment and medicines, and on the possibility of evacuating the wounded and sick from the Strip.” According to the report, efforts at easing the humanitarian situation in Gaza are being coordinated by Israel’s health and defense ministries, with the former assisting in a number of projects in recent weeks, including efforts by international actors to set up field hospitals in Egypt and the arrival of a hospital ship from France. The Defense Ministry and the IDF also understand that in order to obtain time for the war against Hamas, the military’s actions in Gaza need to be seen as legitimate, and that legitimacy is conditional on the humanitarian situation.

[..] Blair’s office said in a statement to Ynet that “Mr. Blair maintains an office in Israel and he continues to work on matters tied to Israel and the Palestinians. Understandably, he has conversations with people in the region and other places in order to see what can be done, but he was not given or offered the role.” Blair served as British premier from 1997 to 2007 and as envoy for the Quartet from 2007 to 2015. The Middle East Quartet consists of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia, and was established to help mediate Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. It has been largely inactive in recent years, as Western relations with Russia have soured. On October 11, Blair, who is a longtime member of Labour Friends of Israel, released a statement condemning Hamas’s brutal onslaught in southern Israel, and calling for change.

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“..Washington is “turning the entire planet into an armed madhouse” using taxpayers’ dollars.”

‘Immoral’ US Warfare ‘Never Sought to Minimize Civilian Deaths’ (Sp.)

Throughout its history, the United States has never allowed concerns about the civilian death toll to impact its warfare strategy, and current developments in Gaza are yet another glaring example of this, scholar, educator and journalist K.J. Noh told Sputnik. “The fundamental immorality of US warfare… is that it has never sought to minimize the deaths of civilians. We know that US wars recently have been somewhere in the range of 90 percent civilian deaths,” the scholar underscored. Recalling US doctrine implemented in countries like Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere, it has been “simply to kill anything that moves. You create a free fire zone, you kill anything that moves, and the murder is indiscriminate,” the pundit said. Afterwards, they may use mainstream media to “paste it over” with “PR means and releases.”

Whether it is fuelling weapons to fuel the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, or sending military assistance to Israel in its fight against Hamas, “fundamentally, the business of the US is war,” K.J. Noh emphasized. “You know, the US is number one supplier of arms to the world. It’s 40 percent of all arms sales… and it sells them to quisling governments and to governments that are involved in the Pacific pivot – this escalation to war against China,” underscored the scholar, adding that Washington is “turning the entire planet into an armed madhouse” using taxpayers’ dollars.

[..] After the Biden administration asked for an additional $14 billion for Israel from Congress, Washington committed to delivering to Tel Aviv Iron Dome air defense missiles, small diameter bombs and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits, besides the earlier agreed weapons deals, as per US media reports. At the same time, unlike the case with Ukraine, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby acknowledged that Washington’s military supplies to Israel were shrouded in secrecy. During an October 23 press briefing, Kirby said that “We’re being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what they’re getting — for their own operational security purposes, of course.” “Transparency in war is largely an illusion or at best, selective. You know, war is always deception. Both the published lists and the unpublished lists. The published lists are designed to intimidate, or message, or signal, or posture. And the unpublished lists are… often hiding dirty criminal tactics.”

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Because he refuses to talk.

Zelensky May Be Ousted – Ex Presidential Aide (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s unwillingness to consider peace talks with Russia might lead him to being ousted to make such negotiations possible, Oleg Soskin, an adviser to two former Ukrainian presidents, said on Saturday. Zelensky, who continues to maintain that victory should be achieved on the battlefield, simply “cannot” enter peace talks with Moscow, Soskin said on his YouTube channel. Such actions, he believes, are pushing Russia and at least some of Ukraine’s Western backers to think that they need someone else to represent Kiev who can “agree on even a temporary truce.” In order to achieve that, the current Ukrainian leadership needs to be “neutralized,” the former presidential aide added.

The idea of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine has become a “prevalent narrative” not only in Russia but in the West as well, Soskin suggested. He noted that French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed such ideas not so long ago. Macron told the BBC in an interview this week that although it was France’s “duty” to support Kiev the time might have come for some “fair and good negotiations” with Russia. Meloni recently told a pair of Russian pranksters, Vovan and Lexus, that “there is a lot of fatigue” in the EU over the conflict. “We are near the moment in which everybody understands that we need a way out,” she added at that time.

Soskin, a renowned economist who was the deputy head of the Institute of the World Economics and International Relations of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in the 1990s, said that the EU would also be potentially unable to satisfy Kiev’s needs for military equipment and ammunition, particularly if US military aid decreases. The former official served as a senior adviser to Ukraine’s first president, Leonid Kravchuk, in the early 1990s and was later an economic adviser to the nation’s second leader, Leonid Kuchma, between 1998 and 2000. Kiev has repeatedly ruled out any talks with Moscow and demands a complete withdrawal of Russian troops from all territories Ukraine claims as its own. Zelensky reiterated this demand in an interview with Reuters this week, adding that Kiev would continue the fight even without US aid if need be.

He also denied media reports about Ukraine’s Western backers allegedly encouraging it to engage in peace negotiations with Moscow. “This is not going to happen,” he said last week. Russia has repeatedly signaled its readiness to engage in negotiations with Kiev but has insisted that such talks should take Moscow’s security interests and the “reality on the ground” into account. In the autumn of 2022, four former Ukrainian territories – including the two Donbass republics – officially joined Russia, following a series of referendums. Kiev declared the votes a “sham” and has sought to reclaim control over the four territories, as well as Crimea, which joined Russia in 2014 following another referendum.

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Two ex-NATO guys both apparently want more war with Russia.

“We need a new European security architecture in which Ukraine is in the heart of NATO.”

Former NATO Chief Suggests Ukraine Joins Bloc Without Lost Territory (TASS)

Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said NATO should invite Ukraine to join the alliance without the territories it no longer controls, according to an interview published by the Guardian. “The time has come to take the next step and extend an invitation for Ukraine to join NATO,” he told the Guardian. “We need a new European security architecture in which Ukraine is in the heart of NATO.” “The absolute credibility of Article 5 guarantees would deter Russia from mounting attacks inside the Ukrainian territory inside NATO and so free up Ukrainian forces to go to the frontline,” said Rasmussen, who headed the bloc from 2009-2014.

He said the alliance would have to send a “clear message to Russia that any violation of NATO territory would be met by a response.” He added that in some ways the proposal is similar to imposing a no-fly zone over Ukrainian territory. Rasmussen insisted that the move would not freeze the conflict or force Ukraine to cede territory to Russia. The Guardian said Rasmussen worked alongside Andrey Yermak, the chief of staff of the Ukrainian presidency, ahead of the last NATO summit in Vilnius this year that ended with no invitation for Ukraine to join.

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“..As for obtaining security guarantees, that would mean NATO membership for Ukraine, James Stavridis argued..”

Ukraine Should Eye ‘Land-For-Peace’ Deal – Ex-NATO Admiral (Sp.)

As Kiev seeks to revitalize its failed counteroffensive against the backdrop of increasing “Ukraine fatigue” in the West, Moscow has repeatedly urged the regime to understand that despite promising military successes to its NATO donors, achieving them is growing ever more elusive. Ukraine should hope for a “land-for-peace conclusion to combat,” retired US Admiral and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis has argued. After the Kiev regime’s much-heralded counteroffensive failed, even the delivery of F-16 fighter jets – promised sometime next year – is not likely to pull off a “real game change,” Stavridis wrote for Bloomberg. He urged Ukraine to resign itself to the fact that it will not manage to seize the new Russian territories, such as the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics or the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.

Accordingly, the former commander drew parallels with the outcome of the Korean War, which ended with an armistice in 1953, and suggested that Ukraine should aim for the “South Korean scenario” as its best bet. “This will probably bog down into a frozen conflict; the sooner large combat operations stop, the sooner the Ukrainians will begin to reconstruct,” Stavridis wrote, and laid out his vision of what steps Kiev ought to aim for: “So three lessons of Korea pertain for Ukraine: find the funds for reconstruction as rapidly as possible; construct real and enduring security guarantees; and be willing to negotiate a land-for-peace conclusion to combat.” “That is a realistic scenario,” claimed Stavridis. According to Stavridis, Western firms are already eying staking out their claims to “postwar construction activities in Ukraine,” in such aspects as “mass communications, electric power facilities, water treatment and new residential development.”

And as to where the money for all of that would come from, the ex-general had a ready answer: “the potential availability of hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian funds that are under sanction in the West.” The overall value of frozen Russian sovereign assets in Europe since the Ukraine conflict escalated is estimated at 211 billion euros ($223 billion). While Brussels has repeatedly warned it intends to tap into these assets for the benefit of Ukraine, the bloc has so far failed to invent a legal mechanism for doing so. Pundits interviewed by Sputnik have explained that this is nothing but “wishful thinking,” adding that “it would be a sheer violation of property rights.” Nevertheless, the ex-commander waxed lyrical in his article, enthusing that a “Korean-style miracle of reconstruction” could be “on the horizon for Ukraine.”

As for obtaining security guarantees, that would mean NATO membership for Ukraine, James Stavridis argued, yet again citing the example of South Korea, which holds Major Non-NATO Ally status with the US.

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“..You’d think that the EU might want to at least wait for an improvement in the public sentiment among Ukrainians..”

The EU Praises Ukraine’s ‘Achievements,’ But They Are Laughable (Marsden)

The European Commission just released a report card for countries seeking to join the European Union. And while Türkiye has been waiting on the sidelines for years, it now finds itself criticized and moving further away from accession for its unwillingness to drink on command the Kool-Aid that Brussels doles out. Meanwhile, Ukraine is getting kudos for achieving the political equivalent of basic potty training – and even those achievements are debatable. “Ukraine has completed … well over 90% of the necessary steps that we set out last year in our report,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. What kind of dodgy bell curve grading is that? There’s a term for what the EU is doing here. It’s called stringing someone along – in this case, with a participation trophy for effort. Ukraine and other countries, like Moldova and Georgia, want into the bloc.

But the EU can barely afford to run what it has now, particularly with Germany and France – its economic engines – struggling from the EU’s own anti-Russian sanctions blowback on industry. Forget committing outright to taking on any more clown acts. So the European Commission is now issuing these condescending report cards, saying that Ukraine has met four of the seven pre-conditions, not for joining the bloc, but for just opening negotiations. Kiev still needs to de-corrupt, presumably to be more aligned with the rest of the EU’s corruption level, it’s being told – which let’s face it, is a pretty low bar. It also needs to de-oligarchize (because Europe only has one Queen, and that’s Ursula herself). It also needs to learn to play nice with minorities and respect their basic rights – like a preschooler needs to be told to do.

So what did Kiev do right, according to Brussels? It has “established a transparent pre-selection system for the Constitutional Court judges and reformed the judicial governance bodies,” the report says. But just last month, Reuters reported that Kiev was on a hiring spree of 2,000 judges amid a “huge shortfall” and EU pressure. Doesn’t sound like the situation is too stable, or resolved. Sounds instead like it’s cramming for an exam or rushing to be able to just tick a box. Granted, there has been a corruption crackdown documented by the mainstream media over the past several months, including the dismissal of the Supreme Court Chief Justice, but when corruption is so systemic and public trust in the judiciary is estimated to be in the single to low double digits, where’s the concrete proof that the new players are a substantial improvement over the old ones? You’d think that the EU might want to at least wait for an improvement in the public sentiment among Ukrainians before giving its stamp of approval.

“Ukraine has taken positive steps in a wider and systemic effort to address the influence of oligarchs,” the report concludes. But is that really the result of a deliberate cleanup – or just due to circumstances? The Wilson Center has detailed how “war was making an impact on the Ukrainian oligarchy by physically destroying the oligarch-owned industrial complexes.” Some oligarchs have fled Ukraine for places like the South of France, as Le Monde has reported. Does it count for Brussels as “de-oligarchization” efforts if Ukrainian oligarchs have fled to Europe with their considerable assets? Seems like perhaps Kiev is pulling the escalator up by the handrail on this particular “achievement” attributed to it.

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I think RFK has had his peak.

The DC Establishment Thinks RFK Could Win, And They’re Panicking (Hill)

Making the rounds of opinion-influencer social media and politically oriented podcasts over the last week to gauge the current state of the presidential race, one could be excused for believing that no great shake-up had occurred. In Trump World, all the discussion was about the former president’s highly politicized civil fraud trial in New York and how it would backfire by making Trump a more formidable candidate. Meanwhile, left-leaning outlets were hyping GOP dysfunction in the House and the Republican losses in the off-year elections as an early indicator that Biden will fare better than expected next November. But one development that sent shock waves through the entire class of paid political consultants inside the Beltway went almost unmentioned publicly.

A topic of constant discussion and not a little bit of anxiety on both sides was the extraordinarily strong showing of third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in two recent national polls. Both of the polls showed Kennedy leading both President Biden and former President Trump among the key electoral demographics of independent voters and voters under 45 years of age. Just how disturbing is this development for the uni-party establishment in Washington? Disturbing enough that the New York Times ran a brief story essentially dismissing its own poll results under the interpretive headline, “What’s Behind Kennedy’s Poll Numbers? Voters Dread a Trump-Biden Rematch.” The piece reads almost as a parody of a damage-control exercise.

It included the remarkable disclaimer that the poll of six key presidential battleground states, which found RFK the choice of nearly a quarter of those polled in a three-way matchup with Biden and Trump, “almost surely inflates the support of Mr. Kennedy.” But the argument does not bear scrutiny that Kennedy’s remarkably strong showing is merely a function of dissatisfaction with the prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch. His fundraising haul for the third quarter, $8.7 million, demonstrates robust support for his candidacy, not just dissatisfaction with other choices. Significantly, Kennedy raised millions of dollars from people who didn’t donate at all in the last two presidential elections, a sign that he’s activating new voters. Remarkably, he maintains a 19 percent favorability lead with voters over both Biden and Trump — this despite a concerted effort by almost every mainstream media outlet to dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist and crank.

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“..seeking to block testimony from four expert witnesses set to take the stand during the defense phase. Their testimony would address the accuracy of valuations contained in statements of financial condition submitted to Deutsche Bank and other firms for the purpose of securing favorable terms for loans and insurance. In the view of the attorney general’s office, such testimony is beside the point given that the judge has already ruled that Trump is guilty of fraud.“

Trump Lawyers to Mount Counterattack in NY Civil Case (ET)

The media and public should brace themselves for the most heated phase of the civil fraud trial of former President Donald Trump when courtroom proceedings resume on Nov. 13—if past interactions among the defense, the judge, and government lawyers are any indication. The defense will begin to make its case on behalf of the 45th president and 2024 candidate, as well as his two sons and daughter, who are no longer defendants in the case yet have faced relentless and acrimonious cross-examination on the witness stand over the past two weeks. President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is expected to be the first to testify for the defense. Trump lawyer Christopher Kise and Judge Arthur Engoron feuded throughout the cross-examination of President Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Ivanka Trump.

The defense attorney has objected constantly, saying that questions posed were irrelevant to the legal issues at hand or that no one could reasonably expect the people on the stand to recall the details of documents, records, meetings, and conversations from as far back as 2012. As if to add further contentiousness to the proceedings, New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office on Nov. 8 sent a letter to Judge Engoron seeking to block testimony from four expert witnesses set to take the stand during the defense phase. Their testimony would address the accuracy of valuations contained in statements of financial condition submitted to Deutsche Bank and other firms for the purpose of securing favorable terms for loans and insurance. In the view of the attorney general’s office, such testimony is beside the point given that the judge has already ruled that Trump is guilty of fraud.

Nor has the pro-Trump side been inactive during the run-up to the next phase of the trial. On Nov. 10, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) sent a lengthy letter to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, spelling out a litany of complaints about how Judge Engoron has conducted himself and his alleged bias against the respondents in the lawsuit “This judge’s bizarre behavior has no place in our judicial system, where Judge Engoron is not honoring the defendant’s rights to due process and a fair trial. These serious concerns are exacerbated by the fact that the defendant is the leading candidate for President of the United States, and it appears the judicial system is being politicized to affect the outcome of the campaign,” Ms. Stefanik wrote. She then cited the judge’s reference to the former president as “just a bad guy” deserving of prosecution by the attorney general, and his blunt statement to President Trump that “we are not here to listen to what you have to say.”

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“..we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”

Trump’s Veterans Day Message Was Quite Different From Biden’s (ET)

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump released differing messages on Nov. 11, Veterans Day. “Today, we honor the story of our veterans—the story of our nation at its best,” President Biden wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “On Veterans Day, let’s recommit to fulfilling our one sacred obligation as a nation: to prepare those we send into harm’s way and care for them and their families when they come home.” In a Veterans Day speech at the Memorial Amphitheater in Arlington National Cemetery, he highlighted “those who have always, always kept the light of liberty shining bright across the world,” while making reference to his late son, Beau, who was deployed to Iraq about 15 years ago.

“We come together today to once again honor the generations of Americans who stood on the front lines of freedom. … to once again bear witness to the great deeds of a noble few who risked everything, everything, to give us a better future,” President Biden said. During the event, the president was joined by First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, and several members of his Cabinet. On Nov. 11, President Biden announced that military veterans who were exposed to toxins could be able to enroll in no-cost health care starting next year.

President Trump marked Veterans Day with a message on his Truth Social social media platform that read, “To our heroic veterans, I am grateful for your service to our country and honored to wish you a Happy Veterans Day.” He added that there’s “no greater act of selfless service than defending America’s God-given freedoms and liberty.” Hours later, he wrote a message on the platform noting, “[In] honor of our great veterans on Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” They will “do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream,” wrote President Trump, who was later seen at a UFC fight in New York on Nov. 11. “The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave, than the threat from within,” he wrote. “Despite the hatred and anger of the radical left lunatics who want to destroy our country, we will make America great again!”

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The US is set to start paying over $1 trillion in interest on its debt this year.

Moody’s US Credit Warning Will Accelerate Dedollarization (Sp.)

The New York City-headquartered credit rating giant lowered its outlook of America’s creditworthiness from “stable” to “negative” on Friday, citing the country’s worsening fiscal position. Sputnik reached out to veteran economist and macroeconomics specialist Dr. Sergio Rossi for his take on the implications of Moody’s move. The White House slammed Moody’s over its threat to downgrade the US’s credit rating, with press spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre suggesting that the worsening outlook was “yet another consequence of congressional Republican extremism and dysfunction.” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo also challenged the decision, emphasizing that “while the statement by Moody’s maintains the United States’ AAA rating, we disagree with the shift to a negative outlook.

The American economy remains strong, and Treasury securities are the world’s preeminent safe and liquid asset,” Adeyemo assured in a statement. “The Biden administration has demonstrated its commitment to fiscal sustainability, including through the more than $1 trillion in deficit reduction included in the June debt limit deal as well as President Biden’s budget proposals that would reduce the deficit by nearly $2.5 trillion over the next decade,” the deputy Treasury chief added. Moody’s decision came just hours after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s meetings with Chinese counterpart He Lifeng in San Francisco on Friday ahead of the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit this coming week. Yellen, who assured recently that Washington could “certainly afford” to keep pumping tens of billions in taxpayer money to conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, has yet to comment on Moody’s decision.

Moody’s is the last of the big three international credit agencies signaling the possible downgrade of the US’s rating, with Standard and Poor’s already doing so in 2011, citing political polarization after what was then the latest debt ceiling showdown. Fitch downgraded the US to an AA+ rating in August, citing an “expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years,” and the last-minute debt deal reached in June, when the country again teetered on the brink of defaulting on its close to $33 trillion national debt. Yellen “strongly disagreed” with that decision, suggesting it was based on “outdated data.” Sovereign credit ratings are designed to evaluate risks associated with lending money to a country, but also offer signals to financiers on the potential risks involved with investing into a country. The worse the rating, the worse the risk is perceived to be. Moody’s lowest possible rating is a C, which signals that the borrower is in default of some or all of its financial obligations.

The outlook downgrade comes as Washington heads for another shutdown deadline on November 17, with Republicans in the House of Representatives tabling a bill to continue funding the government without new appropriations for Ukraine or Israel. The White House has blasted the stopgap funding bill as an “extreme” and “unserious” proposal, with Jean-Pierre calling it “a recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns – full stop.” Just how “unserious” the House proposal is will be seen this week as lawmakers negotiate to get the stopgap funding through, with recently picked House Speaker Mike Johnson seemingly unlikely to back down on Ukraine after his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was ousted from the job in October over allegations of proposing “secret side deals” for additional Ukraine cash.

The Moody’s outlook shift, combined with the seemingly never-ending shutdown crisis, inflation, the fallout of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the growing signs of a looming US recession, are all bad news for Washington and the West in general, says Dr. Sergio Rossi, a professor of macroeconomics and monetary policy at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. “The situation for the US public finance is rather worrying indeed, since the US federal government has been accumulating fiscal deficits for a long period of time, and currently the economic outlook is very problematic for a number of stakeholders in this country and beyond it,” Dr. Rossi told Sputnik.

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“..on a voluntary basis, at first..”

“Your access to your financial assets can be denied or stopped if you don’t do what you’re told.”

EU Moves Forward With Digital ID Despite Security Concerns (AmG)

The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union reached a final agreement this week on the establishment of “European Digital Identity Wallets,” the first central and fully digital identification system for all Europeans. “Under the new law, the EU will offer its citizens so-called ‘digital wallets’—on a voluntary basis, at first—which will contain digital versions of their ID cards, driving licenses, diplomas, medical records, and bank account information,” the European Conservative reported. These documents will be recognized as means to access online services throughout Europe, and citizens will be able to prove their identity or share electronic documents from their wallets “with a click of a button,” the legislators hope. “This marks an important step towards the Digital Decade 2030 targets on the digitalization of public services,” the EU Commission said in a statement Wednesday.

“All EU citizens will be offered the possibility to have an EU Digital Identity Wallet to access public and private online services in full security and protection of personal data all over Europe.” The agreement reached by the co-legislators is now subject to formal approval by the European Parliament and the Council. Once formally adopted, the European Digital Identity framework will enter into force on the 20th day following its publication in the Official Journal. The agreement came just a few weeks after Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, announced that the European Union was moving forward with the development of its new central bank digital currency (CBDC)—the digital Euro. Conservative EU lawmakers and cybersecurity experts have opposed these developments, warning that large-scale abuse is inevitable in an all-encompassing digital identity system.

Dutch MEP Rob Roos sounded the alarm on X, Wednesday: “BREAKING: Very bad news. The European Parliament and Member States just reached an agreement on introducing the Digital Identity,” he said. Roos noted that following the agreement, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton said: “‘Now that we have a Digital Identity Wallet, we have to put something in it…’, suggesting a connection between CBDC and eID.” Ahead of the the European Parliament’s decision, over 500 privacy and cybersecurity experts from 39 countries signed a joint letter warning that the legislation “fails to properly respect the right to privacy of citizens and secure online communications.” Roos lamented that most EU lawmakers “ignored all the privacy experts and security specialists. They’re pushing it all through.” The Dutch conservative said that he is not optimistic, but “it is not too late yet.” “Parliament still has to vote about this. Let your MEP know that you oppose the Digital Identity and that you want your MEP to vote against it!” he said.

The Biden White House released a “Comprehensive Framework for Responsible Development of Digital Assets” in September of last year. Catherine Austin Fitts, financial expert and Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the H.W. Bush administration, has long been a vocal opponent of CBDC systems. In a recent interview, she warned that a 100 percent digital system would be controlled centrally and that a person’s money could potentially be limited to a particular geographical area. Such a totalitarian system, she argued, could also allow the State to limit people on what they are allowed to buy. “Let’s say I want to mandate a vaccine. Your financial transaction ability can be turned off,” Fitts said. “Your access to your financial assets can be denied or stopped if you don’t do what you’re told.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

3-day fast

 

 

 

 

Common ground

 

 

Ravens

 

 


An extraordinarily rare glimpse of one of the last Malayan tigers; there are only 150 left on Earth. Their rapid decline is due to deforestation & poaching for body parts. 1400 snares were found in their protected area. So, take a good look, we may not see one again.

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

May 262018
 


Louise Dahl-Wolfe Looking at Matisse, Museum of Modern Art 1939

 

S&P 500 Companies Return $1 Trillion To Shareholders In Tax-Cut Surge (R.)
The 2020s Might Be The Worst Decade In US History (Mauldin)
Moody’s Warns Of ‘Particularly Large’ Wave Of Junk Bond Defaults Ahead (CNBC)
Moody’s Puts Italy On Downgrade Review, Junk Rating Possible (ZH)
UK Economy Posts Worst Quarterly GDP Figures For Five Years (G.)
Prospects of US-North Korea Summit Brighten (R.)
The Real ‘Constitutional Crisis’ (Strassel)
A Mendacious Exercise In Manufacturing Paranoia (Jim Kunstler)
Tesla Seeks To Dismiss Securities Fraud Lawsuit (R.)
Madrid Takes Its Car Ban to the Next Level (CityLab)

 

 

Oh, that’s what the tax cuts are for?!

S&P 500 Companies Return $1 Trillion To Shareholders In Tax-Cut Surge (R.)

S&P 500 companies have returned a record $1 trillion to shareholders over the past year, helped by a recent surge in dividends and stock buybacks following sweeping corporate tax cuts introduced by Republicans, a report on Friday showed. In the 12 months through March, S&P 500 companies paid out $428 billion in dividends and bought up $573 billion of their own shares, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices analyst Howard Silverblatt. That compares to combined dividends and buybacks worth $939 billion during the year through March 2017, Silverblatt said in a research note. Earnings per share of S&P 500 companies surged 26 percent in the March quarter, boosted by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed by Republican lawmakers in December.

Companies have been returning much of that profit windfall to shareholders via share buybacks and increased dividends at never before seen amounts, highlighted by Apple’s record $23.5 billion worth of shares repurchased in the first quarter. S&P 500 companies have also plowed some of the windfall from lower taxes into investments toward growth or becoming more efficient. First-quarter capital expenditures totaled at least $159 billion, up more than 21 percent from the year before, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. The biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax code in over 30 years, the new law slashes the corporate income tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, and charges multinationals a one-time tax on profits held overseas.

Read more …

Mauldin turns dark side.

The 2020s Might Be The Worst Decade In US History (Mauldin)

I recently wrote about a looming credit crisis that’s stemming from high-yield junk bonds. The crisis itself will have massive consequences for investors. But that’s not the worst part. The crisis will create a domino effect and trigger global financial contagion, which I usually refer to as “The Great Reset.” The collapse of high-yield bonds will hit stocks and bonds. Rising defaults will force banks to reduce their lending exposure, drying up capital for previously creditworthy businesses. This will put pressure on earnings and reduce economic activity. A recession will follow. This will not be just a U.S. headache, either. It will surely spill over into Europe (and may even start there) and then into the rest of the world.

The U.S. and/or European recession will become a global recession, as happened in 2008. Europe has its own set of economic woes and multiple potential triggers. It is quite possible Europe will be in recession before the ECB finishes this tightening cycle. As always, a U.S. recession will spark higher federal spending and reduce tax revenue. So I expect the on-budget deficit to quickly reach $2 trillion or more. Within four years of the recession’s onset, total government debt will be at least $30 trillion. This will further constrain the private capital markets and likely raise tax burdens for everyone—not just the rich.

Meanwhile, job automation will intensify, with businesses desperate to cut costs. The effect we already see on labor markets will double or triple. Worse, it will start reaching deep into the service sector. The technology is improving fast. The working-class population will not like this and it has the power to vote. “Safety net” programs and unemployment benefit expenditures will skyrocket. Studies show that the ratio of workers covered by unemployment insurance is at its lowest level in 45 years. What happens when millions of freelancers lose their incomes?

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We’re talking trillions. Poof!

Moody’s Warns Of ‘Particularly Large’ Wave Of Junk Bond Defaults Ahead (CNBC)

With corporate debt hitting its highest levels since before the financial crisis, Moody’s is warning that substantial trouble is ahead for junk bonds when the next downturn hits. The ratings agency said low interest rates and investor appetite for yield has pushed companies into issuing mounds of debt that offer comparatively low levels of protection for investors. While the near-term outlook for credit is “benign,” that won’t be the case when economic conditions worsen. The “prolonged environment of low growth and low interest rates has been a catalyst for striking changes in nonfinancial corporate credit quality,” Mariarosa Verde, Moody’s senior credit officer, said in a report.

“The record number of highly leveraged companies has set the stage for a particularly large wave of defaults when the next period of broad economic stress eventually arrives.” Though the current default rate is just 3 percent for speculative-grade credit, that has been predicated on favorable conditions that may not last. Since 2009, the level of global nonfinancial companies rated as speculative, or junk, has surged by 58 percent, to the highest ever, with 40 percent rated B1 or lower, the point that Moody’s considers “highly speculative,” as opposed to “non-investment grade speculative.” In dollar terms, that translates to $3.7 trillion in total junk debt outstanding, $2 trillion of which is in the B1 or lower category.

“Strong investor demand for higher yields continues to allow all but the weakest issuers to avoid default by refinancing maturing debt,” Verde wrote. “A number of very weak issuers are living on borrowed time while benign conditions last.” The level of speculative-grade issuance peaked in the U.S. in 2013, at $334.5 billion, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. American companies have $8.8 trillion in total outstanding debt, a 49 percent increase since the Great Recession ended in 2009.

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President Mattarella has refused to accept the nominee for finance minister, Savona. He’s a euroskeptic.

Meanwhile, if Italian bonds are downgraded further, Europe has a massive problem.

Moody’s Puts Italy On Downgrade Review, Junk Rating Possible (ZH)

In a quite direct ‘threat’ to the newly formed Italian coalition, Moody’s warned that Italy will face a downgrade from its current Baa2 rating (potentially more than one notch to junk status) due to the lack of fiscal restraint in the new “contract” and the potential for delays to Italy’s structural reforms. While Italy’s current rating is Baa2, and a downgrade would leave it at Baa3 (still investment grade), one look at Italian debt markets this week and one can be forgiven for thinking it is pricing in a multiple-notch downgrade to junk… and thus potentially making things awkward for its ECB bond-buying-benefactor and its banking system’s massive holdings of sovereign bonds.

Full Moody’s Report: Moody’s Investors Service has today placed the Government of Italy’s ratings on review for possible downgrade. Ratings placed under review are the Baa2 long-term issuer and senior unsecured bond ratings as well as the (P) Baa2 medium-term MTN programme, the (P)Baa2 senior unsecured shelf, the Commercial Paper and other short-term ratings of Prime-2/(P) Prime-2 respectively. The key drivers for today’s initiation of the review for downgrade are as follows: 1. The significant risk of a material weakening in Italy’s fiscal strength, given the fiscal plans of the new coalition government; and 2. The risk that the structural reform effort stalls, and that past reforms such as the pension reforms implemented in 2011 are reversed.

Moody’s will use the review period to assess the impact of the fiscal and economic policy platform of the new government on Italy’s credit profile, with a particular focus on the effect on the deficit and debt trajectories in the coming years. The review will also allow Moody’s to assess further whether the new government intends to continue to pursue growth-enhancing structural reforms, or conversely to reverse earlier reforms, such as the 2011 pension reform, as well as other economic policy initiatives in the coming months that may have an incidence on the country’s growth potential over the coming years.

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What do you mean we can’t blame the weather?

UK Economy Posts Worst Quarterly GDP Figures For Five Years (G.)

The weakest household spending for three years and falling levels of business investment dragged the economy to the worst quarter for five years, official statisticians have said. The Office for National Statistics confirmed its previous estimate that GDP growth slumped to 0.1% in the first quarter, while sticking to its view that the “beast from the east” had little impact. The latest figures will further stoke concerns over the strength of the UK economy, amid increasing signals for deteriorating growth as Britain prepares to leave the EU next year. Some economists, including officials at the Bank of England, thought the growth rate would be revised higher as more data became available.

Threadneedle Street delayed raising interest rates earlier this month after the weak first GDP estimate, despite arguing that the negative hit to the economy from heavy snowfall in late February and early March had probably been overblown. Instead the ONS said it had seen a longer-term pattern of slowing growth in the first three months of the year. Rob Kent-Smith of the ONS said: “Overall, the economy performed poorly in the first quarter, with manufacturing growth slowing and weak consumer-facing services.” While admitting bad weather will have had some impact, particularly for firms in the construction industry and some areas of the retail business, statisticians said the overall effect was limited, with increased online sales and heightened energy production during the cold snap.

The figures show the services industries contributed the most to GDP growth, with an increase of 0.3% in the first quarter, while household spending grew at a meagre 0.2%. The construction industry declined by 2.7% and business investment fell by 0.2%.

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“..an advance team of 30 White House and State Department officials was preparing to leave for Singapore later this weekend..”

Prospects of US-North Korea Summit Brighten (R.)

Prospects that the United States and North Korea would hold a summit brightened after U.S. President Donald Trump said late on Friday Washington was having “productive talks” with Pyongyang about reinstating the June 12 meeting in Singapore. Politico magazine reported that an advance team of 30 White House and State Department officials was preparing to leave for Singapore later this weekend. Reuters reported earlier this week the team was scheduled to discuss the agenda and logistics for the summit with North Korean officials. The delegation was to include White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joseph Hagin and deputy national security adviser Mira Ricardel, U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Trump said in a Twitter post late on Friday: “We are having very productive talks about reinstating the Summit which, if it does happen, will likely remain in Singapore on the same date, June 12th., and, if necessary, will be extended beyond that date.” Trump had earlier indicated the summit could be salvaged after welcoming a conciliatory statement from North Korea saying it remained open to talks. “It was a very nice statement they put out,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We’ll see what happens – it could even be the 12th.” “We’re talking to them now. They very much want to do it. We’d like to do it,” he said.

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Through Kimberley Strassel, the Wall Street Journal distances itself ever more from the MSM.

The Real ‘Constitutional Crisis’ (Strassel)

Democrats and their media allies are again shouting “constitutional crisis,” this time claiming President Trump has waded too far into the Russia investigation. The howls are a diversion from the actual crisis: the Justice Department’s unprecedented contempt for duly elected representatives, and the lasting harm it is doing to law enforcement and to the department’s relationship with Congress. The conceit of those claiming Mr. Trump has crossed some line in ordering the Justice Department to comply with oversight is that “investigators” are beyond question. We are meant to take them at their word that they did everything appropriately. Never mind that the revelations of warrants and spies and dirty dossiers and biased text messages already show otherwise.

We are told that Mr. Trump cannot be allowed to have any say over the Justice Department’s actions, since this might make him privy to sensitive details about an investigation into himself. We are also told that Congress – a separate branch of government, a primary duty of which is oversight – cannot be allowed to access Justice Department material. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes can’t be trusted to view classified information – something every intelligence chairman has done – since he might blow a source or method, or tip off the president. That’s a political judgment, but it holds no authority. The Constitution set up Congress to act as a check on the executive branch—and it’s got more than enough cause to do some checking here.

Yet the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation have spent a year disrespecting Congress—flouting subpoenas, ignoring requests, hiding witnesses, blacking out information, and leaking accusations. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has not been allowed to question a single current or former Justice or FBI official involved in this affair. Not one. He’s also more than a year into his demand for the transcript of former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s infamous call with the Russian ambassador, as well as reports from the FBI agents who interviewed Mr. Flynn. And still nothing.

[..] Mr. Trump has an even quicker way to bring the hostility to an end. He can – and should – declassify everything possible, letting Congress and the public see the truth. That would put an end to the daily spin and conspiracy theories. It would puncture Democratic arguments that the administration is seeking to gain this information only for itself, to “undermine” an investigation. And it would end the Justice Department’s campaign of secrecy, which has done such harm to its reputation with the public and with Congress.

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“..a malevolent secret police operation..”

A Mendacious Exercise In Manufacturing Paranoia (Jim Kunstler)

After many months, the gaslight is losing its mojo and a clearer picture has emerged of just what happened during and after the 2016 election: the FBI, CIA, and the Obama White House colluded and meddled to tilt the outcome and, having failed spectacularly, then labored frantically to cover up their misdeeds with further misdeeds. The real election year crimes for which there is actual evidence point to American officials not Russian gremlins. Having attempted to incriminate Trump at all costs, these tragic figures now scramble to keep their asses out of jail.

I say “tragic” because they — McCabe, Comey, Rosenstein, Strzok, Page, Ohr, et al — probably think they were acting heroically and patriotically to save the country from a monster, and I predict that is exactly how they will throw themselves to the mercy of the jury when they are called to answer for these activities in a court of law. Of course, they have stained the institutional honor of the FBI and its parent Department of Justice, but it is probably a healthier thing for the US public to maintain an extremely skeptical attitude about what has evolved into a malevolent secret police operation.

The more pressing question is how all this huggermugger gets adjudicated in a timely manner. Congress has the right to impeach agency executives like Rod Rosenstein and remove them from office. That would take a lot of time and ceremony. They can also charge them with contempt-of-congress and jail them until they comply with committee requests for documents. Mr. Trump is entitled to fire the whole lot of the ones who remain. But, finally, all this has to be sorted out in federal court, with referrals made to the very Department of Justice that has been a main actor in this tale.

The most mysterious figure in the cast is the MIA Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, who has become the amazing invisible man. It’s hard to see how his recusal in the Russia matter prevents him from acting in any way whatsoever to clean the DOJ house and restore something like operational norms — e.g. complying with congressional oversight — especially as the Russia matter itself resolves as a completely fabricated dodge. The story is moving very fast now. The Pequod is whirling around in the maelstrom, awaiting the final blow from the white whale’s mighty flukes.

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Gullible?

Tesla Seeks To Dismiss Securities Fraud Lawsuit (R.)

Tesla Inc on Friday asked a court to dismiss a securities fraud lawsuit by shareholders who said the electric vehicle maker gave false public statements about the progress of producing its new Model 3 sedan. In a filing in federal court in San Francisco, Tesla said that its statements about the challenges the company faced with Model 3 were “frank and in plain language,” including repeated disclosures by Chief Executive Elon Musk of “production hell.” Tesla did not seek to hide the truth, its motion to dismiss said. The company says its Model 3 has experienced numerous “bottlenecks” from problems with Tesla’s battery module process at its Nevada Gigafactory to general assembly at its Fremont plant.

Tesla is under pressure to deliver the Model 3 to reap revenue and stem massive spending that has put Tesla’s finances in the red. The ramp of the Model 3, Tesla said in the court filing, was “the first of its kind,” with difficulties likely to crop up after it got underway. The lawsuit filed last October seeks class action status for shareholders who bought Tesla stock between May 4, 2016 through October 6, 2017, inclusive. It said shareholders bought “artificially inflated” shares because Musk and other executives misled them with their statements. Tesla made such statements during the lead-up to, and early production of, its Model 3 sedan and failed to disclose that the company was “woefully unprepared” for the vehicle’s production, the lawsuit said.

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Good on ’em! Cars don’t belong in cities.

Madrid Takes Its Car Ban to the Next Level (CityLab)

The days when cars could drive unhindered through central Madrid are coming to a close. Following an announcement this week, the Spanish capital confirmed that, starting in November, all non-resident vehicles will be barred from a zone that covers the entirety of Madrid’s center. The only vehicles that will be allowed in this zone are cars that belong to residents who live there, zero-emissions delivery vehicles, taxis, and public transit. Even on a continent where many cities are scaling back car access, the plan is drastic. While much of central Madrid consists of narrow streets that were never suitable to motor vehicles in the first place, this central zone also includes broad avenues such as Gran Via, and wide squares that have been islands in a sea of surging traffic for decades.

The plan is thus not just about making busy central streets more pleasant, but about creating a situation where people simply no longer think of bringing their cars downtown. This might come as a shock to some drivers, but the wind has been blowing this way for more than a decade. Madrid set up the first of what it calls Residential Priority Zones in 2005, in the historic, densely packed Las Letras neighborhood. Since then, a modest checkerboard of three other similar zones have been installed across central Madrid. The new area will be a sort of all-encompassing zone that abolishes once and for all the role of downtown streets as through-routes across the city.

To get people used to the idea, implementation of the non-local car ban will be staggered. In November, manual controls by police around the zone’s edge will begin. Cars that are breaching the new rules will be warned of the fine they face in the future—€90 per occurrence—without actually being charged then. In January, a fully automated system with cameras will be put in place, and from February, the €90 will be actively enforced against any cars found breaking the rules.

Read more …

May 262017
 
 May 26, 2017  Posted by at 9:34 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  1 Response »


Henri Matisse Le Bonheur de Vivre 1906

 

Trump Directly Scolds NATO Allies, Says They Owe ‘Massive’ Sums (R.)
Trump Joins New-Look G7 Amid Trade, Climate Discord (AFP)
US Appeals Court Refuses To Reinstate Travel Ban (R.)
NSA Under Obama Secretly Spied On Americans For Years (Circa)
UK Labour Party Slashes Tory Lead To Just Five Points In Latest Poll (Ind.)
UK Election Campaign Resumes After Manchester Attack (AFP)
Not A Little List: EU Draws Up Brexit Bill (R.)
China’s Reforms Not Enough To Arrest Mounting Debt – Moody’s (R.)
Toronto Area Home Sales Sink After Cooling Measures (G&M)
World Bank Star Economist Paul Romer Sidelined in War Over Words (BBG)
Fed Faces A ‘Surprise’ Problem On US Inflation (R.)
No-Nonsense Finns Ready to Rain on Franco-German Euro Parade (BBG)
Greece Debt Talks Remain Fraught Despite IMF Optimism (AFP)
Unease On Greek Island of Chios Over New Migrant Detention Center (K.)

 

 

It’s an anti-Trump love fest.

Spending $1 billion on a new building that you will never be able to visit tells you what these people think of you. But the, NATO is the ideal vehicle for the arms industry: no democracy anywhere in sight.

Trump Directly Scolds NATO Allies, Says They Owe ‘Massive’ Sums (R.)

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday intensified his accusations that NATO allies were not spending enough on defense and warned of more attacks like this week’s Manchester bombing unless the alliance did more to stop militants. In unexpectedly abrupt remarks as NATO leaders stood alongside him, Trump said certain member countries owed “massive amounts of money” to the United States and NATO – even though allied contributions are voluntary, with multiple budgets. His scripted comments contrasted with NATO’s choreographed efforts to play up the West’s unity by inviting Trump to unveil a memorial to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States at the new NATO headquarters building in Brussels.

“Terrorism must be stopped in its tracks, or the horror you saw in Manchester and so many other places will continue forever,” Trump said, referring to Monday’s suicide bombing in the English city that killed 22 people, including children. “These grave security concerns are the same reason that I have been very, very direct … in saying that NATO members must finally contribute their fair share,” Trump said. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg defended Trump, saying that although he was “blunt” he had “a very plain and clear message on the expectations” of allies. But one senior diplomat said Trump, who left the leaders’ dinner before it ended to fly to Italy for Friday’s Group of Seven summit, said the remarks did not go down well at all. “This was not the right place or time,” the diplomat said of the very public harangue. “We are left with nothing else but trying to put a brave face on it.”

In another unexpected twist, Trump called on NATO, an organization founded on collective defense against the Soviet threat, to include limiting immigration in its tasks. And Trump did say that the United States “will never forsake the friends who stood by our side” but NATO leaders had hoped he would more explicitly support the mutual defense rules of a military alliance’s he called “obsolete” during his campaign. Instead, he returned to a grievance about Europe’s drop in defense spending since the end of the Cold War and failed to publicly commit to NATO’s founding Article V rule which stipulates that an attack on one ally is an attack against all. “23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying for their defense,” Trump said, standing by a piece of the wreckage of the Twin Towers. “This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States, and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years,” Trump said as the other leaders watched.

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It’ll give the press some more material to talk about on handshakes; it’s all they do these days anyway.

Trump Joins New-Look G7 Amid Trade, Climate Discord (AFP)

G7 leaders meet Friday determined to put on a display of united resolve in the fight against jihadist terrorism, despite deep divisions on trade and global warming. The two-day summit in Sicily’s ancient hilltop resort of Taormina kicks off four days after children were among 22 people killed in a concert bomb attack in Manchester. British Prime Minister Theresa May will lead a discussion on terrorism in one of Friday’s working sessions and is expected to issue a call for G7 countries to put more pressure on internet companies to remove extremist content. “The fight is moving from the battlefield to the internet,” a senior British official said ahead of the talks.

With May and Donald Trump among four new faces in the club of the world’s major democracies, the gathering in Italy is being billed as a key test of how serious the new US administration is about implementing its radical policy agenda, particularly on climate change. Senior officials are preparing to work through the night of Friday-Saturday in a bid to bridge what appear to be irreconcilable differences over Trump’s declared intention of ditching the US commitment to the landmark Paris according on curbing carbon emissions. Officials acknowledge the summit, one of the shortest in the body’s history, is effectively about damage limitation against a backdrop of fears among US partners that the Trump presidency, with its ‘America First’ rhetoric, could undermine the architecture of the post-World War II world. Summit host Paolo Gentiloni, a caretaker Italian prime minister also making his G7 debut, acknowledged as much on the eve of the meeting.

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Long dead. It was supposed to be for 30 days only anyway, and those are long gone.

US Appeals Court Refuses To Reinstate Travel Ban (R.)

In a stinging rebuke to President Donald Trump, a U.S. appeals court refused on Thursday to reinstate his travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority nations, calling it discriminatory and setting the stage for a showdown in the Supreme Court. The decision, written by Chief Judge Roger Gregory, described Trump’s executive order in forceful terms, saying it uses “vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement that the government, which says the temporary travel ban is needed to guard against terrorist attacks, would seek a review of the case at the Supreme Court. “These clearly are very dangerous times and we need every available tool at our disposal to prevent terrorists from entering the United States and committing acts of bloodshed and violence,” said Michael Short, a White House spokesman.

He added that the White House was confident the order would ultimately be upheld by the judiciary. In its 10-3 ruling, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said those challenging the ban, including refugee groups and individuals, were likely to succeed on their claim that the order violates the U.S. Constitution’s bar against favoring one religion over another. Gregory cited statements by Trump during the 2016 presidential election calling for a Muslim ban. During the race, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslim’s entering the United States” in a statement on his website. The judge wrote that a reasonable observer would likely conclude the order’s “primary purpose is to exclude persons from the United States on the basis of their religious beliefs.”

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Where’s the anger?

NSA Under Obama Secretly Spied On Americans For Years (Circa)

The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community. More than 5%, or one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011, according to one classified internal report reviewed by Circa. The Obama administration self-disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing Oct. 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that set off alarm.

Trump was elected less than two weeks later. The normally supportive court censured administration officials, saying the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an “institutional lack of candor” and that the improper searches constituted a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue,” according to a recently unsealed court document dated April 26, 2017. The admitted violations undercut one of the primary defenses that the intelligence community and Obama officials have used in recent weeks to justify their snooping into incidental NSA intercepts about Americans. Circa has reported that there was a three-fold increase in NSA data searches about Americans and a rise in the unmasking of U.S. person’s identities in intelligence reports after Obama loosened the privacy rules in 2011. Officials like former National Security Adviser Susan Rice have argued their activities were legal under the so-called minimization rule changes Obama made, and that the intelligence agencies were strictly monitored to avoid abuses.

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May was losing a lot of votes before AMnchester.

UK Labour Party Slashes Tory Lead To Just Five Points In Latest Poll (Ind.)

Labour has slashed the Conservatives’ lead in the polls to just five points, the latest YouGov/Times results show. The party has made consistent gains in recent weeks as leader Jeremy Corbyn claimed his message was finally getting through to voters. The results show a four point change since last week when the Tories were leading by 9 percentage points – the first time Labour had narrowed the gap to single figures since Theresa May called the snap election on 18 April. The latest poll comes after the Prime Minister made an unprecedented U-turn over her “dementia tax” plans, just four days after making them the centrepiece of her election manifesto.

A separate poll, conducted after the Tory manifesto launch, found 28% of voters said they were less likely to vote Conservative because of the social care package. It comes as Mr Corbyn prepares to take the hugely controversial step of blaming Britain’s foreign wars for terror attacks such as the Manchester suicide bombing. The Labour leader will claim a link between “wars our government has supported or fought in other countries and terrorism here at home”, as he relaunches his party’s election campaign on Friday after the three-day pause. Mr Corbyn will stress his assessment is shared by the intelligence and security services and “in no way reduces the guilt of those who attack our children”. The Independent understands Mr Corbyn wishes to draw attention to his March 2011 vote against the Libya bombing – when he was one of just 13 MPs to oppose David Cameron.

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May will use Manchester and fear for all she can suck out of it. Corbyn will be portrayed as incapable leader for the country, in the same way he has been called unfit to lead his party. He would have been way ahead in the polls if his own party had not turned on him. Re: Bernie.

UK Election Campaign Resumes After Manchester Attack (AFP)

Britain’s politicians resume campaigning in earnest on Friday with national security in the spotlight, as police scramble to bust a Libya-linked jihadist network thought to be behind the Manchester terror attack. Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had suspended campaigning after Monday’s bombing at a Manchester pop concert, which killed 22 people, including many teenagers, and wounded dozens more. Eight suspects are currently in detention on UK soil in connection with the blast, for which the Islamic State group has claimed responsibility, while police in Libya have detained the father and brother of 22-year-old suicide bomber Salman Abedi. Washington’s top diplomat Rex Tillerson is due to visit London on Friday in an expression of solidarity, after Britain reacted furiously to leaks of sensitive details about the investigation to US media.

Opposition leader Corbyn in a speech in London later on Friday is expected to say it is the “responsibility” of governments to minimise the risk of terror by giving police the funding they need. A YouGov poll published in Friday’s edition of The Times put Conservatives on 43% compared to Labour on 38%, far better for Labour than the double-digit margin that had previously separately it from the ruling party. YouGov polled 2,052 people on Wednesday and Thursday. But analysts said that the Conservative prime minister – who previously served as interior minister for six years – could benefit at the polls from the shift in focus ahead of the general election on June 8. “If security and terrorism become more prominent then I can only see one winner from this – Theresa May,” said Steven Fielding, a professor of politics at the University of Nottingham. The YouGov poll also found that 41% of respondents said that the Conservatives would handle defence and security best, compared to 18% who said the same of Labour.

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Will May be part of these discussions?

Not A Little List: EU Draws Up Brexit Bill (R.)

The EU will next month demand Britain agree to pay a fixed percentage of the EU’s outstanding obligations on the day it leaves the bloc, in defiance of a British rejection of that logic as “preposterous”. A draft EU negotiating paper, seen by Reuters, that will be put to London when Brexit talks begin following a national election in Britain on June 8 makes clear that suggestions from Prime Minister Theresa May’s government that the Union might end up owing rather than getting money cut no ice in Brussels. The paper on principles of the financial settlement that the EU wants from London on departure in March 2019 sets no figure, and chief negotiator Michel Barnier has made clear it cannot be calculated until the end as it depends on the EU’s spending.

However, he wants an agreement on how the “Brexit bill” will be calculated, perhaps by late this year, before the Europeans agree to launch talks that May wants on a free trade agreement. EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker has said Britain may have to pay its 27 allies some €60 billion on departure and some experts estimated the up-front cost, before later refunds, could be nearly double that – suggestions May’s foreign minister Boris Johnson called “absolutely preposterous”. The paper to be discussed among diplomats next week before Barnier presents the opening demands to London in the week of June 19, spells out that while Britain will get some credit – notably its €39 billion share of the capital of the European Investment Bank.

But the list of what it must pay, and go paying for some years after Brexit, is much longer. Four pages of appendix details list more than 70 EU bodies and funds to which Britain has committed payment in a budget set out to 2020. Yet the three-page main document made no mention of Britain getting credit for a share of, say, EU buildings, as British ministers have said it should have. EU officials argue Britain was not asked to pay extra for existing infrastructure in Brussels when it first joined the bloc in 1973. Among obligations Britain will be asked to cover are the funding until summer 2021 of British teachers seconded to schools catering to the EU’s staff and diplomats.

Other payments include promises to fund Syrian refugees in Turkey, aid for the Central African Republic, the EU aviation safety agency and the European Institute for Gender Equality. “The United Kingdom obligations should be fixed as a percentage of the EU obligations calculated at the date of withdrawal in accordance with a methodology to be agreed in the first phase of the negotiations,” the paper states. It adds that people, businesses and organizations in Britain would continue to benefit from some EU funds for some time after Brexit. Britain has about 13% of the EU’s 507 million population and accounts for some 16% of its economy. Its net contribution to the EU’s €140 billion annual budget has typically been roughly €10 billion in recent years.

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CHina is not in good shape. Moody’s diagnosis came late.

China’s Reforms Not Enough To Arrest Mounting Debt – Moody’s (R.)

China’s structural reforms will slow the pace of its debt build-up but will not be enough to arrest it, and another credit rating cut for the country is possible down the road unless it gets its ballooning credit in check, officials at Moody’s said. The comments came two days after Moody’s downgraded China’s sovereign ratings by one notch to A1, saying it expects the financial strength of the world’s second-largest economy to erode in coming years as growth slows and debt continues to mount. In announcing the downgrade, Moody’s Investors Service also changed its outlook on China from “negative” to “stable”, suggesting no further ratings changes for some time.

China has strongly criticized the downgrade, asserting it was based on “inappropriate methodology”, exaggerating difficulties facing the economy and underestimating the government’s reform efforts. In response, senior Moody’s official Marie Diron said on Friday that the ratings agency has been encouraged by the “vast reform agenda” undertaken by the Chinese authorities to contain risks from the rapid rise in debt. However, while Moody’s believes the reforms may slow the pace at which debt is rising, they will not be enough to arrest the trend and levels will not drop dramatically, Diron said. Diron said China’s economic recovery since late last year was mainly thanks to policy stimulus, and expects Beijing will continue to rely on pump-priming to meet its official economic growth targets, adding to the debt overhang.

Moody’s also is waiting to see how some of the announced measures, such as reining in local government finances, are actually implemented, Diron, associate managing director of Moody’s Sovereign Risk Group, told reporters in a webcast. China may no longer get an A1 rating if there are signs that debt is growing at a pace that exceeds Moody’s expectations, Li Xiujun, vice president of credit strategy and standards at the ratings agency, said in the same webcast. “If in the future China’s structural reforms can prevent its leverage from rising more effectively without increasing risks in the banking and shadow banking sector, then it will have a positive impact on China’s rating,” Li said. But Li added: “If there are signs that China’s debt will keep rising and the rate of growth is beyond our expectations, leading to serious capital misallocation, then it will continue to weigh on economic growth in the medium term and impact the sovereign rating negatively.”

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Down 26% yoy.

Toronto Area Home Sales Sink After Cooling Measures (G&M)

House sales fell 26% in the Toronto region in the month following the Ontario government’s introduction of a foreign-buyer’s tax as many potential purchasers stepped back and waited to assess the market impact. In the 30 days after the province announced the immediate introduction of a 15-per-cent foreign-buyer’s tax on April 20, the number of houses sold in the Greater Toronto Area fell 26% compared with the same period last year, according to data compiled by Toronto realtor John Pasalis, president of Realosophy Realty Inc. Communities north of Toronto saw the greatest declines between April 20 and May 20, with sales falling 61% in Richmond Hill, 46% in Markham and 44% in Newmarket. The City of Toronto recorded a 23% drop in the number of homes sold, while Brampton and Mississauga west of Toronto had sales declines of 16% and 27%, respectively.

The sales review looked only at freehold homes, including detached and semi-detached houses, but did not include condominiums. The drop in selling activity is part of a broad cooling in the Toronto region market that began in April as buyers moved to the sidelines while home owners rushed to list their houses to try to cash in before the market peaked. In the first two weeks of May alone, sales of all types of homes in the GTA fell 16% compared with the same period in May last year, while the number of new listings soared 47%, according to data compiled by the Toronto Real Estate Board. The average GTA home sold for $890,284 in the first two weeks of May, a 17-per-cent increase from a year earlier, primarily because of large gains earlier this year. But the price was down 3% compared with April, when the average sale price for all types of GTA homes was $920,791.

Mr. Pasalis said he does not believe the new foreign-buyer’s tax is directly responsible for much of the drop in sales since April 20 because foreign buyers were not a large enough part of the market to cause such a significant decline, and many foreign buyers will qualify for rebates of the tax. Instead, he believes the drop is a result, in part, to a decline in demand from domestic investors who were purchasing second properties to rent or flip. Most investors have stopped buying as they wait to see the impact of a suite of new measures announced by the province in April, including the foreign-buyer’s tax, he said. “They disappeared – no one is talking about buying money-losing rental properties any more,” Mr. Pasalis said. “The whole excitement and euphoria is kind of gone right now.”

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The fight over conventional economic theories.

World Bank Star Economist Paul Romer Sidelined in War Over Words (BBG)

The World Bank’s chief economist has been stripped of his management duties after researchers rebelled against his efforts to make them communicate more clearly, including curbs on the written use of “and.” Paul Romer is relinquishing oversight of the Development Economics Group, the research hub of the Washington-based development lender, according to an internal staff announcement seen by Bloomberg. Kristalina Georgieva, the chief executive for the bank’s biggest fund, will take over management of the unit July 1. Romer will remain chief economist, providing management with “timely thought leadership on trends directly affecting our client countries, including the ‘future of work,’” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in the note to staff dated May 9.

Romer said he met resistance from staff when he tried to refine the way they communicate. “I was in the position of being the bearer of bad news,” he said in an interview. “It’s possible that I was focusing too much on the precision of the communications and not enough on the feelings my messages would invoke.” [..] But in recent years, his attacks on the credibility of macroeconomic models irritated many of his peers. His combativeness didn’t endear him to some of the more than 600 economists who work in DEC, according to people familiar with the matter. Romer wanted DEC to set the intellectual agenda among those who think deeply about how to help the world’s poorest countries, said one of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The World Bank is already considered a major source of development research, ranking first among institutions in terms of the number of times its work is cited, ahead of Brown University, the London School of Economics and Harvard University. But Romer expressed to those around him that the department should communicate more clearly, dive right into public debates, and align its work with the institution’s goals of ending extreme poverty and reducing inequality. It didn’t take him long to shake things up. He declared several positions redundant and enforced term limits on senior managers. In the interview, Romer said he cut more than $1 million in annual expenses from the group’s budget.

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A fight between fabricated numbers.

Fed Faces A ‘Surprise’ Problem On US Inflation (R.)

Recent data on the performance of the U.S. economy has been generally on the soft side, a sore point discussed at length by Federal Reserve officials at their latest meeting, minutes of the gathering released on Wednesday showed. In fact, measures developed by Citigroup economists to track how incoming economic data stacks up against market expectations show the latest numbers from the United States have been falling persistently short of forecasts. Meanwhile, Citi’s comparable “economic surprise” indexes for other regions show just the opposite: upside surprises. Of particular concern for the Fed are recent undershoots on key gauges of inflation that have been lagging the central bank’s stated target of 2% annualized consumer price growth.

Market-based measures of long-term inflation expectations have also weakened substantially, enough so that Fed policymakers agreed at their last meeting that before raising rates again they would need stronger data to confirm recent weakness was not a new trend. With doubts rising over U.S. President Donald Trump’s ability to deliver policies to promote faster economic growth, many of these gauges have fallen back to near Election Day levels. Citi’s inflation surprise indexes underscore the Fed’s anxiety. [..] recent U.S. inflation readings have returned to their long-term trend of underperforming against forecasts after a brief run of upside surprises earlier this year.

Meanwhile, inflation reports from Europe have topped expectations by the widest margin on record. The rest of the so-called Group of 10 largest developed economies are meanwhile beating forecasts by the most since the financial crisis nearly a decade ago, even after taking into account the drag from U.S. numbers. Even Japan, notorious for its decades-long struggles against deflation, is posting inflation data notably above forecasts.

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Will France and Germany push through a closer union despite the protests? They could….

No-Nonsense Finns Ready to Rain on Franco-German Euro Parade (BBG)

The euro area should focus on implementing its banking union and consigning bailouts to the history books, rather than exploring ambitious ideas such as a common budget or shared liabilities, according to Finland’s finance minister. “We’re willing to engage in a discussion on different scenarios on the future of European Monetary Union,” Petteri Orpo said in an emailed response to questions Wednesday. “I would be cautious about proposals that aren’t consistent with the current stage of political union in Europe, such as eurobonds.” The debate over the future of the EU has received new impetus following the U.K.’s decision to leave, with the European Commission outlining five possible scenarios.

Those hoping for a re-start in the integration drive in response to populist criticisms have drawn new energy from the lovefest on display in Berlin when German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted a first meeting with Emmanuel Macron, the new French president. Italy and Spain, meanwhile, are renewing their push for mutually-backed debt. The priorities of Finland’s finance minister are not as lofty. “The banking union is by far the most important element,” Orpo said. “Risk reduction must come before risk sharing.” Finland may have a special interest in boosting the banking union now that the largest Nordic lender, Nordea Bank, is considering relocating its headquarters to Helsinki from Stockholm.

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My long-term point exactly: “Greece cannot grow while maintaining such a high surplus,” Rice said.”

Greece Debt Talks Remain Fraught Despite IMF Optimism (AFP)

Critical talks on easing Greece’s massive debt burden remain fraught with conflict, despite assurances from the IMF on Thursday that the sides are closer to an agreement. A deal to secure debt relief for Athens from the eurozone is the missing piece to unlocking loans the country needs to make debt payments and begin to recover from the years-long crisis. But transcripts of part of the recent discussions between the IMF, the ECB and eurozone finance ministers published by Greek financial website Euro2day on Thursday show many disputes remain and few of the participants are satisfied, least of all Greece Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos. He slammed one of the proposals floated in the discussions the “worst of all worlds” for Greece. “I don’t think anyone here can say that is a good deal for us, who have negotiated in good faith.”

This seems to contradict comments from an IMF official Thursday, who said the differences are narrowing even though the fund needs more specifics on a debt relief plan before it can agree to release more financing. “Everyone is optimistic that agreement can be reached and hopefully can be reached at the next Eurogroup meeting” in mid-June, IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters. In contrast, the IMF’s main negotiator, Poul Thomsen, said he was “very far away from being able to tell our board that we are close to a strategy we can agree to” on debt relief, according to the transcripts. [..] Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem floated the possibility of the IMF approving a loan for Greece, but withholding disbursement of the funds until it had sufficient details on the debt relief — something virtually unheard of in IMF aid programs.

Thomsen said it was an “interesting proposal” that he could raise with the management, even while Tsakalotos slammed the idea. One advantage to the unusual arrangement, were the IMF to agree, is that it would take the discussion of Greek debt relief out of play in Germany’s election in September. The German public is hostile to more financial support for Athens. Rice vehemently denied doing any political favors for Germany. “We are exploring all options within our existing practices and rules,” he said. IMF lending depends on each country’s circumstances “but we try to be as flexible as we can,” he added. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called the lack of a deal at Monday’s talks “a major failure,” and said “I’m not very optimistic that things will improve.”

The IMF also disagrees with Europe’s forecasts for Greek growth and primary fiscal surplus which are key to the debt discussions, Rice said. Europe continues to forecast a surplus excluding debt payments of 3.5% of GDP even after 2022, which the IMF believes is not sustainable and would impose undue hardship on the country. Athens could better use its budget to fuel growth and “Greece cannot grow while maintaining such a high surplus,” Rice said. “It does not help anyone to have assumptions that are overly optimistic.”

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Detention centers for people fleeing western-induced misery and chaos breaks so many international laws that these laws are invalidated in one fell swoop.

Unease On Greek Island of Chios Over New Migrant Detention Center (K.)

People living near the location of a new migrant detention center on the island of Chios say they will fight its construction. The facility will be used as a holding center for those who have had their asylum requests rejected and are due to be deported. A high-ranking police official, Nikolaos Zisimopoulos, informed authorities on Chios that construction of the new center would begin immediately, and containers carrying building materials arrived on the island Thursday. The municipal council called an emergency meeting last night to discuss the matter, as residents say their patience is reaching breaking point and that they will take action to fight the center’s construction.

Chios Mayor Manolis Vournous has asked for more time to allow the island’s residents to discuss the location of the new center. The Hellenic Police (ELAS), however, says there is no more time for any further discussion as the situation on the island’s existing camps is dire. ELAS also notes that a shift in the main flow of migrants toward Chios and away from Lesvos is adding fuel to the fire. Authorities say this shift can be attributed to the migrants knowing Chios does not have a closed facility like Lesvos does. So far this month more than half of all refugee and migrant arrivals in Greece have come to Chios.

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May 242017
 
 May 24, 2017  Posted by at 9:32 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


Henri Matisse Nu Blue IV 1952

 

China Hit by First Moody’s Downgrade Since 1989 on Debt Risk (BBG)
Chinese Banks Are In Big Trouble (ZH)
American Exceptionalism – Population Growth vs Money Growth (Econimica)
Shiller: Stay In The Market, It ‘Could Go Up 50% From Here’ (CNBC)
German Police Search Daimler Facilities In Dieselgate Probe (DW)
Canada Must Deflate Its Housing Bubble (BBG Ed.)
The Violence of Austerity (OD)
IMF Wants More Realism In Eurozone Assumptions On Greece (R.)
QE Remains A Long Shot For Greece (K.)
In Germany, Syrian Man Wins Case Against Deportation To Greece (AP)
Elder Refugees Seeking Asylum in Europe Left Stranded in Greece – HRW (GR)
Tasmania Bans Super Trawlers From Its Waters (AAP)
Fossils Cast Doubt On Human Lineage Originating In Africa (R.)

 

 

Moody’s worries are the local government financing vehicles and state-owned enterprises, which are umbilically linked to the shadow banks.

You can’t run an entire economy from and in the shadows.

China Hit by First Moody’s Downgrade Since 1989 on Debt Risk (BBG)

Moody’s Investors Service cut its rating on China’s debt for the first time since 1989, challenging the view that the nation’s leadership will be able to rein in leverage while maintaining the pace of economic growth. Stocks and the yuan slipped in early trading after Moody’s reduced the rating to A1 from Aa3 on Wednesday, with markets paring losses in the afternoon. Moody’s cited the likelihood of a “material rise” in economy-wide debt and the burden that will place on the state’s finances, while also changing the outlook to stable from negative. It’s “absolutely groundless” for Moody’s to argue that local government financing vehicles and state-owned enterprise debt will swell the government’s contingent liabilities, according to a response released by the Ministry of Finance. The ratings company has underestimated the capability of the government to deepen reform and boost demand, the ministry said.

It wouldn’t be the first time a rating company was behind the curve, nor is such pushback unique – U.S. Treasury officials questioned the credibility of a 2011 downgrade from Standard & Poor’s. Still, the move underscores broader doubts over whether President Xi Jinping’s government can simultaneously cut excessive leverage and steady growth, all with a twice a decade reshuffle of top party posts looming later this year. “It is a psychological blow that China will not take kindly to and absolutely speaks to the rising financial pressures,” said Christopher Balding, an associate professor at the HSBC School of Business at Peking University in Shenzhen. That said, “it doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things because so much of Chinese debt is held by state or quasi-state actors and minimal amounts are international investors.”

Total outstanding credit climbed to about 260% of GDP by the end of 2016, up from 160% in 2008. At the same time, China’s external debt is low by international standards, at around 12% of gross domestic product, according to the IMF, meaning that a downgrade isn’t likely to be as disruptive as it would be for nations more reliant on international funding. Overseas institutions’ holdings of onshore bonds dropped to 830 billion yuan ($121 billion) as of the end of March, from 853 billion yuan three months earlier, People’s Bank of China data show. That’s less than 1.5% of 63.7 trillion yuan of outstanding notes. Moody’s last cut China’s sovereign rating in 1989, when it downgraded the sovereign to Baa2 from Baa1, according to spokesperson, Manvela Yeung. Moody’s lowered China’s credit-rating outlook to negative from stable in March 2016, citing rising debt, falling currency reserves and uncertainty over authorities’ ability to carry out reforms.

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Starting to be painful. At some point, Beijing total control will come up empty.

Chinese Banks Are In Big Trouble (ZH)

That’s not supposed to happen… With the crackdown on financial system leverage underway, Chinese banks (and securities firms) are in big trouble. As we noted previously, China’s bond curve is inverted, yields are surging, and Chinese regulatory decisions shutting down various shadow-banking pipelines has crushed securities firms’ stocks. However, as Bloomberg points out, as China’s deleveraging efforts cut into banks’ profit margins, rising base funding costs and interbank credit risk concerns have pushed banks’ cost of borrowing beyond the rate they charge customers for loans for the first time in history. As the chart shows, the one-year Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate has exceeded the Loan Prime Rate, the first time this has happened since the latter was introduced in 2013. “This is probably just the beginning” and interbank funding costs will rise further amid the drive to reduce leverage, said Xu Hanfei at China Merchants Securities in Shanghai.

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Wonderful from Chris Hamilton.

American Exceptionalism – Population Growth vs Money Growth (Econimica)

Since 1971, and the disconnection of the dollar from a finite gold backing, the value of money (the dollar) has been determined by it’s purchasing power versus the inflation of the assets to be purchased. Thus printing more money has not necessarily created “wealth” if the assets to be purchased are rising as fast or faster than the purchasing power of the “money”. The Fed touts it’s dual mandate of full employment and stable prices…but the result in prices; not so stable. The primary global asset purchasable only in US dollars, crude oil, has told a story of wildly gyrating prices. Since the end of Bretton Woods and the subsequent Congressionally dual mandated roles bestowed on the Fed…crude oil prices have gone bezerk, twice climbing nearly 10x’s within a decade. This is the opposite of stable (particularly compared to the price stability from WWII’s end until the Fed took over).

Soooo, theoretically the growth of “money” should be linked to the growth of the population, to ensure an adequate and stable money supply exists for the growing population. In a moment I’ll show you anything but a stable money supply. But first, the chart below shows the total 25-54yr/old US population, those employed among them, and the value in dollars of all publicly traded US stocks (represented by the Wilshire 5000). Something far beyond population growth or employment growth is pushing up the value of dollar based assets, gauging by US stock markets accelerating appreciation.

With that in mind, the chart below shows the growth of M3 money (the broadest measure of US “money”) and the broader 15-64yr/old US population since 1971. The money supply has grown in excess of 20x’s (2,000%) vs. the working age population (15-64yr/olds) which has grown less than 1x (nearly 70% increase).

This results in a rising ratio of “money” on a per capita of the core population basis, as the chart below details. The total amount of “money” rose from approximately $5 thousand dollars per working age adult to todays $65 thousand dollars per adult…an increase of 13x’s (1.300%).

The annual growth of the 15-64yr/old core US population peaked in 2003 and annual core population growth has decelerated by 90% since…while annual M3 growth has doubled over the same time period. [..] The chart below from 2000 into 2017 shows the change in both core population and M3 money supply, showing the year over year change on a monthly basis…and the current fall in core population growth will continue downward, likely turning negative at times over the next year (yet another first for America).

The final chart is the growth in M3 money supply per the growth in the adult, working age population. I’m not an economist or expert on much of anything…but that doesn’t look particularly good to me (something to do with “hyper-monetization” or some such thing). All I can say is the appearance of hockey sticks typically aren’t a good or stable sign but their appearance, just like those of black swans, has become the “new normal”.

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It could also fall by 50%.

Shiller: Stay In The Market, It ‘Could Go Up 50% From Here’ (CNBC)

Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller believes investors should continue to own stocks because the bull market may continue for years. CNBC’s Mike Santoli spoke with Shiller in an exclusive interview for CNBC PRO. Santoli asked Shiller about his market outlook. “I would say have some stocks in your portfolio. It could go up 50% from here. That’s what it did around 2000, after it reached this level, it went up another 50%. So I’m not against investing in the stock market when you consider the alternatives. But I think if one wants to diversify, US is high in its CAPE ratio. You can go practically anywhere else in the world and it’s lower,” Shiller said. “We could even set a new another record high in CAPE, that’s not a forecast.”

Shiller developed the “cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio” (CAPE) market valuation measure, which is calculated using price divided by the index’s average historical 10-year earnings, adjusted for inflation. The economist’s research found future 10-year stock market returns were negatively correlated to high CAPE ratio readings on a relative basis. However, even though the current CAPE ratio is at 29, which is above the 17 historical average, the economist is not calling for a market decline. “I can see it as a real possibility that stocks prices and house prices would both keep going up for years, but I’m not forecasting that by any means,” he added.

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Dragging on.

German Police Search Daimler Facilities In Dieselgate Probe (DW)

German authorities have raided several locations associated with German premium carmaker Daimler. They acted on an initial suspicion of fraud involving misleading information about emission levels. Prosecutors in the southern German city of Stuttgart confirmed Tuesday they had searched about a dozen locations associated with the maker of Mercedes-Benz cars. The raids came as a result of the company being suspected of fraud and misleading advertising in relation to the selling of diesel-powered vehicles. Prosecutors have yet to provide further details on the raids. They only said the raids were carried out by well over 200 investigators across the country, with the focus of the search in progress on locations in the states of Baden-Württemberg, Lower Saxony, Saxony and the the city state of Berlin.

The carmaker said the investigations targeted “known and unknown employees of Daimler over suspicion of fraud related to the possible manipulation of exhaust gas emissions in passenger cars with diesel engines.” Daimler executives said they were not aware of any emissions scandal, adding that they were fully co-operating with investigators. The automaker had earlier agreed with Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority to “voluntarily” recall 247,000 vehicles to remove “potentially problematic technology,” which Daimler said had been installed to prevent engines from being damaged. Daimler has also been in the crosshairs of prosecutors in the US where it faces a number of class-action suits by car owners who have accused the company of not being accurate in stating emissions levels for a number of its diesel-powered models.

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You don’t say.

Canada Must Deflate Its Housing Bubble (BBG Ed.)

Canada’s housing market offers a case study in a contentious economic issue: If a central bank sees a bubble forming, should it act to deflate it? In this instance, the answer should be a resounding yes. A combination of foreign money, local speculation and abundant credit has driven Canadian house prices to levels that even government officials recognize cannot be sustained. In the Toronto area, for example, they were up 32% from a year earlier in April. David Rosenberg, an economist at Canadian investment firm Gluskin Sheff, notes that it would take a decline of more than 40% to restore the historical relationship between prices and household income. Granted, the bubble bears little resemblance to the U.S. subprime boom that triggered the global financial crisis.

Although one specialized lender, Home Capital, has had issues with fraudulent mortgage applications, regulation has largely kept out high-risk products. Homeowners haven’t been withdrawing a lot of equity, and can’t legally walk away from their debts like many Americans can. Banks aren’t sitting on the kinds of structured products that destroyed balance sheets in the U.S. Nearly all mortgage securities and a large portion of loans are guaranteed by the government. That said, the situation presents clear risks. As buyers stretch to afford homes, household debt has risen to 167% of disposable income – the highest among the Group of Seven industrialized nations. This is a serious vulnerability, and a big part of the rationale behind Canadian banks’ recent ratings downgrade. The more indebted people are, the more sensitive their spending becomes to changes in prices and interest rates, potentially allowing an otherwise small shock to result in a deep recession.

What to do? Administrative efforts to curb lending and tax foreign buyers have helped but haven’t solved the problem. That’s largely because extremely low interest rates are still giving people a big incentive to borrow. The Bank of Canada has held its target rate at 1% or lower since 2009, and at 0.5% since 2015, when it eased to counteract the effect of falling oil prices. That’s a very stimulative stance in a country where the neutral rate is estimated to be about 3% or higher. One can’t help but see a parallel with the low U.S. rates and the housing bubble of the early 2000s.

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The Violence of Austerity, edited by Vickie Cooper and David Whyte, is published by Pluto Press.

The Violence of Austerity (OD)

As we move towards the general election, we are paralyzed by what is probably the biggest single issue affecting ordinary people in the country: austerity. We are unable to fully understand both the economic madness of austerity and the true scale of the human cost and death toll that ‘fiscal discipline’ has unleashed. Since coming into power as Prime Minister, Theresa May has made a strategic decision not to use the word ‘austerity’. Instead she has adopted a more palatable language in a vain attempt to distance herself from the Cameron governments before her: “you call it austerity; I call it living within our means.” The experience of countless thousands of people is precisely the opposite: people are actively prevented from living within their means and are cut off from their most basic entitlement to: housing, food, health care, social care and general protection from hardship.

And people are dying as a result of these austerity effects. In February, Jeremy Corbyn made precisely this point when he observed the conclusions of one report that 30,000 people were dying unnecessarily every year because of the cuts to NHS and to local authority social care budgets. But this is really only the tip of the iceberg. The scale of disruption felt by people at the sharp end of these benefit reforms is enormous. Countless thousands of others have died prematurely following work capability assessments: approximately 10,000 according the government’s own figures. People are dying as a result of benefit sanction which has fatal impacts on existing health conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease. Austerity is about dismantling social protection. The crisis we face in social care is precipitated by cuts to local authority funding.

In the first 5 years of austerity, local authority budgets were cut by 40%, amounting to an estimated £18bn in care provision. A decade of cuts, when added up, also means that some key agencies that protect us, such as the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency will have been decimated by up to 60% of funding cuts. Scaling back on an already paltry funding in these critical areas of regulation will lead to a rise in pollution related illness and disease and will fail to ensure people are safe at work. The economic folly is that austerity will cost society more in the long term. Local authorities are, for example, housing people in very expensive temporary accommodation because the government has disinvested in social housing.

The crisis in homelessness has paradoxically led to a £400 million rise in benefit payments. The future costs of disinvesting in young people will be seismic. Ending austerity would mean restoring our system of social protection and restoring the spending power of local authorities. It would mean, as all the political parties except the Conservatives recognise, taxing the rich, not punishing the poor in order to pay for a problem that has its roots in a global financial system that enriched the elite. It would also mean recognizing that the best way to prevent the worsening violence of austerity and to rebuild the economy is to re-invest in public sector jobs.

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The Greek government is being played for fools. Given how long this has been going on, one might suggest they are.

IMF Wants More Realism In Eurozone Assumptions On Greece (R.)

The IMF needs to see more realistic euro zone assumptions about Greece’s economy and more detail on planned debt relief measures to join a bailout, IMF’s European Department head Poul Thomsen said. Thomsen said the IMF and Greece’s euro zone lenders made progress in talks on Monday, but were not yet quite there. “We still think there is a need for more realism in assumptions and more specificity,” Thomsen said on Tuesday. The euro zone and the IMF agreed on Monday that Greece would have to keep a primary surplus – the budget balance before debt servicing – at 3.5% of GDP for five years after the bailout ends in 2018. But officials said the size of the surplus afterwards was still under discussion and there were also differences on economic growth assumptions, especially that forecasts used for debt relief plans spanned dozens of years. A group of euro zone countries led by Germany wants the IMF to join the Greek bailout, now handled by euro zone governments alone, to increase credibility. The IMF says that it will only join if Greece is granted debt relief.

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Greece will be declared eligible for inclusion in the ECB’s QE only AFTER the central bank says it will taper QE.

QE Remains A Long Shot For Greece (K.)

Greece is nowhere near a swift inclusion in the ECB’s QE program, according to senior officials at domestic banks. They argue that the issue of the national debt, and securing its sustainability in a way that would satisfy the IMF too, constitutes a particularly complex problem that may well be too hard to resolve by next month’s Eurogroup. They therefore consider Greece’s entry into the ECB’s bond-buying program this summer unlikely – instead expecting it to happen after the German election in the fall, either by the end of 2017 or in early 2018. Some go as far as expressing concern as to whether Greece will make it in at all before the program ends.

While there are more and more voices within the ECB speaking in favor of concluding the program earlier, Greece would like enjoy its benefits for more than two years. Greek banks are hoping a formula will be found at the next Eurogroup, on June 15, that will allow the disbursement of the next bailout tranche while putting off any decisions on the debt. The most optimistic observers note there is a chance of Greece entering QE between July and September and next month’s Eurogroup will be crucial to this end. The ECB argues that Greece’s inclusion in the bond-buying program requires the safeguarding of the debt’s sustainability.

In this context political statements or a mere reference to a series of measures will not suffice, as they will have to constitute legally binding pledges, which is highly unlikely before the German election. Goldman Sachs stated in an analysis that this country is not likely to fulfill the terms the ECB has set to join QE before the reduction of the monthly rate of bond purchases is activated. It also highlighted the high rate of bad loans as a point of concern that might also delay the decision for Greece to enjoy the benefits of QE. Similarly, Citi estimates that without an agreement on the easing of the debt, both inclusion in QE and a return to the bond markets would be quite difficult for Greece.

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In one and the same Union, laws and rights are widely divergent. That is not a union.

In Germany, Syrian Man Wins Case Against Deportation To Greece (AP)

Germany’s highest court has upheld a complaint by a Syrian whose asylum claim was rejected because he’d already been granted asylum in Greece. The man, whose name wasn’t released, arrived in Germany in 2015. He told officials he had already been granted protection in Greece but had been living on the street there and received no support from the Greek government. The man’s claim in Germany was rejected, meaning that he risked deportation to Greece. Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court said Tuesday that a lower court had wrongly failed to take account of a lack of welfare payments for refugees in Greece and to check whether there were assurances that the man would be given at least temporary housing. Judges sent the case back to the lower court to reconsider.

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Who cares about human rights declarations when elections are coming up?

Elder Refugees Seeking Asylum in Europe Left Stranded in Greece – HRW (GR)

There are many unnecessary delays and arbitrary barriers which keep older refugees and asylum seekers stranded in Greece, unable to reunite with family members who have legal status in the EU, Human Rights Watch said on Monday. According to their publication on Monday, EU: Older Refugees Stranded in Greece, one of the main issues that older refugees face is that family reunification does not focus on reuniting an entire family, but spouses and parents with minor children who are under the age of 18. Hundreds of older refugees and asylum seekers currently in Greece who have fled war zones and persecution are waiting to learn if they will be allowed to reunite with adult family members who have been granted residency in another EU country. Although EU law provides for family reunification for older people, lack of clarity or explicit provisions governing the process means that they can remain in limbo, far from their family for prolonged periods of time.

“These older people, already victims of conflict and persecution, hoped to find protection in the EU after treacherous journeys to Greece, and to be reunited with their family,” said Bethany Brown, researcher on older people’s rights at Human Rights Watch. “Now they don’t know if they will ever see their relatives again.” While several barriers are common to all asylum seekers, they can have a more significant impact on older people. Older people have been shown, in some contexts, to have significantly higher rates of psychological distress than the general refugee population, and often suffer from health issues, injuries and violence during displacement, and frailty that can be exacerbated by time and uncertainty.

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A little piece of news. But a good one.

Tasmania Bans Super Trawlers From Its Waters (AAP)

Tasmania’s parliament has passed laws banning super trawler fishing vessels from operating in the state’s waters. Legislation was given a green light on Wednesday, with Liberal government MP Mark Shelton confirming that any future attempts to allow freezer trawler vessels would require an act of parliament. “Our bill should give recreational fishers additional comfort that any future attempt to let super trawlers into the small pelagic fishery will be met with parliamentary hurdles,” he said.

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Graecopithecus freybergi.

Fossils Cast Doubt On Human Lineage Originating In Africa (R.)

Fossils from Greece and Bulgaria of an ape-like creature that lived 7.2 million years ago may fundamentally alter the understanding of human origins, casting doubt on the view that the evolutionary lineage that led to people arose in Africa. Scientists said on Monday the creature, known as Graecopithecus freybergi and known only from a lower jawbone and an isolated tooth, may be the oldest-known member of the human lineage that began after an evolutionary split from the line that led to chimpanzees, our closest cousins. The jawbone, which included teeth, was unearthed in 1944 in Athens. The premolar was found in south-central Bulgaria in 2009.

The researchers examined them using sophisticated new techniques including CT scans and established their age by dating the sedimentary rock in which they were found. They found dental root development that possessed telltale human characteristics not seen in chimps and their ancestors, placing Graecopithecus within the human lineage, known as hominins. Until now, the oldest-known hominin was Sahelanthropus, which lived 6-7 million years ago in Chad. The scientific consensus long has been that hominins originated in Africa. Considering the Graecopithecus fossils hail from the Balkans, the eastern Mediterranean may have given rise to the human lineage, the researchers said.

The findings in no way call into question that our species, Homo sapiens, first appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago and later migrated to other parts of the world, the researchers said. “Our species evolved in Africa. Our lineage may not have,” said paleoanthropologist Madelaine Böhme of Germany’s University of Tübingen, adding that the findings “may change radically our understanding of early human/hominin origin.” Homo sapiens is only the latest in a long evolutionary hominin line that began with overwhelmingly ape-like species, followed by a succession of species acquiring more and more human traits over time.

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