Nov 102016
 
 November 10, 2016  Posted by at 10:24 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


Byron In Chinatown, Pell Street, New York 1900

To Make America Great Again, Write Off The Private Debt (Steve Keen)
Asian Markets Soar, Nikkei Rockets Close To 7% (CNBC)
Dow Closes Up 250 Points; Financials Surge After Trump Election Upset (CNBC)
The Jig Is Up: America’s Voters Just Fired Their Ruling Elites (Stockman)
Thousands Protest Trump Win Around US (BBG)
White House Won’t Rule Out Pardon to Protect Clinton From Trump (BBG)
Trump Would Have Lost US Election If Bernie Had Been The Candidate (Ind.)
WikiLeaks Mocks Dems After Election Loss (Hill)
Trump Could Bring Russia In From The Cold (Dejevsky)
Donald Trump’s Financial Advisory Team Stocked With Wall Streeters (WSJ)
Mexico Will Not Pay For Trump Wall, But Seeks Cooperation (R.)
Meanwhile, As The World Watched The Election.. (Black)
Vancouver Wields $10,000-a-Day Fine in Crackdown on Empty Homes (BBG)
India’s Shock Bank Note Ban Sparks Cash Chaos (R.)
Hand Grenade Thrown Outside French Embassy In Athens (AP)

 

 

Too many pieces and opinions on Trump to keep count of. Let’s start with Steve Keen’s, the most practical one. It would be great and highly useful if Trump and/or his people read it.

To Make America Great Again, Write Off The Private Debt (Steve Keen)

Dear President Trump, The key source of America’s economic weakness today is something you have experience with: private debt. All leaders before you have obsessed about government debt while ignoring private debt, which is far higher (150% of GDP versus 100%) and far more dangerous. You can do something about this, and unlike your purely political predecessors, your experience tells you that it can be done—the only question is how to do it. The private debt mound sitting on top of American households and businesses is the reason demand is depressed right now. With that debt mountain weighing them down, firms are reluctant to borrow and invest, while households are reluctant to use credit to consume. Credit demand is now back to the average of the 1950s to 1970s—the “Golden Age” of America, when your supporters today and their parents had well-paying manufacturing jobs.

But it will easily turn negative again like it did during the Great Recession, given how enormous the debt burden still is today, since your immediate predecessor put more effort into rescuing Wall Street than he did into rescuing Main Street. The Washington insider economists who are now going to attempt to get your ear will tell you that this private debt doesn’t matter, and that nothing can be done about it anyway. They’re wrong on both counts. On whether it matters, they’ll say that one person’s debt is another person’s asset, so the total level of debt doesn’t matter. What they ignore is that banks create money and demand when they lend, and both money and demand fall when debt is repaid. They ignore the evidence shown in Figure 2, which I’ve been shoving in front of their faces for over a decade now (from early 2006, well before the Great Recession began).

On whether it can be done, they’ll tell you that this is “helicopter money”, and that it’s a dreadful idea. But the reality is that they’re doing it already. It’s just that the Fed’s helicopter, which they call “Quantitative Easing”, has been dropping that money on Wall Street rather than Main Street. When the Fed buys bonds off a pension fund under QE, it creates the money that it buys that pension’s funds bonds with. The pension fund then does what pension funds do with money: they buy shares and other bonds. This drives up share markets, which benefits Wall Street and the 1% directly. Brokers get paid lots of commission, most of which they stuff in their offshore bank accounts. They spend a fraction of this on Main Street, buying the odd hamburger.

But there would be far more money in Main Street’s hands if you put it there directly. There are many ways to do this, and it’s important to do it in a way that doesn’t favour people who borrowed over people who didn’t. But the easiest way to illustrate it is to imagine that you tell the Federal Reserve to buy mortgages directly from the public. For the Federal Reserve, there’s little practical difference what it’s doing right now, only 100% of the money it creates turns up in Main Street bank accounts rather than those of Pension Funds and Wall Street brokers. With less debt, there’ll be more spending by Main Street, and, as a result, more employment. The only sufferers will be bankers and Wall Street, who will have far less income-earning assets than they have now, and may even have to work for a living.

Read more …

So much for those predictions too.

Asian Markets Soar, Nikkei Rockets Close To 7% (CNBC)

Asia markets soared on Thursday with the Nikkei jumping close to 7%, as traders reassessed the economic impact of Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election. The Nikkei 225 ended up 6.72%, or 1,092.88 points, at 17,344.42, as the yen weakened against the dollar, trading at 105.42 as of 2:50 pm HK/SIN. The dollar/yen had plunged to 101 levels on Wednesday. “U.S. yields surged higher on the back of expected increased fiscal spending by Trump. This has helped the dollar rally sharply against other currencies but especially the low yielding yen and the euro,” Anthony Darvall, chief market strategist at easyMarkets, said in a note on Thursday.

“A weaker yen has helped propel Japanese stocks up…completely erasing yesterday’s losses.” The Australian benchmark index closed up 3.34%, or 172.27 points, at 5,328.8. The ASX’s strength was underpinned by its energy subindex, up 3.29%, and the materials subindex, up 5.75%. The gold subindex shed 4.82%. New Zealand’s NZX 50 ended up 1.04%, or 69.51 points, at 6,733.72. Before markets opened, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand cut rates by 25 basis points to a record low of 1.75%. The RBNZ statement warned that “numerous uncertainties remain, particularly in respect of the international outlook, and policy may need to adjust accordingly.”

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The predicted crash took exactly 49 minutes.

Dow Closes Up 250 Points; Financials Surge After Trump Election Upset (CNBC)

U.S. stocks surged more than 1% Wednesday with financials and health care leading after Republican Donald Trump won the presidential election, defying market expectations for a Hillary Clinton win. The day’s rally took the major averages within 2% of their all-time intraday highs, and marked a stunning recovery from a sharp plunge in stock index futures overnight. Trade volume Wednesday was roughly 12 billion shares, the highest since the surprise U.K. vote to leave the European Union in June. “Overnight was all about uncertainty. Today we know” the result,” said JJ Kinahan, chief strategist at TD Ameritrade. He said part of the day’s rally was fueled by short covering, and that volatility will likely continue as traders eye Trump’s potential Cabinet picks.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed up more than 250 points at 18,589, with Goldman Sachs and Caterpillar contributing the most to gains. With about half an hour to the close, the Dow briefly added more than 300 points and was tracking to close at a record high. The index came within about 25 points of its all-time intraday high of 18,668.44 touched in August and closed within half a% of that level. Financials leaped 4% in their best day since 2011 to lead S&P 500 advancers, followed by health care. Banks and diversified financials such as Morgan Stanley led financial sector gains, while biotech stocks led health care gains. “Within financial services, there is a guarded view that there may be less regulation [under Trump] than under a Clinton presidency,” said John Stadtler, head of U.S. financial services at PwC.

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Strong from David. “..the giant stock market bubble will now crash. [..] We will be in an official recession within 6 months.”

The Jig Is Up: America’s Voters Just Fired Their Ruling Elites (Stockman)

America’s voters fired their ruling elites last night. After 30 years of arrogant misrule and wantonly planting the seeds of economic and financial ruin throughout Flyover America, the Wall Street/Washington establishment and its mainstream media tools have been repudiated like never before in modern history. During the course of the past year, upwards of 70 million citizens – 59 million for Trump and 13 million for Bernie Sanders – have voted for dramatic change. That is, for an end to pointless and failed wars and interventions abroad and a bubble-based economic policy at home. The latter showered Wall Street and the bicoastal elites with vast financial windfalls – even as it left 90% of Flyover America behind, where households struggled with stagnant wages, vanishing jobs, soaring health costs, shrinking living standards and diminishing hope for the future.

The voters also said in no uncertain terms that they are fed-up with a “rigged” system that has one set of rules for establishment insiders and another for everyone else. In essence, that’s what servergate, the Clinton Foundation pay-to-play scandals and the trove of Wikileaks DNC/Podesta hacks was all about. Indeed, in his brawling style, the Donald in effect convinced a huge slice of the electorate that the Clintons amounted to America’s leading crime family. And while he may have exaggerated the extent of their personal crimes and misdemeanors, the latter functioned as a proxy for the beltway racketeering that has become the modus operandi of the Imperial City. Stated differently, the people did connect the dots. There is a straight line from repeal of Glass-Steagall by the Rubin-Clinton democrats in the late 1990s through the resounding repudiations of the Clintons last night.

This string includes the M&A roll-up of the giant Wall Street banks after 1998; the subprime mortgage scams, housing booms and subsequent crash during the next decade; the panicked multi-trillion bailouts of the Wall Street gambling houses in the fall of 2008 and the lunatic spree of central bank money pumping that followed; the soaring stock market fueled by the Fed’s free money that arose therefrom; and the egregious global fund-raising and shakedowns of the Clinton Foundation and personal wealth accumulations by the Clinton’s personally, capped by Hillary’s notorious $250,000 off-the-record speeches to Goldman Sachs.

What happened was that during the eight Obama years, Washington essentially borrowed $10 trillion, or nearly as much as the first 43 presidents did over 220 years, while the Fed expanded its balance sheet by 5X more than had happened during its first 94 years of existence. [..] For months and years to come, the Imperial City will be ungovernable and the nation will be racked with fiscal, financial, political and even constitutional crisis. By kicking the can in a ruinous direction for decades, America implicitly opted eventually for the bleeding cure. To wit, the giant stock market bubble will now crash. The stock-price obsessed C-suites of corporate America will now panic and begin pitching inventory and workers overboard. We will be in an official recession within 6 months. The Federal budget will plunge back into trillion dollar annual deficits very soon.

Accordingly, Washington will descend into permanent warfare over the debt ceiling and an exploding $20 trillion+ public debt. Any notion of a Trump economic revival program – even if it could now be confected – will be stillborn in the financial and fiscal chaos ahead. And most important of all, the almighty Fed will be stranded high and dry – out of dry powder and under political attack like never before from angry politicians and citizens alike. The jig is up.

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Earlier today I read what looks to be an apt observation: ‘Every white person in New York who didn’t vote for Trump is now out in the streets protesting against him’. Chaotic scenes in LA and other places too. But the people who protest now are miles off target and months too late: they should have stood up for Bernie when the Hillary camp and the DNC conspired to oust him. Indeed, Bernie himself should have stood up back then, not for himself but for his supporters; they would have stood up with him. Whether they all like it or not, being asleep and/or silent when big things happen that count, does carry a price. If you drop the ball, you can’t just pick it back up again and pretend it didn’t fall. Shouting ‘not my president’ in the wake of an election is a sign of weakness, no matter how well-intentioned. The protests should have taken place before the election, not after.

Thousands Protest Trump Win Around US (BBG)

The raw divisions exposed by the presidential race were on full display across America on Wednesday, as protesters flooded city streets to condemn Donald Trump’s election in demonstrations that police said were mostly peaceful. From New England to heartland cities like Kansas City and along the West Coast, many thousands of demonstrators carried flags and anti-Trump signs, disrupting traffic and declaring that they refused to accept Trump’s triumph. In Chicago, where thousands had recently poured into the streets to celebrate the Chicago Cubs’ first World Series victory in over a century, several thousand people marched through the Loop. They gathered outside Trump Tower, chanting “Not my president!”

Chicago resident Michael Burke said he believes the president-elect will “divide the country and stir up hatred.” He added there was a constitutional duty not to accept that outcome. A similar protest in Manhattan drew about 1,000 people. Outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in midtown, police installed barricades to keep the demonstrators at bay. Hundreds of protesters gathered near Philadelphia’s City Hall despite chilly, wet weather. Participants — who included both supporters of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost to Clinton in the primary — expressed anger at both Republicans and Democrats over the election’s outcome.

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Shouldn’t this be left up to Congress?

White House Won’t Rule Out Pardon to Protect Clinton From Trump (BBG)

The White House on Wednesday wouldn’t rule out issuing a pardon to protect Hillary Clinton from prosecution by the incoming administration over her use of a private e-mail server. President-elect Donald Trump threatened during his campaign to assign a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton. He blamed a “rigged system” for protecting her from prosecution after FBI director James Comey announced in July and again on Nov. 6, two days before the election, that his agency wouldn’t seek charges against the Democrat. “You’d be in jail,” Trump memorably warned Clinton during their final debate. Asked whether President Barack Obama might issue Clinton a pardon before he leaves office in January, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the administration doesn’t discuss such cases in advance.

Earnest indicated Obama was hopeful a pardon wouldn’t be necessary, noting that Trump was gracious toward Clinton in his victory speech early Wednesday morning. “We’ve got a long tradition in this country of people in power not using the criminal justice system to exact political revenge,” Earnest said. “We go to great lengths to insulate our criminal justice system from partisan politics.” Crowds at Trump’s rallies frequently chanted “lock her up” when the Republican mentioned Clinton’s name. Trump would occasionally join them. On Wednesday, as he claimed victory in the presidential race, Trump complimented Clinton for her campaign and her public service. “Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country,” he said.

Comey said in July that Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” in handling classified information, but that criminal prosecution wasn’t warranted. The Justice Department agreed. But proactively offering a pardon isn’t unprecedented. In 1974, Gerald Ford gave former president Richard Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for any crimes he might have committed while in the Oval Office. That move, derided by critics, underscored the political risks of such a move. Ford lost re-election to Democrat Jimmy Carter. Obama and Clinton are in a less perilous situation; Obama cannot run for president again, and Clinton’s political career is also likely over.

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Nothing new. And everyone knew it, too. Including Hillary and the DNC.

Trump Would Have Lost US Election If Bernie Had Been The Candidate (Ind.)

“Right now in every major poll, national poll and statewide poll done in the last month, six weeks, we are defeating Trump often by big numbers, and always at a larger margin than Secretary Clinton is.” So spoke Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton’s Democratic rival in the primary, when he appeared on the May 29 2016 edition of NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’. It was not the first time the socialist former Mayor of Burlington had made the claim. And it was something that his supporters believed passionately. Time after time, supporters of the white-haired, frequently cantankerous Democratic socialist, said the media was helping prepare a coronation for Ms Clinton in a way that was neither fair or democratic.

At a rally in the Bronx, New York, in April, Paul Nagel, 58, a gay rights and housing activist, told The Independent that Mr Sanders would go into the Oval Office on the back of a popular movement and that he could continue to listen to the people. “What we’re seeing now feels 1969,” he said. At rallies for the 74-year-old across the country, there was a sense of euphoria and excitement that simply did not exist at those for Ms Clinton. Ms Clinton’s supporters said they had made a calculation to vote for her as they believed she would be the best candidate to lead the country, but there was no sense of the passion witnessed at her rivals’ events, or those of Barack Obama eight years earlier.

But it was not just anecdotal evidence. A series of polls suggested that Mr Sanders – with his calls for free college tuition, the removal of student debt, a national health service and the removal of big money from politics – would stand a better chance against Mr Trump than Ms Clinton. A poll by NBC News-Wall Street Journal on May 15 said Ms Clitnon would beat Mr Trump by three points, but said Mr Sanders would win by 15 points. A CBS News-New York Times on May 3 gave Ms Clinton a six-point advantage over Mr Trump, but said Mr Sanders would win by 13 points. At the same time, Fox News said Ms Clinton would lose to Mr Trump by three points, but said Mr Sanders would win by four.

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‘Mocks’ is a ridiculous term to use here.

WikiLeaks Mocks Dems After Election Loss (Hill)

WikiLeaks capped off Tuesday’s surprising presidential election with a tweet appearing to mock Democrats for picking Hillary Clinton as their nominee. “By biasing its internal electoral market the DNC selected the less competitive candidate defeating the purpose of running a primary,” the official account tweeted near midnight. Throughout the campaign, WikiLeaks published hacked DNC emails that it said showed the party was biased toward Clinton over her primary rival, Bernie Sanders. Some emails showed DNC staffers discussing how to expedite Sanders’s exit from the primary race after it was clear Clinton would win. Others appeared to show then-CNN analyst Donna Brazile leaking questions to the Clinton campaign in advance of town hall debates between the two Democrats.

Donald Trump’s campaign also seized on the hacked emails to argue that Clinton and Democrats had treated Sanders unfairly, as he made a play for the Vermont senator’s supporters. On Tuesday, WikiLeaks head Julian Assange posted a winding statement on his site expressing his dislike of both candidates, saying that the site had an obligation to leak the Clinton-related emails even though it did not have a similar set of Trump documents. “Publishing is what we do. To withhold the publication of such information until after the election would have been to favour one of the candidates above the public’s right to know,” Assange wrote.

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Whaddaya know: A voice of reason in the otherwise full-tard anti-Trump Guardian.

Trump Could Bring Russia In From The Cold (Dejevsky)

As the tally turned towards a victory for Donald Trump in the middle of the European night, comments began to appear on social media to the effect that Russian intelligence had won its biggest victory in the country’s history. More than this, that the Kremlin had actually captured the United States. The prominent, if spectral, role played by Russia was one of the stranger aspects of this already strange US election. And these comments were alarmist, if logical, extensions of the claims made by the Clinton camp during the campaign that Trump was somehow in cahoots with President Vladimir Putin and that the Russian state was interfering in the election on his behalf. There was precious little evidence for such claims, and Putin himself ridiculed them at his annual Valdai meeting with international Russian specialists two weeks ago.

Was the US a banana republic, he asked, that its elections could be so easily manipulated? Of course not. But they were useful to the Democrats’ campaign in showing off Hillary Clinton as a tough foreign policy president-in-waiting and demonising Trump by association. They were not useful enough, though, given the result. Either the voting public dismissed them, or perhaps they agreed with Trump that improved relations with Russia might be a good thing. In any case, they turned out not to be the black mark the Clinton campaign expected. There is no mystery about why the accusations took hold. It was in part because Trump had said early on that he thought he could do business with Putin, earning him the reputation of being soft on big bad Russia. Then the Democrats at their convention chose to divert blame for the hacking of their computer system on to Russian intelligence.

This was never conclusively proved and all the supposedly corroborating statements from US officials contained get-out clauses. People with intelligence connections suggested that everyone tried to hack everyone’s computers, especially at election time, without any intention of actually interfering. The truth of any Russian involvement will probably never be known. But certain myths that gained currency need to be dispelled. One was that Trump was receiving privileged information from Russia. In fact, anything he said was already openly available before he said it. Another was that Trump had complicated and suspect business dealings with Russia. No evidence was ever produced – despite what must have been exhaustive efforts by the Clinton campaign[..]. There also seems to have been some confusion between Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, which hardly reflects well on the accusers.

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Let’s see first. But Donald had better be careful with that. All nominations will face heavy scrutiny.

Donald Trump’s Financial Advisory Team Stocked With Wall Streeters (WSJ)

Donald Trump’s successful insurgent bid for the White House promised to upend a global power structure that benefited large corporations. Now, several Wall Street financiers and other successful business leaders could be in line to run top posts in his presidential administration. People close to Mr. Trump have said he is considering Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker who became his national campaign finance chairman in May, as his pick for Treasury secretary. If tapped for the job, Mr. Mnuchin would become the third Goldman alumnus in the last 20 years to head the Treasury, following Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson, who both served as the bank’s chief executive.

After a 17-year career at Goldman, where Mr. Mnuchin led the mortgage-trading department and was the bank’s chief information officer, he turned to investing. He briefly worked for a hedge fund tied to George Soros, the big Democratic donor. In his closing campaign ad, Mr. Trump featured both Goldman and Mr. Soros as “the establishment…who control the levers of power in Washington.” Advisers to Mr. Trump have said promptly filling senior appointments would help calm jittery markets, which saw volatility soar after it became apparent that Mr. Trump, a political outsider who broke with the political philosophy that has defined both parties, would win the election.

“Just as he comforted a lot of people when he picked Mike Pence as his running mate, they’ll be much more comfortable when they see what the team will be,” predicted Wilbur Ross, the private-equity investor who has advised Mr. Trump on economic policy. Business leaders have been “incorrectly worried about what might happen under Trump,” Mr. Ross said.

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Cooperation it is.

Mexico Will Not Pay For Trump Wall, But Seeks Cooperation (R.)

Mexico said on Wednesday it would work with Donald Trump for the benefit of both nations after his surprise U.S. election win, but reiterated it would not pay for his planned border wall, which stirred up deep resentment during a fraught presidential campaign. As Trump strode toward victory, the peso plunged 13% in its biggest fall since the Tequila Crisis devaluation 22 years ago, before paring losses to trade down 8.7% at 19.91 per dollar. Still, officials held back from taking action to support the peso despite it hitting lifetime lows overnight. Trump’s threats to dump the NAFTA agreement with Mexico and Canada, and to tax money sent home by migrants to pay for the controversial wall on the southern border, have made the peso particularly vulnerable to events in the U.S. presidential race.

“Very hard times are coming to Mexico,” said analyst Gabriela Siller of Mexican bank BASE. Still, President Enrique Pena Nieto said he called to congratulate Trump, and had agreed to meet the New Yorker during the transition phase to discuss joint cooperation, which he hopes would strengthen the competitiveness of North America. Welcoming Trump’s victory speech pledge to seek “common ground” and partnership with other countries, Pena Nieto said in a televised statement that Mexico shared the same vision. [..] Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu reiterated that Mexico would not pay for Trump’s proposed wall. The vow to make Mexico pay for the barrier was a key feature of his stump speeches.

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“..the word “never” apparently means 49 minutes to a Nobel laureate, because that’s how long it took for the S&P 500 to turn positive for the day..”

Meanwhile, As The World Watched The Election.. (Black)

[..] when I woke up this morning here in Thailand and flipped on the TV, the first thing I saw was Wolf Blitzer having an orgasm every time Hillary won an electoral vote. It’s almost comical to suggest there was any semblance of objectivity throughout the entire cycle. Hillary Clinton had the full and unabashed backing of the entire media establishment. And the banking establishment. And the political establishment. And countless billionaires, Hollywood celebrities, rock stars, international press, foreign leaders, and even the President of the United States. Yet all of those big guns proved to be ineffective against a citizenry that’s fed up with the status quo.

At least the losing side has accepted its defeat with quiet dignity. University students across the country have come out of their safe spaces to protest by the thousand, chanting “F*ck Donald Trump” and “Not my President”. The students’ sudden fury may be what caused the Canadian government’s immigration website to temporarily go down (though I’m sure this will somehow be blamed on the Russians). Liberal papers like the Huffington Post are running headlines like “An American Tragedy”, while NYT bloggers are calling Trump voters “racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic.” Celebrities had some real gems like “Well, congratulations America you f–ked this one up,” and “I feel like I’m about to give birth to a baby that’s already dead.”

Comedian Chelsea Handler posted one of the most bizarre Tweets of the night, saying “My condolences to the President and First Lady. We will keep aiming high. We may not have you honored you this time, but we will honor you.” So apparently this exercise of American democracy has dishonored the President. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman commented that tumultuous financial markets would “never” recover. Wow. Never. But the word “never” apparently means 49 minutes to a Nobel laureate, because that’s how long it took for the S&P 500 to turn positive for the day once the market opened. Investors ostensibly realized that, despite the Trump victory, Disney will keep making superhero movies, Coke will keep distributing poisonous flavored water, and Mark Zuckerberg will keep selling your personal data to advertisers.

[..] I thought the late-night quickie from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta summed it up perfectly. While Hillary stayed in her $20,000/night suite at the Peninsula Hotel, Podesta was sent to tell the crowd of Clinton supporters that “She is not done yet!” Nonsense. It was a big fat lie. Minutes later she called Donald Trump to concede the election. Anyone trying to understand why she lost might take note of this deceit– even at the bitter end. She lied to her own supporters.

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All bubble cities should pay attention. Vancouver appears to be making this work.

Vancouver Wields $10,000-a-Day Fine in Crackdown on Empty Homes (BBG)

Want to keep your million-dollar luxury pad in Vancouver empty? Get ready to pay C$10,000 ($7,450) annually in extra taxes. Lie about it? That’ll be C$10,000 a day in fines. Canada’s most-expensive property market, suffering from a near-zero supply of rental homes, announced the details of a new tax aimed at prodding absentee landlords into making their properties available for lease. The empty-home tax will take effect by Jan. 1 and will be calculated at 1% of the property’s assessed value, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson told reporters at City Hall. “Vancouver is in a rental-housing crisis,” Robertson said. “The city won’t sit on the sidelines while over 20,000 empty and under-occupied properties hold back homes from renters.”

The measure is among efforts to make housing more accessible and affordable in Vancouver, ranked the world’s third-most-livable city, and has drawn attention for its sky-high prices fomented by global money flows. Public scrutiny has focused on absentee landlords, particularly from overseas, who are accused of sitting on investment properties where windows remain dark throughout the year. In August, the provincial government imposed a 15% tax on foreign buyers, and last month the federal government tightened mortgage insurance eligibility requirements. The city of Vancouver has focused its efforts on the rental market, where vacancies can get scooped up within hours while bidding wars drive up leasing costs.

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The only possible outcome.

India’s Shock Bank Note Ban Sparks Cash Chaos (R.)

Indians struggled to pay for basic goods like food and fuel on Wednesday and fretted about their savings, after the government withdrew 500 and 1,000 rupee notes from circulation in a bid to flush out money hidden from the tax man. The shock measure also sent shudders through the investment community on a day when the markets were also reeling at the election of Republican candidate Donald Trump as the next U.S. president. India’s National Stock Exchange share index slumped as much as 6.3% in early trade before recovering most losses to close the day off 1.3%.

The currency move, announced late on Tuesday night by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, aims to bring billions of dollars worth of unaccounted wealth into the mainstream economy and curb corruption. The biggest disruption in decades to cash transactions, which power much of the rural economy, comes months before a series of state elections including in India’s most populous Uttar Pradesh state. Critics have warned that ordinary people who do not have access to the banking system will be hardest hit, and that Modi risks upsetting his ruling party’s support base of small traders and businessmen who largely deal in cash.

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Obama visits Athens Nov 15.

Hand Grenade Thrown Outside French Embassy In Athens (AP)

A hand grenade attack outside the French Embassy in central Athens lightly wounded a policeman early Thursday, police said, days before U.S. President Barack Obama is due to visit the Greek capital. Authorities said the policeman, who had been on guard outside the embassy, was wounded when unknown assailants threw a hand grenade outside the embassy building, located opposite Parliament on a major avenue. Police shut down the area to vehicles and pedestrians, while anti-terrorism forensics experts combed the scene for evidence.

Police said the attack was apparently carried out by two people on a motorbike, and a bike matching the description was later found in a central Athens neighborhood popular with anarchists and was being examined to determine whether it was the one that had been used in the attack. Authorities said it appeared the policeman had only been lightly wounded because he had been inside an armored guard post outside the embassy entrance. The attack came days before Obama is to arrive in Athens next week for an expected overnight visit. Left-wing organizations have announced they will hold protests during the visit.

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Nov 092016
 
 November 9, 2016  Posted by at 10:29 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  7 Responses »


Javier Juén 2016

Donald Trump Wins White House in Astonishing Victory (AP)
Global Markets Roiled as Trump Election Win Upends Forecasts (BBG)
Putin Congratulates Trump, Hopes To Work On International Issues (RT)
World Leaders Brace Themselves For Trump Presidency (G.)
Canada Immigration Website Crashes As Trump’s US Election Lead Grows (G.)
Donald Trump’s Victory Is Nothing Short Of A Revolution (G.)
Toronto Million-Dollar Homes Pushing Demand to Nearby Cities (BBG)
India Abolishes Larger Banknotes In Fight Against Graft, ‘Black Money’ (CNBC)
Spanish Philosopher Marina: ‘We Have Lost The Idea Of Europe’ (EurActiv)
The True Scandal Of 2016 Was The Torture Of Chelsea Manning (Scahill)
Geoffrey Pyatt: Greece An Island Of Stability, Owes Its Success To EU (Kath.)

 

 

 

The media are not yet ready to cover something they opinionated so frantically against.

Donald Trump Wins White House in Astonishing Victory

Donald Trump has been elected the next president of the United States — a remarkable showing by the celebrity businessman and political novice who upended American politics with his bombastic rhetoric. Trump rode an astonishing wave of support from voters seeking sweeping change, capitalizing on voters’ economic anxieties, taking advantage of racial tensions and overcoming a string of sexual assault allegations on his way to the White House. His triumph over Hillary Clinton will end eight years of Democratic dominance of the White House and threatens to undo major achievements of President Barack Obama. He’s pledged to act quickly to repeal Obama’s landmark health-care law, revoke the nuclear agreement with Iran and rewrite important trade deals with other countries, particularly Mexico and Canada.

The Republican blasted through Democrats’ longstanding firewall, carrying Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states that hadn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since the 1980s. He needed to win nearly all of the competitive battleground states, and he did just that, claiming Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and others. Global stock markets and U.S. stock futures plunged deeply, reflecting investor alarm over what a Trump presidency might mean for the economy and trade. Trump will take office with Congress expected to be fully under Republican control. Republican Senate candidates fended off Democratic challengers in key states and appeared poised to maintain the majority. Republicans also maintained their grip on the House. Senate control means Trump will have great leeway in appointing Supreme Court justices, which could mean a major change to the right that could last for decades.

Trump upended years of political convention on his way to the White House, levelling harshly personal insults on his rivals, deeming Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers, and vowing to temporarily suspend Muslim immigration to the U.S. He never released his tax returns, breaking with decades of campaign tradition, and eschewed the kind of robust data and field efforts that helped Obama win two terms in the White House, relying instead on his large, free-wheeling rallies to energize supporters. His campaign was frequently in chaos, and he cycled through three campaign managers this year. His final campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, touted the team’s accomplishments as the final results rolled in, writing on Twitter that “rally crowds matter” and “we expanded the map.”

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Shocks are wearing off already.

Global Markets Roiled as Trump Election Win Upends Forecasts (BBG)

Global markets were thrown into disarray as Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, shocking traders after recent polls indicated that Hillary Clinton would be the victor. Futures on the S&P 500 Index plunged by a 5% limit that triggers trading curbs and European equities sank the most since the aftermath of Britain’s shock vote to leave the European Union. Gold advanced with haven assets including the yen and sovereign bonds. Mexico’s peso tumbled the most since 2008 amid concern U.S. trade policies will become more protectionist under Trump. The dollar pared losses and Treasuries trimmed gains after Trump appeared before supporters.

Trump was projected to be the winner early Wednesday by the AP and television networks after Wisconsin pushed him over the 270 Electoral College vote threshold needed to become president-elect. The Republicans also retained control of Congress. A Trump victory had been portrayed by analysts as having the potential to unhinge markets that were banking on a continuation of policies that coincided with the second-longest bull market in S&P 500 history. Brexit was the last major political shock and led to the U.S. equity gauge sliding 5.3% in two days. “A Trump win is expected to damage trade,” said James Butterfill, head of research and investment strategy at ETF Securities in London. “Traders are already expressing their worries through a depreciating dollar, which is bad news for European companies.”

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I’m sure you’d rather have seen war with Russia.

Putin Congratulates Trump, Hopes To Work On International Issues (RT)

In a message to Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed confidence that the dialogue between Moscow and Washington, in keeping with each other’s views, meets the interests of both Russia and the US. Putin also expressed hope over the joint efforts on bringing Russian-American relations out of their current crisis. The Russian leader noted in the message that he hopes to address some “burning issues that are currently on the international agenda, and search for effective responses to the challenges of the global security,” RIA Novosti reported. On top of it, Putin has expressed confidence that “building a constructive dialogue between Moscow and Washington, based on principles of equality, mutual respect and each other’s positions, meets the interests of the peoples of our countries and of the entire international community.”

According to many observers, US-Russia relations are now at their lowest point since the Cold War. Putin has repeatedly noted that the worsening of Russia’s relations with the US “was not our choice,” however. For things to improve between Moscow and Washington, the US should first and foremost start acting like an equal partner and respect Russia’s interests rather than try to dictate terms, Putin said last month. “We are concerned with the deterioration of Russian-American relations, but that was not our choice, we never wanted that. On the contrary, we want to have friendly relations with the US, a great country and a leading economy,” Putin said at an economic forum in Moscow. The US will have to negotiate with Russia on finding solutions to international issues as no state is now able to act alone, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week, adding that problems in bilateral relations began to mount long before the Ukrainian crisis broke out in 2014.

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Brussels is full of puppets who won’t feel all that easy today, having ridiculed and vilified Trump for a long time.

World Leaders Brace Themselves For Trump Presidency (G.)

At midnight in Washington, as Donald Trump’s victory became inevitable, the French ambassador to the US sent out a tweet. “It is the end of an era,” he declared, “that of neoliberalism.” “It remains to be seen what will succeed it,” Gérard Araud added. “After Brexit and this election, everything is now possible. A world is collapsing before our eyes.” Those sweeping observations were later deleted, but the underlying sentiment will be widely shared in western capitals. Overnight, the world entered uncharted territory. President-elect Trump spent the campaign threatening to upend what has been called the existing order, the network of treaties and multilateral institutions that govern much of global relations.

He has said he would tear up and renegotiate trade treaties, and he has even called into question America’s commitment to the Nato alliance. With a completely different kind of leader preparing to enter the Oval Office, it is already looking like a world turned upside down. There is a caveat to the direst predictions. Trump will have to work with Congress, including establishment foreign policy Republicans. And he will have to find people to staff the top positions in his administration. It is possible that he will simply enjoy his victory and his new home in the White House and delegate foreign policy to Republican insiders such as Stephen Hadley, George W Bush’s national security adviser who is rumoured to be interested in reprising his role. That Bush administration seemed radical at the time, but no longer in relation to Trump’s stated agenda.

On balance, it seems more likely that he means what he has said all along about US relations with the rest of the world, and intends to turn his ideas into policy under his personal leadership. Long-negotiated multilateral trade deals, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Europe, will be the first to be halted. Opposition to those deals were a cornerstone of the Trump campaign. In their place, Trump has said he will negotiate bilateral deals that would be more favourable for US manufacturing. But he would face hostile trading partners, irritated at the dumping of major agreements. A constant theme of his campaign was to denigrate Chinese trading practices and to promise to claw back American advantage. China will not make concessions easily. Trump’s America could easily face a trade backlash.

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Time for Trump to get deeper into Canadian real estate.

Canada Immigration Website Crashes As Trump’s US Election Lead Grows (G.)

Canada’s main immigration website appeared to suffer repeated outages on Tuesday night as Trump took the lead in several major states and his prospects for winning the US presidency turned markedly higher. Some users in the United States, Canada and Asia saw an internal server error message when trying to access the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website. When the Guardian clicked on the page it would not load and a “this page isn’t working” error message came up. Officials for the ministry could not immediately be reached for comment, but the website’s problems were noted by many on Twitter.

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There’ll be a lot of opinions like this one: “boy, were we wrong, but really, we’re so right we just gotta wear shades.”

Donald Trump’s Victory Is Nothing Short Of A Revolution (G.)

We may as well call this what it is: a revolution. Because nothing else comes close to capturing the political revolt – and the chaos that surely follows – from Donald Trump’s stunning victory in 2016. We were all wrong. So badly wrong. The polls, the pundits, the press. The elites, the allies, the business leaders. Trump’s victory makes the upset of Brexit look like a quaint tiff over a round of golf. America and its relationship to the world has fundamentally changed overnight. An era that stretches back to Franklin D Roosevelt just came to an abrupt and ugly end. Instead of being an expansive, outward-looking, globalist power, the United States has definitively turned inward, shutting its borders to Mexicans, Muslims and any number of other perceived enemies of Trump’s demagogic imagination.

At the same time, America itself has been redefined. The bond between its president and its constitution will be strained, if Trump pursues a fraction of what he so clearly promised through this extraordinary election. His political enemies – notably Hillary Clinton – can expect prosecution led by an FBI that previously found no grounds for legal action over her private email server. The Trump Department of Justice will seek prison time for Clinton, and the only barrier to this punishment is the third and independent branch of government: the judiciary. Trump promised a deportation force to round up hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of undocumented immigrants starting on his inauguration day in January. His transition to government will surely be dominated by plans to rip through the Latino communities of America’s largest cities.

There will be no judicial restraint in these immigration cases. Amid the political upheaval, we can expect massive economic dislocation. The financial markets will now be calculating the price of uncertainty in global trade flows as they contemplate Trump’s promises to impose huge tariffs on China, restrict international investment by US companies, and force an epic diplomatic breach with Mexico over his beloved wall. Taken together, Trump’s victory ushers in the most tumultuous period of American history since the Great Depression and the start of world war two. It will challenge the core concepts of American identity and global security as we have known them for generations.

Overnight, Russia has moved from perennial rival to trusted friend, while Nato’s future is in peril. Allies can now expect to pay for their security umbrella, as the US military effectively turns into a mercenary force. Many countries may find cheaper options and break with the US entirely.

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Vancouver stifled this; TO should too.

Toronto Million-Dollar Homes Pushing Demand to Nearby Cities (BBG)

Toronto’s hot housing market is driving residents to seek more affordable options outside Canada’s largest city, pushing demand for new properties to new highs in these outlying towns. Residential permits in Hamilton, a city of about 500,000 people an hour’s drive from Toronto, more than doubled to a record C$204 million ($153 million) in September, according to Statistics Canada. That’s the largest jump in more than six years for the area reliant on manufacturing and steel production. The value of permits in St. Catharines, in the wine-growing Niagara region, jumped to the second highest on record to C$66 million in the month. The surge in new housing demand in outlying regions of Toronto comes amid escalating prices and all-time-high sales in Canada’s financial capital.

The average price of a detached house in downtown Toronto jumped 22% in October from the prior year to C$1.3 million amid a record number of sales, according to the city’s real estate board. The more affordable condominiums are also facing growing demand and escalating costs, with sales up 20% and the average price up 13%, nearing half-a-million dollars. Hamilton-Burlington is already feeling the effects of the pent-up housing demand. Sales of all housing types rose to a record high for the month of October as listings dropped 3.2% and properties were snapped up within a month of listing. The average price of a freehold home increased 15% to C$540,250, still less than half the cost of a Toronto property.

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In a society of over a billion people who trade mostly in cash.

India Abolishes Larger Banknotes In Fight Against Graft, ‘Black Money’ (CNBC)

Consumers in the world’s biggest democracy just got a big surprise. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced that 500 and 1,000 rupee banknotes would be withdrawn from circulation at midnight, saying it was part of a crackdown on rampant corruption and counterfeit currency. India is hampered by so-called black money that is undeclared, untaxed or under the table, said Sasha Riser-Kositsky at research firm Eurasia Group. The unexpected step appears designed to bring billions of dollars worth of cash in unaccounted wealth into the mainstream economy, as well as hit the finances of Islamist militants who target India and are suspected of using fake 500 rupee notes to fund operations. “The move to restrict the circulation of large-denomination currency notes represents a major step in the government’s fight against black money,” Riser-Kositsky said.

Speaking in an address to the nation, Modi said that black money “and corruption are the biggest obstacles in eradicating poverty.” New 500 and 2,000 rupee denomination notes will be issued at a later date, he added. Those notes are worth roughly $7.53 and $30.14, respectively, but they represent very large-denomination bills in the country. The average daily income in India was 272.19 rupees in 2014, or about $4.09 at today’s conversion rate, according to the country’s Labor Bureau. “It shows resolve on the part of the government to do something about black money, which I like a lot,” a hedge fund investor who is active in India but requested anonymity told CNBC. The investor added, however, that “I do think there’s going to be a backlash. A lot of the economy is still cash-driven, and this will inconvenience a lot of people and transactions.”

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Yeah. Many years ago.

Spanish Philosopher Marina: ‘We Have Lost The Idea Of Europe’ (EurA)

Philosopher José Antonio Marina told EurActiv Spain that the idea of Europe has been lost and called on the EU to undertake a period of “quiet” reflection in order to relaunch a project imbued with “intellectual, political and economic vigour”. “The idea that we have about Europe has a direct impact,” which means that the European Union “needs to enter a much more reflective period in order to find solutions to problems that were unimaginable before”, warned philosopher José Antonio Marina. As an example, the Spaniard cited Brexit, and the issue of activating Article 50, which for an exclusive club only accustomed to enlargement has come as a shock. The EU’s doors are still open to new members of course.

Marina added that one of the EU’s major problems is that it has not spent enough time delving into one particular issue: sovereignty. The British, who “are very practical” and “have a clear idea of England, but not of Europe”, preferred to “regain their sovereignty, even if it makes them poorer”, insisted the Toledo-born thinker. “Sovereignty has always been a complicated issue,” he continued. “In Europe, this debate has been diluted, it has become tired and has not been carried out well,” Marina claimed, adding that this whole concept, as well as the concept of the nation, has to be rethought. However, he warned that regulatory system reforms have to be done carefully, because “they are tools that contain a lot of wisdom”.

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I agree with Scahill’s main topic, but cringe at seeing him fall for the “Trump’s bizarre and consistent lauding of Vladimir Putin” narrative.

The True Scandal Of 2016 Was The Torture Of Chelsea Manning (Scahill)

A few days ago, we learned that Private Chelsea Manning attempted to take her own life last month for the second time since being sentenced to 35 years at the U.S. military prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. The whistleblower, who provided the collateral murder video, the Iraq and Afghan war logs, and the hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. State Department cables to Wikileaks, was convicted of espionage. As I waited to vote today, I found myself thinking of her languishing in misery in isolation and incarceration. This election — particularly in its closing stages — has been dominated by controversies over emails, classified documents, and Wikileaks.

We’ve heard endlessly about Hillary Clinton’s private basement server, her 33,000 deleted emails, the phishing and leaking of John Podesta’s emails, including parts of Clinton’s much discussed private speeches to Goldman Sachs. Trump, for his part, suddenly discovered a great love for Julian Assange, though he does have trouble correctly spelling Wikileaks in his tweets of praise. Taken together with Trump’s bizarre and consistent lauding of Vladimir Putin and leaks from the U.S. intelligence community, the country has been treated to an odd flashback of Cold War propaganda, including a fair dose of red-baiting from the Democrats. In the matter of Anthony Weiner’s computer, his wife Huma Abedin’s communications and the potential implications for Clinton, the FBI, whose overreach had not previously been of much concern to Democrats, suddenly became a deviant manipulator of the electoral process, while Trump and his supporters alternately praised the agency’s professionalism and denounced it as part of the rigged system.

The U.S. public is now getting a taste of the way hacking, phishing, and an overwhelming dependence on fallible machines and networks can impact politics. But let’s be clear: None of the disclosures in this campaign — not one thing in any of the hacked emails or those declassified and released from Clinton’s private server — has brought to light anything of greater importance than the documents Chelsea Manning provided to Wikileaks. She revealed war crimes, including murder and torture, dirty and duplicitous dealings of the U.S. and its allies, exposed liars, documented a secret history of America’s longest running war, and forced a much needed debate about the U.S. role in the world. And for that, she is being tortured.

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Talk about a Trojan horse. More like a Trojan assclown. Maybe Trump can get rid of him.

Geoffrey Pyatt: Greece An Island Of Stability, Owes Its Success To EU (Kath.)

A week before a scheduled visit to Athens by US President Barack Obama, American Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt on Tuesday emphasized that Greece is an island of stability in a volatile region and that the country’s success is linked to the success of the European Union. Pyatt made his comments during a meeting with Parliament Speaker Nikos Voutsis. The two men’s talks focused on the political situation in their respective countries, the state of Greece’s economy and the refugee crisis. Pyatt also met with Deputy Prime Minister Yiannis Dragasakis for talks that focused on the meetings Obama is to have in Athens next week.

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