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Debt Rattle December 9 2024

Dec 092024
 
 December 9, 2024  Posted by at 10:31 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


Johannes Vermeer The soldier and the laughing girl 1657

 

• Syria’s Assad Resigns Amid Peace Efforts, Orders Peaceful Power Handover (Sp.)
• General Staff, Kremlin Agree To Withdraw Under Turkish Safe Passage (Helmer)
• Syria’s Assad In Moscow – Senior Diplomat (RT)
• Putin and Xi and Iran The Unready (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Trump Was ‘Reluctant’ To Meet Zelensky – Axios (RT)
• Zelensky Rejects Trump’s Peace Call (RT)
• Trump Says He’ll ‘Probably’ Cut Ukraine Aid (RT)
• Rumors Swirl About The West Planning To ‘Exile’ Zelensky (RMX)
• Trump’s Estimate Of Russian Losses Wrong – Kremlin (RT)
• Rand Paul Warns Musk & Ramaswamy About The Swamp’s Upcoming DOGE Dodge (ZH)
• In the West Law Is Being Separated from Truth and Justice (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Trump Vows To Pardon Jan. 6 Rioters On Day One After Getting Into Office (JTN)
• Democrat Party Going Extinct – Martin Armstrong (USAW)
• Ex-Secret Service Agent Warns Trump Likely To Be Attacked Before Jan 20 (MN)
• Biden ‘Worst President’ In Modern History; Devastating New Poll Finds (ZH)
• Rep. Eli Crane: Daniel Penny Should Receive Congressional Gold Medal (JTN)
• This is Not the Time for Balance: LA Times Columnist Resigns (Turley)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Full Welker interview

 

 

Rand Paul
https://twitter.com/i/status/1865529326919377302

Terrell

 

 

 

 

When did Assad first see it coming?

• Syria’s Assad Resigns Amid Peace Efforts, Orders Peaceful Power Handover (Sp.)

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, after negotiations with several participants in the conflict in Syria, has decided to step down from his position and leave the country, giving instructions for a peaceful transfer of power, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported. “As a result of negotiations between Bashar al-Assad and several participants in the armed conflict on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, he made the decision to resign from the presidency and leave the country, giving instructions for a peaceful transfer of power. Russia was not involved in these negotiations,” the Russian Foreign Ministry stated in a Telegram post. The ministry also emphasized that Russia is deeply concerned about the dramatic events unfolding in Syria.

Furthermore, Russia calls on all parties involved in Syria to renounce violence and resolve governance issues through political means, and in this regard, Moscow is in contact with all Syrian opposition factions. “We urge all parties involved to refrain from violence and resolve all governance issues through political means,” the ministry’s statement reads. “In this context, the Russian Federation is in contact with all factions of the Syrian opposition. We call for respect for the views of all ethnic and confessional groups in Syrian society and support efforts to establish an inclusive political process based on the unanimously adopted UN Security Council Resolution 2254,” the Foreign Ministry emphasized. Earlier, UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen proposed the urgent organization of inter-Syrian negotiations in Geneva.

“We hope that these approaches will be taken into account by the UN and all interested parties, including in the context of implementing the initiative of the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, for the urgent organization of inclusive inter-Syrian negotiations in Geneva,” the Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement said. Meanwhile, Russian military bases in Syria are on high alert. “Russian military bases in Syria are on heightened combat readiness. Currently, there is no serious threat to their security,” the statement concluded.

Sachs Syria
https://twitter.com/i/status/1865744518995218747

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“..what we see in Syria is the sum of the worst misjudgements and mistakes the Russians made in the Ukraine..”

• General Staff, Kremlin Agree To Withdraw Under Turkish Safe Passage (Helmer)

When former president Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of the Security Council; the Russian military bloggers and the GRU’s favoured journalist; are as silent on Russian military action in Syria as they are at the moment, the signal they are sending is unmistakeably loud. It is the sound of recriminations for President Vladimir Putin; for the commanders of Russia’s forces in Syria; for General Valery Gerasimov, head of the General Staff, the GRU, and the Defense Ministry – all for having failed to detect, warn, or act on the Turkish, Israeli and American preparation of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces for their drive to Damascus to replace Bashar al-Assad, and allowing the Israeli Air Force (IAF) to stop Hezbollah from reinforcing its units in Syria from Lebanon, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps from flying reinforcements from Iran.

“Yes,” says a well-informed Moscow source, “what we see in Syria is the sum of the worst misjudgements and mistakes the Russians made in the Ukraine. This is the Kremlin for one hundred percent. But in the Ukraine there has been learning from the mistakes and recovery. I don’t believe the defeat in Syria will lead to Putin making more concessions to Washington on Ukraine. On the contrary, I believe it hardens the positions on the Ukraine and releases the General Staff to wage strategic war with the US.” There is a line of thinking in the General Staff, hinted in reporting by Russian military bloggers, which has proposed to preserve the bases at Tartus and Khmeimim, and establish a defence in depth between the north-south D35 road and the sea. This territory is west of the M5 highway linking Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus, all of which HTS have captured.

This roughly approximates the territory known in the Ottoman Empire until 1914 as the sanjak of Latakia. A reliable military source says “the Russians would need to hold the north-south M53, D35, and D34 highways. This would give [Syrian Special Forces Commander General Suhayl] Hassan the capacity to maintain the defence all along this new border. This means retaking Masyaf, an important road junction west of Hama, and also Rabu.” Hassan was last reported to have been headed for Latakia; there is no sign that he and his forces are capable of fight. Assad and his family have arrived in Moscow with family members, the state news agency Tass has reported. Tass added the hint that negotiations are under way for evacuation of the bases. “Russian officials are in touch with representatives of armed Syrian opposition, whose leaders have guaranteed security of Russian military bases and diplomatic missions on the Syrian territory.”

The tactical and operational difficulties are insurmountable, another Russian source believes. He acknowledges there is no sign of the political will for the fight at the Kremlin. There are more signs, the source adds, that the order has been given to negotiate with the Turks a safe-passage agreement for full withdrawal from the country of all Russians. Local reports are currently indicating that HTS and Turkish forces have moved west of the M5 highway to take Jebla, a town six kilometres from Khmeimim. If true, this indicates that the fight-back option has run out of opportunity on the ground, and will in the Kremlin. The only senior Russian official to break the silence has been Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. He was speaking in Doha on Saturday, November 7, before the fall of Damascus and the flight of Assad.

The HTS operation was understood in advance, Lavrov admitted. It had been “carefully and long planned and is an attempt to change the situation on the ground, to change the balance of power. We will oppose this in every possible way, support the legitimate Syrian authorities and at the same time actively promote the need to resume dialogue with the opposition, as required by UN Security Council Resolution 2254.” Lavrov also acknowledged the strategic scale of the defeat Russia has suffered. “Nothing goes smoothly in world diplomacy, but the events which we are witnessing today, they are clearly geared to undermine everything we have been doing during those years.”

Kerry

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“..Russian military bases in Syria are on combat alert, but are not considered to be at serious risk..”

• Syria’s Assad In Moscow – Senior Diplomat (RT)

Bashar Assad and his family are in Moscow, senior Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov said early Monday morning, seemingly confirming previous media reports that the former Syrian president has been granted asylum. The government in Damascus fell to militants on Sunday. Ulyanov, who leads Moscow’s delegation to international organizations headquartered in Vienna, said the presence of the Assads in Moscow shows that “Russia does not betray its friends in difficult situations… unlike the US.”On Sunday, Russian news agencies cited diplomatic sources as saying that Assad and his family members had arrived in Russia. They were reportedly granted asylum “on humanitarian grounds.”

Over the weekend, the Syrian Army stood down as Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) jihadists and US-armed Free Syrian Army (FSA) militants advanced on Damascus and took over the Syrian capital. The anti-Assad forces declared him deposed and claimed control over the country’s government. Assad agreed to step down following back-channel talks with unspecified armed groups and left the country, instructing officials to conduct “a peaceful transfer of power,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday. Russian military bases in Syria are on combat alert, but are not considered to be at serious risk, the statement added. Moscow sent troops to Syria in 2015 to help the government beat back Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and other militant groups. The Russian military currently operates a naval facility in the port of Tartus and an air base near the city of Latakia.

The Russian government has urged the militants to refrain from violence and support a UN-backed effort for national reconciliation. Syria was plunged into years of violence in 2011, after US-backed armed groups tried to topple the Assad government. Jihadists and Islamists eventually emerged as dominant players among the anti-Assad groups, even as Washington and its allies claimed that ‘moderate rebels’ could ultimately prevail. The lightning offensive that led to the fall of Damascus was launched late last month. It followed a period of relatively low-intensity fighting, which began with an uneasy truce brokered by Moscow and Ankara in 2020.

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“The third front that Washington opened against Russia had immediate success.”

• Putin and Xi and Iran The Unready (Paul Craig Roberts)

Putin’s inability to ever finish a task has cost him Syria. Now only Iran and Saudi Arabia stand between Israel and Israel’s goal of Greater Israel. The Saudis having witnessed Russia and Iran’s inattention and inability to act might reestablish the petrodollar in exchange for American protection. Iran and Hezbollah having pissed away the strategic initiative will be the next to fall. The neoconservative plan to overthrow seven Muslim countries in five years has taken longer than intended but is on its way to success. Trump’s military and foreign policy appointees are all anti-Iran and will easily fall in with Israel’s agenda as it also serves Washington’s intent to control oil flows and waterways.

Erdogan, the president of Turkey, betrayed Muslims and Putin by allying with Washington and Israel in overthrowing Syria, a country that possibly could disappear with portions going to Israel, Turkey, and the oil to the US.The Western presstitutes are delivering the required narrative to control explanations. The easily achieved enormous victory Washington gained over Russia and Iran means the assault on the two countries will continue, thus maximizing the chance that Putin will have to surrender or resort to nuclear war.

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How the MSM goes down:

“None of the three men spoke to the press afterwards or revealed any specific details of the meeting.

All three, however, later posted on social media..”

• Trump Was ‘Reluctant’ To Meet Zelensky – Axios (RT)

French President Emmanuel Macron had to persuade incoming US President Donald Trump to meet Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky during a visit to Paris by the latter two, Axios reported on Sunday, citing sources. Trump arrived in Paris on Saturday to attend the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral, which was damaged in a fire in 2019. The trip was Trump’s first foreign visit since winning last month’s election. The trilateral meeting between Trump, Macron, and Zelensky took place shortly after the reopening ceremony. A source told Axios that Trump had initially been “reluctant” to meet with Zelensky and made the decision to go ahead with the meeting at the last moment. According to French media reports, the encounter lasted only about 45 minutes. None of the three men spoke to the press afterwards or revealed any specific details of the meeting.

All three, however, later posted on social media, with Macron saying on X that the meeting was focused on the Ukraine conflict and “common action for peace and security.” Also on X, Zelensky described the talks as “good and productive,” thanking Trump for being “resolute.” He signaled that Kiev, Paris and Washington “want this war to end as soon as possible” and claimed that “peace through strength is possible,” without elaborating on that remark. Posting on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, Trump called for an “immediate ceasefire and negotiations” between Moscow and Kiev, urging Russian President Vladimir Putin “to act” and signaling that “Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal” with Russia. He did not elaborate further on this comment.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that he could end the Ukraine conflict within a day of returning to the White House, and has criticized the outgoing US administration for spending too much on arming Kiev. According to earlier media reports, he may try to enforce a freeze of the conflict along the current battle lines, using US aid to Kiev as leverage.Moscow has repeatedly said it considers a freeze of the conflict unacceptable. It has insisted that any settlement is only possible if Ukraine withdraws its forces from Russian territory, including the former Ukrainian regions, ensures the rights of its Russian-speaking population and adheres to neutrality.

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“..the conflict “cannot simply end with a piece of paper and a few signatures.”

• Zelensky Rejects Trump’s Peace Call (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has rejected a call by US President-elect Donald Trump for an immediate truce and peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.Following a meeting between Trump, Zelensky, and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Saturday, the president-elect issued a lengthy post on his Truth Social platform saying, “there should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin” to settle the Ukraine conflict. According to Trump, Ukraine “would like to make a deal and stop the madness.” However, Zelensky made it clear that this is not the case in an even longer post published on X on Sunday, in which he said the conflict “cannot simply end with a piece of paper and a few signatures.”

“A ceasefire without guarantees can be reignited at any moment… To ensure that Ukrainians no longer suffer losses, we must guarantee the reliability of peace and not turn a blind eye to occupation,” the Ukrainian leader stated.He stressed that “in the occupied territories of Ukraine, at least several million people remain,” once again ruling out the possibility of Kiev making any territorial concessions to Moscow in exchange for peace.”It is precisely such peace through strength that we discuss with all our partners, as well as the steps and guarantees needed for the people and the state attacked by Russia,” Zelensky said.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that he could end the Ukraine conflict within a day of returning to the White House, and has criticized the outgoing US administration for spending too much on arming Kiev. According to earlier media reports, he may try to enforce a freeze of the conflict along the current battle lines, using US aid to Kiev as leverage. Moscow has repeatedly said it considers a freeze of the conflict unacceptable. It has insisted that any settlement is only possible if Ukraine withdraws its forces from Russian territory, including the former Ukrainian regions, ensures the rights of its Russian-speaking population and adheres to neutrality.

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“..Ukraine should “prepare for less aid from the United States” after his inauguration next month. “Possibly. Yeah, probably, sure..”

• Trump Says He’ll ‘Probably’ Cut Ukraine Aid (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump has said he will “probably” reduce American aid to Ukraine once he takes office, in an interview aired hours after he called for an “immediate ceasefire” between Moscow and Kiev. During an interview broadcast by NBC News on Sunday, Trump was asked whether Ukraine should “prepare for less aid from the United States” after his inauguration next month. “Possibly. Yeah, probably, sure,” Trump replied. The US has allocated $131.36 billion for Ukraine since February 2022, according to figures published by the Pentagon earlier this month. Just under $90 billion of this amount has actually been transferred, according to Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Throughout his campaign, Trump repeatedly promised that he would end the Ukraine conflict within “24 hours” of taking office, without offering any specifics on how he would achieve this.

However, it is widely believed that he would use the threat of a reduction in US aid to force Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to negotiate, and the threat of increasing said aid to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into talks. Trump met with Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Saturday, for an impromptu discussion that he was reportedly “reluctant” to attend. None of the three men spoke to the press afterwards or revealed any specific details of the 40-minute meeting. However, Trump took to social media on Sunday to claim that “Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness,” before calling for “an immediate ceasefire and negotiations,” lest the conflict “turn into something much bigger, and far worse.” Trump also claimed that Ukraine has lost 400,000 soldiers since 2022, a figure far higher than any body count published by Kiev or any of its Western backers.

In a separate social media post on Sunday, Trump claimed that the conflict has cost Russia 600,000 troops, a figure that the Kremlin said is based on false information provided by Ukraine for propaganda purposes. Zelensky has denied seeking a swift deal. In a post on X later on Sunday, he claimed that the conflict “cannot simply end with a piece of paper and a few signatures.” Putin, he declared, “can only be stopped by strength,” and that Ukraine will only settle for what he termed a “just peace.” The Ukrainian leader insists that his ten-point ‘peace formula’ is the only viable roadmap for ending the conflict. However, the Kremlin has dismissed this document – which demands that Russia restore Ukraine’s 1991 borders, pay reparations, and surrender its own officials to war crimes tribunals – as “delusional.”

Moscow maintains that any settlement must begin with Ukraine ceasing military operations and acknowledging the “territorial reality” that it will never regain control of the Russian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, as well as Crimea. In addition, the Kremlin insists that the goals of its military operation – which include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification – must be achieved. Pressed by NBC host Kristen Welker, Trump refused to say whether he had spoken to Putin since winning last month’s presidential election. “I don’t want to say anything about that, because I don’t want to do anything that will impede the negotiation,” he told Welker.

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“..presidential elections will be held in Ukraine. European peacekeeping forces, mainly troops from Great Britain and France, would then be deployed in Ukraine..”

Oh, really? NATO troops in Ukraine?!

• Rumors Swirl About The West Planning To ‘Exile’ Zelensky (RMX)

If a ceasefire is reached in Ukraine, the West is considering “exiling” Volodymyr Zelensky to London, writes Do Rzeczy, citing a report out of the Spanish daily El Mundo via government sources in Kyiv. A rumor has been circulating in diplomatic circles in the Ukrainian capital for two weeks that if a ceasefire occurs, the West will convince Zelensky to “exile” himself to the U.K. and presidential elections will be held in Ukraine. European peacekeeping forces, mainly troops from Great Britain and France, would then be deployed in Ukraine. Kyiv could also count on “rapid” accession to the European Union and aid for the country’s post-war reconstruction. Ukraine had a bad November, with Russia occupying the largest amount of territory in Ukraine since March 2022, mainly in the east of the country, near Pokrovsk, according to experts from the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

The group says Moscow has occupied a total of 68,500 square kilometers since the beginning of the war, or about 19 percent of Ukraine’s entire pre-2014 territory, including the annexed Crimea and part of Donbas. Senior aides of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump have met with officials from Kyiv, as the incoming president has made ending the conflict a top priority of his administration, while Zelensky is clearly tired of war. Head of MI6, Richard Moore, raised alarm bells over the dangerous situation the world is currently facing. After meeting with his French counterpart, Nicholas Lerner, last week, he told the press, “Nicholas and I are in no doubt about the stakes in Ukraine: If Putin is allowed to succeed in reducing Ukraine to a vassal state, he will not stop there.” At the same time, the U.S. is pushing Ukraine to begin recruitment of 18-25 year olds to bolster Ukraine’s armed forces, but there are concerns about the country’s demographic future should his young cohort be sent to the front.

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We’ve been through this 100 times.

• Trump’s Estimate Of Russian Losses Wrong – Kremlin (RT)

Incoming US President Donald Trump’s estimate of Russia’s losses in the Ukraine conflict is far off the mark and is based on Kiev’s interpretation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday. Peskov was commenting on a post Trump made on his Truth Social platform earlier on Sunday, where he claimed that Moscow has lost some 600,000 servicemen in the conflict. The day before, Trump had a meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky in Paris. While calling for an “immediate ceasefire and negotiations” between Moscow and Kiev and signaling that Ukraine was willing to “make a deal with Russia,” Trump also gave an estimate of Kiev’s losses, which he claimed stood at some 400,000 troops “and many more civilians.” “As for the figures given about losses on both sides, it is obvious that they are presented in the Ukrainian interpretation and reflect the official position of Ukraine.

“The real figures of losses are completely different,” Peskov said in a press statement. He stressed that “Ukrainian losses are many times higher than the losses on the Russian side.” The spokesman also warned that prolonging the conflict, which the US and other Western states are doing by aiding the Kiev regime, could “lead to the complete exhaustion of the Ukrainian army.” Russia does not make public its losses in the conflict. President Vladimir Putin explained back in June that it is simply not done “as a rule,” while those who do announce such figures tend to intentionally “distort” the information. He noted at the time, however, that the ratio of losses on the two sides is approximately one Russian loss for every five Ukrainian losses. In late November, The Economist reported that up to half a million Ukrainian troops had been killed or wounded in the conflict, based on leaked intelligence reports, official statements, and open sources.

On Sunday, Zelensky claimed in a post on X that since the escalation of the conflict in 2022, only some 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed. Back in February of this year, he insisted that Kiev had lost only 31,000 troops. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Kiev’s army has lost 39,260 servicemen over the past four months alone. In his statement, Peskov reiterated that Moscow is open to negotiations and is eager to end the conflict, but stressed that it could only be done if Russia’s conditions for a settlement were met. Moscow has repeatedly insisted that any settlement is only possible if Ukraine withdraws its forces from Russian territory, including the former Ukrainian regions, ensures the rights of its Russian-speaking population, and adheres to neutrality.

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“When Elon Musk told Twitter employees to go back to work, a third of them quit—they weren’t used to working.”

• Rand Paul Warns Musk & Ramaswamy About The Swamp’s Upcoming DOGE Dodge (ZH)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) warned Department of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) co-heads Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy that Senate Republicans are moving to allow the Department of Defense, which has failed seven audits in a row, to exceed its spending limits. The Kentucky Republican highlighted the issue this week on Fox News’s ‘The Ingraham Angle.’ LAURA INGRAHAM: I know you have been constantly focused on this, and you have been with Vivek this week. What ideas have you given him because he is looking to you for ideas, other than, of course, as we were saying, getting the federal workers.

SEN. RAND PAUL: One of my favorite examples of federal workers not showing up is from a few years ago. We had an assistant to the head of the EPA, and he told his boss that he also worked for the CIA. He said he would be gone for six months at a time. Finally, during a government shutdown, someone said, “Hey, Mr. Smith, we understand this guy works for you. We haven’t seen him in six months.” They replied, “Who?” They had never heard of the guy. The man completely made up a story about working for the CIA, and for nearly a decade, millions of dollars were paid to him while he didn’t show up. He’d be lounging around saying, “I’m on a secret mission to the Middle East, can’t talk.” That kind of stuff runs rampant throughout government. People say you can’t balance a budget by making people go back to work, but you certainly can start. When Elon Musk told Twitter employees to go back to work, a third of them quit—they weren’t used to working.

Then, when he told them they’d have to do overtime, another third quit. You can get rid of a lot of people, and that saves a lot of money. There are many rules that protect federal workers, but some of these need to change, and we need to outsource certain things. I had it out with the Postmaster General the other day. Two years ago, the Postal Service lost $6.5 billion. Last year, they lost $9.5 billion. The only way to fix this is to implement better rules that require accountability. You can’t keep hiring more government employees. You have to make them nongovernmental employees.

LAURA INGRAHAM: How difficult is that process? Everybody knows that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are both brilliant individuals. They are extremely capable—obviously, Elon is the richest person in the world. Washington, however, is its own beast. As smart as they are, getting stuff done will be a challenge. A lot will rest with you in Congress. SEN. RAND PAUL: One of the big things Elon did with SpaceX to reduce costs was to move away from cost-plus contracts to competitive contracts. I think that can be done by the executive branch. They can lay off people, downsize, and switch to competitive contracts. Is that going to balance the budget? Not alone. I’m for getting rid of all this waste. When the federal and state governments cut welfare, aid, and food stamps, the states need to take on more responsibility. Because the Federal Reserve and our debt are financing the federal portion, states will have to become more fiscally responsible. They’ll either need to raise taxes to fund benefits or be more conservative about who qualifies.

To be clear, I’m for looking at entitlements, waste—everything—because it’s such an enormous problem. If you put the military off the table and entitlements off the table, you’re left with only 16% of the budget. Even if you eliminate that, you don’t get anywhere close to balancing the budget. So, while I’m for eliminating waste, I’m also for reviewing all spending. LAURA INGRAHAM: The Pentagon, which I mentioned, has so much waste and so many duplicative initiatives inside the Defense Department. They fail the audits year after year. Have you been on top of this? Republicans, frankly, have been rubber-stamping the Pentagon budget for decades. That has to change. SEN. RAND PAUL: It’s worse than that, Laura. Right now, the first budget reconciliation that the Republicans are proposing is to bust the Pentagon caps. We have military spending caps, but spending is still going upwards. All the old guardrails in the Senate—you know who they are—are going to bust the military caps with their first budget reconciliation. Same as the first budget.

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“..all the crimes, evidence for which the laptop provided, that the FBI failed to investigate.”

• In the West Law Is Being Separated from Truth and Justice (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Biden regimes discussion of “preemptive” pardons for Tony Fauci, Adam Schiff, and Liz Cheney is the Biden regime’s admission that these people have committed felonies in their efforts to destroy Donald Trump and that Fauci by lying about the safety and protection of the Covid “vaccine” is liable for mass murder and health damage to millions of people worldwide. He is also liable for funding illegal biowarfare research in both US and Chinese laboratories. In effect, the preemptive pardons would be convictions that escape punishment. Normally, a pardon from a president or governor comes after a conviction and often only after the sentence is served. Traditionally pardons have not been given in advance of indictment. In the case of Biden’s pardon of Hunter, the pardon was preemptive as it included a ten-year period and not just the gun and IRS convictions but also all the crimes, evidence for which the laptop provided, that the FBI failed to investigate.

What the discussion should be about is why is it more important to get Trump, while protecting Biden, than it is to obey the law? Once ideology enters politics, law no longer holds, because ideologues have agendas that are contrary to law and to the Constitution.There are many problems with Republicans, but Democrats have become an ideological party. Democrats are champions of open borders and the blurring of distinction between citizens and immigrant-invaders. They are champions of normalizing sexual perversions. They are champions of raising children independently of parental control. Democrats oppose the First, Second, and Fourteenth Amendments. Their ideology replaces free speech with indoctrination and controlled narratives. Their ideology violates the 14th Amendment by granting privileges to people of color, sexual perverts, and preferred genders. This is all said to be necessary to combat “white supremacy.” Pedophiles have been renamed “minor attracted persons.”

Democrat ideology requires the exploiter–the racist whites– to be displaced from positions of influence and power and turned into second class persons. This Democrat agenda is what the non-woke portion of the American people, not much more than half of the population, objected to and in protest elected Donald Trump President three times. In the latter part of my various careers when I undertook to explain reality to Americans and interested foreigners, I have been non-partisan. I have done my best to hold accountable Republican administrations as well as Democrat administrations. In my book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, published 24 years ago, which Milton Friedman said was “A devastating indictment or our current system of justice,” I demonstrated that we were losing justice to the subservience of law to political agendas. In Alan Dershowitz’s review of my book, he wrote:

“The Tyranny of Good Intentions is a bold defense of our fundamental freedoms. It demonstrates that government oppression is not a right-left issue, but rather a universal evil that should be resisted by all free people. It [my book] demonstrates why conservatives and liberals who despise tyranny must unite against statists of both the right and the left who falsely believe that partisan ends justify depravations of liberty.” It is very costly to go against both parties as it leaves one without support. My supporters are the rare independent thinkers. If they cease to support this website, it will cease to exist. The consequences extend beyond me into the existence of truth. There are not many voices. There is no money in telling the truth. There are immensely powerful lobbies serving ideological and economic interests that drown out the voices of truth. It never pays to serve truth. I serve it because of the way I was raised. People are no longer raised that way. So truth faces extinction.

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“..I would say it will be a large portion of them and it would be early on.”

• Trump Vows To Pardon Jan. 6 Rioters On Day One After Getting Into Office (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump said that he will pardon Jan. 6 rioters on the first day in office in his upcoming administration. In an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Trump told anchor Kristen Welker that “These people are living in hell.” Over 1,500 people have been charged with crimes connected to the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot in 2021, according to NPR. Trump has said in the past that he would pardon many of them. “I am inclined to pardon many of them,” he said during a 2023 CNN event. “I can’t say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, got out of control. I would say it will be a large portion of them and it would be early on.”

Other policies Trump discussed during the NBC interview included his plans for mass deportations, tariffs and healthcare policy. “Obamacare stinks,” Trump said. “If we come up with a better answer, I would present that answer to Democrats and to everybody else and I’d do something about it.” He blamed President Joe Biden for the political divide in the country and called Adam Schiff, the incoming Democratic senator from California, “a real lowlife.” Regarding political retribution, Trump was clear that he believes he was wronged, but he said he will not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden. “I’m not looking to go back into the past,” he said. “Retribution will be through success.”

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“The pardons will have a real detrimental impact on the Democrat Party. It’s going to basically make the Democrat party look like a bunch of thieves and crooks..”

“..they are planning on a major protest for his inauguration. They want to make it so bad that he has to call out the National Guard, and then they will say, see, he’s a dictator..”

• Democrat Party Going Extinct – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong is back with some important new predictions. But first, long before the 2024 Election, Armstrong’s Socrates computer correctly predicted a Trump landslide. Armstrong also predicted the GOP would win the House and the Senate while the Lying Legacy Media (LLM) were telling us all how popular Kamala Harris was and how she would take it all in 2024. Armstrong said Kamala’s real approval rating was around 10% (not 50%), and the Dems and the LLM knew it but lied anyway. Armstrong’s Socrates computer program also predicted Joe Biden would pardon his son Hunter, even though Biden, the Dems and the LLM repeatedly told us there would be no pardon of Hunter. This is where it get’s interesting. Armstrong says, “You have to understand, it wasn’t for Hunter…”

“Yes, my computer (Socrates) was showing Biden would pardon Hunter, and it was basically showing the collapse in the rule of law, and this is what this is about now… All the corruption started in 2014 in Ukraine… By pardoning Hunter all the way back to 2014, it means he can be compelled to testify. How much money did you get out of Ukraine? Where did it go? Did it go to the Big Guy? …Hunter can’t be prosecuted, so he can’t claim the 5th Amendment. He could be thrown in prison for contempt of court for refusing to testify.” Armstrong was held in prison for a record seven years for contempt of court. Armstrong says the law says the sentence should only have lasted 18 months. Still, Hunter could be thrown in jail. Armstrong says Joe will pardon many more, such as those involved in the J-6 prosecutions like Liz Cheney or people like Anthony Fauci, overseer of the CV19 bioweapon vax. Armstrong says,

“The computer has been showing, and we published these reports at our November 2024 conference, that this is most likely the final nail in the coffin for the Democrat Party… The pardons will have a real detrimental impact on the Democrat Party. It’s going to basically make the Democrat party look like a bunch of thieves and crooks… The Democrat Party is going extinct.” When asked if we are still going to war with Russia, Armstrong said, “I hate to say this, but yes, and the (Socrates) computer is never wrong.” Armstrong fears dirty tricks, such as a false flag in Europe, that could get it going and blame the Russians for something they did not do. They want to do this before Trump takes office. Armstrong says he is still recommending a big food supply, gold and cash. He is also predicting that government wants to do away with paper money and do all digital so they can track everything. Will this work? Armstrong says no, but they are going to try anyway.

Armstrong says even though Trump is looking good here before he’s sworn in, he’s going to have a tough four years. Armstrong says,“What I have heard is that they are planning on a major protest for his inauguration. They want to make it so bad that he has to call out the National Guard, and then they will say, see, he’s a dictator. I am concerned. I do not see four years of bliss in the Trump Administration. The computer says from 2026 on, it does not look good, particularly going into 2027 and 2028. This may be our last election…This is a war now with the Deep State. They are not going to take this lightly… They are going to try to obstruct Trump anyway they can… You are taking the trough away from all the pigs, and they are not going to have anything to eat. They are going to fight for their very lives.”

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“..It’s going to be something of a much bigger magnitude and I don’t think the Secret Service is anywhere equipped to handle that situation.”

• Ex-Secret Service Agent Warns Trump Likely To Be Attacked Before Jan 20 (MN)

Former Secret Service agent Richard Staropoli warned Thursday that Donald Trump could be targeted in an attack before he is inaugurated as president, and that the Secret Service may not be able to prevent it. During a FOX News interview, Staropoli suggested Trump could face a threat “of a much bigger magnitude” than the two assassination attempts earlier in the year. Staropoli said that he is “not highly confident at all,” that Trump can be kept safe, noting “The Secret Service that you see out there today is not the Secret Service of yesteryear.” “Somewhere along the line they’ve completely dropped the ball,” he continued, adding “That testimony that you saw today was purely a smokescreen to cover up the shortcomings of a politically compromised agency.” Staropoli was referring to testimony in the House by Acting Director Ronald Rowe and other Secret Service officials before the task force investigating the first assassination attempt on Trump in July.

“It should never have gotten to that point,” Starapoli urged, adding “This whole talk about all these drones and these UAVs, hey, that’s all great, but you need to get back to the basics. What made the Secret Service great was its ability to put human intelligence, manpower on the streets and effectively secure the environment to make it safe for the president of the United States. I don’t see that here.” “As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’d be alone in saying that I certainly can see something happening between now and inauguration day,” Staropoli warned. He added, “it’s not going to be some 20-year-old kid on the roof of a building that’s allowed to get within 100 yards. It’s going to be something of a much bigger magnitude and I don’t think the Secret Service is anywhere equipped to handle that situation.”

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“..Biden is unique in that he deliberately created the circumstances that made his presidency so disastrous..”

• Biden ‘Worst President’ In Modern History; Devastating New Poll Finds (ZH)

Voters have delivered a devastating verdict on Joe Biden’s time in office, branding him the worst president in almost 50 years. The poll results are extremely interesting because they partially reflect America’s profound partisan divide (Reagan and Obama had the same favorables, but Obama’s unfavorables were higher). Meanwhile, Donald Trump had the third highest favorables but his unfavorables were second only to Biden’s, dropping him in the rankings. The one thing, though, is that, of the 1006 registered voters polled, everyone thought Biden was totally awful. Some 44 percent placed him as one of the worst two, while only 14 percent placed him in the top two, giving him a net score of 30 points underwater. That was worse than Nixon, who came out with negative 25, and Donald Trump, with negative 15.

James Johnson, cofounder of J.L. Partners which conducted the poll, called it a ‘diabolical’ result for Biden. “There’s always a recency bias and as Joe Biden is the incumbent, he starts off at a disadvantage there,” he said. “But regardless of that, these numbers are worse than I expected.” As Andrea Widburg writes at AmericanThinker, while time softened Nixon’s reputation, especially when it became clear that Mark Felt became Deep Throat, not out of principle, but out of pique because Nixon didn’t appoint him as the new FBI head, time will not burnish Biden’s presidency. This will be especially true if the RINOs get out of the way and let Trump have the most spectacularly successful presidency in American history. Trump’s roaring economy, foreign policy successes, and sovereign border, along with the fact that his presidency will see at least some return to cultural normalcy, will make Joe Biden’s tenure look even worse.

The thing about Biden’s presidency is that he wasn’t a victim of circumstances. Even Carter could be said to have been a victim of the Iranian Revolution, although it’s hard to imagine anyone handling it worse than he did. Biden is unique in that he deliberately created the circumstances that made his presidency so disastrous. It was his affirmative, proudly touted policies that drove inflation, opened the border, and led to so much American weakness on the world stage that two potential “WWIII starting points” erupted. It was his values, his weaknesses, his corruption, and his senility that got moved events. I sincerely hope that history is incredibly cruel to Biden. He will have left the White House 50 years after setting his sights on it, but I want his legacy to be tarnished in his own mind. Anyone who has wreaked such terrible havoc on this once proud nation deserves to be horribly aware of the disdain in which his countrymen hold him.

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“..allowing degenerates to steamroll our laws and our sense of security, while punishing the righteous..”

• Rep. Eli Crane: Daniel Penny Should Receive Congressional Gold Medal (JTN)

Congressman Eli Crane, R-Ariz., said that he is planning to introduce a resolution to give veteran Daniel Penny the Congressional Gold Medal. “Daniel Penny’s actions exemplify what it means to stand against the grain to do right in a world that rewards moral cowardice,” Crane said according to Fox News Digital.Penny, a 26-year-old Marine veteran, has been accused of fatally choking a mentally ill homeless man who was threatening to kill riders on a subway car in New York City in 2023. “Our system of ‘justice’ is fiercely corrupt, allowing degenerates to steamroll our laws and our sense of security, while punishing the righteous,” Crane continued.

“Mr. Penny bravely stood in the gap to defy this corrupt system and protect his fellow Americans. I’m immensely proud to introduce this resolution to award him with the Congressional Gold Medal to recognize his heroism.” Penny is currently on trial for the death of Jordan Neely, 30. Jury deliberations began last week. The judge in the trial granted a motion to dismiss a manslaughter charge after the jury said twice on Friday they couldn’t agree on the charge.

Read more …

“Readers are fleeing to new media after papers like the L.A. Times and the Washington Post literally wrote off half of the country..”

• This is Not the Time for Balance: LA Times Columnist Resigns (Turley)

When now President-Elect Donald Trump was convicted, the thrill-kill atmosphere around the courthouse and the country was explosive, but no one was more ecstatic than liberal columnist and former prosecutor Harry Litman. The then L.A. Times columnist told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that it was a “majestic day” and “a day to celebrate.” A lawfare advocate, Litman excitedly laid out how Trump could be barred from office, declaring that the raid in Mar-a-Lago was the “whole enchilada” in ending Trump’s political career. Now, Litman has resigned from the L.A. Times because the owner wants more diversity of opinion in the newspaper. Litman went on MSNBC to declare that “this is not a time for balance.” Those seven words sum up much of what has destroyed American media with millions turning away from the echo chamber created by the Washington Post, L.A. Times, and other publications.

Litman is not alone. Many liberals are dispensing with the pretense of declaring opposing views “disinformation” and are now openly fighting to preserve ideological echo chambers and media silos. In my new book, The Indispensable Right, I write about the decline of newspapers as part of the “advocacy journalism” movement. Opinion pages became little more than screeds for the left, including legal commentators who have been consistently wrong and misleading on merits of challenges or cases. Last year, Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis delivered a truth bomb in the middle of the newsroom by telling the staff, “Let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

Litman has been one of the most unabashed lawfare warriors. Even when the Justice Department was seeking to dismiss the Flynn case, Lipman wrote an L.A. Times column advising Judge Emmet Sullivan how to “make trouble” for the administration. Litman admitted there is “very little leeway to reject the government’s decisions to dismiss charges” but encouraged Sullivan to “accomplish what Congress, multiple inspectors general, and a majority of the electorate have not been able to do — hold the president and his allies accountable for their contemptuous disregard for the rule of law.” On MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, Litman declared to Nicolle Wallace that Trump’s victory is “an absolute five-alarm fire.” He called the effort to restore a diversity of viewpoints as little more than an attempt “to curry favor with Trump.” He then added:

“And I just think this is not a time for balance when you have someone who’s not telling the truth on the other side. And it’s a deep responsibility. And instead, I think they cowered and are worried about their personal holdings and just being threatened by Trump. And that’s a really shameful capitulation, I think. So, I just felt I couldn’t be a part of it and had to resign.” It was a telling moment. Litman appeared on a network that has lost half of its viewership and is fighting for its existence in an effort by NBCUniversal to unload it. Readers are fleeing to new media after papers like the L.A. Times and the Washington Post literally wrote off half of the country. Yet, these figures would rather lose their jobs and media platforms than their bias.

Read more …

 

 

 

Rope

Frens
https://twitter.com/i/status/1865514940544541147

Lenny

Grace South African soprano Pretty Yende and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
https://twitter.com/i/status/1865499228639789130

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle October 31 2015

Oct 312015
 
 October 31, 2015  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


Louise Rosskam General store in Lincoln, Vermont 1940

• US on Road to Third World (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Janet Yellen Just Got Some Pretty Bad News (CNBC)
• Fed’s Updated Model of Economy Suggests It’s Time to Raise Rates (Bloomberg)
• China Has Created A Steel Monster And Now Must Tame It (Reuters)
• VW Sticks to $24.2 Billion China Spending Plan Amid Cost Cuts (Bloomberg)
• Chevron to Cut Up to 7,000 Jobs (WSJ)
• Saudi Arabia Credit Rating Cut by S&P After Oil Prices Sink (Bloomberg)
• Swiss Probe Banks to Gauge Exposure to Petrobras Scandal (Bloomberg)
• Largest US Banks Face $120 Billion Shortfall Under New Rule (Reuters)
• Portugal Risks Becoming ‘Ungovernable’: President (Telegraph)
• Subprime Mortgages Make Surprise Comeback In The UK (Guardian)
• Greek PM Tsipras Says Shamed By Europe’s Handling Of Refugee Crisis (Reuters)
• Greece Says 22 Refugees Drown Off Aegean Islands, 144 Rescued (Reuters)
• Tsipras: Aegean Waves Wash Up Dead Children, And Europe’s Very Civilization (AP)
• Tsipras Blames Migrant Flows On Western Military Action In Middle East (AP)
• The Next Wave: Afghans Flee To Europe in Droves (Spiegel)
• Refugee Crisis: Germans Restrict Entry Points From Austria (BBC)

How to gut a society.

• US on Road to Third World (Paul Craig Roberts)

On January 6, 2004, Senator Charles Schumer and I challenged the erroneous idea that jobs offshoring was free trade in a New York Times op-ed. Our article so astounded economists that within a few days Schumer and I were summoned to a Brookings Institution conference in Washington, DC, to explain our heresy. In the nationally televised conference, I declared that the consequence of jobs offshoring would be that the US would be a Third World country in 20 years. That was 11 years ago, and the US is on course to descend to Third World status before the remaining nine years of my prediction have expired. The evidence is everywhere. In September the US Bureau of the Census released its report on US household income by quintile. Every quintile, as well as the top 5%, has experienced a decline in real household income since their peaks.

[..] Only the top One Percent or less (mainly the 0.1%) has experienced growth in income and wealth. The Census Bureau uses official measures of inflation to arrive at real income. These measures are understated. If more accurate measures of inflation are used (such as those available from shadowstats.com), the declines in real household income are larger and have been declining for a longer period. Some measures show real median annual household income below levels of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Note that these declines have occurred during an alleged six-year economic recovery from 2009 to the current time, and during a period when the labor force was shrinking due to a sustained decline in the labor force participation rate. On April 3, 2015 the US Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 93,175,000 Americans of working age are not in the work force, a historical record.

Normally, an economic recovery is marked by a rise in the labor force participation rate. John Williams reports that when discouraged workers are included among the measure of the unemployed, the US unemployment rate is currently 23%, not the 5.2% reported figure. In a recently released report, the Social Security Administration provides annual income data on an individual basis. Are you ready for this? In 2014 38% of all American workers made less than $20,000; 51% made less than $30,000; 63% made less than $40,000; and 72% made less than $50,000. The scarcity of jobs and the low pay are direct consequences of jobs offshoring. Under pressure from “shareholder advocates” (Wall Street) and large retailers, US manufacturing companies moved their manufacturing abroad to countries where the rock bottom price of labor results in a rise in corporate profits, executive “performance bonuses,” and stock prices.

The departure of well-paid US manufacturing jobs was soon followed by the departure of software engineering, IT, and other professional service jobs. Incompetent economic studies by careless economists, such as Michael Porter at Harvard and Matthew Slaughter at Dartmouth, concluded that the gift of vast numbers of US high productivity, high value-added jobs to foreign countries was a great benefit to the US economy. In articles and books I challenged this absurd conclusion, and all of the economic evidence proves that I am correct. The promised better jobs that the “New Economy” would create to replace the jobs gifted to foreigners have never appeared. Instead, the economy creates lowly-paid part-time jobs, such as waitresses, bartenders, retail clerks, and ambulatory health care services, while full-time jobs with benefits continue to shrink as a percentage of total jobs.

These part-time jobs do not provide enough income to form a household. Consequently, as a Federal Reserve study reports, “Nationally, nearly half of 25-year-olds lived with their parents in 2012-2013, up from just over 25% in 1999.” When half of 25-year olds cannot form households, the market for houses and home furnishings collapses.

Read more …

Damned if you do and doomed if you don’t. The loss of credibility will finish the job for Yellen no matter what the Fed does.

• Janet Yellen Just Got Some Pretty Bad News (CNBC)

Two days after the Federal Reserve released what was allegedly its most hawkish statement in months came a reminder that the path toward a rate hike won’t be an easy one. One of the main economic factors for Fed officials when it comes to assessing the right time to start hiking rates is wage growth, tied with the consumer spending that is supposed to follow. There was bad news on both fronts in economic data released Friday morning. The big releases of the day were on personal income, which increased just 0.1% in September, missing even the meager consensus estimate of 0.2%, and the University of Michigan consumer confidence survey, which, at 90, whiffed as well with its second-lowest reading of the year.

Below the Wall Street radar, though, came another report that doesn’t garner the headlines but is believed to be one watched closely by Fed Chair Janet Yellen and her fellow monetary policymakers: The employment cost index. The quarterly release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that compensation costs for nongovernment workers rose just 0.6% in the three-month period – about what economists had expected but not much to move the inflation needle. On an annualized basis, compensation costs rose just 2%, which actually is a decline from the 2.2% increase realized for the same period a year ago. Benefit costs increased just 1.4%, despite a 3% jump in health-care packages. The news was slightly better for state and local government workers, who collectively saw a 2.3% annualized increase, compared with 1.8% in the year-ago period.

The pace of wage increases is critical to Fed thinking. Many on Wall Street took Wednesday’s statement, which referenced conditions for an interest rate increase by the end of the year, as indicating that central bank officials are close to hiking for the first time since taking their key policy rate to near-zero in late 2008. Federal Open Market Committee members are hoping to see demand-driven inflation, something hard to come by when wage increases are so anemic. The wage and confidence news comes just a day after the government reported gross domestic product growth of just 1.5% in the third quarter. With the slow wage growth, core inflation as measured through Yellen’s preferred indicator, the personal consumption expenditures index, is tracking at just 1.25%, according to Steve Blitz, chief economist at ITG.

“The FOMC, if true they are tied to trends, can only be disappointed by the trend in consumption and wage growth coming out of the third quarter,” Blitz said in a note. “Because [if] they really, really, really want to move 25 basis points in December they have to be, by their own rules, now focused on whether the individual data points for the economy in the next six weeks indicate a change in trends to the upside. In other words, the next two payroll numbers mean everything.”

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Channeling Groucho: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others..”

• Fed’s Updated Model of Economy Suggests It’s Time to Raise Rates (Bloomberg)

The Federal Reserve Board released an updated version of its large-scale model on the U.S. economy that may hold clues into why policy makers pivoted at their meeting earlier this week toward a December interest-rate increase. The revised inputs and calculations on Friday suggest the economy will use up resource slack by the first quarter of 2016, according to an analysis by Barclays Plc, and that also indicates Fed staff lowered their near-term estimate for how fast the economy can grow without producing inflation – a concept known as potential growth. “The output gap appears closed,” said Michael Gapen at Barclays in New York. “This means further progress would lead to resource scarcity and potential upward pressure on inflation in the medium term.”

Gapen said that may explain why U.S. central bankers signaled this week that they will consider the first interest-rate increase since 2006 at their next meeting, on Dec. 15-16. The model assumes that the Federal Open Market Committee raises the benchmark lending rate in late 2015. However, immediate liftoff has “been a feature” of the model since late 2014, Barclays noted. In the current model, “the long-run growth rate is two-tenths lower” at 2%, Barclays said. FOMC participants forecast the economy’s long-run growth rate at 2% in September. The unemployment rate stood at 5.1% in September, and the Fed model assumes little change from that level, dipping to a low of 4.8% in a forecast horizon that extends to 2020, according to Barclays.

FOMC officials estimated full employment – or the level of the unemployment rate consistent with stable prices – at 4.9% last month. “This view is quite different than ours,” said Gapen, who formerly worked at the Fed. “We forecast ongoing declines in the unemployment rate and see it reaching 4.3% by end-2016.” The model, known as FRB/US and updated periodically, is a series of calculations put together by Fed staff that sketch out how broad measures of the economy would change based on a set of defined parameters. The staff also constructs a bottom-up forecast for policy makers before each FOMC meeting. U.S. central bankers use the models and forecasts as reference points, not sole determinants of their decision-making.

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“By 2014, China’s production had reached 823 million tonnes. It was not just the world’s largest producer, it produced more than the rest of the world combined.”

• China Has Created A Steel Monster And Now Must Tame It (Reuters)

The British steel industry is in crisis. That statement may come as a surprise to non-UK readers, many of whom might well be forgiven for thinking the country’s steel mills had gone the way of other legacy industries such as coal mining and shipbuilding. But Britain produced 12.1 million tonnes of crude steel last year, making the country the fifth-largest producer in the EU. It won’t produce that much this year. The last couple of months have brought a string of closure announcements, including that of the Redcar plant in Teeside, a symbol of previous against-the-odds survival. British steel mills are struggling with UK-specific problems, particularly high energy costs that are significantly above the European average.

Stung into belated action, the government is scrambling to assemble a rescue plan, albeit with one hand tied behind its back by EU state subsidy rules. But there is a much, much bigger problem roiling steel production, not just in Britain, but across the globe. China. China exported 11.25 million tonnes of steel last month. It was an all-time high and, expressed in annualized terms, was equivalent to 80% of the entire steel output of the 28-member EU last year. This wave of Chinese steel is creating a global steel-making crisis, of which Britain is only a minor sub-plot. But the biggest crisis of all may yet turn out to be in China itself. With exquisitely bad political timing, Britain’s steel woes erupted just before the long-planned visit to the country by Chinese President Xi Jinpeng.

Xi said China was committed to eliminating surplus steel capacity with 77.8 million tonnes already shuttered and more closures planned. Overcapacity, he added, was a global problem, not just a Chinese problem. Which is true. Steel-making has been dogged for decades by structural overcapacity, a tendency to overproduction and resulting weak pricing. But this time is different, because there has never been a steel giant like China before. China’s crude steel production tripled between 1980 and 2000 to 128.5 million tonnes and then went supernova in the following decade with annual growth rates of up to 30%. By 2014, China’s production had reached 823 million tonnes. It was not just the world’s largest producer, it produced more than the rest of the world combined.

Underpinning that breakneck pace of growth was the country’s massive investment in urban infrastructure. From new cities to new roads to new airports, it all needed massive amounts of steel, and of course the iron ore used to make the steel, generating secondary booms in key suppliers such as Australia. But now the boom is over and the world is paying the price.

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All on red. Expansion plans for a shrinking market. Time to ditch shares?!

• VW Sticks to $24.2 Billion China Spending Plan Amid Cost Cuts (Bloomberg)

Volkswagen will shield its five-year, €22 billion expansion plan in China from cost cuts, underscoring the importance of its largest market to stem the fallout of the diesel-emissions manipulation scandal. This year and next, VW is pushing to update about 70% of the vehicles it sells in China and introduce more than 30 models to the market. The company is aiming to boost its production capacity in China from last year’s 3 million cars to at least 5 million vehicles. The carmaker needs growth in China to at least partly offset the towering cost of recalling as many as 11 million diesel cars worldwide. Volkswagen set aside €6.7 billion for the recalls in the third quarter, acknowledging this won’t be enough.

Analysts’ estimates for the total price tag, including fines and legal costs, range from about €20 billion to as much as €78 billion. “We continue to be committed to our investment plans in China, including our capacity goal,” Larissa Braun, a spokeswoman for VW’s Chinese business, said Friday in an e-mailed response to questions. The Wolfsburg-based manufacturer will make the investments together with joint venture partners SAIC Motor and FAW Car. The expansion comes even as the Chinese economy slows and many cities consider restricting car purchases to fight traffic jams and pollution. The market is such a priority that VW’s new Chief Executive Officer Matthias Mueller made the country his first major trip destination as CEO, joining German chancellor Angela Merkel on a trade mission this week.

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All oil majors are in far deeper doodoo then they let on. All big producing nations too.

• Chevron to Cut Up to 7,000 Jobs (WSJ)

Chevron on Friday said it could cut 6,000 to 7,000 jobs and pare its capital spending by 25% next year, as profit tumbled in its third quarter. Still, results for the quarter fell less than Wall Street had expected. Shares of Chevron, down 20% this year, added 1% in premarket trading. Chevron didnt detail when the job cuts could occur. As of December 2014, Chevron had about 64,700 employees, according to a securities filing. The second-biggest U.S. oil company said it expects capital spending of $25 billion to $28 billion in 2016, down 25% from this year’s budget. The company said it expects to cut spending further in 2017 and 2018, to around $20 billion to $24 billion. For the quarter ended Sept. 30, Chevron reported earnings of $2.04 billion, or $1.09 a share, down from $5.6 billion, or $2.95 a share, a year earlier. Revenue fell 37% to $34.32 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected Chevron to post 76 cents a share in earnings on $29.76 billion in revenue for the third quarter. A 15% reduction in capital spending to $7.97 billion helped prop up earnings in the period. Foreign currency effects also added $394 million to profit in the quarter, up from $366 million a year earlier. The company eked out a $59 million profit in its exploration and production segment, down from a profit of $4.65 billion a year earlier. Its U.S. segment swung to a loss of $603 million from a profit of $929 million a year earlier. The company’s average price for a barrel of crude oil and natural gas liquids was $42 in the quarter, down from $87 a year ago. The average price for natural gas was $1.96 per thousand cubic feet, down from $3.46 in the prior year.

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A deflating fairy tale of riches.

• Saudi Arabia Credit Rating Cut by S&P After Oil Prices Sink (Bloomberg)

Saudi Arabia’s credit rating was cut by Standard & Poor’s , which said the decline in oil prices will increase the budget deficit in a country that relies on energy exports for 80% of its revenue. S&P cut the sovereign rating one level to A+, the fifth-highest classification, as it said the biggest OPEC producer’s deficit will increase to 16% of GDP this year. The nation’s credit outlook is negative as the decline in oil prices makes it difficult to reverse the fiscal deterioration, S&P said in a statement. “Credit metrics for oil producers like Saudi Arabia are coming under pressure,” said Steve Hooker, a money manager at Newfleet in Hartford, Connecticut, who helps oversee $12.5 billion of debt. “It’s not likely to reverse until the oil prices go up.”

The widening deficit and a high reliance on energy revenue “point to vulnerabilities in Saudi Arabia’s public finances,” the ratings company said. Brent crude has plunged 27% from this year’s high in May amid a persistent global supply glut. Still, public debt in Saudi Arabia is among the world’s lowest, with a gross debt-to-GDP ratio of less than 2% in 2014. “We could lower the ratings within the next two years if Saudi Arabia did not achieve a sizable and sustained reduction in the general government deficit, or its liquid fiscal financial assets fell below 100% of GDP,” Trevor Cullinan, a credit analyst at the rating company, said in the statement.

The Saudi Finance Ministry said it “strongly disagrees with S&P’s approach to ratings management in this particular instance.” The downgrade was “driven by fluid market factors rather than changes in the fundamentals of the sovereign,” which “remain strong,” the ministry said in a statement on the website of state-run Saudi Press Agency. The country is rated Aa3 by Moody’s Investors Service, the equivalent of one step higher than S&P’s new grade. S&P’s classification for Saudi Arabia is the same as Slovakia, Ireland, Bermuda and Israel.

Read more …

No mention of action other than freeing up $120 million that had been frozen.

• Swiss Probe Banks to Gauge Exposure to Petrobras Scandal (Bloomberg)

Switzerland’s finance regulator is investigating local banks to gauge their possible exposure to a widening scandal surrounding Brazilian oil producer Petrobras. The regulator, known as Finma, said it is looking into whether banks and securities trading firms met their due-diligence obligations in possible cases of money laundering, and whether any possible incidents were reported to authorities. Bern, Switzerland-based Finma didn’t identify the banks that it began talking to months ago as part of the ongoing investigation. Switzerland’s attorney-general in March released $120 million of $400 million in assets tied to suspicious Petrobras-related transactions that had previously been frozen. The Rio de Janeiro-based oil and gas producer is mired in a corruption scandal in which company executives allegedly directed hundreds of millions of dollars from overpriced contracts to politicians.

The worsening affair has sent investor confidence in Brazil tumbling, plunged Latin America’s largest country into recession and triggered calls for Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to be impeached over her handling of the matter. Swiss prosecutors said in March they’d uncovered more than 300 accounts belonging to senior Petrobras executives and its suppliers at more than 30 banking institutions apparently used to “process bribery payments.” Valor reported on the Finma probe earlier. Swiss Attorney-General Michael Lauber and his Brazilian counterpart Rodrigo Janot have complimented each other on the speed and cooperation with which the two countries’ justice systems have worked together, at a time when Swiss justice has been criticized for moving too slowly.

Read more …

Makes no difference when you’re TBTF.

• Largest US Banks Face $120 Billion Shortfall Under New Rule (Reuters)

Six big U.S. banks need to raise an additional $120 billion, most likely in long-term debt, under a rule proposed on Friday by the Federal Reserve. The requirements are aimed at ensuring that some of the biggest and most interconnected banks, which include Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo, can better withstand another crisis by turning some of their debt, particularly debt issued by their holding companies, into equity without disrupting markets or requiring a government bailout. The banks are expected to meet the $120 billion shortfall by issuing debt, which is usually more cost-effective than issuing equity, according to Federal Reserve officials speaking at a background press briefing Friday.

The rule proposed Friday, largely in line with banks’ expectations, concerns the lenders’ total loss-absorbing capacity. It is one of a series of rules aimed at reducing risk in the banking system by determining how much debt and equity banks should use to fund themselves. In a procedural vote, the Fed’s governors approved a draft of the proposal, meaning it will be submitted for public comment. During a public meeting with Fed officials, one staffer who worked on the rule said banks should have an easy time complying, because many requirements overlapped with existing rules. Further, the bulk of the debt requirements can be fulfilled by refinancing existing debt, the staffer said.

Some requirements must be met by Jan. 1, 2019, while more-stringent requirements must be met by Jan. 1, 2022. The requirements are most stringent for JPMorgan, followed by Citigroup. After that come Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, all of which have the same requirement. Wells Fargo’s requirement is the next highest, followed by State Street and finally Bank of New York Mellon. JPMorgan has more than $2 trillion in total assets, making it the largest U.S. bank by that measure.

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Portugal’s president is playing a murky role in this.

• Portugal Risks Becoming ‘Ungovernable’: President (Telegraph)

Portugal risks becoming “ungovernable” as Leftist forces prepare to topple the returning government of prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho after just 11 days, the country’s president has warned. Mr Passos Coelho – whose pro-bail-out coalition presided over four years of austerity policies – was sworn into office on Friday after his ruling coalition finished first in recent elections, but lost its parliamentary majority. The appointment was met with controversy after the country’s president vowed to block an alliance of Leftist, anti-EU parties from taking the reins of office. The coalition of Socialists, Communists and the radical Left have vowed to bring down the minority government when a parliamentary vote is held on November 10. A collapse would make it the shortest government in Portugal’s 40 years of post-war democracy.

Addressing the nation, president Anibal Cavaco Silva defended himself against accusations of constitutional over-reach. But the head of state struck a more conciliatory tone, calling for all the main parties to broker a compromise to stop Portugal from descending into political chaos. “Without political stability, Portugal will become an uncontrollable country. And, of course, no one trusts an ungovernable country,” said the president. “The government taking over today does not have majority in parliament so the effort of dialogue and compromise has to proceed with the other political forces to seek the necessary understanding.” Mr Cavaco Silva warned the anti-austerity Left against derailing four years of fiscal consolidation and poisoning relations with the EU.

Prime minister Passos Coelho said Portugal’s commitment to the eurozone was “imperative”. “Nobody should risk the well being of the Portuguese in the name of ideological agendas or personal or political ambition,” he said. Despite exiting its €78bn bail-out last year, Portugal has the highest combined debt levels in the eurozone and the second highest government deficit at -7.8pc. The pro-euro opposition Socialist party is presenting itself as the only stable government having agreed to work with the two more strident anti-EU forces on the left. Together they will command a majority of over 50pc in the 230-seat parliament. The Left-wing alliance has reportedly agreed to reverse many of the fiscal measures taken by the previous conservative government, providing relief to low-income pensioners and workers.

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A country ruled by money.

• Subprime Mortgages Make Surprise Comeback In The UK (Guardian)

Sub-prime mortgages, widely blamed for causing the 2007-08 financial crisis, are making a surprise comeback in the UK, with several new lenders launching home loans for people with poor credit histories. Lenders are targeting people who have faced serious financial problems including repossession and bankruptcy – as well as those with more minor blots on their records – for the mortgages, which come with interest rates as high as 8%. Bluestone Mortgages, a lender part-owned by Australia’s biggest investment bank, has just launched in the UK, following hard on the heels of another Australian-owned business, Pepper Homeloans, which similarly caters for those who have experienced a “credit event” such as missing payments on a previous mortgage. Another recent arrival is Foundation Home Loans, which offers buy-to-let mortgages to people who have had financial problems.

These three join a group of other players in a sector that argues it is offering a lifeline to the sizeable number of people who have suffered a financial “hiccup” and as a result are being rejected by the big name high street lenders. But the new wave of sub-prime mortgages on offer may prompt concern among those who fear a return to the lending practices of the past. And these mortgages come at a price: some borrowers taking out a two-year fixed-rate deal will be charged as much as 7%-8%, compared with current best-buy rates of as little as 1.54% on conventional loans. Peter Tutton, head of policy at StepChange debt charity, sounded a note of caution, pointing out that “last time around, before the crash, there were some really bad lending practices. Certain sub-prime lenders were lending to people who couldn’t afford it and were vulnerable and were being repossessed.”

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“Tsipras also said any suggestion that Greece was not effectively safeguarding the EU’s outermost borders – he referred to leaders of “certain European countries” – was borne of ignorance of international law dictating protection of the lives of people in distress at sea.”

• Greek PM Tsipras Says Shamed By Europe’s Handling Of Refugee Crisis (Reuters)

Greece’s prime minister said on Friday he was ashamed to be a member of a European Union that he said was sidestepping responsibilities over the migrant crisis and crying hypocritical tears for children who have drowned trying to reach its shores. In some of the hardest-hitting comments yet on a crisis resonating throughout Europe, Alexis Tsipras told parliament Greece didn’t want a “single euro” for saving lives as thousands of refugees continued to arrive daily on its shores, and the EU remained at odds on how to deal with the influx. At least 35 people drowned trying to cross the sea between Turkey and Greece this week. Authorities fear the death toll will rise as more people attempt the short but dangerous passage to Greece before the onset of winter.

“I feel ashamed as a member of this European leadership, both for the inability of Europe in dealing with this human drama, and for the level of debate at a senior level, where one is passing the buck to the other,” Tsipras told parliament. Impoverished Greece has been a transit point for more than 570,000 refugees and migrants fleeing conflict in the Middle East and beyond since January, triggering bickering among European nations. Speaking during prime ministers’ question time, Tsipras also said any suggestion that Greece was not effectively safeguarding the EU’s outermost borders – he referred to leaders of “certain European countries” – was borne of ignorance of international law dictating protection of the lives of people in distress at sea. “These are hypocritical, crocodile tears which are being shed for the dead children on the shores of the Aegean.”

“Dead children always incite sorrow. But what about the children that are alive who come in thousands and are stacked on the streets? Nobody likes them.” [..] Although his migration minister was quoted as saying earlier this week that EU financing was needed for a subsidized housing program to work, Tsipras said Greece did not expect to get paid for saving lives. “Greece is in crisis. We are a poor people, but we have retained our values and humanity, and we aren’t claiming a single euro to do our duty to people who are dying in our back yard,” Tsipras said, after an opposition lawmaker asked what Greece had received in return for agreeing to host refugees. His country, he said, couldn’t put a price on the human cost. “I’m not addressing you,” he told a lawmaker. “I’m addressing those European partners who are wagging their finger at Greece.

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The time for safe passage is long overdue.

• Greece Says 22 Refugees Drown Off Aegean Islands, 144 Rescued (Reuters)

Greece rescued 144 refugees and recovered the bodies of 22, including four infants and nine children, after their boats sank in two separate incidents in the Aegean sea, the coastguard said on Friday. The death toll from drownings at sea has mounted recently as weather in the Aegean has taken a turn for the worse, turning wind-whipped sea corridors into deadly passages for thousands of refugees crossing from Turkey to Greece. The coast guard said 138 migrants were rescued and 19 drowned after their wooden boat capsized off the island of Kalymnos late on Thursday. In a second incident off the island of Rhodes, three people, including a child and an infant, drowned and four were missing. Six people were rescued at sea, the coastguard said.

Some 16 people, including two infants and eight children, were confirmed dead and 274 people were rescued when a wooden boat they were on literally fell apart in rough seas off the Greek island of Lesbos late on Wednesday. Greece has been a transit point for more than 570,000 refugees and migrants fleeing conflict in the Middle East and beyond this year, triggering bickering among European nations at odds on how to deal with one of the biggest humanitarian crises in decades. Refugees have reported smugglers offering ‘discounts’ of up to 50% on tickets costing between 1,100 to 1,400 euros to make the journey on inflatable rafts in bad weather, UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Thursday. Perceptibly sturdier wooden boats cost more, at between €1,800 and €2,500 €per passenger.

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“The waves of the Aegean are not just washing up dead refugees, dead children, but (also) the very civilization of Europe..”

• Tsipras: Aegean Waves Wash Up Dead Children, And Europe’s Very Civilization (AP)

Drowned babies and toddlers washed onto Greece’s famed Aegean Sea beaches, and a grim-faced diver pulled a drowned mother and child from a half-sunk boat that was decrepit long before it sailed. On shore, bereaved women wailed and stunned-looking fathers cradled their children. At least 27 people, more than half of them children, died in waters off Greece Friday trying to fulfill their dream of a better life in Europe. The tragedy came two days after a boat crammed with 300 people sank off Lesbos in one of the worst accidents of its kind, leaving 29 dead. It won’t be the last. As autumn storms threaten to make the crossing from Turkey even riskier and conditions in Middle Eastern refugee camps deteriorate, ever more refugees – mostly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis – are joining the rush to reach Europe.

More than 60 people, half of them children, have died in the past three days alone, compared with just over a hundred a few weeks earlier. Highlighting political friction in the 28-nation European Union, Greece’s left-wing prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, cited the horror of the new drownings to accuse the block of ineptitude and hypocrisy in handling the crisis. [..] Speaking in Athens, Tsipras accused Europe of an “inability to defend its (humanitarian) values” by providing a safe alternative to the sea journeys. “The waves of the Aegean are not just washing up dead refugees, dead children, but (also) the very civilization of Europe,” he said, dismissing Western shock at the children’s deaths as “crocodile tears.” “What about the tens of thousands of living children, who are cramming the roads of migration?” he said.

“I feel ashamed of Europe’s inability to effectively address this human drama, and of the level of debate … where everyone tries to shift responsibility to someone else.” Tsipras’ government has appealed for more assistance from its EU partners. It argues that those trying to reach Europe should be registered in camps in Turkey, then flown directly to host countries under the EU’s relocation program, to spare them the sea voyage. But it has resisted calls to demolish its own border fence with Turkey, which would also obviate the need to pay smugglers for a trip in a leaky boat. “My opinion is that at this stage — for purely practical reasons — … the opening of the border fence is not possible,” Greek Migration Minister Yiannis Mouzalas said.

“When talking about receiving refugees, it’s not under our control — they are coming,” he told state ERT TV. “So it’s a question of how we address this problem. … We will not put them in jail or try to drown them. They will have all the rights that they are allowed under (international) agreements and Greek law.” Greece’s Merchant Marine Ministry said 19 people died and 138 were rescued near the eastern island of Kalymnos early Friday, when a battered wooden pleasure boat capsized. Eleven of the victims were children, including three babies. At least three more people — a woman, a child and a baby — died when another boat sank off the nearby island of Rhodes, while an adult drowned off Lesbos.

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Curious: the version of the AP piece above, as posted by HuffPo, was quoted by Zero Hedge as containing the bolded lines in this piece below. But when I looked at the link, these lines had been edited out. An NBC version also misses the reference to western military action. The New York Post version still carries them.

• Tsipras Blames Migrant Flows On Western Military Action In Middle East (AP)

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras accused Europe of an “inability to defend its (humanitarian) values” by providing a safe alternative to the dangerous sea journeys. “I want to express … my endless grief at the dozens of deaths and the human tragedy playing out in our seas,” he told parliament. “The waves of the Aegean are not just washing up dead refugees, dead children, but (also) the very civilization of Europe.” Tsipras accused western countries of shedding “crocodile tears” over children dying in the Aegean but doing little for those who make it across. “What about the tens of thousands of living children, who are cramming the roads of migration?” he said.

Tsipras blamed the migrant flows on western military interventions in the Middle East, which he said furthered geopolitical interests rather than democracy. “And now, those who sowed winds are reaping whirlwinds, but these mainly afflict reception countries,” he added. “I feel ashamed of Europe’s inability to effectively address this human drama, and of the level of debate … where everyone tries to shift responsibility to someone else,” Tsipras said.

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“Many Afghans dream of a better life in Europe. About 80,000 applied for asylum in Europe in the first half of 2015 alone, with most of them going to Germany.”

• The Next Wave: Afghans Flee To Europe in Droves (Spiegel)

Redwan Eharai’s journey ends where it began: in Afghanistan, in the city of Herat. Eharai, a 15-year-old boy, is carrying the heavy body of his mother Sima up the hill to the cemetery, together with neighbors and relatives. He and his mother had set out from Afghanistan together, headed for Germany. Now he is standing at her grave. She died at the border between Iran and Turkey, struck in the head by a bullet fired by an Iranian police officer. Hundreds of people have now come to say their goodbyes. When she was still alive and urgently needed help, no one was there for her, says Eharai, as he looks into his mother’s grave. Despite his stubble, which makes him look almost like a grown man, he currently seems more like a child.

His family is poor – Eharai’s father died of a brain tumor five years ago, and Sima, his 43-year-old mother, suffered from depression. She had trouble sleeping and cried a lot. In Afghanistan, being a widow without an income, and with three children, is like being buried alive, says Eharai – you have no rights at all. Instead, Sima Eharai decided to leave Afghanistan and go to Germany with three of her children, Adnan, Erfan and Redwan. Sanaz, her eldest daughter, was already living in Frankfurt. Her mother, determined that she would have a better life, had arranged for her to marry a German of Afghan descent. “I can’t continue living like this,” Sima Eharai said when she called her daughter the last time. “Either I make it to you or I’ll follow my husband into death.”

Many Afghans dream of a better life in Europe. About 80,000 applied for asylum in Europe in the first half of 2015 alone, with most of them going to Germany. They are the second-largest group of refugees and migrants in Germany after Syrians. At the moment, people are flooding into Herat Province from all over Afghanistan. From there, they drive across the border to Iran or travel farther south to cross into Iran along a less well-guarded section of the border. About 3,000 Afghans are now coming into Iran every day illegally. From there, they continue to Turkey, where they board boats to the Greek islands of Lesbos or Kos and then cross the Balkans to Northern Europe.

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That just moves the problems somewhere else.

• Refugee Crisis: Germans Restrict Entry Points From Austria (BBC)

Germany is to restrict the number of entry points for migrants arriving via Austria, in a bid to control the flow as thousands cross into Bavaria daily. It says it has reached agreement with Austria on five crossing points on the 800km (500-mile) border. Authorities in Bavaria have complained a lack of co-ordination with Austria is hampering efforts to aid new arrivals. Many others continue to make their way via Greece, in freezing temperatures, hoping to get asylum in Germany. Meanwhile, more than 20 migrants – many of them children – have drowned in more boat sinkings in Greek waters while they were trying to reach EU countries via Turkey. Greek officials said 19 people had died and 138 were rescued near the island of Kalymnos.

Three others died off Rhodes and three were missing. Six were rescued there. And the Spanish coastguard called off the search for 35 migrants missing at sea the day after their boat was shipwrecked en route from Morocco. Fifteen migrants were rescued alive from the vessel and the bodies of four others were found. A spokeswoman for Germany’s interior ministry told AFP news agency that the new rules on entry points would go into effect immediately. “We would like to have a more orderly procedure,” she said. A senior Bavarian politician said that under the agreement, 50 migrants an hour could cross into the state at the five agreed points.

Earlier this week, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maziere accused Austria of transporting refugees to the German frontier at night, leaving them there unannounced. Federal police spokesman Heinrich Onstein has said everything was being done to prevent the migrants from having to sleep outdoors. He said the problem had been that “we do not know how many people will arrive, and at which border post”. However an Austrian police spokesman dismissed such accusations as a “joke”, given that Austria was receiving 11,000 people a day just at the Spielfeld crossing from Slovenia. Germany expects at least 800,000 asylum seekers this year – some estimates put it as high as 1.5 million. That is at least four times the number who arrived last year.

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