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Debt Rattle September 27 2025

Sep 272025
 
 September 27, 2025  Posted by at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


René Magritte The song of the storm 1937

 

• Martyr or Liar? Comey Indicted on Two Counts (Turley)
• Former FBI Director James Comey Indicted on Three Counts (CTH)
• Days of Judgment (James Howard Kunstler)
• Yet Again, Deep State Attacks DNI Tulsi Gabbard (CTH)
• Leaked Memo Reveals FBI Deployed A Stunning 274 Agents On J6 (ZH)
• Kiev False-Flag Provocation Could Lead To World War 3 – Zakharova (RT)
• Kremlin Slams ‘Reckless’ NATO Threats To Shoot Down Russian Planes (RT)
• EU Moves To Bypass Hungary’s Veto On Russia Sanctions (RT)
• Crazy Idea On How To Steal Russia’s Assets: Make EU Taxpayers Pay For It (MoA)
• Kallas Insists US Shouldn’t Offload Ukraine On EU (RT)
• West Invented The ‘Russian Threat’ – And Kept It For 500 Years (Bordachev)
• Gaza Deal Near – Trump (RT)
• He Destroyed A Country and Half A Million Lives and Got Five Years (Fetouri)
• Elon Musk Says Charlie Kirk Was Shot From The Rear (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

https://twitter.com/JesseBWatters/status/1971742140704096733

 

 

 

 

As I said yesterday, this will be a difffiult case to bring. They are all in it together, and all for one, one for all etc. But there’s a weakness to that too. The rats may try to be first to leave the ship if they expect rain. Several sources now say McCabe may turn on Comey, on whose orders he leaked.

“This is a city that floats on a rolling sea of leaks.”

“He is also a sophisticated player. Perhaps that is why he issued a videotaped message saying effectively “bring it on” and let’s go to trial. While an improvement over Comey’s bizarre seashell messages, the videotape may be too confident.”

• Martyr or Liar? Comey Indicted on Two Counts (Turley)

Yesterday, James Comey became the first former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to be indicted for a federal crime. That is likely the only fact upon which you will receive anything close to agreement in the country. For some, the two-count indictment is a long-overdue accountability for a man who pushed through the now-debunked Russian collusion investigation. For others, it is another abuse on President Donald Trump’s revenge tour. There are legitimate concerns about the targeting of a political critic of the President, particularly after he publicly complained just days ago that Attorney General Pam Bondi was not indicting Comey and others.

However, Comey is hardly the pristine model of “ethical leadership” that he described in his book. Putting aside his critical role in the Russian collusion investigation, Comey tossed aside even the pretense of ethics after Trump fired him. The Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, issued a scathing report that found Comey was a leaker and had violated FBI policy in his handling of FBI memos. On his way out of the Bureau, Comey stole FBI materials, including those containing the “code name and true identity” of a sensitive source. While he did not find that he disclosed the classified information, Horowitz found that Comey took “the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome.”

He further added that Comey “set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees—and the many thousands of more former FBI employees—who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information.” Comey later admitted that he asked his friend, Columbia Law Professor Daniel Richman, to leak information from the documents to the New York Times. Comey’s close associate, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, stated that Comey did instruct him to leak information to the media. Comey denied that repeatedly under oath. James Baker, FBI general counsel and a close adviser to Comey, also told investigators that he was “under the belief” that he was “ultimately instructed and authorized to [provide information to the Times] by then FBI Director James Comey.”

That sets up a straightforward question: who is lying? It could also set up a bizarre scene of McCabe testifying against his friend. McCabe despises Trump as much as Comey, so he may prove to be an overtly hostile witness for the prosecutors. Washington will be glued to any such trial. The only thing more unnerving than the alleged targeting of a political critic in Washington is the prosecution of a leaker. This is a city that floats on a rolling sea of leaks. The Justice Department is notorious for leaks made with lethal effect against targets. Now the former FBI director will stand trial to see if he is a leaker and a liar. There is one individual who is likely to be watching with particular interest and perhaps satisfaction: former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Comey is facing two counts of making false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding. The first count under 18 U.S.C. 1001 (a)(2) is the exact charge that Comey engineered against Flynn. Comey gave a book tour where he thrilled audiences about how he secured a criminal charge against Flynn for making false statements. In one event, an audience cheered as Comey took credit for the controversial charge. He explained that what he did was not exactly proper. It was, he explained, “something we’ve, I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized investigation, a more organized administration…I thought, ‘It’s early enough, let’s just send a couple of guys over.’”

The actual agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe that he intentionally lied about a meeting with Russian diplomats, but Comey and his investigators pushed for charges anyway. They drained Flynn of resources, threatened to indict his son, and ultimately secured a guilty plea. Now it will be Comey in the dock, facing a charge of making a false statement. He will do so as someone who has admitted to improperly removing FBI material and leaking information to the media. The odds still favor Comey. He will have a jury taken from a generally liberal, Democratic jury pool. He is also a sophisticated player. Perhaps that is why he issued a videotaped message saying effectively “bring it on” and let’s go to trial. While an improvement over Comey’s bizarre seashell messages, the videotape may be too confident.

Perjury or false statements can be challenging to prove, particularly when vague or nuanced language is used. This is neither vague nor nuanced. Comey repeatedly swore that he never asked anyone at the FBI to leak information. That is either true or it is not. Comey will continue to be vilified and lionized by different parts of the population. Yet, this is an ignoble moment that he helped bring about. Notably, this indictment comes 50 years after the only Attorney General was convicted of crimes (including false statements and obstruction). That was John Mitchell after the Watergate scandal. Now the man who bragged about nailing Michael Flynn will face the same false statement charge. The man who celebrated the charging of Donald Trump (including obstruction-related charges) will face his own obstruction charge. Whether karma or lawfare, Comey will now have his day in court.

Read more …

“This count could open the door to public testimony by McCabe, Rice, Mook, Brennan and even Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton herself as to Comey’s knowledge; each was a first-hand witness.”

• Former FBI Director James Comey Indicted on Three Counts (CTH)

Newly appointed U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, from the Eastern District of Viginia, has released a criminal indictment of former FBI Director James Comey . The indictment alleges three counts. Counts one and two are ‘false statements’ to congress on September 30, 2020, [18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2)] and count three is ‘obstruction of a federal proceeding’ stemming from the same testimony. [18U.S.C. § 1505] The first false statement charge surrounds Hillary Clinton’s “approval of a plan concerning” Donald Trump and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.

COUNT #1 – James Comey claimed he could not remember being made aware of the Trump-Russia collusion plan, and there is ample evidence from his own previous public statements, from public and sworn statements by former CIA Director John Brennan, from former statements by officials in the January 5, 2017, meeting memorialized by Susan Rice, from statements that remain sealed as recounted by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and from statements under oath by the former Clinton campaign team -including campaign manager Robby Mook- that James Comey was well aware of the plan. While this first count is based on the tenuous “I don’t remember” aspect, this count holds more material benefit than simply Comey’s recollection.

This count could open the door to public testimony by McCabe, Rice, Mook, Brennan and even Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton herself as to Comey’s knowledge; each was a first-hand witness. This first count holds strong material value in a public trial regardless of the outcome. This first count establishes the baseline for USAO Lindsey Halligan to bring all material witnesses into court and publicly put them on record outlining the Trump-Russia collusion scheme. You could say, I hope the intent is not just to incarcerate Comey per se’ – but rather to use what Comey represents to indict the entire enterprise around him. The facts behind Count #1 make this possible. Let’s all hope this strategic intent unfolds.

Count #2, involves James Comey falsely testify he did not direct former his FBI Special Government Employee (SGE) Daniel Richman to leak information to New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt. This second count is easily evidenced through the prior investigation of Office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz and all prior witness statements therein. Again, that includes testimony to Horowitz given by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Additionally, the second count is evidenced by the direct testimony of Daniel Richman himself, who was hired by James Comey and given special access privileges to classified information systems. Richman was likely a grand jury witness during the assembly of the case against Comey. Count #2 is the easiest to prove beyond any reasonable doubt.

BIG PICTURE – One of the frustrations felt by many people who have researched or followed the Trump-Russia collusion nonsense, is the lack of accountability for the internal actors who operated within a highly weaponized DOJ and FBI system. Perhaps this indictment is the first step in holding those to account. I am often asked about why the second term cabinet members of President Trump do not take action. My response is consistent. They refuse to acknowledge or assert the corruption within the institutions they lead. They are fraught with fear. The administration of President Donald Trump does not have the same institutional operations in place that Joe Biden visibly deployed post January 6, 2021.

President Barack Obama spent eight years working with Attorney General Eric Holder, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Deputy AG Sally Yates, former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and former FBI Chief Legal Counsel James Baker, on a process of weaponizing the Dept of Justice and FBI. All of the agents and attorneys within the Obama network, in addition to their private sector media and Lawfare partners, spent over a decade building out their ideological targeting tools. Bondi, Patel and to a lesser extent Bongino, spent a ridiculous amount of time denying the institutional constructs that sit beneath them. Still, to this day, they do not publicly admit the internal challenge with each organization. All institutional change first requires a public admission of the problem.

Main Justice and FBI remain -to this day- in private acceptance but public denial of the problem. In essence they are stuck in a pretending loop. Each day that follows grows the Gordian knot their denial & fear creates. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy; an outcome born of both fear and inability. Those who created the weaponized institutions are heavily reliant upon the retention of pretense. We the people, are continually witnessing this dynamic and frustrated at the lack of accountability. Yet even within that frustrated annoyance, too few boldly outline exactly how comprehensively corrupt the institutions are – by former design. Pam Bondi and Kash Patel are afraid of the organizations they lead. Their fear stems from a desire to be viewed as effective, and yet their ineffectiveness at correcting the problem is driven by their fear. Thus, the loop.

Yes, Main Justice and the FBI can change the dynamic, but it starts -as all massive institutional reform efforts must- with a seismic release of sunlight upon the toxic corruption that sits at their feet. As long as Pam Bondi and Kash Patel continue to maintain a pretense of top-down control, the embedded system operators will continue undermining them and acting maliciously. The effort to hold James Comey to account is highlighting just how corrupt THEIR SYSTEM is. It is not accidental that President Trump needed to shake them up and change this dynamic with the very public appointment of Lindsey Halligan.

How do Bondi and Patel stop entwining the knot and finally cut it? Well, that begins with sunlight, firings, investigations and criminal indictments of former officials AND current holdovers inside their agencies. In essence, they must purposefully and righteously ‘turn the tables‘ in their own temples. Perhaps the indictment of James Comey will finally begin the process.

Read more …

“If you’re want a friend in DC, get a dog. We’re coming for you.” —Dan Bongino, Deputy Director, FBI

• Days of Judgment (James Howard Kunstler)

You better believe Martha Stewart baked a cake last night — the lovely Gâteau Opéra perhaps? — when she got the news that the ham sandwich known as James Comey got indicted by a federal grand jury twenty-two years after that same ham sandwich indicted the goddess of hearth and home for lying to the FBI and the SEC over a trumped-up insider-trading rap, and sent her to federal prison for a five-month stretch plus five additional months of confined home-making and two years of supervised redecorating.

Mr. Comey’s indictment is probably just the opening salvo in what will be a barrage of indictments coming down against government officials who used their powers-under-law to harass, disable, cancel, dis-bar, bankrupt, persecute and ruin thousands of their fellow citizens, including especially the 45th president and the people who worked for him.

Jim Comey was the engine who pulled the choo-choo train of seditious fakery known as RussiaGate (Donald Trump colluding with Vladimir Putin) into America’s public life, which then expanded into the years-long ass-covering operations of the Mueller Investigation, then Impeachments One and Two, then the J-6 FBI-engineered “insurrection,” then Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional J-6 committee gong show, and then the four various fugazi prosecutions against Mr. Trump in 2024 designed to derail his re-run for office bankrupt his family, and stuff him in prison for the rest of his life.

Mr. Comey and his associates must be astounded that none of that worked. It really was a mighty organized criminal endeavor. And, as such, it stands to be prosecutable under the RICO statutes, which means that these current two charges against Mr. Comey should be a coming attraction of much more to come against him and many other familiar characters, possibly including his successor as FBI Director Christopher Wray. (The Blaze reports overnight that the FBI deployed roughly 275 plainclothes agents into the J-6 protest crowd at the US Capitol, as opposed to the 26 agents that Mr. Wray testified about to Congress.)

The smuggery of this gang in the years since all this business started in 2016 has also been out of this world. Mr. Comey dropped one rancid video after another either making threats or sanctimoniously declaring his sainthood, as if he expected the dreadful day would never come that he might face charges. Likewise, former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe ran his mouth all over CNN for years, former CIA Director John Brennan spun fibs on MSNBC, while FBI RussiaGate straw-boss Peter Strzok rode shotgun regularly with fake news confabulator Rachel Maddow. All of it was designed to bamboozle the public, and it worked!

You can expect more than one RICO case to come because these crimes against our country occurred in many discrete episodes of organized misconduct over many years. The RussiaGate op involving Comey, Brennan, Hillary, Obama, Biden, et al., was quite separate from Adam Schiff’s orchestrated seditious Impeachment #1 featuring CIA mole Eric Ciaramella, Col. Alexander Vindman, and ICIG Michael Atkinson. As was the activity of the Mueller group actually supervised by Andrew Weissmann (because Robert Mueller was secretly non compos mentis). As were the J-6 shenanigans of Mr. Wray’s FBI, including the DNC Pipe Bomb sideshow.

As were the Lawfare exploits of Norm Eisen and Mary McCord conniving with “Joe Biden’s” White House to arrange the Trump prosecutions by DA Alvin Bragg and AG Letitia James in New York and DA Fani Willis in Fulton County, GA. As were the dark deeds of Merrick Garland and his Special Counsels Jake Smith, David Weiss, and Robert Hur. As were the 2020 and 2022 election-rigging capers of Marc Elias & Company. As were whatever peculiar directives were ordered by Alejandro Mayorkas to throw the US borders wide open. As was the “autopen” abuse by the White House staff and their cover-up of “Joe Biden’s” mental decline.

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“It is certainly true that AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have refused to look internally; and it is also true that DNI Tulsi Gabbard has spent much of her focus time looking internally.”

• Yet Again, Deep State Attacks DNI Tulsi Gabbard (CTH)

It is difficult not to notice the strategy of how certain Trump administration officials are targeted. Any cabinet member that looks inward to reveal the status of corrupt activity within the information silo itself becomes a target. Cabinet officials who focus externally, meaning the majority of their effort looks outside government, are seemingly left alone. HHS Secretary RFK Jr and Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, are examples of those receiving the worst ideological targeting from operations within HHS and the Intelligence Community respectively. Conversely, CIA Director John Ratcliffe faces almost no scrutiny or targeting by the Intelligence Community as the silo operators frame narratives almost exclusively against DNI Gabbard.

The latest effort surfaces as embeds within Main Justice and the CIA frame a storyline that Tulsi Gabbard’s action in removing the security clearances of 37 current and former officials, has now resulted in those same officials being incapable of testifying against former CIA Director John Brennan (and others). The premise of the narrative is ridiculous. If we are to accept some current or former IC officials are willing to testify against Brennan (or others), regardless of whether Tulsi Gabbard has revoked their security clearances, their retroactive knowledge is still pertinent. They are completely free to give statements and testimony based on their prior conduct. What the leakers to Axios and the New York Times are trying to establish, is groundwork for the removal of Tulsi Gabbard.

This stops her objective of investigating internal corruption. I suspect most of the people trying desperately to undermine Gabbard are from within the CIA Directorate of Analysis, or at least in alignment with the directorate’s agenda. The narrative’s author, Marc Caputo, claims AG Pam Bondi is hampered in her effort to criminally indict John Brennan because the witnesses Main Justice would use have lost their security clearances. Again, the game of leveraging internecine friendships in/around the office of Trump becomes an overlay. It is certainly true that AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have refused to look internally; and it is also true that DNI Tulsi Gabbard has spent much of her focus time looking internally. Bondi and Patel continue the preferred game of institutional blame-casting in Main Justice. Meanwhile, Gabbard is busy focused on cleaning up her IC house.

The Fourth Branch embeds do not fear the approach of Bondi/Patel, but the Fourth Branch embeds are petrified by the approach of Tulsi Gabbard. That reality underpins the baseline of opposition against the Director of National Intelligence. As the dynamic unfolds, CIA Director John Ratcliffe is certainly not corrupt; however, nor is he brave. Director Ratcliffe is willing to let Director Gabbard clean up his house, and then he takes credit for the reform. As the weeks unfold into months, this is becoming increasingly obvious.

Mark Zaid is the current anti-Trump Lawfare operative likely seeding the narrative to Axios/New York Times. “Mark Zaid, a Trump administration critic who represents six of the intelligence professionals whose clearances were revoked, said administration officials fretting about the Brennan case have “valid concerns.” “This seems to be, as usual, an unforced error by Trump administration officials who don’t think things through in the long game in favor of a quick-pass completion,” he said. “If I were the defense counsel [for Brennan], I would raise the revocation in an attempt to undermine the credibility of the witnesses.”

Mark Zaid knows the game-changing process that DNI Tulsi Gabbard is using. Gabbard is directly going into each IC agency to review and retrieve information. When she finds something that connects to the overall plots being used by the Fourth Branch, the DNI takes that information directly to President Trump who subsequently declassifies it and then she releases it. Zaid and the Deep State operatives he represents, want to stop Tulsi Gabbard with urgency. They are throwing every available IC narrative into the media flow in the hope that something stops Tulsi’s effectiveness.

Read more …

And then lie about it 1,000 times…

• Leaked Memo Reveals FBI Deployed A Stunning 274 Agents On J6 (ZH)

The FBI deployed nearly 300 plainclothes agents to the US Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, in an effort that became so chaotic it caused an internal schism within the agency that led many rank-and-file at the bureau that core competencies had been lost to “wokeness,” and that employees had become “pawns in a political war,” according to an after-action report hidden from the public for over four years until it was obtained by Just the News. Anonymous complaints were sent to the after-action team by scores of FBI agents and other personnel – many from the bureau’s premier Washington field office (WFO) – detailing how agents were sent into a dangerous situation without proper safety equipment or even the ability to identify themselves as armed officers to other police agencies.

Most common among the complaints was that under former directors Chris Wray and just-indicted James Comey, the bureau had become infected with political bias and liberal ideology that treated the Trump-supporting Jan. 6 protesters much differently from Black Lives Matter rioters from the summer of 2020. “The FBI should make clear to its personnel and the public that, despite its obvious political bias, it ultimately still takes its mission and priorities seriously,” wrote one employee. “It should equally and aggressively investigate criminal activity regardless of the offenders’ perceived race, political affiliations, or motivations; and it should equally and aggressively protect all Americans regardless of perceived race, political affiliations, or motivations.”

The agent suggested that leaders “identify viable exit options for FBI personnel who no longer feel it is legally or morally acceptable to support a federal law enforcement and intelligence agency motivated by political bias.” Another agent suggested that the problem was widespread throughout the FBI. “Currently, the US Attorneys office is dictating what it is that gets investigated. This is a dangerous precedent because we can barely get them to prosecute investigations that clearly meet thresholds needed for Federal prosecutions,” the agent wrote. “However, their willingness to conduct a search warrant on someone’s life for a misdemeanor seems ridiculous. It is unreasonable for the FBI to conduct investigations involving misdemeanor violations at a federal level… it is not our role.”

Several employees directly mentioned the Washington Field Office (WFO) and its culture. “WFO is a hopelessly broken office that’s more concerned about wearing masks and recruiting preferred racial/sexual groups than catching actual bad guys,” wrote one worker. “I wish you all would pay more attention to our safety than what type of masks we wear. If you are going to deploy us to a riot situation, then give us the proper damn safety equipment–helmet, face shield, protective clothing–and training!” wrote another. In total, the after-action feedback spanned 50 pages, which were located by current FBI Director Kash Patel’s office and turned over to the House Judiciary Committed and its subcommittee

As Just the News notes further; the document has proven a bombshell to lawmakers, revealing for the first time that the FBI had a total of 274 agents deployed to the Capitol in plainclothes and with guns but no clear safety gear of way to be recognized by other law enforcement agencies working in the chaos of the riot. Wray, Patel’s predecessor, steadfastly refused to tell Congress how many if any agents went to the Capitol that day. And a prior DOJ Inspector General Report did not divulge the number, referring only to a SWAT team the bureau sent into the Capitol and having more than two dozen informants in the crowd. The existence of mass FBI agents at the Capitol on Jan. 6 could also be a problem in many of the cases that were subsequently brought in court. If agents were witnesses at the Capitol and did not disclose it in the subsequent affidavits during prosecutions it could create grounds for defendants to appeal.

The document also reveals for the first time that there were widespread concerns for years inside the bureau – sentiments that boiled over after the FBI began sending SWAT teams to arrest Jan. 6 participants on misdemeanor charges – that the FBI had become biased in favor of liberals and against conservatives. Despite the pre-existing report, Wray rejected that notion in testimony before Congress. “The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background,” Wray told Congress in 2023. “I have found almost invariably, the people screaming the loudest about the politicization of the FBI are themselves the most political, and more often than not, making claims of politicization to advance their own views or goals, and they often don’t know the facts or are choosing to ignore them,” Wray added in an episode of the podcast “FBI Retired Case File Review” that aired the same year.

Read more …

MO: take a downed Russia drone, repair it, use it to attack Europe. Everyone will think Russia did it.

• Kiev False-Flag Provocation Could Lead To World War 3 – Zakharova (RT)

Ukraine is planning a possible false-flag operation in Romania or Poland that could escalate into a third world war, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. In a Telegram post on Friday, she pointed to reports in Hungarian media alleging that Kiev intends to stage acts of sabotage in neighboring NATO countries and place responsibility on Moscow. ”Europe has never been so close to the outbreak of World War 3 in modern history,” Zakharova wrote. According to the information available, the Kiev regime’s plan is to repair several downed or intercepted Russian UAVs, fit them with lethal warheads, and – controlled by Ukrainian specialists – send them disguised as “Russian drones” to major NATO transport hubs in Poland and Romania, Zakharova continued.

https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/1971614761889726746

At the same time, they would run a disinformation campaign across Europe to pin the blame on Moscow and thereby try to provoke an armed conflict between the Russian Federation and NATO, she added. In order to carry out this alleged provocation, Russian-made ‘Geran’ drones were reportedly delivered on September 16 to the Yavorov training ground in western Ukraine, which hosts the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security of the Hetman Petro Sagaidachny National Academy. The UAVs had reportedly earlier been repaired at the LORTA plant in Lviv.

Zakharova cited Hungarian journalists as saying that the reason for these actions by Vladimir Zelensky is straightforward: the Ukrainian armed forces are suffering a crushing defeat. The collapse of the army, they argued, is no longer limited to the tactical level but has taken on a strategic dimension. If all this is confirmed, it means that Europe has never been so close to the start of World War 3, Zakharova concluded.

https://twitter.com/Alex_Oloyede2/status/1971655097034633621

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You can bet the Russian pilots are under strict orders NOT to breach protocol.

• Kremlin Slams ‘Reckless’ NATO Threats To Shoot Down Russian Planes (RT)

Threats by NATO member states to shoot down Russian warplanes are “reckless and irresponsible,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said. He insisted that no hard evidence has been presented to back up allegations that Russian fighter jets violated bloc members’ airspace. Earlier this month, Poland alleged that multiple Russian drones had entered its territory. Estonia made similar claims of airspace violations last Friday, requesting urgent consultations with fellow NATO member states. Moscow has denied any breaches of the military bloc’s airspace. Responding to the Estonia claim, the Russian Defense Ministry said three MiG-31s were conducting a routine flight from Karelia Region, east of Finland, to an airfield in Kaliningrad Region, a Russian exclave bordering Poland and Lithuania, and that they strictly flew over neutral waters of the Baltic Sea.

https://twitter.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1971640205116654076

When asked to comment on a report by Bloomberg, in which Western diplomats were cited as threatening to shoot down intruding Russian warplanes, Peskov said on Friday that “this is a very reckless and irresponsible statement.” “Allegations against Russia that its warplanes have violated someone’s airspace are groundless,” the official said, noting that “no credible evidence has been produced” to corroborate the claims. The Bloomberg report cited anonymous officials as claiming that earlier this week, British, French, and German representatives had held a closed-door meeting with Russian officials in Moscow. According to the publication, the Western diplomats warned that NATO was prepared to shoot down Russian warplanes in the event of airspace violations.

Earlier this week, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said he would not rule out such a scenario, but that decisions are made strictly on a case-by-case basis. In an interview with France’s RTL radio station on Thursday, Moscow’s ambassador to Paris, Aleksey Meshkov, cautioned that such an incident would trigger a “war” between NATO and Russia.

Read more …

Democracy and sunlight. This sort of thing always reminds me of Groucho: ‘These are my principles, and if you don’t like them, well, I have others’.

• EU Moves To Bypass Hungary’s Veto On Russia Sanctions (RT)

The European Commission has proposed extending sanctions against Russia by qualified majority rather than unanimity in order to prevent Hungary from blocking them, Politico reported on Friday, citing an EC document.EU diplomats are due to discuss the proposal and a new sanctions package later on Friday, the outlet said. Currently, Brussels renews anti-Russian sanctions every six months with unanimous approval. Hungary has consistently opposed the bloc’s unconditional support for Kiev, favoring peace talks over continued military aid, and has repeatedly used its veto to block EU financial and military assistance. Under the Commission’s plan, only a qualified majority would be needed to extend the restrictions, curbing Budapest’s ability to wield its veto and demand concessions such as releasing frozen Russian assets.

The outlet said that ahead of Friday’s meeting of EU permanent representatives, the Commission also outlined a plan to provide Ukraine with a €140 billion loan backed by frozen Russian central bank assets, to be disbursed in tranches for defense and budget support. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz endorsed the idea this week, but said the funds should go solely to pay for military equipment and only be repaid when Russia compensates Kiev for damages. Earlier this month, the Commission floated a proposal to use Russian assets to back a reparation loan to Ukraine, repayable only if Kiev receives “compensation” from Moscow.

Reuters earlier put the plan at €130 billion, describing it as a “reparations credit” replacing Moscow assets with zero-coupon bonds issued by the Commission, guaranteed by all EU states or a coalition of willing countries. Diplomats for the bloc are expected to debate these initiatives alongside a 19th sanctions package. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the measures would target Russian banks, liquefied natural gas, the Mir payment system and vessels in what Brussels calls Moscow’s “shadow fleet.” Russia, which has denounced Western sanctions as “illegal,” has warned that any attempt to seize or redirect its assets would deliver a “very serious blow” to the international financial system and has vowed to retaliate.

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“If countries see that central bank money can disappear when European politicians see fit, they might decide to withdraw their reserves from the eurozone.”

• Crazy Idea On How To Steal Russia’s Assets: Make EU Taxpayers Pay For It (MoA)

The war hawks have long tried to steal Russian assets held in West to then use the money to finance the proxy war against Russia. The sums involved are serious: “Nearly three years after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Belgium holds €258 billion in frozen or immobilised Russian assets. The General Administration of Treasury at the Ministry of Finance confirmed the figures on Wednesday to La Libre and De Tijd.” Some of these assets belong to institutions not sanctioned by the European Union. Frozen assets amount to €65 billion, with an additional €193 billion in immobilised transactions, primarily from the Central Bank of Russia.”

The money is not really held by Belgium but by the Belgium company Euroclear which acts as depository for international central bank assets denominated in Euros. Currently the EU is confiscating the interest, not the principal, of that money to distribute it to Ukraine. That step is likely already illegal and Russia will certainly use the courts to get it back. There were also talks to invest the Russian assets in junk bonds with aim of achieving a higher yield:

“Euroclear chief executive Valérie Urbain told the Financial Times that European Union plans to raise additional revenue from frozen Russian assets by investing them in higher-risk securities would amount to “expropriation.” Urbain also warned that such a move could prompt “Russian retaliation in all sorts of forms,” as well as damage Euroclear’s reputation. The majority of Russian assets frozen after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine are currently held at Euroclear. The E.U. has reportedly been discussing the possibility of transferring these assets to a special E.U.-administered fund that would make higher-risk investments. The goal is to generate greater returns to support Ukraine.”

That move was blocked as no one was ready to accept the potential liability for it. Not only Belgium, but also Germany and other fiscal conservative states, have warned that such a move would endanger their own assets. Russia has announced that it will retaliate against any confiscation of its money. It threatens to confiscate whatever European companies own or hold in Russia. Those companies would then have to sue their own governments for cover of their losses. Now a new idea has crept up. How it is supposed to work is not clear to me but it seems to have the support of the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

In a Financial Times op-ed Merz claims (archived): “Germany has been, and remains, cautious on the issue of confiscating the Russian central bank’s assets that are frozen in Europe, and with good reason. There are not only questions of international law to consider, but also fundamental issues concerning the euro’s role as a global reserve currency. But this must not hold us back: we must consider how, by circumventing these problems, we can make these funds available for the defence of Ukraine. In my view a viable solution should now be developed whereby — without intervening in property rights — we can make available to Ukraine an interest-free loan of almost €140 billion in total. That loan would only be repaid once Russia has compensated Ukraine for the damage it has caused during this war. Until then, the Russian assets will remain frozen, as decided by the European Council. Such extensive assistance will require budgetary guarantees from member states. Those bilateral guarantees should, as soon as the next Multiannual Financial Framework is in place in 2028, be replaced by collateralisation under the EU’s long-term budget.”

What sounds like AI slop is not Merz’ own idea but a plan that had been proffered earlier by the EU commission. But no one seems to understands how its is different from an outright confiscation of those assets: “Frustration has been building in EU capitals around the lack of details surrounding the so-called reparations loan, which Commission President Ursula von der Leyen first pitched in her State of the European Union speech Sept. 10. The bulk of the Russian assets are held by the Brussels-based financial firm Euroclear and are invested in Western government bonds that have matured into cash. The cash is sitting in a deposit account with the European Central Bank.

The idea is for the EU to redirect the cash to Ukraine and “enter into a tailored debt contract with Euroclear at 0 percent interest,” according to the note. Euroclear holds €185 billion in cash balances linked to the Russian assets, a part of which will pay back a preexisting G7 loan to Ukraine. The remaining €140 billion will be paid out to Ukraine in tranches and used for “defense cooperation” as well as supporting Kyiv’s ordinary budget needs.” Reuters has more details on it: “To avoid seizing the Russian assets, the idea is to transfer the cash from Euroclear to a newly created Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) owned by EU governments, or G7 governments as well. In exchange, the European Commission would issue Euroclear with zero-coupon bonds guaranteed by the owners of the SPV.

The EU bonds would cover Euroclear’s risk against Russian litigation while the cash in the SPV could be invested more profitably than overnight deposits in the ECB and thus generate a higher return for Ukraine. Why would this scheme, as Merz say, ‘require budgetary guarantees from member states’? Doesn’t that mean that the tax-payers of those member state will eventually have to pay it? Who’s money is at risk when Russia wins its litigation? Who pays if something goes wrong? Some 62% of German voters disapprove (in German) Merz’ policies. Only a record low 35.5% says that he is right in what he is doing. In the fiscal conservative Germany any attempt to borrow more money for the war in Ukraine will further sink his and his party’s chances of ever being reelected.

Merz knows that the scheme has little chance to find unanimous EU approval. He plans to circumvent opposition to it: “I propose that, at the European Council at the end of October, we give the mandate to prepare this instrument in a legally secure manner. That decision should, ideally, be unanimous — failing that, it should be adopted by the large majority of member states who are firmly committed to Ukraine. We should also invite partners around the world that have frozen Russian assets to join the instrument. To this end, we will co-ordinate closely with our partners in the G7”. Luckily it is Belgium which has the last says in this. It is, naturally, opposing the scheme:

Speaking in the margins of the UN General Assembly, Mr De Wever said that Chancellor Merz’s proposal “will never happen”. The Belgian Prime Minister argues that seizing central bank assets of a third country would set a dangerous precedent “If countries see that central bank money can disappear when European politicians see fit, they might decide to withdraw their reserves from the eurozone.” De Wever added Chancellor Merz’s public statement regarding this is regrettable. “I’ve told everyone that I am happy to discuss this. But let’s talk and come up with something, rather than sharing an opinion on it every day. I find it quite frustrating.” It is, in the end, Russia’s money. Any attempt to seize is outright thievery. How long will it take for sane people to intervene and to shoot this idea down?

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Scared shitless that the US will distance itself from Kiev.

• Kallas Insists US Shouldn’t Offload Ukraine On EU (RT)

Brussels is not solely responsible for helping Ukraine end its conflict with Russia, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told Politico on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday. The comments follow US President Donald Trump’s recent apparent change of stance on Ukraine, after he suggested that Kiev, “with the support of the European Union,” was “in a position to fight and win.” Some observers saw the remark as Trump stepping back from the conflict after failing to make good on his pledge to end it quickly. “He was the one who promised to stop the killing,” Kallas said. “So it can’t be on us.”

After taking office in January, Trump engaged in brokering peace negotiations while suspending military aid to Kiev and refraining from imposing sanctions on Russia. He has insisted that the EU countries take greater responsibility for their own security, urging European NATO members to increase military spending to 5% of their GDP. Brussels’ top diplomat insisted that there is no NATO without the US, adding that America is one of the military bloc’s key members and any discussion of NATO’s role must reflect Washington’s responsibilities. The EU has faced challenges in financing long-term support for Ukraine, limited by constraints in its budgetary mechanisms and resistance from some members.

Kallas, a long-time Russia hawk, put forward an ambitious plan in March to mobilize new military aid for Ukraine worth €40 billion via EU member states. Several countries, including France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, resisted the proposal, wary of the formidable commitments. After weeks of negotiations, the package was scaled back to €5 billion for ammunition, underscoring both the limits of EU unity and the challenges Kallas faces in translating her hawkish stance into collective action. Russia has repeatedly accused the EU of undermining the peace efforts around Ukraine and militarizing in preparation for any conflict with Moscow. Moscow’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday that the EU and NATO have declared “an actual war” on Russia, accusing the West of orchestrating the Ukraine conflict.

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“The myth of the bogeyman from Moscow was born of cowardice and kept alive by greed..”

• West Invented The ‘Russian Threat’ – And Kept It For 500 Years (Bordachev)

In recent weeks, tensions between European political elites and Russia have flared once more. A drone incident in Poland, an alleged violation of Estonian airspace by Russian jets, and calls from Eastern European politicians to shoot down Russian aircraft all point to a deliberate effort at escalation. This sudden surge of provocation is less about Moscow and more about the EU’s own insecurity. With the United States steadily reducing its security guarantees, the bloc’s governments are grasping at their oldest weapon: the myth of the ‘Russian threat’.It is a myth that has lingered in the European imagination for over 500 years, and it tells us more about Western Europe’s cowardice and greed than about Russia itself

Two realities drive the EU’s current posture. First, Washington’s appetite for underwriting European defense is waning. Reports in Western media suggest that US officials recently told their European counterparts that direct military aid to Eastern Europe may soon be scaled back. For elites in the Baltics and former Soviet republics, this is a nightmare scenario. Their foreign policy has always revolved around one thing: provoking Russia to extract protection and resources from abroad.Second, the EU has no alternative strategy. Without US leadership, it cannot conceive of a foreign policy beyond confrontation with Moscow. Reviving the Russian bogeyman provides a convenient way to retain Washington’s attention – and money.

Yet the irony is obvious. Russia has no interest in punishing its smaller neighbors. Moscow does not seek revenge on the Baltics, Poland, or Finland for decades of anti-Russian rhetoric. Their importance in world affairs is negligible. But for their elites, clinging to the myth of Russian aggression has been the only foreign policy achievement of their independence. The roots of this myth lie not in the Cold War or the 19th century rivalry between empires, but in the late 15th century. Historians trace its emergence to the cowardice of the Baltic barons and the opportunism of German knights in Livonia and Prussia. In the 1480s, Poland’s kings considered sending these knights south to fight the expanding Ottoman Empire. The plan terrified them.

For centuries, they had lived comfortably in the Baltics, bullying local populations and skirmishing with Russian militias at little risk. Facing the Turks was another matter. The memory of Nicopolis – where Ottoman forces executed nearly all captured knights – was still fresh. Unwilling to face a real war, the Livonian and Prussian knights launched a propaganda campaign. Their aim was to convince the rest of Europe that Russia was as dangerous as, or even more dangerous than, the Turks. If successful, they could keep their privileges at home, avoid Ottoman swords, and secure papal approval to treat their border clashes with Russians as a holy war. The strategy worked. Rome granted indulgences and support, ensuring the knights could stay put while still enjoying the prestige of crusaders.

As historian Marina Bessudnova notes, the 1508 Livonian chronicle ‘The Wonderful Story of the Struggle of the Livonian Landgraves against the Russians and Tatars’ provided the finishing touches to this propaganda. Tellingly, the Baltic barons’ private letters contain no mention of a Russian threat. The danger was never real on the ground – only in the stories they sold to Europe. Thus, the myth was born: a fusion of fear, convenience, and profit. Over time, Western Europe, particularly France and England, absorbed it into a broader Russophobia – equal parts contempt and anxiety over a vast empire they could neither conquer nor ignore.

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I don’t think you can save Netanyahu anymore. Best you can do is to argue he is not Israel.

• Gaza Deal Near – Trump (RT)

US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that a deal on ending the war in Gaza is close, but without providing any details. His comments came just hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly he would “finish the job” of eliminating Hamas in the enclave. “I think we have maybe a deal on Gaza, and very close to a deal on Gaza, it’s looking like we have a deal,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday. Trump and Netanyahu are planning to meet in Washington on Monday. ”I think it’s a deal that will get the hostages back. It’s going to be a deal that will end the war,” Trump added.

Earlier this week, Trump and senior US officials presented a 21-point peace plan to Arab and Islamic leaders, the president’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said at the UNGA. The plan calls for a permanent ceasefire, the release of all hostages, new governance for Gaza without Hamas, and a phased Israeli withdrawal, according to media sources. ”I think it addresses Israeli concerns and, as well, the concerns of all the neighbors in the in the region,” Witkoff said. “And we’re hopeful, and I might say, even confident, that in the coming days, we’ll be able to announce some sort of breakthrough.”

Trump’s position on the future of Gaza has not been consistent. In March, Trump said that “nobody is expelling any Palestinians” from the enclave, but later in May, he reiterated his desire for the US to take over the territory and “make it a freedom zone,” urging residents to leave. However, ahead of Netanyahu’s UN speech on Friday, Trump said he would not allow the annexation of the occupied West Bank, rejecting calls from some far-right politicians in Israel who want to extend sovereignty over the area. “It’s not going to happen,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, adding: “There’s been enough. It’s time to stop now.” Netanyahu signed a controversial West Bank settlement expansion plan this month.

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“The former French president’s conviction is a rare glimpse of justice – but his true crime goes unpunished..”

• He Destroyed A Country and Half A Million Lives and Got Five Years (Fetouri)

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty and sentenced to five years in jail for campaign finance violations, a historic ruling in a case that has long captivated Parisian politics. The court concluded that Sarkozy had exceeded legal spending limits during his 2007 presidential election campaign, and engaged in a conspiracy to obscure the sources of illicit funds he received from Libya’s late leader Muammar Gaddafi, as various evidence has demonstrated. However, while the conviction targets money, it leaves untouched the far heavier human toll of his foreign policy decisions – from the 2011 Libya intervention to its cascade of wars, state collapse, and crises brought on by migration across the Mediterranean and Sahel. In other words, France’s courts can punish illicit euros, but fails to account for the blood spilled in the pursuit of regime change.

Earlier this year, while discussing the saga surrounding Sarkozy’s campaign funds, a source speaking to me anonymously, and corroborated by a former Libyan intelligence official, revealed for the first time that “a portion of the money reportedly came from Libyan intelligence, delivered across the Italian border by a female operative.” While the court did not definitively link these funds to Sarkozy’s campaign expenditures, the claims echo earlier allegations by Ziad Takieddine, who passed away in Beirut on September 23. He had maintained that he transported cash from Libyan officials to Paris. The murky trail of intermediaries underscores the complexity of the financial networks and how covert foreign influence can intersect with domestic politics, even when the legal system stops short of proving direct use.

The fallout from Sarkozy’s Libyan intervention extends far beyond financial scandals. By leading France – and later the entire NATO alliance – into the 2011 regime-change operation against Muammar Gaddafi, he helped dismantle Libya’s institutions, creating a vacuum that allowed jihadist networks to expand across the Sahel. Fourteen years on, Libya has yet to recover from that invasion. The resulting instability triggered waves of displacement, forcing thousands of migrants to risk crossing the Mediterranean in search of safety. What began as a “humanitarian intervention” became a cascade of unintended consequences: weakened states, regional insecurity, and a humanitarian crisis that Europe continues to grapple with more than a decade later. Sarkozy’s decisions illustrate how foreign policy choices can have profound, long-term effects reaching far beyond the immediate political or financial sphere.

Sarkozy’s Libyan gamble continues to reverberate across Africa, where resentment toward France has deepened amid coups, political instability, and ongoing foreign interventions. From Mali and Niger to Burkina Faso, anti-French sentiment has surged, fuelled by perceptions of neo-colonial arrogance and broken promises. At the UN General Assembly on September 23, 2023, Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop recalled the 2011 UN Security Council authorization for NATO’s military intervention in Libya, noting that it went against the objections of African leaders and resulted in “consequences [that] have permanently destabilized this fraternal country as well as the entire region.”

The betrayal of Gaddafi, once considered a potential strategic ally, has become a symbol of Western leaders’ disregard for African sovereignty, illustrating how regime-change adventures can leave a continent grappling with the fallout for years. Sarkozy’s conviction for campaign finance violations, while significant in Paris, cannot erase the broader geopolitical upheaval his decisions unleashed – a reckoning with the enduring shadow of neo-colonial interference. Many believe French intelligence played a role in Gaddafi’s murder in order to cover up the campaign funding scandal.

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“I think all that we really know is that the official narrative is false.”

• Elon Musk Says Charlie Kirk Was Shot From The Rear (Paul Craig Roberts)

Much of what Musk says makes sense, but not the globalism part that the assassination of Kirk is a way of dividing us. We have been divided for decades by the teaching of critical race theory, aversive racism and by the DEI policy created by Blumrosen in the EEOC in the 1960s, by abortion, by the legalization of sexual perversity, by the feminist attack on men, and so on. Division has long existed and worsened. Musk’s “globalism” explanation is an effort to rationalize division that has long existed and grown. Liberal-left American professors had done a thorough job of creating division. It is all they are good for.

The globalism theory assumes that the US is the only obstacle to the WEA’s global management of the world. But of course there is Russia, China, and the rest of the world. As for division it is the neoconservatives that have the US aligned against Russia, China, Iran, India, and in Israel’s pocket. Perhaps it is Israel that is attaining world control.

As for forensic evidence, the front neck wound is too small to be an exit wound. Possibly it could be an exit wound of a small caliber such as .17 or .22. But it is most certainly not an exit wound of a powerful round. Moreover, Kirk’s right hand man says the surgeon said there is no exit wound and that the surgeon found the bullet inside Kirk’s neck. Musk did not give evidence for the trajectory he asserts of rear entry and front exit. Still no one has identified the caliber of the bullet. It clearly is not a 30-06 as the official narrative asserts. I find the video of the palm pistol shot more convincing, at least convincing enough to be investigated. Indeed, all explanations should be investigated.

As we already have multiple explanations of Kirk’s assassination, it reminds me of what James Jesus Angleton once told me. When the CIA pulls off an event it has a pre-packaged cover story that instantly becomes the explanation, and several more pre-packaged stories in reserve. If the first narrative wears thin, a couple more narratives are released. People then argue over which is correct and the focus is shifted off the question why the first narrative was wrong. I think all that we really know is that the official narrative is false. The important question is why is the FBI satisfied with a false narrative?

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https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1971324014279917971

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1971432886633972153

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle October 24 2022

Oct 242022
 
 October 24, 2022  Posted by at 8:31 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  55 Responses »


Paul Gauguin A seashore 1887

 

• Russia Says Kyiv Preparing False Flag “Dirty Bomb” Detonation In Ukraine (EWN)
• Kiev Denies Moscow’s ‘Dirty Bomb’ Allegations (RT)
• US Rejects Russia’s Allegations Of Kyiv’s Preparations To Use Dirty Bomb (Az)
• Macron Calls For Peace On Ukraine’s Terms (RT)
• ‘Dancing On Edge Of Volcano’ With Ukraine – Sarkozy (RT)
• Scholz and Von der Leyen Want A Marshall Plan For Ukraine (NOS)
• 101st Airborne Deployed to Ukraine’s Border ‘Ready To Fight Tonight’ (Antiwar)
• Weaponized Governmental Failure: A Primer (McKay)
• On Going Seriously Boom (Fred Reed)
• Musk Blasts ‘Hypocritical’ WaPo
• EU Displays ‘Height Of Hypocrisy’ – Russia (RT)
• Germany Should Go Back To Buying Gas From Russia – Saxony PM (RT)
• Energy Costs Will Bankrupt 90% Of English Schools (RT)
• Blocking Judicial Review Of A Half-trillion Tuition Giveaway (Turley)
• A Closer Look at the Covid Mortality Rate (Miller)
• A Pulse Check Of Australia As We Exit The Pandemic (news.com.au)

 

 

A Russian source whose name escapes me right now.

 

 

Quadruple

 

 

 

 

Gonzalo

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shoigu has allegedly also held multiple calls with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin. No details were revealed.

• Russia Says Kyiv Preparing False Flag “Dirty Bomb” Detonation In Ukraine (EWN)

UPDATE 4.44 pm (October 23) – Russian state-controlled media outlet TASS has reported that Russia’s Defence Minister Shoigu spoke to Britain’s Ben Wallace about Kyiv’s plans to detonate a “dirty bomb” in Ukraine as a false flag operation to “increase anti-Russian rhetoric.” The Russian Defence Ministry told reporters on Sunday, October 23 revealed that Shoigu spoke to Wallace via a phone call to discuss the situation in Ukraine and discuss “possible dirty bomb provocations by the Ukrainian armed forces”. The ministry said: “On 23 October 2022, Russian Defence Minister Army General S.K. Shoigu and British Defence Minister B. Wallace. The situation in Ukraine was discussed. “Sergey Shoigu conveyed to his British counterpart his concerns about the possibility of provocations by Kyiv using a dirty bomb.” Earlier, it was reported by the state-owned media outlet RIA that the UK was also involved in the process with regard to “the possible transfer of nuclear weapon components to the Kyiv authorities.”

ORIGINAL 8.33 am (October 23) – According to “credible sources in various countries – including Ukraine”, Kyiv is reportedly preparing a false flag attack on Ukraine involving the detonation of a so-called “dirty bomb” or a low-yield nuclear weapon, as reported by RIA on Sunday, October 23. The source reportedly told the Russian news outlet that the “purpose of the provocation is to accuse Russia of using weapons of mass destruction in the Ukrainian theatre of war and thereby launch a powerful anti-Russian campaign in the world aimed at undermining Moscow’s credibility.” RIA also said that according to its information, the management of the Eastern Mining and Processing Combine, located in the city of Zheltiye Vody, Dnipropetrovsk Region, as well as the Kyiv Institute for Nuclear Research, have been instructed by top Ukrainian officials to produce the “dirty bomb”, which is believed to be in its final stages.

The news outlet said that the UK is also involved in the process with regard to “the possible transfer of nuclear weapon components to the Kyiv authorities.” It added that if the provocation succeeds then “most countries will react extremely harshly to the ‘nuclear incident’ in Ukraine and as a result, Moscow will lose the support of many of its key partners, while the West will once again try to raise the issue of stripping Russia of its permanent UN Security Council membership status and increase anti-Russian rhetoric.”

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Linking Russia to nukes is a popular pastime.

• Kiev Denies Moscow’s ‘Dirty Bomb’ Allegations (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has denied Moscow’s allegations that Kiev was preparing a false-flag attack with the use of a “dirty bomb,” and has pointed the finger at Russia instead. Zelensky was commenting on what he called “a phone carousel” by the Russian Defense Minister: on Sunday, Sergey Shoigu shared with his French, Turkish and British colleagues his concern over “possible provocations by Ukraine using a ‘dirty bomb.’” Russian state news agency RIA Novosti earlier reported that the goal of such a provocation would be to accuse Moscow of using weapons of mass destruction in a ploy to “launch a powerful anti-Russia campaign”. In a video address on social media, Zelensky claimed that “wherever Russia has brought death and degradation,” Ukraine is “returning a normal life.”

“And there’s only one subject who can use nuclear weapons in our part of Europe, and this subject is the one who ordered comrade Shoigu to call somewhere,” the Ukrainian leader said. So-called “dirty bombs” use conventional explosives along with radioactive material. While it could not rival a nuclear warhead in terms of power, such a device could disperse a radiation cloud around a radius of several kilometers from its explosion. Zelensky expressed confidence that “everyone understands” who is “the source of everything dirty that can be imagined in this war” and called on the world to react “in the toughest possible way” when it comes to “another escalating step” by Russia.

Earlier on Sunday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba also commented on Moscow’s allegations, saying that “Russian lies” about a “dirty bomb” “are as absurd as they are dangerous.” “Firstly, Ukraine is a committed NPT (non-proliferation treaty) member: we neither have any ‘dirty bombs’ nor plan to acquire any. Secondly, Russians often accuse others of what they plan themselves,” the minister said. According to the British Defense Ministry’s readout of the conversation between its head, Ben Wallace, and his Russian counterpart Shoigu, the Russian minister “alleged that Ukraine was planning actions facilitated by Western countries, including the UK, to escalate the conflict in Ukraine.” Wallace “refuted these claims” and warned Shoigu that “such allegations should not be used as a pretext for greater escalation,” the ministry said.

Earlier, in an interview with Deutsche Welle, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that any use of nuclear weapons by Russia in Ukraine will lead to “severe consequences” for Moscow, but refused to reveal details on these. At the same time, he said that the risk of such a Russian attack remains low. Numerous Russian officials have been insisting that the country wasn’t threatening anybody with nukes and have pointed to Russia’s military doctrine, which states that nuclear weapons may only be used if such arms or other weapons of mass destruction are being deployed against the state, or if it is faced with an existential threat from conventional arms.

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Take a look at John McCain’s view of Blinken.

• US Rejects Russia’s Allegations Of Kyiv’s Preparations To Use Dirty Bomb (Az)

US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to reaffirm the United States’ steadfast support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity, State Department Spokesman Ned Price said in a statement. “Secretary Blinken expressed to Foreign Minister Kuleba that the United States rejects Russian Defense Minister Shoygu’s transparently false allegations that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb on its own territory and that the world would see through any attempt by Russia to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation,” Price said.

 

 

McCain ..”Not only unqualified but one of the worst […] Mr Blinken has been a foreign policy advisor to VP Biden since his days in the Senate [but] Mr Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy issue”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1584250474131517440

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Translation: Macron wants the war to continue indefinitely.

Second translation: The loser takes it all.

• Macron Calls For Peace On Ukraine’s Terms (RT)

French President Emmanuel Macron called on Sunday for a peace deal in Ukraine, but insisted that Kiev will dictate the terms of such an agreement. The Ukrainian government, however, has repeatedly ruled out any compromise with Moscow. Speaking at a peace conference organized by a Catholic charity in Rome, Macron said that while “calls for peace might seem…like a betrayal” of Ukraine, the “international community” will one day support a negotiated settlement between Kiev and Moscow, the Associated Press reported. However, peace cannot be “captured by Russian power,” Macron added. “We want the Ukrainian people to decide at a certain point…the moment and the terms of peace.” The French president has expressed this same sentiment already, declaring earlier this summer that “Ukraine will decide when the conditions are met to build peace.”

The leaders of the US, UK, and NATO have issued similarly-worded statements while continuing to bankroll and arm Ukraine’s military, and France, along with the other members of the G7, has pledged to maintain this support for “as long as it takes.” Ukraine’s terms, however, will likely preclude any settlement in the near future. President Vladimir Zelensky has pledged not to negotiate with Russia as long as Vladimr Putin remains in power, signing a decree earlier this month forbidding talks with the Russian president. Zelensky has also promised to seize the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye, which acceded to membership of the Russian Federation following referendums last month. Additionally, the Ukrainian leader has vowed to capture Crimea, which joined Russia following a referendum in 2014.

Not only would an assault on these territories present a formidable military challenge for Zelensky’s forces, a full-scale attack on Russian land would invite Moscow to retaliate with “all the means available” to it, Putin cautioned in a recent speech. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was more blunt when he warned Kiev in July that an attack on Crimea would trigger “Judgement Day” for Kiev. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has warned the UK, France, and other Western powers that it believes Ukraine is preparing to detonate a so-called “dirty bomb” in a bid to frame Russia and escalate the conflict to the point of NATO intervention. While British Defense Minister Ben Wallace refuted these claims and intimated that London’s support for Ukraine would continue, he said after the call that the UK “stands ready” to “de-escalate this conflict.”

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Sarkozy does a lot better than Macron.

• ‘Dancing On Edge Of Volcano’ With Ukraine – Sarkozy (RT)

It’s high time for the EU to abandon its emotionally driven policies on Ukraine and start talking about achieving peace, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has suggested. In an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche on Saturday, Sarkozy criticized Brussels for its involvement in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has included sweeping sanctions on Moscow, weapons deliveries to Kiev, and calls for a military solution to the crisis. “The European Commission is primarily an administrative body. Moreover, I still haven’t understood under which article of the European treaties [the body’s president Ursula] von der Leyen justifies her competence in the field of arms purchases and foreign policy,” he said.

“The only thing the Europeans are hearing now is more and more billions of euros being spent on the purchase of weapons. More weapons, more deaths, more war,” the 67-year-old politician added. The EU’s policy regarding the conflict in Ukraine is driven by “miscalculation, exaltation, anger, superficial reactions,” and because of this “we’re dancing at the edge of a volcano,” said Sarkozy, who was the president of France between 2007 and 2012. The bloc was right to condemn Russia and show solidarity with Ukraine, but it also needs to exercise “composure” and work to prevent the escalation of the conflict, he added. “It’s high time for serious initiatives to be taken to start talking about the future and peace.”

Sarkozy also criticized Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky for signing a decree earlier this month, which officially made it “impossible” for him to hold talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Such a stance amounted to “demanding a regime change in Moscow,” the veteran politician pointed out. “I consider this to be a dangerous leap into the unknown, although it’s understandable that it’s difficult for the Ukrainian president to talk to Putin,” he said. Moscow, which has repeatedly invited Kiev to come to the negotiating table in recent months, has blamed the Ukrainian side for undermining any potential for a peaceful settlement of the crisis.

It has also repeatedly condemned the deliveries of weapons to Zelensky’s government by the US, EU, UK and some other countries, arguing that they won’t change the outcome of the conflict, but will prolong the fighting and increase the risk of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO. Zelensky previously set out the only conditions under which negotiations with Russia would be possible: “They can return our territory back to us if they want negotiations. They must withdraw from our territory and leave us our land within the internationally recognized borders of 1991. And then we will say in what format and with whom we are ready to talk.”

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Google translate. I think this will be costed at $349 billion, the amount George Webb has been mentioning all along. He connects it to Kolomoisky, who is Zelensky’s puppeteer, and to an Israel pipeline.

• Scholz and Von der Leyen Want A Marshall Plan For Ukraine (NOS)

Ukraine’s reconstruction requires a strategy similar to the Marshall Plan after World War II. That write the German Chancellor Scholz and President von der Leyen of the European Commission in an opinion piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. According to the two politicians, supporting Ukraine is also in the interest of the European Union. “Ukraine also defends the international rule-based order, the basis of our peaceful coexistence and well-being worldwide,” they write. “So if we support Ukraine, we are building our future and that of our common Europe.” Scholz and von der Leyen call rebuilding the Russian-invaded country a lengthy task that must begin now. “While one has to be careful with historical comparisons, this is nothing less than a Marshall Plan for the 21st century.”

With the Marshall Plan, European countries received money, goods, raw materials and foodstuffs from the United States between 1948 and 1952. This was done in the form of loans and gifts. It was an initiative of the then US Secretary of State Marshall of State. The timing of Scholz and Von der Leyen’s plea is not coincidental. A conference on the reconstruction of Ukraine begins today in Berlin, which includes representatives from German and Ukrainian business. The summit will be opened by Scholz and Ukrainian Prime Minister Shmyhal. On Friday, von der Leyen announced that the European Union wants to support Ukraine with 1.5 billion euros every month next year. EU finance ministers have yet to work out the details of that new aid.

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“The 101st has not deployed to Europe since the last world war. ”

• 101st Airborne Deployed to Ukraine’s Border ‘Ready To Fight Tonight’ (Antiwar)

The White House has deployed thousands of American soldiers just miles from Ukraine to prepare for war, according to CBS News. Officers speaking with the outlet revealed they were there for combat against Russia. Brigadier General John Lubas confirmed nearly 5,000 troops from the 101st Airborne recently joined the 100,000 American soldiers already deployed to Europe. Lubas described his troops as being on “full deployment,” and they are preparing to fight Russian soldiers in Ukraine. “This is not a training deployment, this is a combat deployment for us. We understand we need to be ready to fight tonight,” he said. CBS Reporter Charlie D’Agata was embedded with the American forces as they conducted military drills – at a forward operating base – within four miles of Ukraine’s border.

The 101st Airborne is engaged in joint exercises with Romanian forces, simulating Ukrainian soldiers’ combat against Russian troops. Colonel Edwin Matthaidess said his forces have been “closely watching” the Russian soldiers, “building objectives to practice against” and conducting war games that “replicate exactly what’s going on” in Ukraine. CBS News reported, “[Russia’s] goal is to cut off all Ukrainian access to the sea, leaving the country and its military forces landlocked.” CBS News did not provide a source for that assertion. The Kremlin has publicly said its war goal is limited to eastern Ukraine. Lubas declared the division was “ready to defend every inch of NATO soil.” However, Moscow has never threatened to invade a NATO country. Ukraine is not a NATO member.

When President Zelensky said Ukraine should be allowed into the North Atlantic alliance last month, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg rejected Kiev’s proposal. The 101st Airborne is a light infantry division. It carries the nickname the “Screaming Eagles” as the Pentagon utilizes the 101st as a force that can deploy around the world within hours. Lubas described his division as bringing a “unique capability, from our air assault capability… We’re a light infantry force, but again, we bring that mobility with us, for our aircraft and air assaults.” Romanian Major General Lulian Berdila told CBS News that the presence of American troops was reminiscent of WWII, “The real meaning for me, to have the American troops here, is like if you were to have allies in Normandy before any enemy was there.” The 101st has not deployed to Europe since the last world war.

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“Middle-class voters tend to choose to live in places where they can expect to get actual value out of their tax dollars..”

So you fail them on purpose.

• Weaponized Governmental Failure: A Primer (McKay)

Let’s call it Weaponized Governmental Failure. It’s the single most explicative factor in the breakdown of American political consensus in the 21st century, even though it’s been around since the latter part of the 20th century. The simple definition of Weaponized Governmental Failure is this: it’s the deliberate refusal to perform the basic tasks of urban governance for a specific political purpose. The crime and the graft and the potholes and the bad drainage, not to mention the spotty trash collection or nonexistent snow shoveling, aren’t incompetence. In fact, none of what you see in the American public sector is incompetence. The people responsible for it are quite highly educated and well-trained in their craft. You just need to understand what their craft is. It’s a choice to do a poor job with the more mundane tasks of running a city, and an educated and purposeful choice at that.

If you do those things effectively, after all, what you will get is middle-class voters moving in. Middle-class voters tend to choose to live in places where they can expect to get actual value out of their tax dollars — good roads, safe streets, functional drainage, decent schools, a friendly business climate, and a growing economy, among other things — and those things are hard to produce when you govern the way the Left does. Put a different way, middle-class voters are a pain in the ass. They want lots of things that make for unrewarding grunt work for a mayor, and a Democrat blowhard like a Mitch Landrieu or Ted Wheeler of Portland would rather spend his time on vacuous cultural aggressions like “social change” and offering wealth redistribution and excuses for the bad personal habits that cause so many people to be poor.

Not to mention tilting at bronze statues of better men long dead and nearly forgotten as a means of “making a difference.” For a Landrieu, or a Kwame Kilpatrick, Marion Barry, Bill de Blasio, or Lori Lightfoot, it is no great loss if those middle-class voters declare themselves fed up and decamp to the suburbs. Their exodus simply makes for an electorate that is a lot less demanding and easier to control. That “white flight” is a feature. It’s not a bug. And it isn’t all that white either. Those suburbs the folks are leaving for? Their minority population share usually increases as their population does. Why do you think that is? Simple: the black middle class has no more use for these woke urban Democrats than the white middle class does. And it’s quite a mutual sentiment, to be sure.

The urban socialist Left wants a manageably small core of rich residents and a teeming mass of poor ones, and nothing in between. That’s what Weaponized Governmental Failure produces, and it’s a wide-scale success. New Orleans votes 90 percent Democrat. Philadelphia is 80 percent Democrat. Chicago is 85 percent. Los Angeles? Seventy-one percent. None of those cities will have a Republican mayor or city council again, or at least not in the foreseeable future.Because there are very few middle-class voters left in the cities.

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“What would happen in, say, New York City even if, improbably, it were not bombed? ”

• On Going Seriously Boom (Fred Reed)

A modern country is a system of systems of systems, interdependent and interconnected—water, electricity, manufacturing, energy, telecommunications, transportation, pipelines, and complex supply chains. These are interconnected, interdependent, and rely on large numbers of trained people showing up for work. Modern warheads are not the popgun squibs of Hiroshima. Talking of repair any time soon after the nuclear bombing of a conurbation is foolish because the city would have many hundreds of thousand of dead, housing destroyed, massive fires, horrendously burned people with no hope of medical care, and in general populations too focused on staying alive to worry about abstractions like supply chains.

The elimination of transportation might cause more death than the bombs. Cities, suburbs, and towns cannot feed themselves. They rely on a constant, heavy influx of food grown in remote regions. This food is shipped by rail or truck to distribution centers, as for example Chicago, whence it is transshipped to cities like New York. Heavy megatonnage on Chicago would disrupt rail lines and trucking firms. Trains and trucks need gasoline and diesel which come from somewhere, presumably in pipelines. These, broken by the blast, burning furiously, would take time to repair. Time is what cities would not have. What would happen in, say, New York City even if, improbably, it were not bombed?

Here we will ignore the likelihood of sheer, boiling panic and resultant chaos on learning that much of the country had been flattened. In the first few days there would be panic buying with shelves at supermarkets being emptied. Hunger would soon become serious. By day four, people would be hunting each other with knives to get their food. By the end of the second week, people would be eating each other. Literally. This happens in famines.Most things in America rely on electricity. This comes from generating plants which burn stuff, usually natural gas or coal. These arrive on trains, which would not be running, or in trucks, not likely to be running. They depend on oil fields, refineries, and pipelines unlikely to function.

All of the foregoing depend on employees continuing to go to work instead of trying to save their families. So—no electricity in New York, which goes dark. This means no telephones, no internet, no lighting, and no elevators. How would this work out in a city of high rises? Most people would be nearly incommunicado in a lightless city. Huge traffic jams would form as people with cars tried to leave—to go where?—as long as gasoline in the tank lasted.Where does water come from in New York? I don’t know, but it doesn’t flow spontaneously to the thirtieth floor. It needs to be pumped, which involves electricity, from wherever it comes from to wherever it has to go. No electricity, no pump. No pump, no water. And no flushing of toilets. River water could be drunk, of course. Think of the crowds.

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“The Washington Post is solely owned by Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos, who also owns Blue Origin, a private spaceflight firm in direct competition with SpaceX.”

• Musk Blasts ‘Hypocritical’ WaPo

Elon Musk called the staff of the Washington Post “such hypocrites,” after the newspaper – which proclaims that “democracy dies in darkness” – ran a series of highly critical articles on him. One referred to the SpaceX CEO as a “security risk.” While it was Bloomberg that first reported the possibility that the federal government may investigate Musk’s companies after the billionaire made them “uncomfortable” with his remarks on Ukraine, the Washington Post fired off a salvo of fiercely critical articles on the SpaceX CEO on Saturday. One piece described how lawmakers in Washington allegedly consider Musk “too powerful and increasingly reckless,” partly over his since-abandoned demand that the government reimburse him for providing Starlink internet access to Ukraine for free.

An op-ed suggested that Musk’s Twitter musings on resolving the Ukraine conflict peacefully should make him “a person of interest to security hawks,” and another opinion piece slammed the supposed lack of “discipline and respectability” in Musk’s personal life. One of Musk’s Twitter followers called the newspaper out for its editorial line. “‘Democracy dies in darkness,’ their slogan says, but instead, ‘democracy dies when influential people use journalism to protect powerful interests while deceptive[ly] claim they are protecting common people’s interests,’” the commenter wrote. “Exactly,” Musk replied on Sunday. “WaPo are such hypocrites.”

Already under fire from the liberal media for his planned buyout of Twitter, Musk angered lawmakers in Washington and Kiev when he proposed a peaceful settlement to the Ukrainian conflict that would involve Ukraine abandoning its claim to Crimea. With one Ukrainian diplomat telling Musk to “f**k off” and US Senator Lindsey Graham proposing that the government pull subsidies to Tesla in response, the Washington Post declared that the tycoon’s “ego” put Ukraine’s “war efforts” in jeopardy. The Washington Post is solely owned by Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos, who also owns Blue Origin, a private spaceflight firm in direct competition with SpaceX. The two firms have competed for federal contracts, with Bezos’ company having a lawsuit against NASA dismissed last year, after the agency awarded a lunar lander contract to SpaceX.

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” The European Union has lost the moral right to speak about war crimes because, for eight years, it has turned a blind eye to the killing of civilians, women and children during the shelling of the Donbass by the regime in Kiev.”

• EU Displays ‘Height Of Hypocrisy’ – Russia (RT)

The European Union doesn’t have the right to accuse Moscow of committing war crimes in Ukraine because the bloc has spent years ignoring the suffering of civilians in Donbass, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said. Russia’s statement came after EU’s main decision-making body, the European Council, condemned Moscow on Friday for “indiscriminate” missile and drone attacks on civilian targets in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine, adding that there was “growing evidence” of war crimes against Ukrainians. In a response released on Saturday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova rebuffed the accusations as “the height of hypocrisy.”

The European Union has lost the moral right to speak about war crimes because, for eight years, it has turned a blind eye to the killing of civilians, women and children during the shelling of the Donbass by the regime in Kiev. Zakharova further accused the European bloc of “covering up Kiev’s criminal actions.” She argued that, instead of seeking a peaceful solution, the EU has been “senselessly investing significant sums into prolonging the fighting.” The spokeswoman also claimed that Ukrainian soldiers who receive Western training and weapons are targeting civilians.

Russia stepped up strikes on Ukraine this month, hitting many thermal power plants and power lines across the country, among other targets. President Vladimir Putin said the intensification was a retaliation against “terrorist attacks” on Russian soil, including a truck bombing that had recently damaged a strategic bridge connecting the Crimean Peninsula with Russia proper. Kiev has not confirmed its involvement in the bridge attack, but several top officials and government agencies openly celebrated the bombing. President Vladimir Zelensky later accused Russia of killing civilians on purpose during its renewed strikes on Ukrainian territory.

Read more …

And soon. Start peace talks to save your economy.

• Germany Should Go Back To Buying Gas From Russia – Saxony PM (RT)

Germany needs to get back to purchasing gas from Russia as soon as the conflict in Ukraine ends, the prime minister of the German eastern state of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, said on Saturday. His nation would still need “pipeline gas” from Russia, the official believes. “When the war is over, we should use gas from Russia again,” Kretschmer told the German tabloid Bild’s weekend edition when asked what he would say to people demanding the Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline be commissioned. Nord Stream 2 was one of the two pipelines designed to deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany via a route along the bed of the Baltic Sea. The project was shelved in late February as Germany halted its certification process when Russia recognized the two Donbass republics as independent.

Kretschmer believes Germany would need the Russian gas pipeline infrastructure to be fully restored if it seeks to ensure sufficient energy supply. He was asked if he believes the two Nord Stream pipelines damaged in an alleged act of sabotage in late September would be repaired. “We will need pipeline gas and that is only possible with functioning pipelines,” he told Bild. Russia should not be the only energy supplier for Germany in the future, the prime minister said, adding that Berlin should also secure long-term gas contracts with the US, Qatar and other Arab nations, as well as “develop our own gas [fields] in the North Sea.” His words came amid an acute energy crunch in Germany as the EU has been striving to wean itself off Russian energy supplies. Brussels’ sanctions policy against Moscow has so far brought more ill than good to Germany, Kretschmer believes.

An economic “tsunami is building up now,” the state leader warned. According to him, entrepreneurs in Saxony face a “dramatic” struggle “for survival” and many of them “are about to give up” in a matter of “weeks, not months.” Kretschmer also said that the federal government relief measures had not yet been properly implemented, while Berlin’s energy saving tips only “get people annoyed.” The prime minister also called for a speedy diplomatic solution to the ongoing conflict, adding that the EU should team up with the US, China, India and Japan to stop the war. At the same time, he said there was “not a single reason why Ukraine should give up even one square meter of its territory.”

Russia must also compensate for all the damage the conflict dealt to Ukraine, he added. Four former Ukrainian regions – the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye regions – were officially declared part of Russia in early October, after voters in those territories overwhelmingly supported the move in referendums. Kiev and Western nations, including Germany, declared the votes a “sham” and continue to view the territories as part of Ukraine.

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Homeschooling?!

• Energy Costs Will Bankrupt 90% Of English Schools (RT)

Schools in England are struggling to pay their electricity and heating bills, and 90% will run out of money next year, the Observer reported on Saturday. With the cost of living crisis forcing some schoolchildren to go hungry, the government plans to cut spending across all departments. The National Association of Head Teachers told the newspaper that 50% of their schools will be in deficit this year, with the figure rising to 90% by next September. Power and heating bills at some schools have risen from £26,000 a year to £89,000 ($100,609), the report stated. On top of this increase, schools are having to fund a 5% teachers’ pay rise announced this summer. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is expected to announce spending cuts to all departments, including education, at the end of the month.

Several school trusts told the newspaper that they are eating into their cash reserves to keep their buildings heated and their teachers paid. However, “there comes a point where we simply run out of money,” said Garry Ratcliffe, whose trust runs three primary schools in Kent. Furthermore, Ratcliffe said he’s seen an increase in the number of families unable to pay their own bills or feed their children. “Families who have never required support before are coming to us,” he said. “There is a great sense of shame for the dad who works every hour he can but still has to walk into school and ask for help.” A survey released last week by Chefs in Schools found that 83% of teachers reported children coming to school hungry because their parents were unable to afford food. Nearly a quarter said that children at their schools skipped lunch “due to poverty.”

Energy costs and inflation – which had been creeping upwards since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic – have skyrocketed since the UK decided to cut itself off from Russian fossil fuels. Outgoing Prime Minister Liz Truss exacerbated the economic crisis with a disastrous ‘mini-budget’ last month that crashed the British pound, and attempted to blame Britain’s economic woes on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Responding to The Observer’s latest report, a Department of Education spokesperson took a similar tack, blaming the “cost pressures” on schools on “international events,” and promising to offset the costs via an energy relief scheme.

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“No vote of Congress — just hundreds of billions of dollars written off by Biden, as if he is an American tsar.”

• Blocking Judicial Review Of A Half-trillion Tuition Giveaway (Turley)

In a speech at Delaware State University on Friday, President Biden was positively exuberant as he announced that he had prevailed in asserting unilateral authority to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in tuition loans. He declared that “just yesterday, a state court and the Supreme Court said, ‘No, we’re on Biden’s side.’” Some of us immediately noted that these were actually federal judges and they did not rule that he has this authority but that the other parties in two cases did not have legal standing to challenge his authority. Indeed, one of those Biden “supporters” was Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who simply denied an emergency application to the court. If it seems unlikely that Barrett is now “on Biden’s side,” it is because the claim is perfectly delusional.

No one could possibly read these decisions as even remotely supporting Biden’s claim to have virtually absolute authority to give away roughly $500 billion owed to the American people shortly before a critical midterm election. Within a few hours of Biden’s boast, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit enjoined the lower court. However, even the Eighth Circuit will not decide whether to be “on Biden’s side” but only whether six states have the constitutional right to bring any challenge as a matter of legal standing. Even the trial judge said the merits of the challenge raised “important and significant” concerns about Biden exceeding his authority.

Overwhelming constitutional concerns are raised by this massive election-year giveaway. Biden simply announced that he would forgive up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers earning less than $125,000 annually; those who received Pell grants could receive up to $20,000 in relief; couples can qualify despite a joint annual income of $250,000. No vote of Congress — just hundreds of billions of dollars written off by Biden, as if he is an American tsar.

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“..the initial WHO estimates were off by 99% for 94% of the world’s population..”

• A Closer Look at the Covid Mortality Rate (Miller)

The median infection fatality rate for those aged 0-59 was 0.035%. This represents 86% of the global population and the survival rate for those who were infected with COVID pre-vaccination was 99.965%. For those aged 0-69, which covers 94% of the global population, the fatality rate was 0.095%, meaning the survival rate for nearly 7.3 billion people was 99.905%. Those survival rates are obviously staggeringly high, which already creates frustration that restrictions were imposed on all age groups, when focused protection for those over 70 or at significantly elevated risk would have been a much more preferable course of action. But it gets worse. The researchers broke down the demographics into smaller buckets, showing the increase in risk amongst older populations, and conversely, how infinitesimal the risk was amongst younger age groups.

They added that “Including data from another 9 countries with imputed age distribution of COVID-19 deaths yielded median IFR of 0.025-0.032% for 0-59 years and 0.063-0.082% for 0-69 years.” These numbers are astounding and reassuringly low, across the board. But they’re almost nonexistent for children. Yet as late as fall 2021, Fauci was still fear-mongering about the risks of COVID to children in order to increase vaccination uptake, saying in an interview that it was not a “benign situation:” “We certainly want to get as many children vaccinated within this age group as we possibly can because as you heard and reported, that this is not, you know, a benign situation.” It’s nearly impossible for any illness to be less of a risk, or more “benign” than a 0.0003% risk of death.

Even in October 2021, during that same interview with NPR, Fauci said that masks should continue on children as an “extra step” to protect them, even after vaccination:And when you have that type of viral dynamic, even when you have kids vaccinated, you certainly – when you are in an indoor setting, you want to make sure you go the extra step to protect them. So I can’t give you an exact number of what that would be in the dynamics of virus in the community, but hopefully we will get there within a reasonable period of time. You know, masks often now – as we say, they’re not forever. And hopefully we’ll get to a point where we can remove the masks in schools and in other places. But I don’t believe that that time is right now.

Nothing better highlights the incompetence and misinformation from Dr. Fauci than ignoring that pre-vaccination, children were at vanishingly small risks from COVID, that vaccination uptake amongst kids was entirely irrelevant since they do not prevent infection or transmission, and that mask usage is completely ineffective at protecting anyone. Especially for those who didn’t need protection in the first place. The CDC, “expert” community, World Health Organization, media figures — all endlessly spread terror that the virus was a mass killer while conflating detected case fatality rates with infection fatality rates. Yet now we have another piece of evidence suggesting that the initial WHO estimates were off by 99% for 94% of the world’s population.

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Things that don’t rhyme:

“..37 per cent said they had not taken any vaccine..”

“..Only 35 per cent out of more than 45,000 people said they were vaccinated..”

“..more than 20 million Australians have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, or more than 95 per cent of the over-16 population..”

• A Pulse Check Of Australia As We Exit The Pandemic (news.com.au)

Today Covid has become an afterthought for many. We no longer have to isolate after a positive test, masks are rarely seen – even on flights. And the tense — and at times explosive — conversations between friends and family members over issues like vaccines are largely behind us. But we want to know how you feel as Australia emerges from the pandemic. Take our poll and see how the rest of the country views what we’ve been through and where we sit today.

After a day of voting, each question has received more than 42,000 responses, ranging up to more than 50,000. The results are striking. More than half of respondents either said they regret getting vaccinated, or were unvaccinated and happy with their decision. Only 35 per cent out of more than 45,000 people said they were vaccinated and would make the same decision again. Not a single person said they were unvaccinated and regret the decision. One fifth of respondents said they had received two doses of a vaccine, 26 per cent had three and 16 per cent had four shots, while 37 per cent said they had not taken any vaccine.

According to Health Department data, more than 20 million Australians have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, or more than 95 per cent of the over-16 population. An overwhelming majority of respondents said they were no longer concerned about Covid and no longer wore masks in public settings. Half of respondents said they caught Covid, with 6 per cent of those catching it more than once, while 40 per cent said they never did. Meanwhile, more than two thirds of respondents said Australia‘s leaders had been too heavy-handed in the pandemic response, 25 per cent said they did they best they could, and 8 per cent said as well as any other country.

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Yottabyte
https://twitter.com/i/status/1584197056406892544

 

 

 

 

Battery

 

 


Changing of the guards, Parliament building, Syntagma square, Athens

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 20 2018

Mar 202018
 
 March 20, 2018  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  12 Responses »


Times Square at night 1954

 

• Last Male Northern White Rhino Dies (Sky)
• Alzheimer Care For Americans Alive Today Projected To Cost $47 Trillion (BBG)
• The Stock Market Meltup Is Over: Morgan Stanley (MW)
• It’s Not Just Tech. Credit Markets Give Fuel to Equity Rout (BBG)
• How Economies Could Insure Themselves Against The Bad Times (Shiller)
• US Expected To Impose Up To $60 Billion In China Tariffs By Friday (R.)
• Facebook Stock Value Down $35 Billion On Cambridge Analytica Controversy (Ind.)
• Former Obama Campaign Director: Facebook Was “On Our Side” (ZH)
• How Facebook Made Its Data Crisis Worse (BBG)
• Tech World Experiencing A Major ‘Trust Crisis’ – Futurist (CNBC)
• If You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It (Jim Kunstler)
• Over 70% of US Citizens Believe America Is Controlled By A ‘Deep State’ (RT)
• UK Tories Set To Slump To Record Low At Local Elections (G.)
• Former French President Sarkozy In Custody Over Libya Funding Probe (F24)
• Greece Undermining EU-Turkey Migrant Deal, German Report Says (K.)

 

 

Is there anything sadder in the world?

• Last Male Northern White Rhino Dies (Sky)

The last male northern white rhino has died in Kenya, keepers have confirmed. The 45-year-old animal died from “age-related complications”, leaving only two females of his subspecies alive. In a statement, the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya said the rhino, called Sudan, was put down after his condition “worsened significantly” and he was unable to stand. Scientists have gathered his genetic material and are working on developing in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) to save his subspecies. In a statement, the zoo wrote: “Sudan will be remembered for his unusually memorable life. “In the 1970s, he escaped extinction of his kind in the wild when he was moved to Prague Zoo. Throughout his existence, he significantly contributed to survival of his species as he sired two females.

“Additionally, his genetic material was collected yesterday and provides a hope for future attempts at reproduction of northern white rhinos through advanced cellular technologies. “During his final years, Sudan came back to Africa and stole the heart of many with his dignity and strength.” Richard Vigne, Ol Pejeta’s CEO, said: “We on Ol Pejeta are all saddened by Sudan’s death. “He was a great ambassador for his species and will be remembered for the work he did to raise awareness globally of the plight facing not only rhinos, but also the many thousands of other species facing extinction as a result of unsustainable human activity. “One day, his demise will hopefully be seen as a seminal moment for conservationists worldwide.”

The northern white rhino population in Uganda, Sudan, Chad and Central African Republic was largely wiped out by poachers in the 1970s and 1980s, fuelled by a demand for rhino horn in traditional Chinese medicine and dagger handles in Yemen. Four fertile northern white rhinos, two male and two female, were moved from a zoo in the Czech Republic to Ol Pejeta with high hopes they would breed in an environment similar to their native habitat. Although they were seen mating, there were no successful pregnancies.

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To be fair, we’re killing our own species too. Where is the US going to find the $47 trillion?

• Alzheimer Care For Americans Alive Today Projected To Cost $47 Trillion (BBG)

Alzheimer’s disease is among the most expensive illnesses in the U.S. There’s no cure, no effective treatment and no easy fix for the skyrocketing financial cost of caring for an aging population. Spending on care for people alive in the U.S. right now who will develop the affliction is projected to cost $47 trillion over the course of their lives, a report issued Tuesday by the Alzheimer’s Association found. The U.S. is projected to spend $277 billion on Alzheimer’s or other dementia care in 2018 alone, with an aging cohort of baby boomers pushing that number to $1.1 trillion by 2050. Research so far has been stymied by clinical failures. By one count, at least 190 human trials of Alzheimer’s drugs have ended in failure.

No company has successfully marketed a drug to treat it, though many big pharmaceutical companies, including Merck and Pfizer, have tried. Biogen, a company based in Cambridge, MA, saw its shares dive last month after it said it was expanding the number of participants in its trial for the drug aducanumab. However, significant cost savings can be achieved, according to the new report, by the simple act of early diagnosis. Currently, individuals are typically diagnosed in the dementia stage, rather than when they have developed only mild cognitive impairment [MCI]. Identifying the disease early can allow it to be better managed, in part with existing drugs that treat its symptoms. In doing so, the study postulates, America could save $7.9 trillion over the lifetimes of everyone alive right now.

The Alzheimer’s Association commissioned researchers at Precision Health Economics to study the potential savings of obtaining an earlier diagnosis. It used data from the Health and Retirement Study, a “nationally representative sample of adults age 50 and older,” run by the University of Michigan and supported by the National Institute on Aging and the Social Security Administration. The $7.9 trillion in savings was derived from a scenario in which all adults who develop Alzheimer’s receive an early diagnosis in the MCI stage. The cumulative cost in such a circumstance is projected at $39.2 trillion—far below the $47.1 trillion that would be spent under current diagnostic patterns.

[..] There are now an estimated 5.5 million Americans aged 65 or older with Alzheimer’s. In 2025, that number is projected to be 7.1 million. By 2050, it could reach 13.8 million. Along with the increasing costs, the report also found Alzheimer’s to be increasingly lethal. It’ss currently the sixth-leading cause of death in the U.S., and deaths attributed to it jumped by 123% between 2000 to 2015, the report found.

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What stock market?

• The Stock Market Meltup Is Over: Morgan Stanley (MW)

The stock market meltup is over. At least, that’s the prognosis of one prominent Wall Street strategist who believes the torrid January rally that gave way to a correction may have been the market’s short-term apex. The S&P 500 jumped 7.5% between the end of 2017 and Jan. 26, when it notched the last in a string of record closes at 2,872.87. “We think January was the top for sentiment, if not prices, for the year. With volatility moving higher we think it will be difficult for institutional clients to gross up to or beyond the January peaks,” said Michael Wilson, chief U.S. equity strategist at Morgan Stanley Institutional Securities, in his weekly note on Monday. “Retail sentiment indicators also look to have peaked in January and we do not see anything on the horizon to get retail investors more bullish than they were following a tax cut.”

As a result, the much-anticipated meltup in stocks that numerous strategists had been forecasting since last year won’t likely happen in 2018, he said. A meltup is an unexpected rise in asset prices as investors surge into the market on fear of missing out. “When we look at our internal data combined with industry flows and sentiment, we think there is a strong case that January was the melt-up, or at least the culmination of it,” Wilson added. One key point in Wilson’s thesis is that gross leverage by Morgan Stanley’s hedge fund clients hit an all-time high in January. Gross leverage, according to the strategist, is a good measure of investor willingness to assume risk.

The record was also set right before the early February “volatility shock” forced investors to scale back their exposure to risk and Wilson does not expect gross leverage to return to January levels any time in the near future.

Going forward, Wilson expects U.S. stock returns to be mostly driven by increase in earnings estimates. “If we just roll forward the current bottom-up estimates, the forward earnings per share would be $166 and $170 by June 30 and September 30, respectively. That is approximately 3% and 5% higher than today’s $161. Not exciting, but not very bad either,” he said. “However, those numbers might need to come down if we start to see some evidence of lower margins since consensus forecasts assume no operating margin degradation. That is another reason why we think the S&P 500 makes its highs for the year this summer. It’s also a wild card that has big idiosyncratic risk at the stock level in our view.”

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The many faces of debt.

• It’s Not Just Tech. Credit Markets Give Fuel to Equity Rout (BBG)

Equity investors grappling with a technology selloff, trade tensions and hawkish monetary chatter have a new foe to contend with: growing angst in credit markets. After resisting the full force of the gales that swept through markets earlier this year, corporate bonds are sending ominous messages. Traders are jumping out of the asset class as investment-grade spreads sit near their widest in six months and yields rise to the highest in more than six years – just as stock investors seek to recover from the first S&P 500 correction in two years. “If credit spreads widen, the equities with bad balance sheets will underperform,” said Louis de Fels at Raymond James Asset Management. “We’re quite cautious on the quality of the assets.”

Corporate bonds held by smart money have historically proven a leading indicator for the direction of stocks. That may spell disappointment for investors heeding Wall Street advice to shift towards equity, a late-cycle outperformer. “Credit leads equities and will underperform,” said Andrew Brenner at Natalliance Securities in New York, citing Federal Reserve hikes, signs of softer U.S. output and corporate sales of short-term U.S. debt. “We expect equities to catch up on the downside.” For now, stock investors appear sanguine. U.S. equity funds took in a record $34.5 billion in the week to March 14, compared to just $2.4 billion for bonds, according to Stanford C Bernstein. That brings the quarterly total for debt funds to $37.3 billion, the slimmest quarterly addition since the three months ending in December 2016, the data show.

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But in the end it’s just another form of debt.

• How Economies Could Insure Themselves Against The Bad Times (Shiller)

The time has come for national governments around the world to start issuing their debt in a new form, linked to their countries’ resources. GDP-linked bonds, with coupons and principal that rise and fall in proportion to the issuing country’s GDP, promise to solve many fundamental problems that governments face when their countries’ economies falter. And, once GDP-linked bonds are issued by a variety of countries, investors will be attracted by the prospect of high returns when some of these countries do very well. This new debt instrument is especially exciting because of its monumental size. Although issues may start out small, they will be very important from the outset. The capitalised value of total global GDP is worth far more than the world’s stock markets and could be valued today in the quadrillions of US dollars.

[..] I have been advocating something like GDP-linked bonds for 25 years. In my 1993 book Macro Markets, I described the world’s GDPs as the “mother of all markets” and emphasised a form of debt called “perpetual claims”. But I did not work out a real plan of implementation and advocacy. [The book] ‘Sovereign GDP-Linked Bonds’ does just that. The basic idea is simple enough. Governments issue GDP-linked bonds to raise funds, just as corporations issue shares. By issuing such bonds, governments pledge to pay in proportion to the resources they have, measured by their countries’ GDP. The price-to-GDP ratio of GDP-linked bonds is essentially analogous to the price-to-earnings ratio of corporate shares. The difference is that GDP is an order of magnitude larger than corporate profits represented by the stock market.

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Well, it won’t be boring.

• US Expected To Impose Up To $60 Billion In China Tariffs By Friday (R.)

The Trump administration is expected to unveil up to $60 billion in new tariffs on Chinese imports by Friday, targeting technology, telecommunications and intellectual property, two officials briefed on the matter said Monday. One business source, who has discussed the issue with the administration, said that the China tariffs may be subject to a public comment period, which would delay their effective date and allow industry groups and companies to lodge objections. This would be considerably different from the quick implementation of the steel and aluminum tariffs, which are set to go into effect on March 23, just 15 days after President Donald Trump signed the proclamations.

A delayed approach could allow time for negotiations with Beijing to try to resolve trade issues related to the administration’s “Section 301” probe into China’s intellectual property practices before tariffs take effect. The White House declined to comment Monday. China has vowed to take retaliatory measures in response. A source who had direct knowledge of the administration’s thinking told Reuters last week that the tariffs, authorized under the 1974 U.S. Trade Act, would be chiefly targeted at information technology, consumer electronics and telecoms and other products benefiting from U.S. intellectual property. But they could be much broader and hit consumer products such as clothing and footwear, with a list eventually running to 100 products, this person said.

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But Zuckerberg sold just in time.

• Facebook Stock Value Down $35 Billion On Cambridge Analytica Controversy (Ind.)

Facebook stock dropped $35bn (£25bn) by close of trading on Wall Street, as the company deals with questions over its privacy rules in the wake of a scandal involving data firm Cambridge Analytica harvesting a vast repository of user information. The social media giant’s stock value declined by around 7%, paralleling losses throughout the technology industry and raising questions about the controversy inflicting lasting damage to Facebook’s bottom line. It amounted to the largest single-day%age decline for Facebook stock since 2014, with the drop outpacing broader declines across Wall Street.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite all shed more than a percentage point in value by market’s close. Prominent tech companies like Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet all saw declines as political pressure on Facebook intensified, building on months of deepening scrutiny of the tech sector by elected officials.

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Six degrees of Facebook.

• Former Obama Campaign Director: Facebook Was “On Our Side” (ZH)

The recent controversy and escalating scandal over Facebook’s decision to ban Trump-linked political data firm Cambridge Analytica over the use of data harvested through a personality app under the guise of academic research has opened a veritable Pandora’s box of scandal for the Silicon Valley social media giant. Carol Davidsen, who served as Obama’s director of integration and media analytics during his 2012 campaign (in her LinkedIn profile she says she was responsible for “The Optimizer” & “Narwhal” big data analytics platforms), claims – with evidence, that Facebook found out about a massive data-mining operation they were conducting to “suck out the whole social graph” in order to target potential voters.

After Facebook found out, they knowingly allowed them to continue doing it because they were supportive of the campaign. “[M]ore than 1 million Obama backers who signed up for the [Facebook-based app] gave the campaign permission to look at their Facebook friend lists. In an instant, the campaign had a way to see the hidden young voters. Roughly 85% of those without a listed phone number could be found in the uploaded friend lists. What’s more, Facebook offered an ideal way to reach them,” reads an article Davidsen posted as a prelude to her postings.

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I doubt that it can make it worse. We haven’t seen the beginning of it.

• How Facebook Made Its Data Crisis Worse (BBG)

Facebook tried to get ahead of its latest media firestorm. Instead, it helped create one. The company knew ahead of time that on Saturday, the New York Times and The Guardian’s Observer would issue bombshell reports that the data firm that helped Donald Trump win the presidency had accessed and retained information on 50 million Facebook users without their permission. Facebook did two things to protect itself: it sent letters to the media firms laying out its legal case for why this data leak didn’t constitute a “breach.” And then it scooped the reports using their information, with a Friday blog post on why it was suspending the ad firm, Cambridge Analytica, from its site. Both moves backfired.

On Friday, Facebook said it “received reports” that Cambridge Analytica hadn’t deleted the user data, and that it needed to suspend the firm. The statement gave the impression that Facebook had looked into the matter. In fact, the company’s decisions were stemming from information in the news reports set to publish the next day, and it had not independently verified those reports, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. By trying to look proactive, Facebook ended up adding weight to the news.

On Saturday, any good will the company earned by talking about the problem first was quickly undone when reporters revealed Facebook’s behind-the-scenes legal maneuvering. “Yesterday Facebook threatened to sue us. Today we publish this,” Carole Cadwalladr, the Observer reporter, wrote as she linked her story to Twitter, in a post shared almost 15,000 times. The Guardian said it had nothing to add to her statement. The Times confirmed that it too received a letter, but said it didn’t consider the correspondence a legal threat.

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You ain’t seen nothing yet.

• Tech World Experiencing A Major ‘Trust Crisis’ – Futurist (CNBC)

Big brands have to reestablish trust with consumers on data safety, futurist Chris Riddell told CNBC at Credit Suisse’s annual Asian Investment Conference on Tuesday. Riddell, who describes his job title as “fundamentally seeing how technology is changing humanity,” said the world is currently experiencing a severe “trust crisis.” “People now are more willing to share data than ever before” but the of data breaches at major companies break “trust and confidence,” he stated.

Social media platform Facebook is currently under fire amid allegations that private data firm Cambridge Analytica lied about deleting user data it had improperly obtained from a Russian-American researcher in 2015. “We’re in an era of category killers, where one organization is dominating in an industry,” Riddell said, pointing to Facebook and Google as examples. The challenge for those businesses is to rebuild trust and use technology to create transparency, he continued.

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RussiaRussiaRussia

• If You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It (Jim Kunstler)

Various readers, fans, blog commenters, Facebook trolls, and auditors twanged on me all last week about my continuing interest in the RussiaRussiaRussia hysteria, though there is no particular consensus of complaint among them — except for a general “shut up, already” motif. For the record, I’m far more interested in the hysteria itself than the Russia-meddled-in the-election case, which I consider to be hardly any case at all beyond 13 Russian Facebook trolls.

The hysteria, on the other hand, ought to be a matter of grave concern, because it appears more and more to have been engineered by America’s own intel community, its handmaidens in the Dept of Justice, and the twilight’s last gleamings of the Obama White House, and now it has shoved this country in the direction of war at a time when civilian authority over the US military looks sketchy at best. This country faces manifold other problems that are certain to reduce the national standard of living and disrupt the operations of an excessively complex and dishonest economy, and the last thing America needs is a national war-dance over trumped-up grievances with Russia.

The RussiaRussiaRussia narrative has unspooled since Christmas and is blowing back badly through the FBI, now with the firing (for cause) of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe hours short of his official retirement (and inches from the golden ring of his pension). He was axed on the recommendation of his own colleagues in the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, and they may have been influenced by the as-yet-unreleased report of the FBI Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, due out shortly.

The record of misbehavior and “collusion” between the highest ranks of the FBI, the Democratic Party, the Clinton campaign, several top political law firms, and a shady cast of international blackmail peddlars is a six-lane Beltway-scale evidence trail compared to the muddy mule track of Trump “collusion” with Russia. It will be amazing if a big wad of criminal cases are not dealt out of it, even as The New York Times sticks its fingers in its ears and goes, “La-la-la-la-la….” It now appears that Mr. McCabe’s statements post-firing tend to incriminate his former boss, FBI Director James Comey — who is about to embark, embarrassingly perhaps, on a tour for his self-exculpating book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.

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Going mainstream doesn’t seem to fit the deep state’s preferences.

• Over 70% of US Citizens Believe America Is Controlled By A ‘Deep State’ (RT)

Over 70% of US citizens in the Republican and Democratic parties believe America is controlled by a “deep state” of unelected government officials, according to a new poll. They also fear state surveillance, it reveals.
Although most Americans interviewed are not familiar with the term ‘deep state’, when they heard the definition as a cadre of unelected government and military officials who secretly influence government policies, a majority expressed belief in its ‘probable existence’ according to the Monmouth University poll released Monday.

Additionally six in 10 of those polled think that these unelected government figures wield too much power when it comes to shaping federal policy. “We usually expect opinions on the operation of government to shift depending on which party is in charge. But there’s an ominous feeling by Democrats and Republicans alike that a ‘deep state’ of unelected operatives are pulling the levers of power,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

Donald Trump has popularized the term ‘deep state’ over the course of his presidency. In January he blasted the ‘deep state’ Department of Justice for allegedly shielding a Hillary Clinton aide who used a non-secure private email account while conducting government business. The poll also highlights widespread fears of state surveillance, with 80% of Americans believing that the US government currently spies on the activities of its citizens. “This is a worrisome finding. The strength of our government relies on public faith in protecting our freedoms, which is not particularly robust. And it’s not a Democratic or Republican issue. These concerns span the political spectrum,” Murray added.

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When incompetence shines through. They’re pitching anti-Corbyn attack ads on…Facebook.

• UK Tories Set To Slump To Record Low At Local Elections (G.)

Conservative party support in London looks set to slump to a record low at the local elections on 3 May as the young, ethnically diverse electorate turns to Labour in increasing numbers. Projections from the Tory peer and psephologist Robert Hayward indicate the Conservatives will lose about 100 council seats. If they lose more than 93 – less than three seats in each of London’s boroughs – the Tories would fall below their previous low of 511 councillors in the capital. That came in 1994, just after the pound had fallen out of the exchange rate mechanism and Labour had begun the recovery that led to its 1997 general election landslide. “I’d be surprised if the Tories did not have an all-time low number of councillors,” Hayward said.

“Labour were very successful in London in the general election last year and I’d expect that to continue in 2018.” The Tories could even lose their two flagship boroughs of Wandsworth, which has been in Conservative control since 1978, and Westminster, which has been Tory since the last local government reorganisation in 1964. More likely, Barnet in north London might go Labour and the Liberal Democrats could triumph in Kingston in south-west London where they are also targeting the neighbouring council, Richmond. The most spectacular reverse would be the loss of Kensington and Chelsea, the Conservative heartland won by Labour with the narrowest of margins at last year’s general election, where the Tory council has come under fire for its mishandling of the Grenfell Tower fire.

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He took the money and then killed him.

• Former French President Sarkozy In Custody Over Libya Funding Probe (F24)

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been called in for questioning by investigators looking into suspected Libyan financing of his 2007 election campaign, an official in the French judiciary said Tuesday. Libyan officials from the Gaddafi era have claimed they helped finance Sarkozy’s election campaign. An investigation into the case has been underway since 2013. It is the first time Sarkozy has been questioned in the inquiry. The hearing comes several weeks after a former associate, Alexandre Djouhri, was arrested in London as part of the investigation and later released on bail. Investigators are examining claims that Gaddafi’s regime secretly gave Sarkozy €50 million overall for the 2007 campaign. Such a sum would be more than double the legal campaign funding limit at the time of €21 million.

In November 2016, French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine said he delivered three suitcases from Libya, containing five million euros in cash, to Sarkozy and his former chief of staff and campaign director, Claude Guéant, between 2006 and 2007. Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, has always denied the allegations. A lawyer for the former French president could not be reached immediately for comment on Tuesday. Sarkozy had a complex relationship with Gaddafi. Soon after his election to the presidency, Sarkozy invited the Libyan leader to France for a state visit and welcomed him with high honors. But Sarkozy then put France in the forefront of NATO-led airstrikes against Gaddafi’s troops that helped rebel fighters topple his regime in 2011.

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In other news: war is peace.

• Greece Undermining EU-Turkey Migrant Deal, German Report Says (K.)

Data published by the German newspaper Die Welt suggest that Greece has been undermining the European Union-Turkey deal signed two years ago to stem the flow of refugees and migrants to the continent. Citing unnamed officials in Berlin, Brussels and the EU’s border agency Frontex, the report alleges that the Greek government has moved a large number of asylum seekers from the Aegean islands to the mainland, effectively preventing their return to Turkey. The message is that any asylum seeker who manages to land on one of the Greek islands, he can then move on to central Europe, officials told the newspaper.

According to EU figures cited by the newspaper, between March 2016 and January 2018, 62,190 asylum seekers landed on the Aegean islands, of whom 27,635, or 45%, were subsequently transferred to mainland Greece. German officials told the newspaper that only a very small number of people whose asylum request had been turned down by authorities had been returned to Turkey. Greece, the same officials said, is effectively creating an incentive for migrants hoping to enter the continent which could lead to a spike in arrivals.

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Behind The Global – Game Of – Thrones

Feb 092015
 
 February 9, 2015  Posted by at 8:07 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  18 Responses »


Arthur Rothstein Going to church to pray for rain, Grassy Butte, North Dakota Jul 1936

Greek PM Alexis Tsipras yesterday laid out Syriza’s stance, and from what I saw he didn’t pull even one punch. Despite all the suggestions from the financial press throughout the past week that Tsipras and Varoufakis reneged on campaign promises to seek debt write-downs, they didn’t, and never have – other than perhaps in semantics.

Which I don’t find the slightest bit surprising. I would have been very surprised if they had. The misinterpretation, and the faulty expectations, are easily explained through the fact that – most of – these guys are not politicians, which they very deliberately expressed in the way they dressed for their meetings with ‘Europe’s finest’.

They don’t see the ‘space’ career politicians see to negotiate away the mandate their voters have given them. For them it’s simple: we were elected on our program – which in this case happens to be to end the misery forced upon Greece by the European and Troika schemes -, and we’re not going to move away from that just because ‘the other side’ starts threatening us, or (a crucial difference in politics) because our voters may not vote for us again in a next election.

In their view, trying to scare Greece into even more submission, which is the overlying message emanating from Brussels and beyond, is entirely null and void because Greece can’t – and shouldn’t – sink any lower than it has. Very and refreshingly simple. No surprise there, but, at least on my part, just support and admiration. Syriza is fighting the fight many others don’t have the intellect, the chutzpah and/or the courage for.

The first thing they did, apart from hiring back the government offices’ cleaning ladies the Troika got fired, was to say they wanted nothing to do with that same Troika. That to me is the most important statement so far by Yanis Varoufakis and his crew. Because that goes to the heart of why Greece is where it is, and why the entire world is.

I saw a headline last night that said something like ‘Greece doesn’t want to talk to the EU’. But that’s not true. Syriza merely wants the IMF out of the picture. And then it would prefer to talk to separate EU nations and offices, rather than top down Brussels bureaucrats. Not just because of the Colonel Blotto game theory I talked about before, but because they recognize how insidious and ruthless the IMF is. I’ll get back to that in a minute.

The most remarkable ‘news item’ for me yesterday came not from Tsipras (or Greenspan), but from former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who did something he would never have when he was in office. Sarkozy went against the grain of the official western narrative vis à vis Ukraine and Russia. He said what no acting French president could possibly say (including himself), because as president he would have been beholden to the US and NATO dictated doctrine, that Putin is evil, and Ukraine should be ‘liberated’.

Sarkozy: Crimea Cannot Be Blamed For Joining Russia

Crimea cannot be blamed for seceding from Ukraine – a country in turmoil – and choosing to join Russia, said former president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. He also added that Ukraine “is not destined to join the EU.” “We are part of a common civilization with Russia,” said Sarkozy [..]. “The interests of the Americans with the Russians are not the interests of Europe and Russia,” he said adding that “we do not want the revival of a Cold War between Europe and Russia.”

Regarding Crimea’s choice to secede from Ukraine when the country was in the midst of political turmoil, Sarkozy noted that the residents of the peninsula cannot be accused of doing so. “Crimea has chosen Russia, and we cannot blame it [for doing so],” he said pointing out that “we must find the means to create a peacekeeping force to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine.” In March 2014 over 96% of Crimea’s residents – the majority of whom are ethnic Russians – voted to secede from Ukraine to reunify with Russia.

That is pretty close to 180º different from what the official western position is. Putin has taken note. Because it destroys everything the West, as represented by Germany’s Merkel and France’s Hollande, brought to the talks in Moscow this weekend (and Minsk today). More importantly, it throws out what NATO wants and prepares for. In the exact same way that Greece seeks to throw out the IMF.

And that is no coincidence. Sarkozy reveals his dismay at being told what to do, when he was in office, by the supranational NATO. Tsipras and Varoufakis refuse being told what to do by the supranational IMF. Same difference. Well, to an extent: Sarkozy did the NATO and IMF’s bidding when he was in office, Syriza never has.

Merkel, meanwhile, ceased resisting Mario Draghi’s mad €1 trillion+ QE program recently, and along that same vein she may today, as she’s talking to Obama in Washington, give up her resistance to the west arming Kiev. Which would be equal to a declaration of war against Russia. The pressure on her is obviously huge and increasing, but Angela should be smart enough to know that it’s impossible for Russia to stop looking out for the Donbass.

Because just about every Russian citizen has family connections in the region, who’ve been shelled by their own government for close to a year now. And if Russia were to retreat, chances are these people will be obliterated in very ugly ways. What Merkel should be demanding at the ‘peace’ talks is for not-so-very-democratically-elected PM Yatsenyuk and his shady government to step down, and nationwide fair elections to be held that include the Donbass. But she won’t.

And then Greenspan came, in what will probably be noted as one of his final lucid moments. The man who did so much damage seeks to atone for that while he still can. And do note that the Oracle was in charge of the Fed during the entire set-up and launch of the euro (yeah, yeah, he was a long term ‘critic’ – but not while it made his Wall Street banks a lot of dough off the project, just remember Goldman in Athens).

Greenspan Predicts Greece Exit From Euro Inevitable

The former head of the US central bank, Alan Greenspan, has predicted that Greece will have to leave the eurozone. He told the BBC he could not see who would be willing to put up more loans to bolster Greece’s struggling economy. Greece wants to re-negotiate its bailout, but Mr Greenspan said “I don’t think it will be resolved without Greece leaving the eurozone”. Mr Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, said: “I believe [Greece] will eventually leave. I don’t think it helps them or the rest of the eurozone – it is just a matter of time before everyone recognises that parting is the best strategy.

Alan Greenspan has long been a critic of the European single currency. Now, the 88-year-old former chairman of the US Fed has repeated a claim that nothing short of full political union – a United States of Europe – can save the euro from extinction. Given that few (if any) of the current 19 sovereign governments which make up the eurozone would choose to create such an entity at this time, that means – for Greenspan at least – the euro is doomed. Before all that, though, he foresees Greece quitting the single currency, but the euro surviving intact.

Greenspan turns against what the Troika – IMF – wants the same way Sarkozy turns against NATO. Once you get them out of their official roles, turns out they’re not as stupid as they pretend to be when they were ‘in function’. That says something about the capture the ‘leaders’ are in, and also about the extent to which they actually represent their voters. Which is not a lot. And that’s the core of the issue.

The entire system has been pre-empted by, first, the wrong kind of organizations, second, the wrong kind of people, and third, the wrong kind of multinational corporations. As in, Wall Street banks, Big Oil, Big Ag -including Monsanto and Sygenta – and a few handfuls of the likes of GE, Boeing, a bunch of carmakers, plus Halliburton etc. They control the planet, they send us to war, they decide what does and does not go. And we’re not going to get rid of them until and unless we realize, loudly and screamingly, that they must go or else.

To illustrate this, please allow me to quote myself a few times from last year:

Oct 7 2014

Germany’s Bad Numbers Are Great News For All Of Us

Nobody in Europe has anything to lose from the demise of the eurozone, at least nothing that they wouldn’t lose anyway, but every single European save for a cabal of power brokers and narcissists has a ton and a half of happiness and self-fulfillment and independence to lose from the continuation of the failed project. [..] What’s wrong with the EU is the same as what’s wrong with NATO, the IMF, the World Bank.

They are institutions that start with noble ideals, but soon start to gobble up ever more power, and with no-one to hold them to account. That kind of structure in turn attracts a certain kind of people, the ones who don’t like to be held to account. And though I’m a little hesitant to include the US in all this, since its so much older, I certainly wouldn’t discard Washington offhand as a place where the wrong kind of people have gathered far too much power.

Oct 18 2014

Wealth Inequality Is Not A Problem, It’s A Symptom

.. the IMF, the World Bank, UN, NATO and the EU absolutely all fit the picture of organizations that have – happily – grown beyond our range of view, and that exhibit the exact same inverted pyramid characteristics we see on wealth inequality, only for these organizations it’s not wealth that floats and concentrates increasingly from the bottom to the top, it’s power. Wealth comes after that. And one shouldn’t confuse that order. Because power buys wealth infinitely faster than wealth buys power.

..but then we forgot, ignored, to check on them, and they accumulated ever more power when we weren’t watching.. And what we see now is that any effort, any at all, to break up the IMF, World Bank, UN, NATO and EU would be met with the same derision that an effort to break up the USA would be met with. We have built, in true sorcerer’s apprentice or Frankenstein fashion, entities that we cannot control. And they have taken over our lives. They serve the interests of elites, not of the people. So why do we let them continue to exist?.

Nov 8 2014

The Broken Model Of The Eurozone

I stumbled upon these few words in an Ambrose Evans Pritchard article the other day, and they hit me almost like some sort of epiphany, which in turn made me feel a little stupid, because it’s all so obvious. What Ambrose wrote (and this time I’m not making fun of him), was about the eurozone (EMU), of which he said:

The North is competitive. The South is 20% overvalued.

And I realized that’s all you need to know about the eurozone, and about why it will fail. Or has already failed, to put it more accurately. [..] Northern Europeans see their lifestyles being cramped from many sides in the ongoing crisis, and they would not accept more being taken from them to be handed to Greece. Even if 50%+ of young Greeks have no jobs, and over 40% of Greek children grow up in poverty. That’s not how the union was explained to them. And they would not have agreed if it had been.

The fact that Brussels has attracted a highly dubious breed of politician and bureaucrat certainly hasn’t helped, and still doesn’t. But it’s not the core problem. The core problem is that there never was a mechanism to reconcile the 20% differences, which means we’re fast on our way to 30% and more. Nothing anybody can do about that other than to leave the union.

Nov 10 2014

A World Run On Broken Economic Models

Leaders of entities like the US, the EU or China have little in common with the people they supposedly represent, and they don’t have to, nobody expects them to. The US midterms were mostly a a battle of the bulge, as in candidates’ bulging wallets. And on top large scale national politics we have created yet another, even more anonymous layer of power. UN, World Bank, IMF, NATO, there’s an ever growing collection of supra-national organizations that keep on guzzling up more power and more money every single day.

Like ‘smaller’ entities such as the US and EU, only more, the supra-nationals attract a certain kind of people, those that like to assert power without being held directly accountable. In structures that far exceed the human scale, they are like fish in water. And that’s why we should never accept having them in those positions. IMF and World Bank have a history of at best disputable and at worst very bloody interventions in nations across the globe.

We should have today celebrated the end of NATO along with that of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago. But it’s still there, and playing an active role in the flaring up of the Ukraine civil war. As for the UN, there should be a place for an organization like it, but not with the money gobbling corporate structure, serving shady interests, that it has today.

Our political systems don’t work. Our economic systems don’t work. We live on a steady – but hardly nutritious – diet of debt and propaganda. Our societies are no longer productive enough to allow for the numbers of intermediaries they have given birth to. But it’s the intermediaries who have more often than not taken up the most powerful positions in our societies. So they will fight, and initially often successfully, to keep their positions, at the cost of the more productive segments. It’s a mechanism that’s much easier to understand than it is to fight.

We, as in mankind, the human species, didn’t develop to have just a few of us take decisions for hundreds of millions of us. It is simply too much for our brains to comprehend, and that is true for both the brains of the rulers and of the ruled. For some of us, though, the brains developed in such a way that they are geared towards seeking maximum power over others. Those people are called sociopaths or psychopaths, depending on the case.

We’re not going to solve this the way we are. We need a much deeper and more comprehensive change to how we’ve organized our societies. Syriza understand this, and they’re acting on it, but they can’t do it alone, and besides their priority must be the Greek population, not the systems that are strangling the world, because that’s what they were voted into office for. We need to support them much more than we have so far, or both their fight and ours will end in defeat.

Supranational organizations will all tend towards developing dictatorial traits, both because of their very structures, and because of the type of people they attract to rise in their ranks.

I’m by no means the only one to say that NATO should be disbanded, Ron Paul made a passionate speech about it in 2008. The problem is that if NATO is not disbanded, it will run amok (it already has). NATO’s purpose was to defend Europe from the Soviet Union’s communist threat. When Russia was no longer a threat, some 25 years ago, the whole apparatus was still left intact, albeit with a few budget cuts, and so NATO went looking for a purpose. I give you: Ukraine.

Whether it’s NATO, or the IMF, or the EU, they’re all part of the same problem. A problem that won’t be solved as long as these institutions are in place. That is not possible. They are organizations that find their purpose in NOT solving problems, because once they’re solves, they no longer have a reason to exist. And they’re not going to volunteer to become obsolete. They’re going to find a reason to find relevance, even if that hurts whoever it is they’re supposed to represent.

We’re never ever going to find a solution to problems like Ukraine or the Eurozone, because we’ve – all over the world – allowed an alphabet soup of institutions to build up that we have no control over, and that we claim can and will solve the issues for us.

We have put the sociopaths in charge, in an international and largely anonymous dictatorship. Who really pulls the levers in the IMF, or NATO etc? We have no way of knowing. And that’s the problem. And that is what Syriza, and precious few besides them, are set to fight. And why they deserve – and need – our support. Because if they don’t win, we don’t.

Debt Rattle February 8 2015

Feb 082015
 
 February 8, 2015  Posted by at 11:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  7 Responses »


DPC New Orleans milk cart 1903

• Tsipras Scrambles to Find a Way Forward for Greece (Bloomberg)
• Europe’s Revolt Isn’t Just In Greece Or Spain (MarketWatch)
• Greece Could Run Out of Cash in Weeks (WSJ)
• Syriza and the French indemnity of 1871-73 (Michael Pettis)
• Democracy Could Have Saved Europe From The Disastrous Single Currency (Hannan)
• Sarkozy: Crimea Cannot Be Blamed For Joining Russia (RT)
• Merkel Objection to Arms for Ukraine May Spur Backlash for Obama (Bloomberg)
• Lavrov: US Escalated Ukraine Crisis At Every Stage, Blamed Russia (RT)
• Europeans Laugh as Lavrov Talks Ukraine (Bloomberg)
• 4 Reasons Stocks Aren’t Soaring After That Stellar Jobs Report (MarketWatch)
• America’s Shrinking Middle Class Is Holding On For Dear Life (MarketWatch)
• Fears For US Economy As Shale Industry Goes Into Hibernation (Observer)
• Bitter Economic Winds Hasten Oil Industry Retreat From North Sea (Observer)
• US Oil Rig Count Plunges 29% from Peak. Halfway to Bottom? (WolfStreet)
• Bracing for Another Storm in Emerging Markets (Kevin Gallagher)
• China’s Exports Slump, Imports Crash In January, Record Trade Surplus (Reuters)
• China’s Record Trade Surplus Highlights Weak Domestic Demand (Bloomberg)
• Stream of ‘Dark’ Foreign Wealth Flows to Elite New York Real Estate (NY Times)
• Twitter Execs Enrich Themselves At Shareholders’ Expense (MarketWatch)
• Peak Food Is The World’s No. 1 Ticking Time Bomb (Paul B. Farrell)

Should be a good speech. 1 PM EDT.

• Tsipras Scrambles to Find a Way Forward for Greece (Bloomberg)

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will outline his plans to keep Greece financially afloat while breaking free from its bailout program when he addresses the nation’s parliament on Sunday. “It is very unlikely that the euro zone will give new money to Greece for months, as the Greek positions are uncertain and significant negotiation is necessary,” Nicholas Economides, professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, said by e-mail. “This puts cash-strapped Greece in a very dire position.” Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the group of 19 euro-area finance ministers, on Friday rejected a short-term financing agreement while Greece negotiates a successor program to its current bailout provided by the EU and IMF. The prime minister will need to address doubts about Greece’s ability to pay its bills, possibly as early as the end of the month.

Tsipras will set out measures for the government to take from now until the end of June, corresponding to the bridge program it has requested from country’s creditors, a government official said after a cabinet meeting Saturday. The prime minister will also set out policies for the next 3 1/2 years, said the official, who commented by e-mail and asked not to be identified in line with policy. The speech is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. local time. Tsipras, 40, will be addressing lawmakers exactly two weeks after his Syriza party swept into power with a promise to reject EU demands for more budget austerity. “Faced with financial reality, the new Greek government will have to reverse or severely pare down its pre-election program,” Economides said. “Already, in a major U-turn, the government has abandoned the position that Greece will not fully pay its debt.”

The next showdown with Greece’s EU partners is scheduled for Feb. 11 in Brussels, when Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis faces his 18 euro-area counterparts in an emergency meeting. Standard & Poor’s lowered Greece’s long-term credit rating one level to B- and kept the ratings on CreditWatch negative. The rating downgrade to B- pushes Greece’s debt six levels into non-investment grade, or junk status. S&P said it plans to “update or resolve” the CreditWatch status by next month. “We could lower our ratings on Greece if we perceive that the likelihood of a distressed exchange of Greece’s commercial debt has increased further because official funding has been curtailed, government borrowing requirements have deteriorated beyond our expectations, or Greece’s external financing has come under greater stress,” S&P said in a statement on Friday.

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“In France and Germany, the mainstream center-left parties have dropped any pretense of fighting the neoliberal orthodoxy that dominates EU economic policy and have been punished by voters accordingly.”

• Europe’s Revolt Isn’t Just In Greece Or Spain (MarketWatch)

Greek voters crowded into Athens’ Syntagma Square to celebrate the landslide election of the leftist Syriza party last month, just as they had the victory of the center-left Pasok party in 1981, which ushered in Greece’s first leftist government after it threw off military dictatorship in 1974. The tens of thousands of Spanish voters who filled Madrid’s Puerta del Sol last Saturday also wanted to celebrate the leftist victory in Greece and rally support for a similar result for Spain’s new left-wing party, Podemos, in parliamentary elections at the end of this year. But the electoral victory of Syriza and the rise of Podemos are not signs of a resurgence of the left in Europe. The huge square in Madrid was also filled with demonstrators in May 2011 when a wave of protests opposed the Socialist government’s willingness to go along with European Union austerity policies.

One of the major ironies of the eurozone crisis, in fact, is that the historic left-wing parties in Europe have been so compromised by the austerity policies dictated by Brussels and Berlin that they have lost significant voter support or collapsed altogether. The once-celebrated Pasok, for instance, which led the government when the euro crisis erupted in 2009, has seen its electoral support plunge from its zenith of 48% in 1981 to a paltry 4.7% in last month’s election. The Spanish Socialist Party, which governed Spain for 14 years under Felipe Gonzalez, has seen its support fall from 48% in 1982 to just 22% in the most recent polls, putting it in third place behind Podemos, which is just one-year-old.

In France and Germany, the mainstream center-left parties have dropped any pretense of fighting the neoliberal orthodoxy that dominates EU economic policy and have been punished by voters accordingly. French Socialist President François Hollande, who swept into office with a parliamentary majority in 2012 on pledges that he would fight German-imposed austerity, saw his approval ratings plummet below 20% when he failed to deliver on that promise. Germany’s Social Democrats, too timid to resist the popularity of conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel, have not only been co-opted into her stringent view of European economic policy but into most every aspect of domestic policy as part of a coalition government.

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“Greece “will be the first country to go bankrupt over €5 billion.”

• Greece Could Run Out of Cash in Weeks (WSJ)

Greece warned it was on course to run out of money within weeks if it doesn’t gain access to additional funds, effectively daring Germany and its other European creditors to let it fail and stumble out of the euro. Greek Economy Minister George Stathakis said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that a recent drop in tax revenue and other government income had pushed the country’s finances to the brink of collapse. “We will have liquidity problems in March if taxes don’t improve,” Mr. Stathakis said. “Then we’ll see how harsh Europe is.” Government revenue has declined sharply in recent weeks, as Greeks with unpaid tax bills hold back from settling arrears, hoping the new leftist government will cut them a better deal. Many also aren’t paying an unpopular property tax that their new leaders campaigned against. Tax revenue dropped 7%, or about €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion), in December from November and likely fell by a similar percentage in January, the minister said.

Other senior Greek officials said the country would have trouble paying pensions and other charges beyond February. Greece has made no secret of its precarious financial position, but the minister’s comments suggest the country has even less time than many policy makers thought to resolve its standoff with Europe. Eurozone officials have asked Greece to come up with a specific funding plan by Wednesday, when finance ministers have called a special meeting to discuss the country’s financial situation. The country needs €4 billion to €5 billion to tide it over until June, by which time it hopes to negotiate a broader deal with creditors, Mr. Stathakis said, adding that he believes “logic will prevail.” If it doesn’t, he warned, Greece “will be the first country to go bankrupt over €5 billion.” If the Greek government runs out of cash, the country would be forced to default on its debts and reintroduce its own currency, thus abandoning the euro.

Most of the €240 billion in aid that Europe and the International Monetary Fund have pumped into the country would be lost. Greece’s new, leftist government has been in a tug of war with its European creditors for days over relaxing strictures of its bailout program. Athens is pressing for less-onerous terms so it can reverse some of the austerity measures weighing on the country, but its partners in the euro currency area, led by Germany, have refused. Before the two sides can address Greece’s broader bailout framework, however, they need to quickly find a way to keep the country solvent. Mr. Stathakis said Athens has asked for €1.9 billion in profits from Greek bonds held by other eurozone governments. In addition, the government wants the eurozone to allow Greece to raise an additional €2 billion by issuing treasury bills, he said. Both proposals clash with the rules governing Greece’s bailout and eurozone officials have dismissed them.

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Very long in-depth analysis of the eurozone by Pettis.

• Syriza and the French indemnity of 1871-73 (Michael Pettis)

1. The euro crisis is a crisis of Europe, not of European countries. It is not a conflict between Germany and Spain (and I use these two countries to represent every European country on one side or the other of the boom) about who should be deemed irresponsible, and so should absorb the enormous costs of nearly a decade of mismanagement. There was plenty of irresponsible behavior in every country, and it is absurd to think that if German and Spanish banks were pouring nearly unlimited amounts of money into countries at extremely low or even negative real interest rates, especially once these initial inflows had set off stock market and real estate booms, that there was any chance that these countries would not respond in the way every country in history, including Germany in the 1870s and in the 1920s, had responded under similar conditions.

2. The “losers” in this system have been German and Spanish workers, until now, and German and Spanish middle class savers and taxpayers in the future as European banks are directly or indirectly bailed out. The winners have been banks, owners of assets, and business owners, mainly in Germany, whose profits were much higher during the last decade than they could possibly have been otherwise

3. In fact, the current European crisis is boringly similar to nearly every currency and sovereign debt crisis in modern history, in that it pits the interests of workers and small producers against the interests of bankers. The former want higher wages and rapid economic growth. The latter want to protect the value of the currency and the sanctity of debt.

4. I am not smart enough to say with any confidence that one side or the other is right. There have been cases in history in which the bankers were probably right, and cases in which the workers were probably right. I can say, however, that the historical precedents suggest two very obvious things. First, as long as Spain suffers from its current debt burden, it does not matter how intelligently and forcefully it implements economic reforms. It will not be able to grow out of its debt burden and must choose between two paths. One path involves many, many more years of economic hell, as ordinary households are slowly forced to absorb the costs of debt — sometimes explicitly but usually implicitly in the form of financial repression, unemployment, and debt monetization. The other path is a swift resolution of the debt as it is restructured and partially forgiven in a disruptive but short process, after which growth will return and almost certainly with vigor

5. Second, it is the responsibility of the leading centrist parties to recognize the options explicitly. If they do not, extremist parties either of the right or the left will take control of the debate, and convert what is a conflict between different economic sectors into a nationalist conflict or a class conflict. If the former win, it will spell the end of the grand European experiment.

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“Distrust of the masses is in the EU’s genome.”

• Democracy Could Have Saved Europe From The Disastrous Single Currency (Hannan)

“Elections change nothing,” said Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s tough-minded finance minister. He was talking about Greece, but he could have been talking about the entire EU racket. The Europhile elites have a guarded and contingent attitude towards democracy. It has its place, to be sure, but it must never be allowed to slow the process of political integration. As the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, put it in response to Syriza’s election victory, “There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties”. He means it. In 2011, in order to keep the euro intact, the EU connived at the toppling of two elected prime ministers: Silvio Berlusconi in Rome and George Papandreou in Athens. Both men were replaced by Eurocrats who presided over, in effect, Brussels-approved civilian juntas.

Although their regimes were called “national governments”, their purpose was to drive through policies that would be rejected at the ballot box. Distrust of the masses is in the EU’s genome. Its founders had lived through the horrors of the Second World War, and associated democracy – especially in its plebiscitary form – with the demagoguery and fascism of the 1930s. They made no bones about vesting supreme power with a group of Commissioners who were immune to public opinion. Sure enough, those Commissioners and their successors saw it as their role to step in when the voters got it wrong – as when, for example, they voted against closer integration in referendums. I could easily fill the rest of this column with either anger or mockery; but I’d rather do Eurocrats the courtesy of taking their argument seriously.

Their contention is, in effect, that voters often misjudge things – that they are likely simultaneously to demand higher spending and lower taxes, and then complain when the money runs out. As José Manuel Barroso, Mr Juncker’s predecessor, put it four years ago, at the height of the economic crisis: “Governments are not always right. If governments were always right we would not have the situation that we have today. Decisions taken by the most democratic institutions in the world are very often wrong.” At first glance, the recent Greek election seems to sustain that view. Here, after all, is a country brought to ruin by excessive spending and borrowing. Yet its voters have just opted for a party that offers more of the medicine that sickened them: a 50% hike in the minimum wage, higher pensions, free electricity for 300,000 households and other fantasies.

[..] When the EU assumed responsibility for the Greek economy, it licensed Greeks to behave irresponsibly. If voters are treated like recalcitrant teenagers, they will behave like recalcitrant teenagers, storming petulantly at the parents whom they none the less expect to pay their phone bills. Greece is an example, not of too much democracy, but of too little. Had the Hellenic Republic been a sovereign country, wholly accountable to its own electorate, things would have worked out very differently. But for the euro, the debt crisis would never have got so badly out of hand: the markets would have imposed their own discipline years ago.

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Dead on: “we must find the means to create a peacekeeping force to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine.” and “It is not destined to join the EU; Ukraine must preserve its role as a bridge between Europe and Russia.”

• Sarkozy: Crimea Cannot Be Blamed For Joining Russia (RT)

Crimea cannot be blamed for seceding from Ukraine – a country in turmoil – and choosing to join Russia, said former president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. He also added that Ukraine “is not destined to join the EU.” “We are part of a common civilization with Russia,” said Sarkozy, speaking on Saturday at the congress of the Union for a Popular Movement Party (UMP), which the former president heads. “The interests of the Americans with the Russians are not the interests of Europe and Russia,” he said adding that “we do not want the revival of a Cold War between Europe and Russia.” Regarding Crimea’s choice to secede from Ukraine when the country was in the midst of political turmoil, Sarkozy noted that the residents of the peninsula cannot be accused for doing so.

“Crimea has chosen Russia, and we cannot blame it [for doing so],” he said pointing out that “we must find the means to create a peacekeeping force to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine.” In March 2014 over 96% of Crimea’s residents – the majority of whom are ethnic Russians – voted to secede from Ukraine to reunify with Russia. The decision was prompted by a massive uprising in Ukraine, that led to the ouster of its democratically elected government, and the fact that the first bills approved by the new Kiev authorities were infringing the rights of ethnic Russians. Concerning Kiev’s hopes of joining the EU in the near future Sarkozy voiced the same position as had been previously expressed by some EU leaders.

“It is not destined to join the EU,” he said. “Ukraine must preserve its role as a bridge between Europe and Russia.” While the West has been criticizing Russia’s stance on Crimea, the Russian Foreign Minister said on Saturday that the peninsula’s residents had the right to “self-determination” citing the March referendum. He gave the example of Kosovo, which despite not holding a referendum, was allowed to leave Serbia and create its own state. “In Crimea what happened complies with the UN Charter on self-determination,” Lavrov said during his speech at the Munich security conference. “The UN Charter has several principles, and the right of a nation for self-determination has a key position.”

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I still don’t get this bit after reading it multiple times: “Obama won’t authorize weapons deployment if Merkel signals that she will not publicly condemn individual nations from arming Ukraine..” Does that mean he will if she will?

• Merkel Objection to Arms for Ukraine May Spur Backlash for Obama (Bloomberg)

Germany’s rejection of supplying weapons to Ukrainian forces fighting pro-Russian rebels may heighten the domestic pressure on a reluctant U.S. President Barack Obama to deliver the arms. Increasing numbers of senior military and State Department officials are joining Republican lawmakers in a push to arm Ukraine – an option the commander-in-chief personally opposes, according to three people familiar with the dynamics in the Obama administration. They asked not to be named due to sensitivity of the matter.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who made an impassioned case against shipping lethal military support to Ukraine in a speech Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, will discuss the issue with Obama in Washington on Monday. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he’s confident Obama will make his decision soon after the meeting.

Obama’s delay in making his move until after Merkel’s visit reflects not only the gravity of the situation and the dueling arguments, but his emphasis on international alliances, his own deliberative nature and the degree to which he’s concentrated power on foreign policy in the White House. Obama won’t authorize weapons deployment if Merkel signals that she will not publicly condemn individual nations from arming Ukraine, the three people said. If she opposes any unilateral supplying of weapons, Obama will explain his decision to follow her lead by citing the importance of keeping a united front against Russian President Vladimir Putin and the risk of triggering a proxy war with him, the people said. [..]

Merkel in her Saturday speech said, “The progress that Ukraine needs cannot be achieved by more weapons.” Instead, she evoked the perseverance of the U.S. and European diplomatic efforts in confronting the Soviet Union during four decades of Cold War that ended with collapse of communism. Like then, that approach needs staying power and unity, said Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany. “The problem is that I cannot envisage any situation in which an improved equipment of the Ukrainian army leads to a situation where President Putin is so impressed that he will lose militarily,” she said, reiterating the importance of a negotiated peace without military intervention. “I have to put it in such a blunt manner.” Facing Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko in the audience, she said: “There’s no way to win this militarily — that’s the bitter truth. The international community has to think of a different approach.”

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“Our partners in the West have closed their eyes to everything that the Kiev government has said and done, which includes xenophobia.”

• Lavrov: US Escalated Ukraine Crisis At Every Stage, Blamed Russia (RT)

Sergey Lavrov has lashed out at the US for their double standards over Ukraine and taking steps that “only promoted further aggravation” of the conflict. He added Russia is ready to guarantee agreements between Kiev and the self-proclaimed republics. One of the major sticking points of the crisis so far has been the failure of Kiev to engage in talks with militia leaders in the East of the country. Lavrov is staggered the US, who talked with the Taliban during their invasion of Afghanistan, through channels in Doha, Qatar, is unable to put pressure on Kiev to engage in discussions. “In the case of Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Sudan our partners actively asked governments to enter into dialogue with the opposition, even if they were extremists. However, during the Ukrainian crisis, they act differently, making up excuses and try to justify the use of cluster bombs,” the Russian Foreign Minister said, who was speaking at a security conference in Munich on Saturday.

The issue of the far right’s rise in Ukrainian politics has been swept under the carpet by the US and EU. Some members of the Ukrainian parliament have promoted ideas such as exterminating Russians and Jews. However, these haven’t been reported or caused any alarm in the West, Russia’s foreign minister added. “Our partners in the West have closed their eyes to everything that the Kiev government has said and done, which includes xenophobia. Some have advocated an ethnically clean Ukraine.” Throughout the Ukrainian crisis, the West has viewed Russia as the aggressor. The Kremlin has been accused of arming eastern Ukrainian militia and even sending Russian troops to reinforce them – claims Moscow has repeatedly denied. It has stated on many occasions that despite the damning rhetoric no sufficient evidence has been ever presented.

On the contrary, Lavrov says the US has been the destabilizing factor in Ukraine. “Through every step, as the crisis has developed, our American colleagues and the EU under their influence have tried to escalate the situation,” Lavrov maintained. He pointed to the failure of the EU to engage Russia about Ukraine signing an economic association agreement with the bloc, Western involvement during the Maidan protests, the failure of the West to condemn Ukraine for calling its own citizens terrorists and for supporting a coup, which led to the toppling of a democratically elected president. “The US made it public it brokered the transit of power in Ukraine. But we know perfectly well what exactly happened, who discussed candidates for the future Ukrainian government on the phone, who was at Maidan, and what is going on (in Ukraine) right now,” Lavrov said.

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The west and its press are no longer even capable anymore of discussing Russia without accusing it of a whole range of alleged misdeeds.

• Europeans Laugh as Lavrov Talks Ukraine (Bloomberg)

In the span of 45 minutes today, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rewrote the history of the Cold War, accused the West of fomenting a coup in Ukraine and declared himself a champion of the United Nations Charter. The crowd here in Germany laughed at and then booed him, but he didn’t seem to care. When Lavrov took the stage Saturday morning at the Munich Security Conference, he knew it was going to be a tough crowd. He was speaking just after German Chancellor Angela Merkel and ahead of U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden. For two days, almost all of the panelists at the conference had railed against Russia’s actions in Ukraine. The debates were not over whether Russia was a bad actor spoiling international security, but rather how to deal with that consensus view.

He looked nervous, perhaps because Sergei Ivanov, chief of staff to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lavrov’s superior, was sitting in the front row, staring at him as if to warn him not to mess up. But none of that kept him from turning in an audacious performance. “In any situation, the United States is trying to blame Russia for everything,” he said. “Russia will be committed to peace. We are against combat. We would like to see a withdrawal of heavy weapons.” Lavrov then accused the U.S. of supporting military attacks against innocent Ukrainians. (He chose not to mention the Russian heavy weaponry in Eastern Ukraine or the hundreds of Russian military advisers on the ground.) Lavrov accused the Ukrainian military and government of being anti-Jewish and said that the Hungarian minority in Ukraine was being mistreated.

He called out the U.S. for negotiating with the Afghan Taliban but – in his view – not supporting negotiations between the Ukraine government and the Eastern separatists. Talking about the possibility of the U.S. giving lethal aid to the Ukrainian military, Lavrov leveled a thinly veiled threat that the Russians might invade Ukraine outright, as they did Georgia seven years ago after what they saw as provocation from President Mikheil Saakashvili. “I don’t think our Ukrainian colleagues should hope the support they are receiving will solve their problems,” he said. “That support … is going to their heads in the way it did for Saakashvili in 2008, and we know how that ended.” The crowd took that in stride, but then burst out laughing when Lavrov said that the annexation of Crimea, which was invaded by unmarked Russian troops, was an example of international legal norms working well.

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“Conditions are likely to come together that will allow the Federal Reserve to hike short-term interest rates anytime “from June on,” said Dennis Lockhart, the president of the Atlanta Fed.”

• 4 Reasons Stocks Aren’t Soaring After That Stellar Jobs Report (MarketWatch)

Why isn’t the stock market ripping higher Friday after that stellar jobs report? The S&P 500 and Dow industrials were up only moderately by around midday, then they turned negative to roughly flat in a hurry. Here are four factors:

1) A rally into the jobs report: Stocks already were showing big gains for the week before the jobs report came out. The S&P 500 is still up 3.4% for the week at last check. The Dow is coming off a four-day winning streak that had it up 720 points for the week as of Thursday’s close. So Friday’s lackluster action probably won’t change a positive weekly trend.

2) Fresh Greek worries: A downgrade of Greece by Standard & Poor’s on Friday afternoon may have sparked a move away from riskier assets like stocks. S&P cut the troubled nation’s long-term rating to B-minus from B, meaning further into junk territory. The folks at ZeroHedge, known for spotlighting the negative, say what’s “scariest” is that S&P itself is mentioning capital controls and bank runs. But other market watchers have been playing down the significance of the latest Greek drama, and they note Friday’s downgrade is similar to an earlier one by Moody’s Investors Service. That said, there are mounting concerns that Greece must get tidy its economic house or risk roiling the market.

3) Rate hikes ahead: The strong jobs report has boosted expectations around the Fed’s rate hikes, and higher rates ought to peel some investors away from stocks. Investors now think the Federal Reserve will raise rates one more time by December 2016 than they expected before Friday’s January job report, as MarketWatch’s Gregg Robb notes. Robb also reports on a notable Fed speech on Friday afternoon. Conditions are likely to come together that will allow the Federal Reserve to hike short-term interest rates anytime “from June on,” said Dennis Lockhart, the president of the Atlanta Fed.

4) A lagging indicator: The January jobs report reveals a lot, but it is important to realize the labor market is often a lagging indicator. Don’t let the stellar report make you forget about real challenges facing the U.S. economy, says MarketWatch’s Steve Goldstein. In a similar vein, Barry Ritholtz at Bloomberg View argues investors might want to ignore every monthly jobs report, since trading off it requires guessing not just the results, but also how much it is already reflected in stock prices.

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And then we go and call that a recovery.

• America’s Shrinking Middle Class Is Holding On For Dear Life (MarketWatch)

Middle America is holding on for dear life. The share of Americans who are part of middle-income households has plunged to 51% in 2013 from 61% in 1970, according to new research by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. And from 1990 to 2013, the share of adult Caucasians and Asians living in middle-income households decreased the most of any ethnic group, from 58% to 53% (for Caucasians) and from 56% to 50% (for Asians). The decline was less pronounced among Hispanics (from 48% to 47%) and African-Americans (from 47% to 45%). Over the same period, the share of the country that qualifies as ‘lower-income’ has also grown: they make up 29% of all households in 2013, after comprising 25% of all households in 1970.

The share of upper income households, on the other hand, rose from 14% in 1970 to 20% in 2013. (To fall in those categories in 2013, household incomes had to be: $166,623 a year for upper income, $71,014 a year for middle income, and $23,659 a year for lower income.) About one-in-four white and Asian adults are upper income versus just one-in-10 Hispanic and black adults, and there was “no meaningful change in these gaps in the past two decades,” Pew found. What’s more, the median incomes of all households fell by 7% during the “lost decade” of 2000 to 2013. In the last three years (between 2010 and 2013), however, the share of middle-income families has remained steady.

“While the muddled recovery has yet to bolster the middle, this flat trend might actually be good news because, for now, it stems a decades-long slide,” it concluded. Not everyone sees this as a reason for celebration. “Marching in place after the recession is a bit like saying, ‘We survived.’ But who has thrived?” says Mark Hamrick, Washington, D.C. bureau chief at personal finance website Bankrate.com. “The problem is that the middle class hasn’t made much headway over the past decade or so.” High-earning Americans have fared better than Middle America, he says. “Ultimately this is an economic problem that presents itself thoroughly across our society. It helps explain why the interests of the middle class have not been well attended to.”

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“The low oil price is bringing to a halt the world’s great engine of supply growth over the last five years..”

• Fears For US Economy As Shale Industry Goes Into Hibernation (Observer)

America’s fracking revolution is becoming a victim of its own success. The controversial boom in shale gas and oil has driven the US economic recovery and helped lower world crude prices. But a price plunge from $115 (£75) a barrel last June to just above $50 last week means many shale operations no longer pay. Rigs across the US are being deactivated at a rate of nearly 100 a week. In the final week of January, 94 were pulled offline – the most since 1987, according to oil services company Baker Hughes. The number of active rigs fell by from 1,609 in October to 1,223 in January and some experts predict fewer than 1,000 will remain by the end of the year. “The low oil price is bringing to a halt the world’s great engine of supply growth over the last five years,” said James Burkhard at IHS Energy. “The US upstream is very responsive to changes in price and drilling is likely to slow down further until prices recover.

“The great revival of US production has been from intensive onshore drilling. These aren’t massive $7bn projects that can’t be stopped: these are mostly onshore fracking that be started and stopped much more easily.” Burkhard said the US fracking boom accounted for more than half of global oil supply growth over the last five years, and it is the easiest tap to turn off while the world waits for the oil price to recover. The US has built up its largest stockpile of crude in 84 years. The profitability of onshore US wells varies considerably, with some only turning a profit when oil price is as high as $90 while others can make money at $30. IHS says nearly 30% of new wells started in 2014 can break even at $81 a barrel. By comparison, Morgan Stanley says some Middle Eastern onshore production is profitable at $10 per barrel.

Oil companies big and small have been knocked by falling prices. Chevron last month reported a 30% fall in quarterly profits (its worst since 2009), while oil exploration company ConocoPhillips swung to a loss as its average realised price fell 19% to $52.88 per barrel. Continental Resources, one of the largest drillers in North Dakota’s Bakken shale, said late last year it would cut its active rigs by 40% this year, with three-quarters of cuts coming by April. North Dakota’s Department of Mineral Resources says the state’s producers need a wellhead price of around $55-$65 to sustain current output of 1.2m barrels per day. If similar cuts were made across the industry, the rig count would fall below 1,100 by the end of March and 950 by the end of the year. A collapse in US oil production – now at 12m barrels a day after rising from 5m in 2008 – is likely to have a big impact on the nation’s economy. The fracking boom has made millionaires out of landowners, strengthened the country’s energy security and created hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs.

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“Bob Dudley, CEO of BP, warned last week that the industry had to prepare for a “new phase” of lower prices that could last months, even years.”

• Bitter Economic Winds Hasten Oil Industry Retreat From North Sea (Observer)

For one oil industry veteran, the dismantling of the Brent oil field in the North Sea prompts mixed feelings. There is gratitude for the livelihood earned from Britain’s post-war energy boom. And relief that it means farewell to “hell on Earth”. “Brent kept me and my family in gainful employment, so I have something to be grateful for, but these platforms are from an era long gone,” says Jake Molloy, who was a production assistant on the Brent Delta platform. Describing the structure, which Shell plans to remove from the North Sea, Molloy adds: “Putting people down platform legs [which store pumps and vessels] is really bad. You could climb down thousands of steps to the bottom with 40 pounds of breathing apparatus on your back only for the alarms to go off and you had to go all the way back again. It was the worst working environment – horrendous, hell on earth.”

Shell’s announcement that it plans to remove the platform was just one of many symbolic retreats staged by the oil industry last week. A day after the Brent proposals, Shell’s rival BP said it was taking a $4.5bn (£3bn) hit in its quarterly accounts to pay for the cost of bringing forward the closure of some unprofitable UK fields, partly due to lower oil prices. Situated 115 miles east of the Shetland Islands, Brent is estimated to have produced 10% of all North Sea oil and gas while generating £20bn of tax revenues since it opened in 1976. Brent is not the first North Sea field to face decommissioning and BP has been planning closures for some time. But the timing makes the closures all the more pointed. Shell’s field gave its name to a benchmark that has plummeted over the past year.

The price of a barrel of Brent crude has dived from $115 in June last year to less than $50 last month. The price has bounced back in the past two weeks to $58 but Bob Dudley, CEO of BP, warned last week that the industry had to prepare for a “new phase” of lower prices that could last months, even years. There will be more cost-cutting moves by the global oil industry over the next 12 months. BP is halving its exploration activity, slashing its capital expenditure by 20% and spending $1bn on making staff redundant after recording a $1bn loss in the last quarter. The $4.5bn writedown for its North Sea operations includes “increases in expected decommissioning costs” – an accounting footnote viewed by Iain Reid at BMO Capital Markets, as an inevitable outcome of low oil prices. “It’s bound to lead to North Sea field shutdowns being brought forward,” he says.

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“..the levels of crude oil in storage have soared to a record. Which will pressure prices further.”

• US Oil Rig Count Plunges 29% from Peak. Halfway to Bottom? (WolfStreet)

In the US, oil companies have been laying off workers and cutting capital expenditures at a feverish pace. With revenues dropping as a function of the price of oil that has fallen by over half since June, preserving cash is suddenly a priority. Wall Street, after years of handing out money no questions asked, shut off the spigot for junk-rated drillers that need new money the most. So it’s crunch time. The number of rigs actively drilling for oil in the US, reported by Baker Hughes every Friday, is a preliminary gauge of these changes. And during the last reporting week, that rig count plunged by 83 to 1,140 rigs, after having plunged by an all-time record of 93 in the prior week. The rig count is now down 469 rigs, or 29%, from the high of 1,609 in October.

And it’s down 359 rigs over the six reporting weeks so far this year. Never before has the rig count plunged this fast this far. During the financial crisis, the oil rig count fell 60% from peak to trough. If this oil bust plays out the same way on a percentage basis, the count would drop to 642 rigs! The bloodletting in the exploration and production sector would be enormous. Having cut the rig count by 29% already since the October peak, the sector might already be about halfway there. But production of oil from existing and recently completed wells continues to set records, and wells to be completed in the near future will add to it. Demand in the US has been slack. And the levels of crude oil in storage have soared to a record. Which will pressure prices further.

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“Floating exchange rates and resulting depreciation can cause the debt burden of firms and fiscal budgets to bloat overnight.”

• Bracing for Another Storm in Emerging Markets (Kevin Gallagher)

In 2012, Brazilian President Dilma Roussef scolded U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s monetary easing policies for creating a “monetary tsunami”: Financial flows to emerging markets that were appreciating currencies, causing asset bubbles, and generally exporting financial instability to the developing world. Now, as growth increases in the United States and interest rates follow, the tide is turning in emerging markets. Many countries may be facing capital flight and exchange-rate depreciation that could lead to financial instability and weak growth for years to come. The Brazilian president had a point. Until recently U.S. banks wouldn’t lend in the United States despite the unconventionally low interest rates. There was too little demand in the U.S. economy and emerging market prospects seemed more lucrative.

From 2009 to 2013, countries like Brazil, South Korea, Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, and Taiwan all had wide interest rate differentials with the United States and experienced massive surges of capital flows. The differential between Brazil and the U.S. was more than 10 percentage points for a while—a much better bet than the slow growth in the United States. According to the latest estimates from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), emerging markets now hold a staggering $2.6 trillion in international debt securities and $3.1 trillion in cross border loans—the majority in dollars. Official figures put corporate issuance at close to $700 billion since the crisis, but the BIS reckons that the figure is closer to $1.2 trillion when counting offshore transactions designed to evade regulations. Now the tide is turning.

China’s economy is undergoing a structural transformation that necessitates slower growth and less reliance on primary commodities. Oil prices and the prices of other major commodities are stabilizing or on the decline. It should be no surprise then that many emerging-market growth forecasts are continually being revised downward. Meanwhile, growth and interest rates are picking up in the United States. The dollar gains strength; the value of emerging market currencies fall. [..] Floating exchange rates and resulting depreciation can cause the debt burden of firms and fiscal budgets to bloat overnight. Given that most of the capital inflows were in dollars, depreciating currencies mean that nations and firms will need to come up with ever-more local currency to pay debt—but in a lower growth environment.

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“..imports slumped by 19.9%..”

• China’s Exports Slump, Imports Crash In January, Record Trade Surplus (Reuters)

China’s exports fell 3.3% in January from a year earlier, while imports slumped by 19.9%, both missing expectations by a wide margin, and resulting in a record monthly trade surplus of $60 billion. Thinking that easing measures in Europe would boost demand for Chinese goods, analysts polled by Reuters had expected to exports to rise by 6.3%, and imports to fall by only 3%, to give a trade deficit of $48.9 billion. Instead, exports slid 12% on a monthly basis, while imports dove 21.1%, according to the data released by the Customs Administration said on Sunday. The decline was led by a sharp slide in commodities imports, in particular imports of coal which dropped nearly 40% to 16.78 million tonnes, down from December’s 27.22 million tonnes, as well as a scale back in crude oil imports, which slid 7.9%.

While the trade data augured badly for an economy that suffered its slowest economic growth in 24 years in 2014, analysts say strong seasonal distortions due to the Lunar New Year holiday make it difficult to interpret the data. Last year the holiday fell in January, and this year it falls in February. China’s export numbers tend to be erratic, sharp moves in opposite directions are common and the combined January and February figures are often a more accurate gauge of the overall trend, analysts say. [..] During 2014, China’s total trade value increased by 3.4% from a year earlier, short of the official target of 7.5%, and some analysts have raised questions about whether export data was inflated by fake invoicing as firms speculated in the currency and commodities markets.

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“Value of crude oil imports fell 41.8% from a year earlier, iron ore imports dropped 50.3% and coal plummeted 61.8%.” [..] “We are going to see more of these alarming data in the next few months.”

• China’s Record Trade Surplus Highlights Weak Domestic Demand (Bloomberg)

China registered a record trade surplus last month as imports plunged on falling commodity prices and weak domestic demand. Imports fell by the most in more than five years, declining 19.9% from a year earlier. That compared with estimates for a 3.2% drop in a Bloomberg survey of analysts. Exports slid 3.3%, leaving a trade surplus of $60 billion, the customs administration in Beijing said. A property downturn and a stall in manufacturing are signals the government may need to step up measures to stimulate the economy, as domestic demand for commodities including crude oil and iron ore declines. The record trade surplus, combined with declines in exports and imports, complicates the government’s management of exchange rates after January’s depreciation.

“It seems that sharp decline in commodity prices, weak domestic demand and weak external demand, reflected in processing imports, all played a role in the decline in imports,” said Wang Tao at UBS in Hong Kong. “Trade data again creates a dilemma for the exchange rate. A record trade surplus is supposed to add appreciation pressure, but declining exports would say otherwise.” It’s not in China’s interest to let the yuan depreciate sharply, Liu Ligang and Zhou Hao at ANZ wrote in a note. “China’s central bank will continue to use a slew of instruments, including fixing rates, open market operations, and direct interventions, to prevent the RMB from weakening sharply,” they wrote.

Value of crude oil imports fell 41.8% from a year earlier, iron ore imports dropped 50.3% and coal plummeted 61.8%. Quantities of the commodities declined as well. Imports declined from all major trade partners, including the EU and US. Falling prices have cut the dollar value of imports and contributed to a prolonged decline in factory gate prices, which may extend to a record 35 months, according to economist estimates. “The slump in imports means a slump in the overall situation of the economy,” said Hu Yifan at Haitong in Hong Kong. “We are going to see more of these alarming data in the next few months.”

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Extensive NYT reasearch project. This reflects very poorly on New York, the US, the UK and London.

• Stream of ‘Dark’ Foreign Wealth Flows to Elite New York Real Estate (NY Times)

On the 74th floor of the Time Warner Center, Condominium 74B was purchased in 2010 for $15.65 million by a secretive entity called 25CC ST74B L.L.C. It traces to the family of Vitaly Malkin, a former Russian senator and banker who was barred from entering Canada because of suspected connections to organized crime. Last fall, another shell company bought a condo down the hall for $21.4 million from a Greek businessman named Dimitrios Contominas, who was arrested a year ago as part of a corruption sweep in Greece. A few floors down are three condos owned by another shell company, Columbus Skyline, which belongs to the family of a Chinese businessman and contractor named Wang Wenliang. His construction company was found housing workers in New Jersey in hazardous, unsanitary conditions.

Behind the dark glass towers of the Time Warner Center looming over Central Park, a majority of owners have taken steps to keep their identities hidden, registering condos in trusts, limited liability companies or other entities that shield their names. By piercing the secrecy of more than 200 shell companies, The New York Times documented a decade of ownership in this iconic Manhattan way station for global money transforming the city s real estate market. Many of the owners represent a cross-section of American wealth: chief executives and celebrities, doctors and lawyers, technology entrepreneurs and Wall Street traders. But The Times also found a growing proportion of wealthy foreigners, at least 16 of whom have been the subject of government inquiries around the world, either personally or as heads of companies. The cases range from housing and environmental violations to financial fraud.

Four owners have been arrested, and another four have been the subject of fines or penalties for illegal activities. The foreign owners have included government officials and close associates of officials from Russia, Colombia, Malaysia, China, Kazakhstan and Mexico. They have been able to make these multimillion-dollar purchases with few questions asked because of United States laws that foster the movement of largely untraceable money through shell companies. Vast sums are flowing unchecked around the world as never before whether motivated by corruption, tax avoidance or investment strategy, and enabled by an ever-more-borderless economy and a proliferation of ways to move and hide assets. Alighting in places like London, Singapore and other financial centers, this flood of capital has created colonies of the foreign super-rich, with the attendant resentments and controversies about class inequality made tangible in the glass and steel towers reordering urban landscapes.

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Lovely.

• Twitter Execs Enrich Themselves At Shareholders’ Expense (MarketWatch)

In October, we pointed out that the $170 million in stock-based compensation dished out to Twitter employees during the third quarter represented 47% of the company’s third-quarter revenue. That was an outsized amount — much higher than the most recently reported payouts for any company included in the S&P 1500 Composite Index. Twitter suffered a third-quarter net loss of $175 million, owing almost entirely from the stock awards. (Twitter is not yet included in the S&P 1500, presumably because it has been publicly traded for only a little over a year.)

Following a memo to employees in which Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said the company was doing a poor job preventing abuse over its messaging platform, the company said on Thursday that for the fourth quarter, its stock-based compensation totaled $177 million, or 37% of revenue. The company reported a net loss of $125.4 million, or 20 cents a share, but would have shown a profit of $79.3 million, or 12 cents a share, if the non-cash stock awards were excluded. The good news for Twitter was that its fourth-quarter revenue totaled $479.1 million, rising from $361.3 million the previous quarter and $242.7 million a year earlier. The company beat consensus estimates for earnings and revenue, though it reported a slowdown in subscriber growth. Twitter said it expects growth to pick up, and investors believed it, sending the shares up 13% on Friday.

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“We’re slowly poisoning America’s food supply, poisoning the whole world’s food supply.”

• Peak Food Is The World’s No. 1 Ticking Time Bomb (Paul B. Farrell)

Global food poisoning? Yes, We’re maxing out. Forget Peak Oil. We’re maxing-out on Peak Food. Billions go hungry. We’re poisoning our future, That’s why Cargill, America’s largest private food company, is warning us: about water, seeds, fertilizers, diseases, pesticides, droughts. You name it. Everything impacts the food supply. Wake up America, it’s worse than you think. We’re slowly poisoning America’s food supply, poisoning the whole world’s food supply. Fortunately Cargill’s thinking ahead. But politicians are dragging their feet. They’re trapped in denial, protecting Big Oil donors, afraid of losing their job security; their inaction is killing, starving, poisoning people, while hiding behind junk-science.

The truth is, America, Big Ag worldwide farm production can’t feed the 10 billion humans forecast on Planet Earth by 2050. Can we wait till 2050 for the fallout? No. The clock’s ticking on the Peak Food disaster dead ahead. We’re at the critical tipping point, the planet is boiling over. Conservative Greg Page, executive chairman of the Cargill food empire, has that great can-do spirit of capitalism: At $43 billion, Cargill is America’s largest privately held company, launched during the Civil War with one grain warehouse. An unabashed optimist, Page was sounding a loud battle cry in Burt Helm’s New York Times op ed, “The Climate Bottom Line:”

Page is a powerful leader, optimistic, realistic, experienced … admits he “doesn’t know … or particularly care … whether human activity causes climate change … doesn’t give much serious thought to apocalyptic predictions of unbearably hot summers and endless storms.” Page wants action, results. Yes, he’s no left-wing environmentalist. Far from it. This is business, jobs, profits, because it’s a fact, climate’s already damaging huge sectors of America’s agricultural business … dust bowls in the heartland, in California’s bone dry central valley, all over … Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, all farm economics are affected. Meanwhile, our politicians dilly-dally, drifting, dragging their feet, in denial, playing petty ideological games.

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