water Archives - The Automatic Earth

Trump moved on three fronts to break Lloyd's insurance blockade — but the bigger story is the Khamenei family money trail leading straight to London.

And why Bolton, Carney, and the old imperial order are all standing outside the fence looking in… pic.twitter.com/XoH8fCtkvb
— Promethean Action (@PrometheanActn) March 11, 2026

Is there a more hypocritical company than Anthropic? https://t.co/vaaMFP9nBz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2026

Elon Musk laid out a plan to build a workforce larger than any country's labor pool and it requires zero humans.

He says digital human emulation will be solved by the end of 2026.

That means an AI that can fully replicate anything a human can do sitting at a computer screen.… https://t.co/8asWXuIRQm pic.twitter.com/gvCtkY2c2f
— Milk Road AI (@MilkRoadAI) March 11, 2026

Next frontier is space!

Elon Musk:
“The next step beyond Earth data centers is Earth orbital data centers.

We’ll be launching SpaceX orbital data centers at the 100 to 200 gigawatt per year level — not cumulative, per year." pic.twitter.com/B5Mm0NMOG1
— XCorp (@XCorpHub) March 12, 2026

Quiet part loud: SpaceX now owns every layer of the stack needed to be a global cellular carrier. And now has a plan to beam it direct to your cell phone.

Starlink Mobile v2 sits on top of:
– The rockets (Starship)
– The satellites (15,000 approved)
– The spectrum ($17B from… https://t.co/YoepW76NnR pic.twitter.com/6dxbtbOgq9
— Josh Kale (@JoshKale) March 11, 2026

It already does.

• The War on Iran Could Remake the World (Lukyanov)

The United States and Israel justified their military campaign against Iran by claiming it was necessary to protect themselves, and the world, from a nuclear threat. Tehran was accused of secretly accumulating enough weapons-grade uranium to build up to 11 atomic bombs. Yet after the first week of bombing, it became clear that nuclear fears were only part of the story. The war against Iran is not merely another Middle Eastern conflict. It marks the latest stage in a long process of upheaval that has been reshaping the region since the end of the Cold War. And the consequences of what is happening today will extend far beyond the Middle East.

The current war can be seen as the culmination of a transformation that began more than three decades ago. The modern Middle East emerged in the 20th century during the decline of colonial empires. But that order began to unravel in 1991, when the United States launched Operation Desert Storm to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The timing was symbolic. The Gulf War coincided with a dramatic shift in global politics: the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, and the emergence of what was often called the “unipolar moment.” The period of unrivalled American dominance.
What followed was a chain reaction of crises and interventions. The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001 triggered the global War on Terror, leading to military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Arab Spring then destabilized regimes across the region, followed by intervention in Libya and the prolonged civil war in Syria.Each crisis pulled more actors into the vortex. Gradually, control over events slipped away from those who had initiated them. For Washington, the result was a strategic trap. The US sought to reduce its direct involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts while simultaneously maintaining its influence. These goals proved increasingly difficult to reconcile.
With hindsight, it is clear that many American decisions in the region were reactive. Each step was presented as part of a coherent geopolitical strategy, yet the long-term consequences were rarely calculated beyond the immediate horizon. Donald Trump, during both his first presidency and his return to office, repeatedly argued that the US should avoid military interventions far from its own borders. Yet Iran presented a different challenge. Iran is the most powerful state the US has confronted directly since World War II. Not necessarily in terms of military strength, but in terms of its demographic weight and regional influence. Attempting to dismantle such a pillar of the regional order inevitably carries profound consequences.
In Washington, a widely circulated interpretation suggests that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump agreed late last year to launch a decisive campaign against Iran. According to this view, the Israeli leadership played a decisive role in shaping the decision. Trump, who had previously championed a policy of restraint in the Middle East, deviated from that principle. The White House appears to have misjudged the political situation in Iran, expecting that a sharp military strike might trigger internal collapse.
There was also hope for a repeat of a familiar pattern: a rapid, surgical attack followed by a declaration of victory. But that scenario failed to materialize. Instead, the region plunged into instability. And once the war escalated, Washington found itself unable to step back without risking the perception of defeat.

“The goal is simple: Undermine public confidence and turn what is shaping up as a strategic success into a perceived failure.”

• The 3 Big Lies About the Iran War (Ben Shapiro)

If you’ve been following coverage of the Trump administration’s military action against Iran, you’ve probably noticed something: A lot of people are determined to convince you that the United States is losing. They’re wrong. Even worse, many of them know they’re wrong. Critics across the political spectrum — from Democrats to elements of the so-called horseshoe Right — are pushing narratives that paint the conflict as a disaster in the making. The goal is simple: Undermine public confidence and turn what is shaping up as a strategic success into a perceived failure. Three particular claims are circulating widely. All three deserve to be addressed.

Lie No. 1: The war is a quagmire.
The first claim is that the United States has stumbled into another interminable Middle East war — one destined to drag on for years and possibly escalate to catastrophic levels. This is absurd. At the time of this writing, the conflict is less than two weeks old. Twelve days. That’s not 12 years, as in Vietnam, or even 12 months, as in the Spanish-American War. Wars unfold over time, and no one should pretend to know exactly how long any conflict will last. But the notion that the United States is already trapped in a generational quagmire — after less than two weeks of fighting — is less analysis than panic.
Lie No. 2: Iran is somehow winning.
A second claim insists that Iran is holding strong — that the regime is weathering the assault and even gaining the upper hand. Again, reality tells a different story. Iran’s military capabilities have been battered. Its missile and drone infrastructure has been heavily targeted. Its naval assets have reportedly suffered severe losses. Leadership turmoil inside the regime only compounds the problem. Reports suggest that the death of longtime Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has triggered a chaotic succession struggle. Even his presumed heir, Mojtaba Khamenei, appears to lack both political support and personal legitimacy within the system. In other words, the Iranian regime is not projecting strength. It is scrambling to maintain control.
Lie No. 3: The oil shock will break the United States.
The final warning is economic: Iran, critics say, will simply shut down the Strait of Hormuz, sending global oil prices skyrocketing and bringing the American economy to its knees.For a brief moment earlier this week, markets reacted to that fear. Oil prices jumped sharply amid speculation that the strait could be disrupted.But the panic faded almost as quickly as it began. Within days, crude prices had fallen back below $90 a barrel. Markets, unlike pundits, respond to reality. And the reality is that Iran faces enormous consequences if it attempts to choke off one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes.
President Donald Trump has made that point unmistakably clear. In a statement posted online, he warned that any Iranian attempt to block the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz would trigger an overwhelming American response.The message was aimed not only at Tehran but also at Beijing and other major energy consumers: The United States intends to keep global energy flowing — and anyone who interferes will pay a heavy price. There are legitimate questions to ask about any military action. Democracies require scrutiny, debate and skepticism. But skepticism should not be confused with hysteria.
Right now, critics are spinning worst-case scenarios while ignoring the basic facts on the ground: Iran’s military is under severe pressure, its leadership structure is unstable, and the economic fallout that many predicted has yet to materialize. None of this guarantees the conflict will end quickly or cleanly. War rarely works that way. But it does suggest that the narrative of inevitable American failure — so loudly promoted by the administration’s opponents — is far removed from the reality unfolding in the Middle East. And that reality matters far more than the talking points.

The title of this article was originally: “Trump claims Strait of Hormuz ‘in great shape’ “.

• Iran Confirms New Supreme Leader Injured But Recovering (RT)

Iran has confirmed that newly appointed Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei was injured but is recovering. “He’s injured but fine,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told Italy’s Corriere Della Sera on Thursday. Earlier reports suggested Khamenei was wounded in the initial US-Israeli strikes that killed his father, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which may explain why he has yet to appear publicly or on video since assuming the top post. Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has outlined three conditions to end the conflict. In a post on X, he said the war can only end through recognition of Iran’s “legitimate rights,” reparations for US-Israeli strike damage, and “firm international guarantees against future aggression.”

Elsewhere, the US-Israeli military campaign against Tehran has continued to disrupt global energy markets. In Iran, the US has bitten off more than it can chewREAD MORE: In Iran, the US has bitten off more than it can chew Despite all 34 International Energy Agency (IEA) members agreeing on Wednesday to a record 400-million-barrel release from emergency reserves, oil prices have surged roughly 9% in the past 24 hours, with international benchmark Brent crude hovering just above $100 per barrel.
Here are the latest developments as RT continues to bring you up to date:
• At least two oil tankers were hit near Iraq’s Umm Qasr port early on Thursday, while the port of Salalah in Oman continued to burn overnight. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain also reported strikes on their oil facilities. Oman evacuated vessels from Mina Al Fahal as a precaution.
• US President Donald Trump claimed Iran has been “virtually destroyed,” but said he does not plan to end the campaign early, insisting the Strait of Hormuz remains “in great shape.”
• A Pentagon probe into the strike on a primary school in Minab that killed 168 children reportedly found that outdated US targeting data on a nearby IRGC facility likely caused the attack.
• The IDF intensified strikes in Lebanon after Hezbollah coordinated attacks with Iran’s IRGC, hitting a Beirut refugee camp. The total death toll in Lebanon now exceeds 634.
• Western banks began closing Middle East branches after Iran threatened financial institutions in retaliation for the strike on Tehran’s state-owned Bank Sepah, which handles military and IRGC payrolls.

Iran has a very serious water issue.

• Attacking Water in Iran Can Bring Out Nukes – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Martin Armstrong warned in February, “This is where the volatility starts kicking in.” What do we have? Oil, gold and silver spiking in price, and violent exchanges between Iran, the United States and many other countries in the Middle East. Now, water assets like desalination plants in Bahrain and Iran are being blown up. Add the worst water shortage in decades in Iran as a backdrop to constant bombing, and you have a situation that could turn very ugly, very fast. The water shortage is so bad that there has been water rationing in Tehran for months. This water rationing was part of the reason there were huge protests in Iran a few months ago.

Armstrong explains, “Part of the protests (in Iran) were about water rationing. The Islamic Republic Guard were called the ‘water mafia.’ They control the water. It’s kind of like North Korea. If you want to be fed, you join the army. All food goes to the army first, and water will also go to the military first.” Remember, they are water rationing in Iran now, and they don’t have a lot left. So, what happens if the US, Israel and other Persian Gulf nations knock out what’s left of Iran’s water? What happens if Iran is completely out of water? Armstrong says, “Personally, I would ask Pakistan for a nuke. Look, you are talking about the death of a country. When you get to that point, if you’ve got a nuke, you are going to use it.”
So, what happens if the dams and reservoirs are bombed and Iran is completely cut off from water? Armstrong says, “If you do that, is that a war crime because you are wiping out the average population and civilians? Would you do that? This is a mess. It’s a complete mess.” On the other side, what happens if Iran knocks out all the Persian Gulf oil refineries? Armstrong says, “If I were Iran, I would attack all the oil refineries of the neighboring states. You do that, and you will bring the entire West to its knees. The US only gets about 3% of our oil from the Middle East. You would wipe out Europe for sure.”
Armstrong sees gold going as high as “$8,800 an ounce . . . and silver $150 per ounce. . .. Oil could test $200 a barrel. . .. It’s going to get worse this summer, and it’s a 250-year drought cycle in Iran. I wrote about this on my site.” In closing, Armstrong says, “Winston Churchill said, ‘In time of war, truth is very precious, and it needs a bodyguard of lies to protect it.’”

“Russian-Chinese cooperation has truly limitless possibilities and potential, and we will continue to act in unison.”

• Iran War Crack-Up (Helmer)

Iran has made one point very clear to the United States. It will negotiate on terms for a “permanent peace” but not for a ceasefire. It will fight on against US troops if they land, against US bases in the Arab states, and against US vessels at sea; it will keep the Hormuz Strait closed. Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi repeated this point in three interviews he gave the NBC and PBS television networks on March 6, March 8 and March 9. President Vladimir Putin has made one point very clear to Iran. “I want to confirm our unwavering support of Tehran and our solidarity with our Iranian friends,” he said in his message of March 9 to the new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. “Russia has been and will remain the Islamic Republic’s reliable partner. I wish you success in tackling the challenges in front of you, good health and strong spirit.”

The next day Putin telephoned Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to “reaffirm his principled stance in favour of de-escalating the conflict as soon as possible and resolving it via political means. Masoud Pezeshkian expressed gratitude for the support provided by Russia, including in particular the humanitarian aid granted to Iran.” De-escalation isn’t ceasefire first; as soon as possible isn’t a short war; humanitarian aid isn’t exactly military aid but it may be. Putin’s wish for Mojtaba Khamenei’s “good health” may extend to new Russian measures for his security; or they may be no more than Putin’s wish. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, then announced the maybes are mightnots.
“’All of these issues were not discussed during that conversation [with Pezeshkian]’ in response to a question whether the presidents discussed Iran’s alleged demands to the United States, including guarantees against the resumption of hostilities, the right for a full peaceful nuclear fuel cycle as well as possible compensations.” Not exactly nothing was said, Peskov meant. But he omitted to say if Putin told Pezeshkian that Russia’s support for Iran’s security and for the new Supreme Leader’s “good health” is “unwavering”.Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, however, did say this to Aragchi in their telephone call on March 10. Russia backs negotiations “with due consideration for [the] security interests of Iran and its regional neighbours”, the foreign ministry communiqué announced.
President Xi Jinping has made nothing very clear — by his silence. Instead, he has delegated Wang Yi to speak. Wang is a Communist Party Politburo member and Foreign Minister; the first rank is more important than the second. “China calls for an immediate stop to military operations to avoid the spiralling escalation of the situation”, Wang said on March 8. “All sides should return to the negotiating table as quickly as possible, resolve differences through equal dialogue, and make efforts for realizing common security.” That’s to say, ceasefire first; negotiations second.
Wang then told his spokesman to announce on March 11: “As to China-Russia relations, both sides develop bilateral ties based on the principle of non-alliance, non-confrontation and not targeting any third party.” This is the first time China has officially emphasized its non-alliance with Russia. At their last direct conversation on February 4, 2026, the Kremlin spokesman had said: “Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping once again noted that the comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation between our two countries are at an unprecedented level, are based on equality and mutual benefit, are not directed against any third parties, and are not subject to short-term political considerations.”
“Comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation” was the watchword of their joint communiqué in Moscow on May 8, 2025; and in Kazakhstan on July 3, 2024; Putin told Xi in Moscow on March 21, 2023, “Russian-Chinese cooperation has truly limitless possibilities and potential, and we will continue to act in unison.”

“That is the signature of economic factionalism, which feeds an insatiable appetite for greater wealth seizure.”

• Eat the Rich: Sanders and Khanna Introduce Federal Billionaires Tax (Turley)

“Enough is enough.” With those words, Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt) launched a push to impose a 5% annual wealth tax on America’s billionaires. With Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Cal.), the legislation, “Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act,” echoes the growing “eat-the-rich” mantra on the left — seeking to replicate a disastrous push in California that has led to an exodus from that state and an estimated loss of $2 trillion in taxable assets. It is also flagrantly unconstitutional. Under the plan, Congress would target 938 billionaires to tap them for $4.4 trillion. That money would then be redistributed as a $3,000 direct payment to every man, woman, and child in a household making $150,000 or less – $12,000 for a family of four.

The timing of the move is telling. Not only is it calculated before the midterm elections, in which the Democrats hope to retake power, but it follows the push by California Democrats and unions to impose a similar wealth tax in that state. Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley, has supported the state law, which includes a ruinous provision for startup entrepreneurs. The law would not only be retroactive to try to trap wealthy taxpayers who have fled the state, but also base wealth calculations on the voting shares of corporate executives. Often, with start-ups, entrepreneurs hold greater voting shares than actual ownership. However, just in case they need more incentive to leave the state, they will be taxed as if their voting shares represented actual wealth.
The practical problem is that the wealthy, like their wealth, are mobile. As a result, many are fleeing California. So now Khanna is joining with the nation’s leading Democratic Socialists to ensure there is nowhere to hide in the United States. For billionaires in California, they could be double-tapped for ten percent of their wealth. It has long been the dream of the far left. Years ago, Warren delighted Democratic voters in her run for the presidency by telling the rich she was coming after “your Rembrandts, your stock portfolio, your diamonds and your yachts.” In one debate, she dramatically rubbed her hands together after saying she would take some of the wealth of fellow candidate John Delaney, a self-made millionaire.
In my book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” I discuss the growing threat of “economic factionalism” as politicians fuel rage against the wealthy based on the false premise that they are not “paying their fair share.” While there are good-faith arguments for adjusting tax burdens to address budget demands, the top 1 percent pays more taxes than the bottom 90 percent combined.There is little reason to believe that a wealth tax targeting billionaires will not, if upheld, be later extended to lower tax brackets, starting with multimillionaires. That is the signature of economic factionalism, which feeds an insatiable appetite for greater wealth seizure.
The Sanders-Khanna plan is notable in its express commitment to direct wealth redistribution. It also explains why the left has made the packing of the Supreme Court a priority. As Harvard professor Michael Klarman explained years ago, the radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election” requires control of the Supreme Court to uphold such measures.The problem is that the Constitution bars the implementation of such a federal wealth tax. When the 16th Amendment was ratified, it allowed for federal income taxes, and only income taxes: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”
The effort to expand federal taxation beyond income taxes will require either a constitutional amendment or an enabling, packed Court.Nevertheless, these politicians will continue to dangle wealth distribution before voters. They will demonize figures like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk for their wealth while ignoring that these same figures are wealth and job creators, driving our economic growth. Instead, Sanders declared that “Billionaires cannot have it all.” The irony of Rep. Khanna (who has been floating a run for President in 2028) turning on his own constituents in Silicon Valley underscores the appeal of wealth-redistribution campaigns. He is turning the very heart of his state’s economic growth as state deficits and out-of-state migration increase.
For Sanders, the legislation is a key moment to advance his long-standing socialist agenda. He declared the beginning of the end of “unprecedented income and wealth inequality” in the United States through such redistribution. The stated objective of erasing wealth inequality highlights how this is just the start and the end of wealth taxation.As discussed in Rage and the Republic, none of this is new. Countries like France previously targeted the wealthy, triggering an exodus of taxpayers and their businesses from the country. It had to reverse its policy as the economy collapsed.
Of course, many young people have no memory of such failures in the 20th Century. Instead, they are drawn to the very same soundbites used in France and Great Britain before disastrous experiments with socialism. With no experience with socialist economies, figures like socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani can entice voters to “the warmth of collectivism.” There are legitimate concerns over the glaring and growing wealth gap in the United States. However, a wealth tax is neither a constitutional nor a practical way of addressing the problem.

“.. the missiles “couldn’t have been launched without British specialists.”

• UK Behind Deadly Storm Shadow Missile Attack On Russian City – Kremlin (RT)

A Ukrainian strike on the Russian city of Bryansk using UK-made long-range Storm Shadow missiles would have been impossible without the direct involvement of British military specialists, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. The regional governor, Aleksandr Bogomaz, initially said the attack on Tuesday killed six people and injured 42, slamming the bombardment as an “inhumane terrorist act.” On Wednesday, he reported that the death toll had risen to seven, while confirming that the strike had involved Storm Shadow missiles. Peskov said on Wednesday the missiles “couldn’t have been launched without British specialists.”

He added that the strikes again show the necessity of the continued military campaign against Ukraine, as its success will ensure that “these barbaric actions by the Kiev regime don’t continue.” “One of the goals is to demilitarize Kiev and strip it of the ability to carry out attacks like this,” Peskov stressed. Ukraine has taken responsibility for the strike, claiming it was targeting a local microelectronics factory. Media reported that the attack came during a shift change at a local factory, when some employees were heading to the exit. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, seven British cruise-missiles were used in the attack. The UK and other nations backing the Ukrainian government “bear full responsibility” for civilian casualties in Bryansk, it said in a statement on Wednesday.
London is “prepared to bring the conflict to a new level in terms of damage and loss of life” using Ukrainian “puppets,” it added.] The ministry said the UN must react to the incident, stating that “silence will be taken as encouragement of criminal actions” of the Ukrainian government and its foreign backers. Governor Bogomaz announced a day of mourning in Bryansk, saying that 20 people remain in local hospitals, while nine of the most severely injured have been transported to specialized medical facilities. Storm Shadow cruise missiles are launched from the air and have a range of up to 560 km. Bryansk is located just over 100 km from the Ukrainian border and is internationally recognized as Russian territory.

“.. the goal is to jeopardize the peace process to end the Ukraine conflict.”

• Ukraine Attacking Russian Gas Pipeline To Stop Deliveries To Europe (RT)

Kiev has been deliberately attacking the infrastructure of the TurkStream gas pipeline in an attempt to halt deliveries to European consumers, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday. The statement comes after pipeline operator Gazprom reported on Wednesday that the Russkaya compressor station in southern Krasnodar Region, which serves as the starting point for supplies through the TurkStream, came under attack overnight. The company said the Beregovaya and Kazachya compressor stations were also targeted the day before, adding that its facilities in southern Russia were attacked 12 times in the past two weeks.

On Wednesday, the Defense Ministry confirmed the attacks, saying: “the Kiev regime, in order to stop gas supplies to European consumers, launched another attack using strike aircraft-type UAVs on the infrastructure of the Russkaya compressor station.” The ministry stated that four Ukrainian drones were shot down by Russian air defense systems in the airspace adjacent to the station, two more were intercepted by fighter aircraft, and three were destroyed by mobile fire teams. The TurkStream transports Russian gas to Türkiye via the Black Sea, with one line dedicated to the Turkish market and another supplying countries in Southern and Southeastern Europe.
Last month, President Vladimir Putin said Russia has become aware of plans to attack the TurkStream and Blue Stream trans-Black sea gas pipelines, adding that the goal is to jeopardize the peace process to end the Ukraine conflict. Putin did not publicly attribute the alleged plot to a specific party, saying it would be discussed behind closed doors with the Federal Security Service (FSB) board. In October, FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov warned that Ukraine and the UK were jointly preparing an attack on TurkStream.
Gas and oil infrastructure in the Black Sea has repeatedly come under Ukrainian attacks amid the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The attacks involved long-range drone strikes against various facilities ashore, as well as repeated attempts to target Russian naval vessels patrolling the pipelines with sea drones. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to the attack, saying it highlights the “true nature and essence of the Kiev regime,” describing the strikes as “especially irresponsible against the backdrop of a global energy crisis that is brewing day by day.”

Anything you say can and will be used… Soon as you say something anything about immigration you’re a racist, bigot, etc.

• The UN Warns Trump About Migrant Rhetoric. Seriously. (Manney)

As if we can’t hate the United Nations enough. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued a warning about President Donald Trump’s immigration rhetoric, claiming that describing migrants as criminals could increase racial hostility. Members of the committee argued that the language used by political leaders can fuel discrimination and possibly trigger hate crimes against migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers living in the United States.

The Committee was deeply disturbed by the growing use of derogatory and dehumanizing language and the dissemination of harmful stereotypes targeting migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. “Portraying them as criminals or as a burden, by politicians and influential public figures at the highest level, particularly the President,” the Committee said, “may incite racial discrimination and hate crimes.” It underscored that the systematic use of racial profiling and arbitrary identity checks by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) against people of Hispanic/Latino, African, or Asian origin has resulted in widespread arrests of refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, and people perceived as such.
The Committee also raised alarm that the lives and physical integrity of the above vulnerable groups are jeopardised by the excessive use of force and violence by enforcement officers during immigration operations. It cited that at least eight people have died since January 2026 during ICE operations or while in ICE custody, including protesters exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association and detained refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants.
The committee, operating within the United Nations human rights system, raised concerns about immigration enforcement actions carried out by federal agencies, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection. Committee members also referenced deaths tied to immigration detention and enforcement operations since early 2026. UN officials urged the U.S. government to review immigration enforcement measures implemented after January 2025. Committee members called for restrictions on enforcement operations near schools, hospitals, and houses of worship. They also pressed federal authorities to prohibit racial profiling and consider alternatives to immigration detention for families and minors.
Trump administration officials rejected the criticism. The White House accused the U.N. of bias and said Trump had delivered on many of his campaign promises, including securing the U.S. border. “No one cares what the biased United Nations’ so-called ”experts” think, because Americans are living in a safer, stronger country than ever before,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said when reached for comment. Administration officials argue that immigration enforcement remains necessary to address criminal activity tied to illegal entry and trafficking networks operating along the southern border.
The UN regularly presents itself as a global human rights watchdog, yet its own record has drawn scrutiny across multiple regions. Internal investigations into reconstruction programs in Iraq revealed allegations that UN development staff demanded bribes of up to 15% of contract values during a multibillion-dollar aid effort for postwar rebuilding projects. These accusations triggered whistleblower complaints about the misuse of funds intended for infrastructure and humanitarian aid.

“New DOJ documents expose a 2011 plan by Epstein and former intelligence operatives to seize $70 billion in frozen Libyan assets ..”

• Forget The Island: Jeffrey Epstein’s Secret War For Libya’s Billions (Fetouri)

While NATO bombs were still falling on Tripoli in the summer of 2011, a different kind of predator was circling the Libyan capital from the safety of a Manhattan townhouse. Newly released 2026 US Department of Justice documents reveal that Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and alleged Israeli intelligence asset, was also a geopolitical vulture looking to feast on the remains of the Libyan state.,Epstein’s private correspondence reveals a cold-blooded calculation to bypass international law and tap into the $32.4 billion in Libyan assets frozen in the US. The tragedy of the Libyan people was presented as a commercial opportunity.

On September 18, 2011, while the streets of Libya were still engulfed in the chaos, a clandestine plan was being hatched in New York to capture the country’s sovereign wealth. In an email titled ‘New York – Optics are important’, Jeffrey Epstein’s associate, Greg Brown, urgently pushed the financier to bankroll a high-level meeting with future Libyan leaders during the UN General Assembly. The targets were not minor players; they included Dr. Mohamed Magariaf, who would soon become Libya’s head of state, and his key advisers, Dr. Noah and Fadel Hshad.
Brown identified this trio as the men who would soon hold the mandate to negotiate with global giants like Goldman Sachs. The prize was a staggering $40 billion in Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) assets invested across Sub-Saharan Africa on top of the amounts frozen in the US banks. By offering to “identify, manage and monetize” these funds, Epstein’s circle sought to position themselves as the ultimate gatekeepers of Libya’s post-war economy – a ‘play’ that Brown promised would generate hundreds of millions for their own pockets.
The operation was in fact a privatized intelligence effort designed to exploit the vacuum of the Libyan state. Additional emails from the same period reveal that Epstein’s network was not working in isolation, claiming that former operatives from Britain’s MI6 and Israel’s Mossad were “willing to assist” in the hunt for Libya’s billions. This shadowy alliance viewed the $32.4 billion in funds frozen in the US – as well as the additional $40 billion’s African portfolio – not as protected sovereign wealth, but as a “significant opportunity” for recovery on a contingency-fee basis. By leveraging the “fearless” reputation Greg Brown attributed to Epstein, the group aimed to convince the nascent Libyan leadership that only their network of spies-turned-fixers had the “juice” to navigate the web of global finance and retrieve the nation’s “stolen” assets.
To justify this unprecedented financial intervention, Epstein’s network relied on a carefully constructed narrative that painted all Libyan overseas wealth as ‘stolen and misappropriated’ by the Gaddafi family – a claim that has never been proven 15 years later. This was a deliberate mischaracterization; in reality, these assets were the legitimate holdings of the Libyan State funds, invested in blue-chip stocks like Pearson and global banking giants. By framing a diversified state portfolio as ‘criminal proceeds’, Epstein’s people and their intelligence associates sought a legal loophole to bypass UN sanctions and extract a ‘contingency fee’ from wealth that belonged to the Libyan people – not a single family.
This strategy of criminalizing state assets was particularly aggressive across the African continent. During the 2011 chaos, persistent rumors (often fed by Western intelligence) portrayed the Libya Africa Investment Portfolio as Gaddafi’s personal slush fund rather than a legitimate development vehicle.
his narrative reached its peak with allegations involving former South African President Jacob Zuma. Claims surfaced that Zuma had received $30 million in cash (and even stashes of gold and diamonds) from the late Libyan leader for “safe keeping.” Although Zuma repeatedly and sarcastically denied these claims, noting that he would hardly be struggling with legal fees if he possessed this fortune, the ‘ghost story’ of the ‘Gaddafi Trillions’ served a vital purpose. It allowed shadow players like Epstein to treat the continent’s sovereign investments as ‘missing treasure’ up for grabs rather than state-owned assets that should have remained under the protection of international law.
The true danger of Epstein’s ‘New York Optics’ play was an attempt to formalize a shadow guardianship over Libya’s sovereign institutions before they could even be rebuilt. By targeting the individuals tasked with negotiating the Goldman Sachs settlement, Epstein was looking to establish a precedent when private, unaccountable fixers would manage the nation’s legal disputes.
This was a direct assault on Libya’s financial sovereignty, after the assault on its political sovereignty by the NATO military invasion. While the United Nations mission (UNSMIL) and international community spoke of ‘transitioning to democracy’, Epstein’s documents reveal a parallel reality: A race to ensure that the LIA remained a black box controlled by Manhattan-based intermediaries. This interference likely contributed to the years of litigation and internal divisions that have kept billions of dollars in state wealth effectively paralyzed – leaving the Libyan people to pay the price for a ‘recovery’ process that was designed by predators for predators.
Perhaps the most damning indictment of this intervention is that it was built on a financial phantom. For 15 years, the international community has been regaled with tales of ‘Gaddafi’s hidden trillions’ – a narrative Epstein’s network eagerly exploited to justify their ‘recovery’ services. Yet, the 2026 reality remains stark: Not a single personal bank account or secret stash belonging to the late Muammar Gaddafi has ever been found. The billions frozen in the West are, and always were, the documented institutional assets of the LIA. LIA was created in 2006 to, among other portfolios, invest oil money for poor families in the country.

New number: $70 billion.

• Epstein Guard To Testify As Oversight Committee Explores Potential MURDER (MN)

House Oversight Chairman James Comer is ramping up the heat on the botched handling of Jeffrey Epstein’s custody, announcing a subpoena for prison guard Tova Noel amid bombshell revelations of suspicious cash deposits and online searches just before the disgraced elitist’s alleged suicide.

Chairman Comer Calls for Epstein Prison Guard to Testify Under Oath

Lawmakers push for answers on long-standing questions surrounding Epstein’s death as investigators seek sworn testimony from the guard on duty #WashingtonEye pic.twitter.com/Lx7BIvRSXl
— Washington Eye (@washington_EY) March 11, 2026

With fresh DOJ documents unearthing red flags that scream cover-up, Comer’s move signals a long-overdue push for transparency against the bureaucratic stonewalling that has shielded powerful figures tied to Epstein’s web of abuse. Comer dropped the news during a Fox News interview, pointing to media reports and overlooked Justice Department records that cast doubt on the official narrative of Epstein’s 2019 death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
“Well, the recent media reports, what you just said, are very concerning — especially the suspicious activity report on a $5,000 mysterious deposit that she had,” Comer told host Jesse Watters. “The reason that stands out to me, Jesse, is because very seldom are suspicious activity reports even reported for sums less than $10,000.” “That’s a mystery there, and that’s something that, according to the DOJ documents, they never looked into — never asked her about,” he continued. Comer emphasized broader questions lingering over Epstein’s case: “Because of this, because of the media reports, and because of the fact that, honestly, most people on the committee aren’t confident 100% that Epstein’s death was a suicide, we’re going to ask Ms. Noel to come in for a transcribed interview.”
“Again, no one’s accusing her of any wrongdoing, but we have a lot of questions about Epstein — questions about who else was involved in abusing girls,” Comer added. “Why did the government not do a better job of investigating and prosecuting Epstein when they had a chance years before they finally convicted him? Was Epstein a spy? Was our government involved in any way, shape, or form in trying to destroy evidence or hide evidence from any of those four properties?” “Now, was Epstein’s death a suicide, as the government has reported, or was there something else?” he questioned. “Again, no one’s accusing this prison guard of any wrongdoing, but I will announce tonight on your show that we are going to ask her to come in and sit for an interview because we have a lot of questions.”
The subpoena targets Noel, who was on duty the night Epstein died. DOJ records show she googled “latest on Epstein in jail” at 5:42 a.m. and 5:52 a.m., just 40 minutes before her colleague discovered the body at 6:30 a.m. Instead of conducting required checks, Noel admitted to napping and online shopping, while falsifying logs—a lapse that earned her a deferred prosecution deal from an Obama-era judge in 2021. FBI forensics flagged her search as the only notable one in a 66-page review of the guards’ computers. Noel denied remembering the searches, calling records “inaccurate.”mChase Bank flagged suspicious deposits into Noel’s account, including $5,000 on July 30, 2019—ten days before Epstein’s death. From December 2018, seven deposits totaled $11,880, coinciding with her assignment to Epstein’s unit. Yet DOJ investigators never questioned her about it.
An FBI briefing identified Noel as an “orange flash” on camera approaching Epstein’s cell at 10:40 p.m. the night before, carrying linens or clothing—the last approach to the tier. She denied it. Noel now faces a lawsuit for alleged assault at her new job as a medical assistant. The guard’s actions fueled a heated exchange between journalist Michael Shellenberger and Joe Rogan during his latest podcast episode.

This development echoes ongoing scrutiny of Epstein’s death. DOJ documents labeled his death a “MURDER” in one instance, showed it documented a day early, and highlighted the wrong noose being DNA-tested. As one X user noted in response to those revelations: “Epstein is alive. He was extracted, likely by our own government.” Another pointed to a bipartisan cover-up: “The evidence points to a cover-up: Trump’s first AG Bill Barr oversaw the initial Epstein “suicide” ruling amid massive irregularities, Biden’s DOJ continued the stonewalling, and now Trump’s team is doing the same. Epstein was likely a protected CIA/elite asset—too many powerful world leaders, billionaires & influencers were involved in his crimes. The government decided to bury it all to avoid total exposure & chaos.”

“.. once Barack Obama came to the podium, he had an agenda.”

• The Politicking of Barack Obama (Victor Davis Hanson)

I’d like to comment recently on the politicking of Barack Obama. He’s been in the news recently, speaking at the Jesse Jackson funeral. What he did there, I’ll get to in a second, but he had a habit of talking down to black Americans as if they were naive, stupid, lacked his sophistication. Do you remember most poignantly when he told supporters of Kamala Harris, don’t dare, you don’t know what’s good for you. Don’t dare vote for basically a white racist like Donald Trump when you could empower a black woman. That didn’t go over very well, but he has a long history of that. Before I continue, though, the Democrats have a long history of using the venue of the funeral memorial service to hijack it and use it for political purposes.

In 2002, they did that with the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, and what should have been a memorial service turned into a four-hour campaign harangue. It was sort of the same way when Barack Obama went to the funeral of John McCain. He was asked to speak, and there’s no secret that John McCain and Donald Trump were not friends.Donald Trump felt that he had endorsed John McCain in 2008. John McCain had not turned the favor by explicitly telling the country that he would not vote for his own party’s nominee in 2016. John McCain, remember, had been a lifetime supporter of private medicine, and when Obamacare came on the scene, he was a vehement opponent. And when Donald Trump then was president, he had the votes to repeal Obamacare and bring in a free-market alternative.
John McCain inexplicably, in a late-night vote, flipped and decided to cast the deciding vote to crush that effort. And we have Obamacare today thanks to John McCain. He was never forgiven. Trump then said some things, and that all surfaced at the McCain funeral where Barack Obama sort of, without mentioning Trump, but it was very overt, the reference. He said that unlike people who are brash and think they’re tough and crude, basically, John McCain was tough, but he didn’t have to emphasize it. The next occasion came in 2020 for Barack Obama. That was at John Lewis’ funeral, and like the Wellstone funeral and the McCain funeral, once again, it was occasion to hijack the purpose, that is to honor the dead, and instead to use it for political purposes. So once Barack Obama came to the podium, he had an agenda.
And he was going to attack Donald Trump. And the way he did it was he said, we are suffering from racism and voter suppression. We don’t need voter IDs. We need a national holiday for balloting. We need to let prisoners vote, and we have too much Jim Crow racism in the country. Therefore, we’ve got to get rid of the Jim Crow racist filibuster footnote. He used it very ineffectively, but he used it in 2006 to deny the nomination of Justice [Samuel] Alito to the Supreme Court. And then he said that we have racist gerrymandering. That’s kind of ironic to see who’s been gerrymandering lately. And he has fully endorsed the efforts of Illinois, of Massachusetts, of Virginia, of California to ensure that Republicans don’t have House representation commensurate with their popular vote in their states.
In that long sermon, people were kind of startled. They thought, “Wow, this is a campaign. Is this a campaign advertisement, or is this an occasion for Obama to get relevance again after being out of office?” I would drop it there, but he did it again. He just went to the funeral of Jesse Jackson. I should add another footnote here that Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama were not close friends. Jesse Jackson said that he had been the trailblazer, the first African American presidential candidate that had a real chance to win. There had been others, but he felt that he was the most viable and that broke the barrier. And Obama was the beneficiary of that. He got so angry that in 2008 he got tired of Barack Obama, he thought, talking down to African Americans. So he said in a hot mic in the Fox Chicago studio, “I’d like to cut his” off, a vulgar reference to Obama’s testicles. But anyway, Obama was asked to speak.
Now, I would say in another footnote, all of these speeches at these funerals that Obama presents are basically about himself. He always relates anecdotes, not about necessarily just about the politician in question, but about his interaction with him. But in this particular Jesse Jackson speech, he went after division in the country using government. These are all sins he purportedly thinks that Donald Trump has committed—disunity, racism, valuing some people over others, and using the government to pursue enemies.
This was very, very rich. Very rich. Barack Obama, remember when he was president, he used the government to do what? Surveil Associated Press reporters, politicized the IRS to make sure they went after conservative groups and denied them tax-free status before his reelection effort. And remember most egregiously of all: He had at one point James Clapper, John Brennan, and James Comey in the Oval Office with him during the transition after Trump had been elected. And he basically said to them, your intelligence assessments from national intelligence, FBI, CIA are flawed because I’m not getting the results I want. I want Russian collusion. Collusion. Now go back and give me Russian collusion and Donald Trump.

“.. only 3 or 4 percent of felony cases are decided by juries. In the US jury trials have already been abolished, not by law, but by non-usec..”

• The Era of Truth and Freedom is Over (Paul Craig Roberts)

The British Parliament is in the process of abolishing the right to trial by jury. The law, which seems about to pass, removes a jury trial for defendants whose crimes are punishable by a sentence of three years or less. Instead of a jury of one’s peers, a judge will determine a defendant’s innocence or guilt. Next the cutoff will be 5 years, then ten, then jury trial will disappear, and England will return to the Dark Ages. The appointed judge will decide according to the wishes of he who rules. The reason the Labour government gives for abolishing trial by jury is an 80,000 case backlog that is choking the British justice system, a backlog that the Labour government says will rise to 200,000 in 9 years.

So, first British governments for decades allowed massive numbers of third world immigrant-invaders into Britain, many of whom turned out to be practitioners of crime. Their crimes, many of which are never prosecuted such as the 180,000 gang-rapes of British girls covered up by British governments for 30 years, overwhelmed the ability of the court system to process, and the solution is to abolish trial by peers, one of Britain’s greatest contributions to justice. For eight centuries from Alfred the Great to the Magna Carter to the Glorious Revolution (1680) the British built freedom and the protection of liberty from arbitrary power into law and civil society. And now a great achievement of Western Civilization has been lost to immigrant-invaders.
Possibly, trial by one’s peers had already been lost in Britain. I do not know if plea bargaining has become a feature of the British justice system. In the “free” United States plea-bargaining is, according to the US Department of Justice, the dominant way to decide felony cases. According to the US Department of Justice, only 3 or 4 percent of felony cases are decided by juries. In the US jury trials have already been abolished, not by law, but by non-use. A plea bargain is self-incrimination, against which the US Constitution and British legal practice protect a defendant from being tortured into a confession, whether innocent or guilty.
Despite the Constitutiion, Americans are coerced into self-incrimination by the cost of paying defense attorneys, by the prosecutor’s threat that he will pile on more charges if the defendant insists on a jury trial. A defendant who insists on a jury trial faces not only a hostile prosecutor, whose time is used up in a jury trial when he could be building his conviction rate with plea bargains, but also a hostile judge whose court docket is clogged by a jury trial. A plea bargain takes a few minutes. A jury trial takes a day or several weeks and requires a lot of effort and resources and attention by the judge..
If the defendant is without financial resources, his public defender knows that if he competently represents his client he will not be assigned more cases by the court. The defendant is told by his lawyer that a jury that trusts the system will think that of so many charges against the defendant at least one of them will be true. The defendant will be told that the penalty for one conviction will be worse than the plea bargain that has attorney can negotiate for him. The process works to break down the defendant’s resistance to self-incrimination.
And, so, prosecutor, defendant and his attorney appear before the judge. All three swear that no deal has been made, that the defendant admits his guilt to a charge of a crime that never happened, but which carries a lesser sentence than the original crime for which the defendant was indicted. When I have written that America’s jails are full of innocent people, this is what I mean. Defendants admit to a crime never committed in order to avoid prosecution for one that did, whether or not the accused committed the crime.
The fact that 96-97% of felonies never go to trial means that the police evidence is never tested in court. Time has taught the police that they don’t need any evidence. Their work load is easy. The police just pick a plausible defendant and turn him over to the plea bargaining system. Feminist ideology and blacks taught that white people are racists have added their part to undermining the integrity of juries. A white male with feminists and blacks on his jury can be convicted out of hate. This is justice in the “free” West today. Even the British have now abandoned the struggle for justice for which they fought for eight centuries.
What more evidence does a sentient person need to understand that the foundations of freedom that made Western civilization unique and a magnet to the world no longer exists. This is why the United States, once the repository of these truth and freedom preserving institutions, can betray all morality, all law, by intentionally attacking a girl’s school in Iran for children of Iranian Guards in order to demoralize the Iranian military force in hopes of reducing its ability to resist Israeli-American unprovoked aggression against the Iranian nation. Trump and Netanyahu opened their war by murdering 185 little girls.
Do governments so totally evil, so overflowing with self-righteousness and self-justification for their crimes against humanity as Washington and Israel have a right to exist? This is the question that is before us. Yet the entire world, including Putin and Xi, refuse to confront the question, preferring to defer to evil.

He’s definitely not his biggest fan.

• Putin Is Again on the Wrong Track (Paul Craig Roberts)

Just as Putin destroyed the reputation of the Russian military by refusing to win an ongoing minor conflict, he is again demonstrating the worst kind of judgment in calling for a return to peace and stability in the Middle East. Is Putin aware of the Zionist Israeli agenda of Greater Israel? How can he not be aware when Netanyahu himself has held up a map of Greater Israel? How can Putin not be aware when Tucker Carlson asked Washington’s ambassador to Israel how Israel could claim an entire region in which there were different countries and received the answer that the Israelis should just go ahead and take it all now? How can Putin be aware of Greater Israel and call for a return to peace and stability? The only stability permitted by Israel’s agenda is when Israel stretches from the Nile to Pakistan.

Just as Israel used the US to clear out of the way Iraq, Libya, and Syria, Israel is now using Trump to remove Iran as an obstacle to Greater Israel. The only way Israeli-American aggression in the Middle East can be avoided is for Israel’s agenda of Greater Israel and Washington’s agenda of hegemony to be negotiated away. Any other negotiations are mindless distractions from reality. The Israeli-American demands for hegemony are totally inconsistent with any possibility of peace and stability. When confronted with such hegemonic demands, how stupid must you be to call for “peace and stability”?= Why are there no calls for Israel to negotiate its agenda of Greater Israel, for Washington to negotiate its growing demands for hegemony over other countries?
If Putin convinces Iran to call off a war that Iran must fight to victory if the ancient country is to survive, Iran will be destroyed. Having betrayed Syria, is Putin now going to betray Iran in exchange for Washington removing sanctions on Russian oil so Putin can negate for Israel and the US the impact of the closed Strait of Hormuz? Is Putin aligning Russia with Washington and Israel against a BRICS partner? If Putin were a real leader, he would be calling for negotiating an end to the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel. The US cannot do it, because America is completely under Israel’s thumb. Unless the rest of the world can bring itself into acknowledging the reality of the agendas of Greater Israel and American Hegemony, the world will continue on the path to Armageddon.

“Rasmussen survey finds 56% of U.S. voters believe COVID shots caused significant deaths — and 42% say CDC employees should be fired for their pandemic response.”

• 56% of Americans Now Suspect COVID-19 “Vaccines” Caused Mass Deaths (Hulscher)

Public opinion is shifting—and they want action. A new Rasmussen survey of 1,158 likely U.S. voters—conducted September 7–9, 2025, with a ±3% margin of error—reveals that 56% believe side effects from the COVID-19 shots have likely caused a significant number of unexplained deaths. Nearly one-third (32%) say it’s very likely. Only 35% still dismiss the idea.This shows that what was once called a “conspiracy theory” has become the mainstream view. The majority of Americans now believe vaccine harms are real and widespread.

Support for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reflects this shift. Half of voters (50%) say government health officials deserve criticism for their handling of the pandemic, while 42% even think CDC employees should be fired for their role in misleading the public. Among those who strongly believe the shots caused deaths, over 70% want CDC firings.
Partisan divides remain—70% of Republicans, 46% of Democrats, and 54% of independents think the vaccines likely caused deaths—but the skepticism crosses party lines and racial groups. In fact, black (64%) and Hispanic (57%) voters are even more likely than white voters (54%) to suspect deadly vaccine effects. According to the survey, RFK Jr. is viewed favorably by 45% of voters, with strong support among Republicans and independents, even as Democrats turn sharply against him.The takeaway: A credible, nationally representative poll now confirms most Americans believe COVID-19 shots have killed many people, and they want accountability from the CDC and government health leaders.

Elon Musk just dropped a major Optimus update:

"We're in the final stages of completion of Optimus 3, which is really going to be by far the most advanced robot in the world. Nothing's even close

I haven't even seen any demos of robots that are as good as Optimus 3"

Production… pic.twitter.com/6p5AszunkY
— X Freeze (@XFreeze) March 12, 2026

Elon Musk just dropped a bombshell that could shake up the entire software industry:

a joint Tesla-xAI project called Macrohard (yes, that's a cheeky jab at Microsoft), also known as Digital Optimus.

Announced on March 12, 2026, this isn't just another AI chatbot—it's designed… pic.twitter.com/14HKJ5U8Ys
— XCorp (@XCorpHub) March 12, 2026

Elon Musk just revealed the architecture for what could become the largest workforce on Earth.

The project is called Macrohard.

A joint venture between Tesla and xAI, built under a $2 billion framework agreement signed earlier this year.

The goal is not to build better… https://t.co/OV9RuvWk2m pic.twitter.com/qx7SVF1DDr
— Milk Road AI (@MilkRoadAI) March 11, 2026

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2031914707989479467?s=20 https://twitter.com/XFreeze/status/2031684358327656503?s=20

Dr. Benjamin Bikman just flipped the cholesterol script:

Higher cholesterol in older adults = longer life and lower risk of Alzheimer's (peer-reviewed studies confirm it).

Low cholesterol? Higher mortality risk and significantly elevated Alzheimer's odds.

Why? Every cell… pic.twitter.com/sUBzXkoGkP
— Camus (@newstart_2024) March 11, 2026

https://twitter.com/ValerieAnne1970/status/2031792269636813252?s=20

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Debt Rattle November 24 2022

Nov 242022

November 24, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: black hole, Boris Johnson, Elon Musk, gold, hoarding, power, SBF, state sponsor of terrorism, Transneft, Twitter, Ukraine, water 49 Responses »

Salvador Dali Bay of Cadaques 1925

• The Fear of Fear Itself: The Gripping Truth Out of Ukraine (Butler)

• It Was Never About Ukraine (Antiwar)

• Black Holes And Digestive Systems, Or Why Hegemon Is Doomed (FMAN)

• New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelensky, Yellen (ZH)

• EU Parliament Brands Russia ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ (RT)

• Russia Is Not ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ – US Ambassador (RT)

• Huge Swathes Of Ukraine Without Power & Water (ZH)

• Ukraine – Lights Out, No Water And Soon No Heat (MoA)

• Germany Rejects Boris Johnson Claims It Said Ukraine Should Fold To Russia (G.)

• EU Has ‘No Right’ To Get Tired Of Ukraine Conflict – Kiev (RT)

• Ukraine Halts Russian Oil Transit To EU – Transneft (RT)

• EU Claims To Have Fully Substituted Russian Gas (RT)

• China Secretly Hoarding Gold To Ditch Dollar – Media

• NATO Contacts Claim Is Media ‘Invention’ – Moscow (RT)

• Anti-Twitter Advertisers Have Been Under-Performing The Market For Months (ZH)

• Elon Musk: Coalition of Political Groups Behind Lack of Moderation Council (ET)

Jim Garrison in his book, “On the Trail of the Assassins.”
“I knew by now that when a group of individuals gravitated toward one another for no apparent reason…inexplicably headed in the same direction as if drawn by a magnetic field..as often as not the shadowy outlines of a covert intelligence operation were somehow becoming visible”

Elon AOC

Elon Musk and AOC finally worked out their differences.

The chemistry these two have is crazy. pic.twitter.com/4dYzYAinqa

— Maze (@mazemoore) November 23, 2022

“Since Putin’s gas hike was not enough to stir Americans into a blood ritual for total war, the liberal world order is throwing grocery prices into the mix.”

• The Fear of Fear Itself: The Gripping Truth Out of Ukraine (Butler)

Now we are asked to be afraid of Vladimir Putin weaponizing gas! We must act in defense of the Russian’s weaponizing food! And Vladimir Putin personally killed J.F.K. with a BB-Gun from the Texas book depository in Dallas. Did Russia’s leadership wake up one morning in 2014 and decide a NATO regime was needed in next-door Ukraine? Well, no. Were the Russians shelling people with Polish DNA in Kyiv for eight years? Certainly not. The EU, NATO, and the New York Times would have informed us of that. So why would Russia act the way she has recently? I see no one out there gazing with practical eyes on this situation. Oh, commodities and controlling them! Money! Tons and tons of money! That has to be it.

Some weeks back, Vladimir Putin’s government decided to allow the free passage of grain ships through the Black Sea out of southwestern Ukraine. The “food” was ostensibly headed to the starving people of Africa and Asia that Washington, London, and Brussels were berserk over. Even the United Nations has held that starving people worldwide need to blame Russia. I was reading a Voice of America report on recent UN meetings about the Ukraine/Black Sea shipments, and it reads like intel for Wall Street commodities brokers. And there’s the point. Food security worldwide is now the red-hot poker western elites are jabbing Russia with now. Since Putin’s gas hike was not enough to stir Americans into a blood ritual for total war, the liberal world order is throwing grocery prices into the mix.

For those in the dark or dizzied by all these events, and I am often with you, the accessible version is to simply call this World War III. Yes, we are already in it. But think about the sequence of recent events and their impact for proper clarity. First, Nord Stream was blown up. The next day a pipeline from Norway to Poland carrying much more expensive natural gas went into operation. A few days after this, the Poles demanded trillions in reparations from the Germans for WW2 grievances settled decades ago. The essentials that power economies and people are being weaponized, but the perpetrators hide in plain sight behind the media they own.

Retired U.S. Colonel Douglas MacGregor gave the best appraisal of the situation in a talk with Aaron Maté and Katie Halper. MacGregor, dubbed “America’s Greatest Warfighter,” is a war hero and former strategy advisor during the Trump administration. He says, in no uncertain terms, that Washington and London’s leaders are on a mission to destroy Germany and the German-Russian cooperative potential. I believe he is right on all counts, but he leaves off how the western elites (banksters) are profiteering from it all. This is a multiple-pronged strategy, not some haphazard knee-jerking.

“Russia refused to play by the rules..”

• It Was Never About Ukraine (Antiwar)

In his March 21 press briefing, State Department spokesman Ned Price told the gathered reporters that “President Zelenskyy has also made it very clear that he is open to a diplomatic solution that does not compromise the core principles at the heart of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.” A reporter asked Price, “What are you saying about your support for a negotiated settlement à la Zelenskyy, but on whose principles?” In what still may be the most remarkable statement of the war, Price responded, “this is a war that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine.” Price, who a month earlier had discouraged talks between Russia and Ukraine, rejected Kiev negotiating an end to the war with Ukraine’s interests addressed because US core interests had not been addressed. The war was not about Ukraine’s interests: it was bigger than Ukraine.

A month later, in April, when a settlement seemed to be within reach at the Istanbul talks, the US and UK again pressured Ukraine not to pursue their own goals and sign an agreement that could have ended the war. They again pressured Ukraine to continue to fight in pursuit of the larger goals of the US and its allies. Then British prime minister Boris Johnson scolded Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” He added that, even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, the West was not.” Once again, the war was not about Ukraine’s interests: it was bigger than Ukraine. At every opportunity, Biden and his highest ranking officials have insisted “that it’s up to Ukraine to decide how and when or if they negotiate with the Russians” and that the US won’t dictate terms: “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

But that has never been true. The US wouldn’t allow Ukraine to negotiate on their terms when they wanted to. The US stopped Ukraine from negotiating in March and April when they wanted to; they pushed them to negotiate in November when they did not want to. The war in Ukraine has always been about larger US goals. It has always been about the American ambition to maintain a unipolar world in which they were the sole polar power at the center and top of the world. Ukraine became the focus of that ambition in 2014 when Russia for the first time stood up to American hegemony.

Alexander Lukin, who is Head of Department of International Relations at National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow and an authority on Russian politics and international relations, says that since the end of the Cold War Russia had been considered a subordinate partner of the West. In all disagreements between Russia and the US up to then, Russia had compromised, and the disagreements were resolved rather quickly. But when, in 2014, the US set up and supported a coup in Ukraine that was intended to pull Ukraine closer into the NATO and European security sphere Russia responded by annexing Crimea, Russia broke out of its post Cold War policy of compliance and pushed back against US hegemony. The 2014 “crisis in Ukraine and Russia’s reaction to it have fundamentally changed this consensus,” Lukin says. “Russia refused to play by the rules.”

“This black hole is now swallowing the entire Energy System of the country as you read this, and attracting dangerously some of the closest objects to its orbit such as Poland, the Baltic Bonsai Countries and the neighboring EU..”

• Black Holes And Digestive Systems, Or Why Hegemon Is Doomed (FMAN)

Ukraine is like a black hole. It swallows everything you throw at it… Billions of dollars in assistance, millions of tons of military material, and (I hope not) hundreds of thousands of lives of Khokhol and its Nazi buddies, especially if they allow the Clown-Zirkus to remain in power for much longer without a check. This black hole is now swallowing the entire Energy System of the country as you read this, and attracting dangerously some of the closest objects to its orbit such as Poland, the Baltic Bonsai Countries and the neighboring EU, all of them being steered directly to the void, in suicide mode, by their (brain disabled, dim-witted, deranged and psychopathic) ruling elites.

But what are really black Holes? You can ask yourself. From an astronomical standpoint, it is simply a star (of some mass) that, at the end of its life, collapses into a point (the singularity) due to the gravity produced by its own mass. This gravity is so intense that not even light can escape from it, hence the name “Black Hole”. They can achieve this state through a variety of processes, but the end result is always the same: something from which you cannot escape if you fall within its event horizon. And that is only defined by its mass, electric charge, and momentum. Whatever falls behind its event horizon is forever out of reach of observers on the outside.

There might be another (more convenient) meaning for this particular Ukrainian black hole. I read in my university days an anthology edited by Jerry Pournelle, where he said that Russians never use the term, because it has some eschatological connotations… some kind of biology-related obscenity. I don’t know if it is true, but I have to say that comparing Banderastan to the black hole at the end of the digestive system of some kind of mythological beast (let’s call it Hegemon) looks like much more pertinent in this case. This end has a particularly long and interesting list of possible denominations.

The beast, has an insatiable hunger, if allowed it would devour us all. The crazy psychopaths ruling elites in the West are feeding it as quickly as possible and as much as they can (wasting in the process the wealth, health and resources of those they govern) because they are also part of the parasites sucking the life and energy off the beast. The more they throw into the mouth, the more they suck out of it. The system works perfectly for them and, what is left, once processed and liberated of most of the real substance and value, is excreted through the blackhole at the end.

Max Keiser:
• I guess the good news about the FTX racketeering scandal is that it looks like it’ll take down several high profile media outlets, the entire ‘crypto’ farce and many scammy VC’s and banks.
• [NYTimes] @dealbook just indicted itself as being part of a criminal enterprise and participating in the FTX racketeering scandal.

• New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelensky, Yellen (ZH)

As we discussed last night, Sam Bankman-Fried has now demonstrated that he is both a pathological liar and a sociopath, the kind who in “explaining” to his employees how he stole billions (over $4 billion according to new FTX CEO John J. Ray) from the now bankrupt FTX, an act which left it insolvent and without liquidity, called it “loans” which were “generally” not used for “large amounts of personal consumption” (just “small amounts” used for such trivial items as $40 million penthouses and private jets). And the only reason we don’t officially call him a criminal just yet, is because he has not yet confirmed he used clienOutrage After New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelenskyy, Yellent money from his exchange to fund his personal hedge fund, an act which would cost any other individual decades in jail… but not prominent democrats like SBF or Jon Corzine, of course.

Plus it’s the US legal system’s job to do that, not ours. Although we are growing increasingly skeptical this prominent Democratic donor will ever see the inside of a courtroom. It’s not just us: with much of the entire world demanding to know how this corpulent 30-year-old still has not been thrown in prison, or at least charged with a variety of crimes, the NYT just confirmed to the entire world what a farce the one-time paper of record has become, and how it is willing to whore itself out for clicks – not to mention prominent Democrat donors – because moments after SBF tweeted that he will be speaking with Andrew Ross-Sorkin moderated NYT “summit” on Nov 30… … Sorkin quickly confirmed as much.

And so, instead of being under arrest, SBF will instead be treated like a luminary alongside other such other Democrat icons as Zelenskyy (who according to some may have been intimately familiar with FTX fund flows in the past year) and of course the woman who along with Ben Bernanke and Jerome Powell, made it all possible by blowing the biggest asset bubble of all time: Janet Yellen. And while we are certain that the NYT – which we assume is done writing puff pieces on behalf of SBF after it became a laughing stock last week – would be quick to mercilessly cancel and expel from its “prestigious” conference anyone who had misgendered some post-op transsexual, it is willing to give this thieving pathological liar and sociopath a forum in which to profess his innocence to the entire world, and by association with other Democrat “celebrities”…

Europe is not where the brains are.

• EU Parliament Brands Russia ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ (RT)

The European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution designating Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” on Wednesday. In a strongly worded but largely symbolic document, MEPs also called on the European Union to further reduce diplomatic ties with Moscow and quickly adopt a ninth package of anti-Russia sanctions. Diplomatic relations with Russia should be cut “to the absolute minimum necessary” and Russian “state-affiliated institutions,” such as Russian cultural centers and diaspora organizations, should be closed and banned, the MEPs said. As the European Union cannot officially designate states as sponsors of terrorism at present, the parliament called on bloc members to put in place the necessary legal framework and to consider adding Moscow to the relevant list.

It also urged EU members to initiate “a comprehensive international isolation” of Russia and “to swiftly complete its work on a ninth sanctions package.” The resolution, which was supported by a vast majority of parliamentarians, accused Russia of conducting “deliberate attacks and atrocities” against Ukrainian civilians, of destroying critical infrastructure in the country, and of violating human rights. Therefore, it said, the European Parliament “recognizes Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and as a state which uses means of terrorism.” Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky welcomed the resolution, tweeting that “Russia must be isolated at all levels and held accountable.”

In recent weeks, similar largely symbolic declarations were adopted by NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. While Kiev has repeatedly urged the West to declare Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism,” only a few countries – including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic – have heeded the call, and their actions have been limited to symbolic gestures. Those with the power to enforce anti-terrorism sanctions against other states, specifically the US, have so far refused to take such a step. In August, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned Washington that designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism would become “a point of no return” in bilateral relations.

“..Van Schaack said the US is “very interested in what the Europeans are doing,” adding that such a resolution “carries great weight.”

• Russia Is Not ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ – US Ambassador (RT)

The US cannot designate Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” since it simply does not fit the relevant criteria, the US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack told a briefing on Tuesday, while commenting on a similar initiative by European lawmakers. The EU parliament adopted a resolution calling Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” on Wednesday. “The designation of a state sponsor of terror in terms of the way US law defines it is not a good match for Russia here,” Van Schaack told journalists. Washington is currently “exploring other potential designations” that would allow it to potentially imposed further sanctions on Moscow, the ambassador added. According to Van Schaack, such a label would not be necessary since the US is already “utilizing our sanctions to an incredible degree.”

The non-binding resolution by the EU parliament was supported by 494 MEPs while 58 voted against it and 44 abstained. The MEPs particularly stated that Russia’s attacks on “the civilian population of Ukraine [and] the destruction of civilian infrastructure” amount to “war crimes” and “acts of terror.” The document also called on Brussels to develop a relevant legal framework allowing it to officially designate entire nations as sponsors of terrorism, adding that it is currently not possible. The resolution also demanded what it called the “comprehensive international isolation” of Russia, including the further reduction of diplomatic relations and the swift adoption of a new round of sanctions. “Contacts with its official representatives at all levels (should) be kept to the absolute minimum necessary,” the document said.

On Tuesday, Van Schaack said the US is “very interested in what the Europeans are doing,” adding that such a resolution “carries great weight.” The EU parliament’s document adopted so far is largely symbolic as it does not impose any legal commitments on Brussels. On Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry blasted any such designations as a way for the West to legitimize their “unilateral coercive measures” against their perceived adversaries. “A number of nations representing the ‘collective West’ use such labels as a ‘terrorist state,’ ‘terrorist regime’ or a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’ to designate those nations [they consider] ‘unwelcome’ and not fitting their warped perceptions of democracy,” Ivan Nechayev, the deputy head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Information and Press Department, told the Russian media.

“Everything is fine with the station. There is nowhere to generate electricity.”

• Huge Swathes Of Ukraine Without Power & Water (ZH)

Ukraine’s energy operator Energoatom has announced Wednesday emergency power shutdowns in effect across all regions of the country amid a new large wave of Russian airstrikes. Sirens have been sounding throughout the day across the country. President Volodymyr Zelensky in follow-up estimated that 10 million Ukrainians now lack access to electricity due to the attacks. “There are emergency shutdowns in addition to planned, stabilization ones,” he explained. “The elimination of the consequences of another missile attack against Ukraine continues all day.” Casualties have been reported in the eastern cities of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, and at least one person has been reported killed in Kiev.

Speaking of the renewed attacks on the capital, Mykhailo Podolyak, head of the Office of the Ukrainian President’s office said, “A new massive attack on infrastructure facilities is underway.” He described, citing recent anti-air defense systems acquired from Western countries, “While someone is waiting for World Cup results and the number of goals scored, Ukrainians are waiting for another score – number of intercepted Russian missiles. A new massive attack on infrastructure facilities is underway. In NASAMS, IRIS-T and Air Defense Forces we trust.” Kiev’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, issued an emergency message on social media warning that ongoing Russian strikes are “Hitting one of the capital’s infrastructure facilities. Stay in shelters! The air alert continues.”

Also alarming is that the mayor in a follow-up message said that water services have been suspended in Kiev after the major strikes. While it’s not the first time that some war-hit parts of Ukraine have been left without electricity and water, the country is now in an extremely dire and urgent phase, having already seen an estimated half its national power infrastructure degraded or destroyed. Temperatures are quickly dropping, with the capital having witnessed its first snow earlier this month. Nuclear power generation is also being severely impacted: Several units were shut down at the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine due to a loss of power during Russian air raids across Ukraine, Ukraine’s nuclear energy firm Energoatom said. An Energoatom spokesperson said, “Everything is fine with the station. There is nowhere to generate electricity.”

“To stop these attacks requires a political solution. Ukraine will have to give up and find some agreement with Russia.”

• Ukraine – Lights Out, No Water And Soon No Heat (MoA)

Earlier today the Russian military shut down the Ukrainian electricity network. Previous attacks had limited the distribution capacity to some 50% of demand. Controlled blackouts over several hours per day allowed to give some electricity for a few hours to most parts of the country. The attack today created a much larger problem. Not only were distribution networks attacked but also so the elements that connect Ukraine’s electricity production facilities to the distribution network. All four nuclear power stations of Ukraine with their 15 reactors are now in shutdown mode. Kiev along with most other cities of Ukraine no longer has electricity. Moldavia is likewise effected as it received some 20% of its electricity from Ukraine. When the Ukrainian network shut down the only local thermal power plant shut down too. It is likely that it can be switched on again but that can be a complicate process.

Limited electricity imports from the European system into Ukraine may still be possible but that electricity would only be available in Ukraine’s western cities. Before today’s attack the Washington Post reported of the difficulties in repairing the network. As we ad explained before the Russian attacks are hitting the transformers that connect the national 330 kilovolt backbone network. These are hard to replace: “As the scope of damage to Ukraine’s energy systems has come into focus in recent days, Ukrainian and Western officials have begun sounding the alarm but are also realizing they have limited recourse. Ukraine’s Soviet-era power system cannot be fixed quickly or easily. In some of the worst-hit cities, there is little officials can do other than to urge residents to flee — raising the risk of economic collapse in Ukraine and a spillover refugee crisis in neighboring European countries….

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that about half of the country’s energy infrastructure was “out of order” following the bombardment…. For weeks, Russian missiles have targeted key components of Ukraine’s electrical transmission system, knocking out vital transformers without which it is impossible to supply power to households, businesses, government offices, schools, hospitals and other critical facilities. During a briefing for reporters on Tuesday, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, the state-run power grid operator, called the damage to the power system “colossal.”… Russians, he said, were mainly targeting substations, nodes on the electrical grid where the current is redirected from power stations. The main components of these substations are autotransformers — “high-tech and high-cost equipment” that is difficult to replace….

A list of “urgent needs” from DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, circulating in Washington, lists dozens of transformers along with circuit breakers, bushings and transformer oil…. But it is the autotransformers — the “heart” of the substations, in the words of Kudrytskyi — that are at the top of the Ukrainians’ list of needs and the key to keeping the country’s electrical grid functioning. The Ukrainians have tried to buy up every autotransformer they can find, going as far as South Korea to purchase them, but they still need to place orders for more to be built.“We try to collect everything around the world that they have now, and order more,” said Olena Zerkal, an adviser to Ukraine’s Energy Ministry. Any attempts to repair the network are useless as long as Russia continues to attack it. To stop these attacks requires a political solution. Ukraine will have to give up and find some agreement with Russia.

Ha ha ha. I bet Boris spoke the truth for once.

• Germany Rejects Boris Johnson Claims It Said Ukraine Should Fold To Russia (G.)

Germany has angrily dismissed claims by Boris Johnson that in the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine it said it would be better for Ukraine to fold than to become embroiled in a long war. Johnson, interviewed by CNN, also claimed that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was in denial about the threat of invasion, and that Italy, led at the time by Mario Draghi, said it could not help because it was so dependent on Russian hydrocarbons.A spokesperson for the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, rejected the claims with a diplomatically phrased dig at Johnson. “We know that the very entertaining former prime minister always has a unique relationship with the truth; this case is no exception,” the official said. Miguel Berger, the German ambassador to the UK, backed the dismissal of Johnson’s account.

Johnson’s claims appear similar to comments from Andriy Melnyk, the former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, who has said German politicians told him before the invasion that they expected Ukraine to be defeated within three days and so it was pointless to provide any help. Melnyk claimed on Twitter in March: “On 14 February we were warning German politicians: ‘Kyiv may be bombed in the coming days! We urgently need 12 thousand anti-tank rockets from Germany.’ In response: just mockery. So sad. So furious.” He later claimed that the German finance minister, Christian Lindner, was against supplying weapons to Ukraine or cutting Russia off from the international Swift banking payments. Melnyk told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Lindner had told him with a smile that he thought Ukraine would collapse within a few hours and that he was ready to talk to a puppet regime that would be installed by Russia.

The German finance ministry denied the accusation. Macron was broadcast before the invasion making desperate pleas to Vladimir Putin to hold talks with Joe Biden. Johnson stressed in his interview that EU nations had later rallied behind Ukraine and were providing steadfast support, but he said that was not universally the case in the period before the invasion in February. “This thing was a huge shock … we could see the Russian battalion tactical groups amassing, but different countries had very different perspectives,” Johnson told CNN’s Richard Quest in Portugal. “The German view was at one stage that if it were going to happen, which would be a disaster, then it would be better for the whole thing to be over quickly and for Ukraine to fold,” he claimed, citing “all sorts of sound economic reasons” for that approach.

This should stop EU support right there and then, of course. First give us your billions, then we’ll read you your rights. And cut off your energy.

• EU Has ‘No Right’ To Get Tired Of Ukraine Conflict – Kiev (RT)

The European Union must cast aside all doubts about new anti-Russia sanctions and double down on slapping Moscow with new restrictions that would curb its missile industry, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said on Tuesday. Speaking at a regular briefing, Kuleba urged the EU to speed up the work on its ninth sanctions package, which he described as long overdue. “We are only hearing about an attempt to start serious work on its preparation. Such a situation is totally unacceptable,” the minister said. In the same vein, he called on his EU colleagues “to put aside any doubts or, as it is fashionable to say, ‘fatigue,’ and to start to quickly complete the ninth sanctions package.” “If the Ukrainians are not tired, then the rest of Europe, all the more, has neither the moral nor the political right to get tired,” Kuleba stressed.

He called on the EU to focus on sanctions impacting Russia’s capability to produce missiles, which are used by Moscow to conduct strikes on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. Russia has been targeting Ukrainian energy facilities, including power stations, since October 10, after accusing Kiev of attacking Russian structures, including the strategic Crimean Bridge. Due to these strikes, Ukraine has been experiencing rolling blackouts, with authorities there saying that these attacks have knocked out about 40% of the nation’s energy infrastructure. On Tuesday, Politico reported that the EU has not officially started working yet on the ninth sanctions package against Russia. However, according to two of the outlet’s sources, the new measures may potentially focus on Russian individuals that can be linked to the Ukraine conflict.

The previous sanctions package was adopted by the EU in early October and sought to deprive Moscow of €7 billion ($7.2 billion) in revenues from the import of products which support the Russian economy, including steel products, various machinery, textiles and non-gold jewelry. Following the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in late February, Western countries imposed sweeping new sanctions on Moscow, freezing around half of Moscow’s gold and foreign exchange reserves. According to Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, these assets “have been essentially stolen” by the West. Last week, Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, claimed that the US, which has supported the sanctions, is seeking to weaken and destroy Russia, and is using Ukraine as a “battering ram” to achieve that goal.

See? Just to make their point that you have “No Right’ To Get Tired Of Ukraine Conflict”, they cut off your gas…

• Ukraine Halts Russian Oil Transit To EU – Transneft (RT)

Kiev has stopped the operation of a section of the southern branch of the ‘Druzhba’ (Friendship) oil pipeline that transits Ukraine, RIA Novosti reported on Wednesday, citing Russian oil-exporting company Transneft. According to the report, oil transmission has been suspended for an indefinite period. “In Ukraine, the section [of Druzhba] has been stopped, from Brod to the Carpathians,” said Igor Demin, an adviser to the president of Transneft. He added that deliveries via the Belarusian section of the pipeline were continuing. Last week, Kiev stopped oil flows to Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline, explaining the suspension was linked to a Russian air strike that reportedly had hit a transformer station near the border with Belarus.

It stated that the service was suspended due to a “drop in voltage.” Kiev later announced plans to raise transit fees for Russian oil running through the pipeline to the EU, due to higher costs resulting from Russian air and missile attacks targeting the country’s energy infrastructure. Ukrainian oil transit fees have already been raised twice this year. The last hike, in April, reportedly brought the total increase on an annualized basis to 51%. Built in the 1960s, Druzhba is one of the longest pipeline networks in the world, which carries crude some 4,000km from Russia to refineries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

We don’t believe you. But still, question: what did you pay?

• EU Claims To Have Fully Substituted Russian Gas (RT)

The European Union has entirely replaced Russian natural gas imports with LNG and pipeline gas from alternative reliable suppliers, Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson told a plenary session of the European Parliament on Wednesday. The bloc is due to debate a gas price cap proposal on Thursday to prevent sky-high costs for consumers. “Diversification, demand reduction, a common storage policy [and] our #RepowerEU actions are making a difference,” Simson tweeted after the session, adding: “But we need to stay vigilant.” The substitution of Russian pipeline gas came on the back of the increased purchases of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States, experts told RIA Novosti. According to the European Commission, between January and August the total volume of gas imports from Russia, including LNG, decreased by 39 billion cubic meters (bcm).

During the same period, LNG supplies from the United States jumped by almost 80% in annual terms. Last year, Russia accounted for around 45% of the EU’s gas imports. According to the International Energy Agency, Moscow supplied 155 bcm to the bloc, while this year imports are expected to drop to a little over a third of that (around 60 bcm). Meanwhile, analysts from the research firm Kpler warned this month that replacing Russian pipeline gas supplies with LNG would result in significant costs for the EU. Unlike pipeline gas, which is usually supplied under long-term contracts, LNG is more often purchased on the spot market, and its cost tends to be many times higher. Meanwhile, increased purchases by the EU have been making it difficult for developing countries to buy LNG, as they are being now forced to compete on price with wealthier nations.

“Gold purchases by regulators more than quadrupled in the July-September period and totaled 399.3 tons..”

• China Secretly Hoarding Gold To Ditch Dollar – Media

Central banks across the world have stepped up their gold purchases after Russia’s overseas assets were frozen as part of sanctions this year, according to strategists cited by the Japanese business daily Nikkei Asia. Some $300 billion of Russian foreign reserves, and billions more from individuals and businesses, have reportedly been frozen by the US and its allies. The Kremlin has repeatedly slammed the seizures as “theft.” Gold purchases by regulators more than quadrupled in the July-September period and totaled 399.3 tons, according to data revealed in the November report of the World Gold Council. The figure marks a dramatic surge from 186 tons recorded in the preceding quarter, and 87.7 tons in the first quarter of this year. Meanwhile the year-to-date total surpasses any full year since 1967.

Emin Yurumazu, a Japan-based economist from Turkey, told the media that “anti-Western countries are eager to accumulate gold holdings on hand,” after nations saw how Russia’s overseas assets were frozen as part of sanctions. The central banks of Turkey, Uzbekistan and India previously said they had bought 31.2 tons, 26.1 tons and 17.5 tons, respectively. It is currently unclear which nations purchased the rest of the 300-ton total calculated in the industry group’s report. Some unidentified purchases are to be expected, but an unspecified slice of “this magnitude is unheard of,” Koichiro Kamei, a financial and precious-metals analyst, was cited by the agency as saying. “China likely bought a substantial amount of gold from Russia,” market analyst and former Japan director for the World Gold Council, Itsuo Toshima, said.

He explained that the People’s Bank of China likely purchased a portion of the Central Bank of Russia’s gold holdings of over 2,000 tons. The analyst noted that this is typical behavior from the Chinese monetary regulator, which did not disclose any gold purchases from 2009 to 2015, and then reported it had increased the reserves by 600 tons. The People’s Bank of China has not published any new reports on gold purchases since 2019. The gold-buying frenzy comes as part of the latest attempts made by central banks to protect their assets by reducing their exposure to the US dollar. China has been a dominant force in the current de-dollarization trend. According to data from the US Treasury Department, the nation sold $121.2 billion in US bonds between March and October.

Of course they talk. The US wants to know what Russia is thinking.

• NATO Contacts Claim Is Media ‘Invention’ – Moscow (RT)

Russia’s top military commander, Valery Gerasimov, did not communicate with Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee, contrary to what some Western media outlets have claimed, the Russian Defense Ministry has stated. Reports about “typical” conversations between the two military officials and an agreement on the “safe passage of ships in the Black Sea” are “an invention from the start to the end,” a statement released on Wednesday said. Earlier in the day, the news outlet EurActiv, which specializes in covering EU affairs, cited a NATO source as saying that some Eastern European members of the alliance “raised their reservations” about alleged contact between Bauer and Gerasimov.

The source claimed that the two had regular exchanges aimed at deescalating the conflict, particularly in the Black Sea, and that the parties had agreed to “be careful” to avoid accidents. Unnamed members of the alliance questioned the practice, but others said Bauer was entitled to have his channel of communication with Russia. The Dutch admiral served as the chief of defense in his home country before becoming the chair of NATO’s Military Committee in June last year. The Military Committee is composed of the defense chiefs of all member states, while Bauer has the role of the topmost adviser on military strategy to the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s decision-making body. General Gerasimov heads the Russian General Staff, a position equivalent to that of a chief of defense in NATO states.

The EurActiv source claimed that the US, Türkiye, and nations in western and southern Europe “fortunately” countered the push by the UK, Eastern European, and Scandinavian members for “a zero-sum approach” in relations with Russia. Berlin’s role in the alliance has been reduced to virtually nothing, the outlet claimed. “Germans pay, give and don’t speak,” the source was quoted as saying. Nevertheless, NATO members were mostly on the same page in terms of supporting Ukraine, as long as it didn’t compromise their own national security, according to the same tip. The report said that applicants Finland and Sweden were unlikely to join the US-led bloc before June next year, when Türkiye holds national elections. Ankara blocked their accession, claiming that the two nations were not committed to fighting terrorist groups threatening Turkish national security.

“Oddly, the advertisers are abandoning the platform as its user-base is growing to record highs…”

• Anti-Twitter Advertisers Have Been Under-Performing The Market For Months (ZH)

The last few months have seen a growing number of companies choosing to exercise their freedom of speech by choosing to abandon any advertising platforms that dare allow freedom of speech to virulently spread among its users. Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the fearmongery and virtue-signal-ery has been turned up to ’11’ as the ‘woke-est’ of those companies have reportedly pulled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising from the social media platform (despite Musk’s insistence that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged.”) Oddly, the advertisers are abandoning the platform as its user-base is growing to record highs…

Twitter added 1.6M daily active users this past week, another all-time high pic.twitter.com/Si3cRYnvyD

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2022

So, in an effort to quantify just how broke you can become if you go woke, we created the ‘woke advertisers’ basket. This is a market-cap weighted index of 34 stocks representing our best aggregation of the woke-est companies who have publicly claimed they are withdrawing/pausing their advertising on Twitter… and in most cases, have played the ‘virtue signal’ card while doing so over the “dangers” of being on such a “hate-filled” platform”.

Note: an * means the company has issued a statement or was publicly reported as stopping its ads on Twitter and subsequently confirmed. Otherwise, companies identified on this list are “quiet quitters”, based on a Media Matters analysis of Pathmatics data. These companies were previously advertising on Twitter, but then stopped for a significant period of time following direct outreach, controversies, and warnings from media buyers. Since the start of June, when US economic surprise data started to turn down and economic weakness began to be acknowledged – the companies that make up the basket of stocks that have decided to pull back from advertising on Twitter have been underperforming (-11.4% vs S&P -1.9%)…

Additionally, the anti-Twitter basket has significantly underperformed since 03/25 when Musk made his initial offer to buy Twitter (-17% vs S&P -11%) and also underperformed since Musk took over Twitter on 10/27 (+3.3% vs S&P +5.1%), even as the broad market has squeezed notably higher. Is the signaling of how virtuous they are by antagonizing Elon Musk merely a cover for extensive cost cutting and marketing budget reductions as the C-Suite sees recession imminent… Who knows? sBut we suspect that if things are about to shift from bad to worse in the global economy, these anti-Twitter companies are perhaps more likely to underperform (having shown their cards already).

“They broke the deal..”

• Elon Musk: Coalition of Political Groups Behind Lack of Moderation Council (ET)

Elon Musk said Tuesday that Twitter is lacking a moderation council because of the actions of a “large coalition of political and social activists.” The billionaire businessman took over the platform in October and promised shortly after that Twitter would be forming a “content moderation council” that had “widely diverse viewpoints” and that “no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.” However, the Tesla CEO said on Tuesday that the absence of a moderation council was due to a group of political and social activists who he claimed broke an agreement with him by encouraging companies to stop advertising on Twitter. Musk was responding to a Twitter user who accused him of penning a “completely fictional” tweet regarding the establishment of a moderation council.

“A large coalition of political/social activist groups agreed not to try to kill Twitter by starving us of advertising revenue if I agreed to this condition,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “They broke the deal,” he added. [..] Earlier this month, Musk claimed that Twitter’s revenue was declining because of “activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.” “Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” Musk said. The businessman later threatened to name and shame the advertisers who were boycotting the platform following his takeover of the site and despite his assurance that the platform would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” where anything could be said, “with no consequences.” “In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all,” Musk wrote in an open letter to advertisers in October.

Schwaub Schools Dr Urso

Peach Faced Lovebird Parrot on a Saguaro Cactus, Phoenix, Arizona

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Debt Rattle April 23 2022

Apr 232022

April 23, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:02 am Finance Tagged with: Greece, IMF, immunosuppression, Paxlovid, Turkey, Twitter, water, woke, Xi, Zelensky 43 Responses »

Jackson Pollock Number 31 1949

• Does Paul Craig Roberts like Genocide? (Orlov)

• Zelensky Gets John F. Kennedy Award For Defending Democracy (AP)

• Daddies in Mommie-land (Kunstler)

• Migratory Birds Of Mass Destruction (IPL)

• Xi Echoes Putin in Proposal for New ‘Global Security Initiative’ (ET)

• Biden Proposes $500 Million In Aid For Ukrainian Government (Hill)

• Turkey Says Some NATO Members Want Longer Ukraine War to Hurt Russia (Antiwar)

• Russia Warns Greece of Complete Breakdown in Relations (GR)

• FDA and Pfizer Knew COVID Shot Caused Immunosuppression (Mercola)

• Patients Report A Rebound Of Covid-19 Symptoms After Taking Paxlovid (BGlobe)

• The IMF and the Law of Unintended Consequences (CTH)

• Staring Into the Abyss (CHS)

• Woke Elitists Are Too Stupid To See Elon Musk Is Saving Twitter (Smith)

• The Coming Removal of the Mandate of Heaven, Part 2: Water (GCW)

Gonzalo Lira

In the encirclement pictured on this map, there are some 60,000 Ukrainian combat troops—their finest men. They have no chance of being relieved, reinforced or resupplied. They have no chance to win. If they keep fighting, they will die—for nothing.

This is an utter tragedy. https://t.co/ISCBX0qKSE

— Gonzalo Lira (@GonzaloLira1968) April 22, 2022

A different view.

Attacking PCR without even linking to what you’re citing is not great.

But Orlov’s view of the future is interesting.

• Does Paul Craig Roberts like Genocide? (Orlov)

3. Russia has a great and prosperous future as a wealthy, well-educated, civilized, vast and resource-rich country, but this future has nothing to do with Europe or the rest of the West, which are going to collapse. The fact that Russia has been rather tightly integrated with the West ever since Peter the Great moved the capital to St. Petersburg has complicated its transition away from the West and its turn eastward. Western sanctions, rampant Russophobia and the application of cancel culture to Russian culture has made this transition inevitable in the eyes of most Russians, but the process takes time. It would not be helpful if tensions with the West decreased prematurely or if anti-Russian sanctions were removed before they are made completely irrelevant. Also, the West’s unwillingness to buy Russian energy, metals, fertilizer and other essentials speeds up its collapse timeline and that, for Russia, is also a positive.

4. Immediately after Russia commenced its Special Operation in the Ukraine, much of Russia’s remaining fifth-columnists departed for other lands. They already had no impact on Russian politics, but they still exerted some amount of influence in culture and education, and their departure has been most welcome. Given the absolutely overwhelming public support for the Special Operation in Russia, those liberals who have spoken out against it have thereby excused themselves from Russian public life, making room for new talent and new blood. This is also a process that needs to run its course and should not be rushed.

5. The Special Operation has allowed Russia to demonstrate the overwhelming superiority of its armed forces vis-à-vis NATO. All of the weapons that the West has managed to infiltrate into the Ukraine are either being destroyed by rocket attacks or are accumulating in stockpiles after being abandoned by retreating or surrendering Ukrainian troops. None of the obsolete Stingers, Javelins or other military junk has made much of a difference at all. There is very little of any significance that the West can do to hurt Russia’s careful and measured progress in the Ukraine. Once more, time is on Russia’s side: it will take another few months for it to register in the West that all those billions spent on aid to the Ukraine have gone into a black hole with nothing to show for it.

We all know what award he’ll be heavily nominated for. That’s how crazy this has all become.

• Zelensky Gets John F. Kennedy Award For Defending Democracy (AP)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is among five people named Thursday as recipients of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for acting to protect democracy. Zelensky was chosen because of the way he has “marshaled the spirit, patriotism and untiring sacrifice of the Ukrainian people in a life-or-death fight for their country,” as Russia pours in troops and assaults cities and towns, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation said. The foundation said four U.S. officials were chosen for standing up for free and fair elections, as the system is challenged in ways it has never been before. They are: Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and Fulton County, Georgia, elections worker Wandrea “Shaye” Moss.

Caroline Kennedy and her son, Jack Schlossberg, will present the awards May 22 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. The award was created by the family of the late president to honor public figures who risk their careers by embracing unpopular positions for the greater good, and is named after Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Profiles in Courage.” “There is no more important issue facing our country, and the world, today than the fight for democracy,” Kennedy said in a statement. “The war in Ukraine has shown the world that we can’t take freedom for granted, and the courage of our elected officials in the U.S. reminds us that as citizens we each have a responsibility to protect our democracy and exercise our fundamental right to vote.”

“..a shell of a man who, in his prime, lived just to work his official positions for millions in grift.”

• Daddies in Mommie-land (Kunstler)

If the USA and its NATO allies actually cared about Ukraine, we would have just left the place alone to slowly settle into the de-industrialized agricultural backwater it was becoming. And if we wanted to prevent widespread devastation once Operation Z got underway, we would have promoted peace talks, with an emphasis on our previous declaration that Ukraine would not be a candidate to join NATO. Instead, we set up Ukraine as a launching pad for annoying Russia (while also using Ukraine as a money laundromat for public officials and arms-makers). America is a drama queen, like the Queen Bee in one of those Real Housewives shows on cable TV, whose entire purpose in life is creating colorful conflicts within her circle of sisters. Daddy is not needed around that house, except offstage maybe as the wide-receiver for a multi-million-dollar paycheck courtesy of the NFL (a rival entertainment).

When one of America’s drama queen stunts goes wrong, the Queen Bee melts into a puddle of tears — boo hoo — tripping the empathy toggle.The sisters cluster around her, beating their wings. Somebody, please, help her feel better… fetch her a glass of pino grigio or a Xanax! Drama Queen Bee America does not like how the Ukraine drama is playing out. The mean old Daddy Putin is rocking the joint, cleaning out the place like Gary Cooper in some Long Branch Saloon of the Eurasian steppe — heaving all those Azov Nazis through the swinging doors out into the dusty street. The other sisters in the NATO circle were induced to acting as cheerleaders for the Azov boys, and now Mr. Putin has gone and turned off Europe’s gas. Western Civ is about to be sent to bed without dinner — the ultimate daddy trick. Now the sisters are all going boo hoo. Nothing is working for the sisterhood.

America’s president, “Joe Biden,” suits the current national script perfectly. He’s a mere prop for the drama queens. No one mistakes him for “Daddy.” He’s the old, impotent, intemperate, often confused “Grampy,” a figure of bathos and derision, a shell of a man who, in his prime, lived just to work his official positions for millions in grift. How, otherwise, do you account for his fortune? The Ukraine money laundromat was one of his favorite stops, managed carefully by cheerleaders Victoria Nuland, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, and NSC official Fiona Hill, America’s foreign policy establishment there back in the day. But who, exactly, is managing Grampy now backstage in the White House? My guess would be Susan Rice because you never hear anything about Susan Rice or her role there: Director of the Domestic Policy Council of the United States. Wow! Sounds weighty. When was the last time you saw her name in The New York Times or cable TV news? You’d think they’d be interested in her doings.

“But the cover-up was only partially successful. Indeed, Russia is in possession of highly incriminating evidence.”

• Migratory Birds Of Mass Destruction (IPL)

The UN Security Council held an extraordinary event on April 6 under the rubric Arria Formula Meeting on Biological Security regarding the biological activities in countries including Ukraine. Predictably, the US and UK representatives didn’t show up at the event and the western media also blacked out the proceedings. But that does not detract from the profound significance of what transpired. The highlight of the Security Council proceedings lasting over two hours was the disclosure by General Igor Kirillov, chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, that Washington is creating biological laboratories in different countries and connecting them to a unified system.

He said the US has spent more than $5 billion on military biological programs since 2005 and detailed that in territories bordering Russia and China alone, about 60 facilities have been modernised during this period. The Ukrainian network of laboratories is designed to conduct research and monitor the biological situation consisting of 30 facilities in 14 populated locations. Highly sensitive materials from the Ukrainian biological laboratories were exported to the US in early February just before the Russian special operation began, and the rest were ordered to be destroyed lest they fell into Russian hands. But the cover-up was only partially successful. Indeed, Russia is in possession of highly incriminating evidence.

Previously also, Russia had released a number of documents related to the biological military activities of the Pentagon, which pointed toward a worldwide project to set up biological laboratories in rival countries with the goal of developing targeted viral weapons against those countries. The proceedings of the Security Council conference on April 6 are in the public domain and are accessible. Russia has made specific allegations, pointing finger at:
• Pentagon funding for the bio-labs in Ukraine;
• Location of these bio-labs (not only in Ukraine but in 36 countries around the world);
• Diseases and epidemics on which research work is going on, focusing on the means for their release, the countries where they are being tested (even without the knowledge of the governments of these countries); and, of course,
• Experiments relating to coronavirus (and bats used to transmit this virus).

However, the US has so far point-blank refused to accept any supervision and verification of such incriminatory evidences and has stonewalled the demand for a verification mechanism. It is unlikely that the US will permit an international verification process that holds the potential to expose it as indulging in crimes against humanity — although there are appropriate frameworks in place including the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the UN, to hear the clarifications from the relevant country in a fair and impartial manner.

Xi doesn’t echo anyone.

• Xi Echoes Putin in Proposal for New ‘Global Security Initiative’ (ET)

Chinese leader Xi Jinping on April 21 took several veiled swipes at Washington and allies’ sanctions on Russia, while proposing what he called a new China-led “global security initiative.” Xi said the new initiative takes “legitimate security concerns of all” and upholds “the principle of indivisibility of security,” key concepts that Russia has used to justify its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its current assault on Ukraine. The “indivisibility of security” broadly refers to the idea that the security of one state is inseparable from that of other countries in the region, and thus no state should enhance its security at the expense of another’s. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in justifying his invasion of Ukraine, had argued that NATO’s strategy breached this principle.

The Chinese leader’s remarks, made during a video speech to the annual Boao Asia Forum, came as Beijing continues to strengthen its ties with Moscow even after Putin’s invasion. Earlier this week, a top Chinese diplomat pledged to deepen links with the aggressor state during a meeting with Russia’s envoy to China in Beijing. Since the war, the Chinese regime has repeatedly criticized Western sanctions and refused to condemn Moscow. It has also echoed Moscow’s propaganda claim that the United States and NATO instigated the conflict. During his speech, the Chinese leader said the security initiative would uphold “non-interference in internal affairs” and respect “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” slogans consistently used by Beijing to justify and deflect criticism of its aggression towards Taiwan. Beijing views the self-ruled island as its own territory to be taken by force if necessary.

The Chinese leader also reiterated Beijing’s opposition to “long-arm jurisdiction” and “unilateral sanctions,” without directly naming any country. Last month, Western officials warned that Beijing had signaled a willingness to provide Moscow with economic and military aid for its war effort. This prompted President Joe Biden to warn Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a March 18 video call of unspecified “consequences” should the regime materially support Moscow.

It will all land in the pockets of the oligarchs.

Zelensky wants $7 billion per year.

• Biden Proposes $500 Million In Aid For Ukrainian Government (Hill)

The Biden administration is seeking to send Ukraine $500 million to help keep its government services running as the war with Russia stretches into its third month, the Treasury Department announced Thursday. The administration will ask Congress to approve $500 million to cover the cost of Ukraine’s basic government services, including pensions, salaries and aid programs, the Treasury Department said. The aid package would be in addition to another $800 million in military support proposed by Biden on Thursday, which would also require approval from Congress. Biden said Thursday the U.S. has almost exhausted the $13.6 billion in Ukraine aid approved in a March government funding bill. Any new federal spending must be approved by the House and Senate before the president can sign the bill and send out the money.

“This is money the government can help use to stabilize their economy, to support communities that have been devastated by the Russian onslaught and pay the brave workers that continue to provide essential services to the people of Ukraine,” Biden said in remarks from the White House Thursday morning. Both Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met separately Thursday with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in Wasington, D.C. Yellen and Shmyhal were joined by Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo and Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergii Marchenko. The U.S. and its allies have provided tens of billions of dollars in military and economic support to Ukraine as it attempts to fend off the Russian invasion. Mass emigration, compulsory military service for working-age men, the destruction of Ukrainian cities and the upended wheat planting season have derailed the Ukrainian economy, exacerbating the deep humanitarian costs of war.

“The [Washington Post] report said: “For some in NATO, it’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying, than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high a cost to Kyiv and the rest of Europe.”

• Turkey Says Some NATO Members Want Longer Ukraine War to Hurt Russia (Antiwar)

In an interview on Wednesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said some NATO member states want the war in Ukraine to last longer as a way to hurt Russia. “There are countries within NATO who want the war to continue,” Cavusoglu told CNN Turk. “They want Russia to become weaker.” According to Iran’s Mehr News Agency, Cavusoglu did not think the war would last long after Russia and Ukraine held peace talks in Istanbul last month. But following a NATO foreign ministers meeting, he was given the impression that some alliance members don’t want the war to end.

Since Russia invaded on February 24, the US and many of its NATO allies have abandoned diplomacy with Russia. Instead of seeking a diplomatic solution, the Western powers are pouring weapons into Ukraine and waging an economic sanctions campaign against Russia. The view among some NATO members on the war was summarized by a recent report from The Washington Post. The report said: “For some in NATO, it’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying, than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high a cost to Kyiv and the rest of Europe.”

“this happened despite the fact that we share the same faith with the Greeks, the same traditions, and were always there to help our Greek friends.”

• Russia Warns Greece of Complete Breakdown in Relations (GR)

Russia’s Foreign Ministry warned Greece on Friday that the relations between the two nations that “share the same faith” have been “reduced to almost nothing.” Maria Zakharova, director of the Information and Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, warned in a statement released on social media that the “historical parallels” between Greece and Russia were in danger of becoming “a solid double line between us.” The Russian official focused on Greece’s decision to declare 12 Russian officials “personae non-gratae,” on April 6 joining other European states that had taken similar steps in response to accusations of atrocities committed by Russian forces against civilians in Ukraine. The Foreign Ministry said the decision was made in line with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963.

Russia’s embassy in Athens condemned Greece’s decision and warned of consequences. “We have strongly protested against this unjustified and hostile step which aims to further destroy our bilateral relations,” the Russian embassy announced in a statement. “We made clear that this action will not remain without consequences,” it further said. In her social media post, Zakharova lamented the breakdown of relations between Russia and Greece and delved in the historic ties between the two countries. “There was a time when Russia helped Greece achieve independence and restore its statehood, and its first head was previously Russia’s foreign minister, but now this country’s diplomatic relations with Russia have been reduced to almost nothing,” Zakharova warned.

She added that “this happened despite the fact that we share the same faith with the Greeks, the same traditions, and were always there to help our Greek friends. “This is not so much an issue of Euro-Atlantic solidarity erasing the past, since it is a sovereign choice for every nation to decide whom to honor. Even worse, this deprives people and nations of their future, independence and the right to make sovereign choices,” Zakharova concluded.

“Pfizer’s own consent form clearly states: “Although not seen to date, it cannot yet be ruled out that the studied vaccine can make a later COVID-19 illness more severe.“

• FDA and Pfizer Knew COVID Shot Caused Immunosuppression (Mercola)

With another batch of 11,000 Pfizer documents, released April 1, 2022, old suspicions have gained fresh support. As reported by “Rising” cohost Kim Iversen (video), the first bombshell revelation is that natural immunity works, and Pfizer has known it all along. The clinical trial data showed there was no difference in outcomes between those with previous COVID infection and those who got the shot. Neither group experienced severe infection. Natural immunity was also statistically identical to the shot in terms of the risk of infection. The second revelation is that side effects from the shots were more severe in younger people, aged 18 to 55, than those aged 55 and older. (The risk of side effects also increased with additional doses, so the risk was higher after the second dose than the first.)

As many of us have said all along, the risk of severe COVID is dramatically lower in younger people than those over 60, which makes an elevated risk of side effects unacceptable. As noted by The Naked Emperor on Substack,[1] “with a vaccine that is producing more frequent and more severe reactions and adverse events in younger individuals, the vaccine should have been restricted to those who were actually at risk of severe COVID-19.” Interestingly, Pfizer’s documentation also includes medical information that mainstream media and fact checkers have labeled as misinformation or disinformation. A pediatric consent form lists several possible side effects, including a myocarditis rate of 10 in 100,000 — far greater than the 1 in 50,000 (i.e., 2 in 100,000) rate previously reported.

We also know that myocarditis is far more frequent in young males, so for them, the risk is significantly higher than 10 in 100,000, as they make up the bulk of these injuries. Many who have warned about the possibility of mRNA shots causing antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) — a situation in which you end up being more susceptible to serious infection than you would have been otherwise — have been smeared and demonized by media and labeled as disinformation spreaders. Yet Pfizer’s own consent form clearly states: “Although not seen to date, it cannot yet be ruled out that the studied vaccine can make a later COVID-19 illness more severe.” As noted by Iversen, if ADE truly was of no concern at all, the consent form would not include it. Yet there it is.

Vaccine-associated enhanced disease (VAED) is also listed as an “Important Potential Risk” in Table 5 on page 11 of a document called “5.3.6 Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports.”As of February 28, 2021, Pfizer had 138 cases of suspected VAED, 75 of which were severe, resulting in hospitalization, disability, life-threatening consequences or death; a total of 38 cases turned out to be lethal and 65 remained unresolved. Moreover, as noted by the Daily Expose, “Phase 3 clinical trials are designed to uncover frequent or severe side effects before a vaccine is approved for use, including ADE. But herein lies the problem, [because] none of the COVID-19 vaccines have completed Phase 3 trials.”

Anyone surprised?

• Patients Report A Rebound Of Covid-19 Symptoms After Taking Paxlovid (BGlobe)

When it first hit the market in December, the COVID-19 antiviral treatment, Paxlovid, was hailed as a game-changer, an effective medicine that kept at-risk people out of the hospital. But now some patients are reporting on social media an unusual and unnerving phenomenon: their COVID symptoms appear to rebound after taking the medication. And it’s not just their symptoms that reappear. Many report that after finishing their five-day course of treatment, feeling better, and testing negative on an at-home rapid test, they then test positive again a few days later. The issue has captured the attention of at least two teams of Boston-area scientists, who are trying to understand what might be fueling the problem. Resistance to the drug? Patients being quickly reinfected?

Or maybe some people just need to take the medicine longer to mount a more effective immune response. Twitter and Reddit have been filled with patients and doctors sharing their experiences and hypotheses over the past few days, including John Donoghue, a 71-year-old emeritus physics professor in Amherst. “We had three cases in the house with the same pattern,” Donoghue said, in an interview. He, his wife, and her 95-year-old mother all were infected with COVID in the last month. All three received Paxlovid, felt better, and tested negative on rapid tests for four or five days. Then their symptoms returned and each one tested positive again.

“The symptoms the second time were milder,” Donoghue said. “In some ways, we feel that Paxlovid did its job. It took away the extreme symptoms of the first round and reduced them very quickly in all three cases.” Paxlovid, granted an emergency use authorization by federal regulators in late December, is an at-home treatment prescribed at the first sign of infection to patients at high risk of serious COVID complications. The treatment consists of a series of three pills taken twice a day for five days. In its clinical trial, Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant that manufactures Paxlovid, reported an 89 percent reduction in COVID-related hospitalization or death from any cause in patients who received Paxlovid within three days of symptoms, compared with patients who received a placebo.

“Now, the world is facing massive inflation, economic contraction, looming hunger, widespread famine and a pending global financial collapse.”

• The IMF and the Law of Unintended Consequences (CTH)

It’s not exactly a confidence builder when the Director of the International Monetary Fund answers the question about forward priorities by saying, “Perhaps we need to pay attention to the law of unintended consequences.” You had one job Kristalina, one job. During an International Monetary Fund (IMF) spring debate and discussion segment, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, outlined her perspective against the backdrop of massive inflation caused by the global financial institutions telling government to spend money and they will print it, during COVID. [The video is prompted to 01:04:50].

The discussion included EU Central Bank President Lagarde, US Fed Chair Powell, Indonesian Finance Minister Mulvani – when IMF Director Kristalina Georgieva admitted they channeled their COVID fear and emotions by unsustainably printing money without pausing to think through the consequences. Now, the world is facing massive inflation, economic contraction, looming hunger, widespread famine and a pending global financial collapse. Their response? “Whoops.” Not to worry, they’ll have a little wine and chocolate and figure things out. Swear.

“..the Fed has exacerbated socially fatal neofeudal inequality..”

• Staring Into the Abyss (CHS)

The global economy is perched on the edge of an abyss, and averting our gaze doesn’t actually lessen the risk, it increases it because problems which aren’t faced directly and addressed directly fester and rot the system from within. This is why we’re collectively staring into the abyss: all the big problems have been dismissed, ignored or papered over with PR-happy-talk “solutions” that only make the problem worse. There are three basic techniques that our “leadership” (public and private) have used to avoid dealing directly with our pressing problems: 1. Appear to address the problems by doing more of what’s failed spectacularly. 2. Propose magical-thinking happy-happy technological “solutions” that are appealing but impractical. 3. Keep the status quo glued together to maximize quick-buck gains for the elite while guaranteeing long-term catastrophe for the entire society / economy.

Doing more of what’s failed spectacularly is one of the phrases you’ve seen here over the years. This generates an illusion of control because the tried-and-true Band-Aid makes it look like the problem is being addressed. Since doing more of what’s failed spectacularly doesn’t break the system immediately, everyone incorrectly assumes it’s benign or actually helping. The Federal Reserve’s blowing of serial speculative credit-asset bubbles is a good example. With the bogus goal of generating a “wealth effect” that only rewards the already-rich, the Fed has exacerbated socially fatal neofeudal inequality and created guaranteed-to-pop bubbles that each collapsed with devastating consequences for the credulous who believed the Fed’s poisonous assurances that a) this isn’t a bubble and b) bubbles never pop.

The Fed’s “solution”–blowing an even bigger bubble to paper over the catastrophic losses when the previous bubble popped–has finally reached the endgame: three bubbles and you’re out (2000, 2008-09 and 2021-22). Sorry to disappoint the beneficiaries of the three Fed bubbles, but there won’t be a fourth bubble. Bubbles don’t inflate at the bottom of the abyss.

Does woke Twitter have a future?

• Woke Elitists Are Too Stupid To See Elon Musk Is Saving Twitter (Smith)

In the past year Big Tech and Big Media are learning a valuable lesson – That “Get Woke, Go Broke” is not just a mantra, it’s a rule. We’ve just seen companies like Netflix take a massive market beating because of their hubris and their presumption that they can simply dictate the path of our culture from on high through leftist propaganda. CNN just shut down their premium “+” service after a single month because no one trusts them enough to pay them pocket change for content. And Disney is about to lose their municipal charter in Florida because they thought they were in charge of the state and its laws, when in fact they are not. Woke corporations are slowly but surely dying and leftists don’t seem to grasp the situation.

They’ll never admit openly that the reason these companies are seeing declines is because of their cult-like political stance that justifies the forced indoctrination of everyone, including children. They’ll say it was covid, they’ll say it was inflation, they’ll say it was bigotry, but in reality it was always them. No one likes them, and people are finally realizing they don’t have to spend money buying products from insane leftists they don’t like. In this regard Twitter is a bit of an enigma. The social media company has gone from a relatively innocuous space for people to market online businesses and for politicians and celebrities to engage with their followers or detractors, to a vicious battleground overrun with leftist zealots hellbent on using the platform as a weapon to silence dissent and destroy the lives of people that disagree with them. The platform went from average social media outlet to becoming a birthplace for evil behavior.

If I was to describe what Twitter really stands for today, I would say it is an attempt to build a global hive mind; a place where everyone is coerced into conformity with establishment ideals through peer pressure and mob aggression. That is to say, Twitter is the antithesis to a free speech society; a beta test for the future of authoritarianism where you THINK you are allowed to speak your mind but only the “correct” opinions are allowed to pass. How this happened is hard to say. Some theorize that leftist cultists scrambled like rats from the sinking ship of Tumblr and found their way over to Twitter to take up residency. I would argue that maybe Twitter was always intended to become what it now is. Just take a look at the monster’s gallery of its largest shareholders.

If Elon Musks Takes Over, He’ll Expose Twitter

If Elon Musks Takes Over, He'll Expose Twitter: Douglas Murray

“If Elon Musk were to take control of Twitter, we would all be able to find out exactly what it is that Twitter has been up to in recent years.”

“All of that would come out.”

Video ⇨ https://t.co/hZ8oXZciZK pic.twitter.com/Rg3vZUezPD

— UngaTheGreat (@UngaTheGreat) April 22, 2022

The water wars will not be pretty. Promise.

• The Coming Removal of the Mandate of Heaven, Part 2: Water (GCW)

In order to understand the grave danger China is facing, we need to understand water usage and thresholds below which the population begins to face some level of danger. For that, we’re going to turn to Reuters for an overview. At a minimum, a civilization requires 1,700 cubic meters of water per person per year to be considered water secure. This amounts to 373,947 gallons of water per person, with a minimum of 4,156 gallons of water per year to ensure good health. Freshwater is used for everything from industry to agriculture to power generation, and our infrastructure is rated for a minimum level of water moving through the pipes. If that water falls below that level, pressure drops and the water can become unsafe.

This starts to become a problem at 1,000 cubic meters per person per year, and reaches a threat level at 500 cubic meters per person per year. Beijing is currently sitting at 100 cubic meters of fresh water per person per year. Barely seven times the necessary minimum for a person to remain healthy, with the rest stretched thin and endlessly recycled as it eventually becomes useless for any purpose which brings it into contact with humans in any way. When examining the water situation in a given country, the first place to look is always the groundwater situation. Which, in China’s case, isn’t very positive. Over 80% of the groundwater in China is unsafe, according to publicly available data attained from a Chinese government survey. Information which is normally a closely held secret.

Same with the fact that 47% of the groundwater in China is so badly polluted it can’t even be used for industrial purposes. Note, Beijing gets almost a third of their water from groundwater sources, which must be thoroughly treated at massive cost in man-hours, materials, and energy before it can be used by the general public. This has resulted in Beijing sinking at a rate of 11 cm per year as the depleted aquifer results in subsidence. Assuming its even at a level which can be affordably treated. Which 47% of the groundwater can’t be. This situation is even worse in the cities, where 90% of the groundwater is unusable for purposes which would bring it into contact with people. And, ironically, although the groundwater pollution is worse in the cities, rural areas are more heavily affected due to the fact most rural communities lack the resources to treat either the water they take in for normal usage or the waste water they release back into the wild.

Brand

Russell Brand about how ideas are piloted, they test the water around assertion of power… pic.twitter.com/RI5mWwYXs7

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) April 22, 2022

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Debt Rattle August 25 2018

Aug 252018

August 25, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:45 am Finance Tagged with: car finance, chlorine, hunger, Instagram, Nauru, Paul Singer, refugees, Tesla, Trump, Twitter, Venezuela, water, welfare 6 Responses »

Henry Bacon Étretat 1890

• The Dogs of Vengeance (Jim Kunstler)

• Chemical Attack Being Staged To Frame Damascus – Russia MoD (RT)

• Half Of Millennials Take Out Car Finance To Match Social Media Dreams (Ind.)

• Majority Of Young Americans Live In A Household Receiving Welfare (ZH)

• Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey To Testify On Conservative “Shadowbans” (ZH)

• UK Immigration Minister Blocks Britons Who Sought Help On Twitter (G.)

• Paul Singer, Doomsday Investor (New Yorker)

• Tesla To Remain A Public Company, CEO Musk Says (AFP)

• The Great Chinese Art Heist (GQ)

• Drought In Central Europe Reveals Cautionary ‘Hunger Stones’ (NPR)

• The Water Crises Aren’t Coming – They’re Here (Esq.)

• Venezuela Heads For Refugee Crisis Moment Comparable To Mediterranean (R.)

• Ecuador Opens “Humanitarian Corridor” For Venezuelan Migrants (AFP)

• ‘Begging To Die’: Succession Of Critically Ill Children Moved Off Nauru (G.)

The only thing today that mentions Trump.

• The Dogs of Vengeance (Jim Kunstler)

History has a velocity of its own, and its implacable forces will drag the good, the bad, the clueless, the clever, the guilty, the innocent, the avid, and the unwilling to a certain fate. One can easily see a convergence of vectors shoving the nation toward political criticality this autumn. Mr. Trump is like some unfortunate dumb brute of the ancient Teutonic forests with a bulldog clamped to his nose, the rest of the pack close behind snapping at his hamstrings and soft, swaying underbelly. His desperate bellowing goes unanswered by the indifference of the trees in forest, the cold moon above, and all the other furnishings of his tragic reality.

As these things tend to happen, it looks like the exertions of Robert Mueller have turned from the alleged grave offenses of a foreign enemy to the sequela of consort with a floozie. Down goes Mr. Trump’s private attorney, Michael Cohen, in his personal swamp of incriminating files and audio recordings. Enter, stage left, one David Pecker, publisher of the venerable National Enquirer — the newspaper of wreckage — on his slime-trail of induced testimony. And there is your impeachable offense: an illegal campaign contribution. One way or another, as Blondie used to sing, I’m gonna getcha, getcha, getcha.

Some in this greatest of all possible republics may be asking themselves if this is quite fair play, given the hundreds of millions of dollars washed-and-rinsed through the laundromat known as the Clinton Foundation, and related suspicious doings in that camp of darkness. But remember, another president, Jimmy Carter, once declared to the shock of official Washington that “life is unfair.” What I wonder is what these dogs of vengeance reckon will happen when they achieve their goal of bringing down the bellowing bull and pulling his guts out. Perhaps a few moments of tribal satisfaction, one last war dance around the fire, and when the fire dies out, they will find themselves under the same cold indifferent moon with blood on their snouts and an ill wind blowing in the tree tops.

Why there’s still support for the White Helmets.

• Chemical Attack Being Staged To Frame Damascus – Russia MoD (RT)

The US and its allies are preparing new airstrikes on Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry said, adding that militants are poised to stage a chemical weapons attack in order to frame Damascus and provide a pretext for the strikes. The attack would be used as a pretext for US, UK and French airstrikes on Syrian targets, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov said. USS ‘The Sullivans,’ an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer, was already deployed to the Persian Gulf a couple of days ago, he added. The destroyer has 56 cruise missiles on board, according to data from the Russian Defence Ministry.

A US Rockwell B-1 Lancer, a supersonic bomber equipped with 24 cruise missiles, has also been deployed at the Qatari Al Udeid Airbase. The provocations are being prepared by militants from Al-Nusra Front (now known as Tahrir al-Sham) in Idlib province, northwestern Syria, In order to stage the attack, some eight canisters of chlorine were delivered in to village near Jisr al-Shughur city for the terrorists’ use, he added. A separate group of militants, prepped by private British security company Olive, have also arrived in the area. The group will be disguised as volunteers from the White Helmets group and will simulate a rescue operation involving locals purportedly injured in the attack, according to the military official.

Instagram shapes the world.

• Half Of Millennials Take Out Car Finance To Match Social Media Dreams (Ind.)

Forget fashion, music or gadgets. The desire to live up to social media aspirations has pushed more than half of millennials to buy a car for its status value, new figures suggest, and almost 40 per cent said Instagram or Facebook played a part in deciding which motor they went for. With two thirds of younger drivers reliant on credit to fund the purchase – twice the number of 37- to 54-year-old generation Xers – research from Admiral has revealed the new, expensive face of social media influencing. Younger drivers were found to be more reliant on credit, with 64 per cent taking car finance to fund a purchase compared with 38 per cent of 37- to 54-year-olds.

The consequences have financial implications on younger generations too, as more than half of drivers aged 19 to 36 admit feeling pressure to buy a specific car for status or prestige. More than one in 10 millennials said famous faces played a part in their choice of car, compared with just 4 per cent of gen-X drivers. They may currently own a Ford Fiesta, Vauxhall Corsa, VW Golf or Polo, but millennials dream of BMW i8s, Audi R8s, Ford GTs and Aston Martin Vantages.

Car finance and food stamps?

• Majority Of Young Americans Live In A Household Receiving Welfare (ZH)

New analysis from CNS News finds that the majority of Americans under 18 live in households that take “means-tested assistance” from the US government. The study, based on the most recently available data from the Census Bureau, leads with the question: Will they be called The Welfare Generation? The data presented by CNS editor Terrence Jeffrey shockingly reveals that in 2016 “there were approximately 73,586,000 people under 18 in the United States, and 38,365,000 of them — or 52.1 percent — resided in households in which one or more persons received benefits from a means-tested government program.”

It’s a slim majority, but a majority which nonetheless presents an extremely worrisome trend regarding the number of young Americans and possibly young families who’ve experienced some level of government dependency. To put it in another, perhaps more alarming way, if you’re under 18 the data shows you are more likely that not to be living in a home that receives some form of taxpayer-financed largesse. In terms of the country’s total population of 319.9 million Americans, the data finds that 114.8 million, or about 36 percent, lived as part of a household in which someone collected welfare. Jeffrey continued, “When examined by age bracket persons under 18 were the most likely to live in a household receiving means-tested government assistance (52.1 percent), while those 75 and older were least likely (18.8 percent).”

You can’t have banning and shadowbanning on social media decided by opaque terms overseen by geeks. Just like you can’t ban people from having a phone, radio, TV just because you don’t like them.

• Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey To Testify On Conservative “Shadowbans” (ZH)

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is scheduled to appear before the House Energy & Commerce committee on September 5th, after several GOP lawmakers demanded action in response to reports of conservatives being “shadow banned” by the San Francisco-based social media giant. “Twitter is an incredibly powerful platform that can change the national conversation in the time it takes a tweet to go viral,” wrote committee Chair Greg Walden (R-OR) in a Friday statement. “When decisions about data and content are made using opaque processes, the American people are right to raise concerns. This committee intends to ask tough questions about how Twitter monitors and polices content, and we look forward to Mr. Dorsey being forthright and transparent regarding the complex processes behind the company’s algorithms and content judgement calls,” the statement continues.

Earlier this month, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy sent a letter to Walden, requesting that he be allowed to publicly grill Jack Dorsey over recent allegations that the platform limits the reach of some conservative accounts. “Any solution to this problem must start with accountability from companies like Twitter, whose platforms have enormous potential to impact the national conversation — and unfortunately, enormous potential for abuse,” McCarthy said in the letter to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden. “In particular, I would like to request a hearing with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey so that the American people can learn more about the filtering and censorship practices on his platform.” -Kevin McCarthy

McCarthy, who has worked on tech issues for years, has been investigating reports of Silicon Valley tech giants injecting their admittedly liberal bias into the way they enforce speech on their platforms. McCarthy and other Republican leaders met with Facebook staffers in June over their concerns, and as recently as last month McCarthy was running ads on Facebook inviting supporters to join him “and President Trump in defending our conservative voice against social media censoring,” according to the platform’s public database of political ads. This action follows Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against Twitter after he discovered that his account was being ‘shadowbanned’ – the practice of excluding or reducing the visibility of one’s tweets from normal circulation on the platform.

Didn’t we already have this with Trump? This lady needs some educating.

• UK Immigration Minister Blocks Britons Who Sought Help On Twitter (G.)

The immigration minister blocked at least two British citizens on Twitter when they asked for her assistance after the Home Office failed to respond to their complaints or appeals from their MPs. Caroline Nokes’ action, which means the people concerned are unable to read her tweets or contact her, were described by a leading immigration lawyer as suggesting “complete indifference”. Stephen Buck was blocked from following Nokes or seeing her tweets on 11 August after he sent her three tweets in four months, asking for help to prevent his long-term partner, Rusty Goodall, from being deported to Australia. It took the Home Office 13 months to refuse Goodall’s application to extend his visa, during which time the couple received no update on his case.

“I was nothing but polite in my approaches, but having tried all other avenues available to us (ie contacting the Home Office directly, asking our MP for help) and still feeling as though we were in a position where nobody was doing anything and nobody cared about us, contacting Nokes on Twitter felt like the only option left to try and get somebody in power to listen,” Buck said. “The fact that the only response to these pleas to one of the few people who could make a difference in our case was to block me, was truly upsetting, frustrating and insulting.” John Holden, a British citizen who lives in the UK with his Filipino wife, son and three adopted children, was blocked by Nokes on the same day as Buck after also asking for help.

“The Home Office have refused to issue my British children with British passports: they say we need to change the children’s Philippine passports to their new adopted surnames first,” he said. “The problem is that the Philippine authorities won’t do that unless we take the children out of school and return to the Philippines for a process that could take up to 18 months, during which I would have to readopt children who are already mine and are already British.

Singer bankrupts countries.

• Paul Singer, Doomsday Investor (New Yorker)

In 1995, Singer started working with a trader named Jay Newman, who specialized in the government—or sovereign—debt of developing countries. The collaboration led to the legal battle that would publicly define Singer: his fourteen-year fight with the government of Argentina. Like Singer, Newman was a lawyer by training, and, also like Singer, he had no problem making money using methods that others might find distasteful. For many years, sovereign loans were treated by banks and other lenders much the way that subprime mortgages were prior to 2008—as highly desirable, relatively low-risk investments.

But many countries, particularly poorer ones with fragile economies or corrupt governments, borrowed far more than they could realistically repay, and, during the nineteen-eighties, approximately fifty countries defaulted or had to restructure their debt, including Mexico, most of Latin America, Poland, the Philippines, Vietnam, and South Africa. In most cases, the International Monetary Fund would come in, impose budget cuts and other austerity measures, and help the governments renegotiate what they owed. The countries’ debt holders generally traded their old bonds for new ones under reduced terms, which allowed the country to exit default.

Newman saw an opportunity in these financial crises: purchase the defaulted debt at a very low price and then try to negotiate for, or sue the country for, full repayment on the original terms. An investor who pursued this strategy came to be known as a “rogue creditor.” The tactic could prove extremely profitable—as long as you had the stomach for it. Newman said that he never sued a country that couldn’t afford to pay, but critics argue that rogue creditors interfere with a country’s ability to return to the financial markets, exacerbating the poverty and suffering of its citizens. Singer hired Newman, initially offering him thirty thousand dollars a month and 20% of the profits on investments he recommended.

The Republic of Peru had defaulted on its debt in 1984; in 1996, the government initiated a debt exchange, and more than ninety per cent of Peruvian debt holders traded in their old bonds for new ones, taking a fifty-per-cent discount on the original value. Singer purchased eleven million dollars of defaulted Peruvian bonds, and then began a protracted legal battle to force the government to pay back the full value. In 1998, after a trial, a federal court found Elliott to be in violation of the Dickensian-sounding Champerty laws, which prohibit buying debt with the sole purpose of bringing legal action. Elliott appealed the case and won. The company later engaged in an intense lobbying campaign to change the Champerty laws in New York State.

It also filed a lawsuit in Brussels, attempting to prevent Peru from paying interest on any of its new bonds until it had paid Elliott. Peru was left with an unpalatable choice: default, again, on its new bonds, or pay what it viewed as a ransom to a New York hedge fund.

What say ye, SEC?

• Tesla To Remain A Public Company, CEO Musk Says (AFP)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Friday that the company would continue to be publicly traded, weeks after suggesting that he would take the electric carmaker private. Musk met with Tesla’s board of directors on Thursday “and let them know that I believe the better path is for Tesla to remain public. The Board indicated that they agree,” he wrote on the company blog. Musk surprised markets on August 7 by announcing on Twitter he wanted to take Tesla private at $420 a share. But shares fell more than 20 percent since the announcement. After the announcement the controversial entrepreneur came under extensive scrutiny over his Twitter statements related to the proposal, especially a claim that Tesla had “secured” funding for the move.

However, Musk said Friday that based on talks with current shareholders, as well as an assessment by financial advisers Silver Lake, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, “it’s apparent that most of Tesla’s existing shareholders believe we are better off as a public company.” Even though the majority of shareholders “said they would remain with Tesla if we went private, the sentiment, in a nutshell, was ‘please don’t do this,'” he wrote. “I knew the process of going private would be challenging, but it’s clear that it would be even more time-consuming and distracting than initially anticipated.”

Insane story. Hollywood must have already bought the rights.

• The Great Chinese Art Heist (GQ)

The patterns of the heists were evident only later, but their audacity was clear from the start. The spree began in Stockholm in 2010, with cars burning in the streets on a foggy summer evening. The fires had been lit as a distraction, a ploy to lure the attention of the police. As the vehicles blazed, a band of thieves raced toward the Swedish royal residence and smashed their way into the Chinese Pavilion on the grounds of Drottningholm Palace. There they grabbed what they wanted from the permanent state collection of art and antiquities. Police told the press the thieves had fled by moped to a nearby lake, ditched their bikes into the water, and escaped by speedboat. The heist took less than six minutes.

A month later, in Bergen, Norway, intruders descended from a glass ceiling and plucked 56 objects from the China Collection at the KODE Museum. Next, robbers in England hit the Oriental Museum at Durham University, followed by a museum at Cambridge University. Then, in 2013, the KODE was visited once more; crooks snatched 22 additional relics that had been missed during the first break-in. Had they known exactly what was happening, perhaps the security officials at the Château de Fontainebleau, the sprawling former royal estate just outside Paris, could have predicted that they might be next. With more than 1,500 rooms, the palace is a maze of opulence. But when bandits arrived before dawn on March 1, 2015, their target was unmistakable: the palace’s grand Chinese Museum.

Created by the last empress of France, the wife of Napoleon III, the gallery was stocked with works so rare that their value was considered incalculable. In recent years, however, the provenance of those treasures had become an increasingly sensitive subject: The bulk of the museum’s collection had been pilfered from China by French soldiers in 1860 during the sack of Beijing’s Old Summer Palace. In the low light before daybreak, the robbers raced to the southwest wing and shattered a window. They climbed inside, stepping over broken glass, and swiftly went to work dismantling the empress’s trove. Within seven minutes, they were gone, along with 22 of the museum’s most valuable items: porcelain vases; a mandala made of coral, gold, and turquoise; a Chimera in cloisonné enamel; and more.

History lessons: “If you see me, weep.”

• Drought In Central Europe Reveals Cautionary ‘Hunger Stones’ (NPR)

A lengthy drought in Europe has exposed carved boulders, known as “hunger stones,” that have been used for centuries to commemorate historic droughts — and warn of their consequences. The Associated Press reports that hunger stones are newly visible in the Elbe River, which begins in the Czech Republic and flows through Germany. “Over a dozen of the hunger stones, chosen to record low water levels, can now be seen in and near the northern Czech town of Decin near the German border,” the AP writes. One of the stones on the banks of the Elbe is carved with the words “Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine”: “If you see me, weep.” A team of Czech researchers described that stone in detail in a 2013 paper about the history of droughts in Czech lands.

The stone is also chiseled with “the years of hardship and the initials of authors lost to history,” the researchers wrote: “It expressed that drought had brought a bad harvest, lack of food, high prices and hunger for poor people. Before 1900, the following droughts are commemorated on the stone: 1417, 1616, 1707, 1746, 1790, 1800, 1811, 1830, 1842, 1868, 1892, and 1893.” That particular stone is now a bit of a tourist attraction; it’s one of the oldest hydrological landmarks in central Europe. Also, because of a dam on a tributary of the Elbe, it’s seen more often now than it used to be, according to a Decin tourist site — although the current river levels are still exceptional.

We have 1% of all earth’s water. So of course we’re rapidly poisoning it.

• The Water Crises Aren’t Coming – They’re Here (Esq.)

Water cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be damaged. When Gleick says we’ll never run out, he means that at some point, millions of years ago, there was all the water there is, a result of the law of the conservation of matter. Having evaporated from lakes and rivers and oceans and returned as snow and rain, the water we consume has been through innumerable uses. Dinosaurs drank it. The Caesars did, too. It’s been places, and consorted with things, that you might not care to think about. In theory, there’s enough freshwater in the world for everyone, but like oil or diamonds or any other valuable resource, it is not dispersed democratically. Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Peru, Indonesia, and Russia have an abundance—about 40 percent of all there is.

America has a decent amount. India and China, meanwhile, have a third of the world’s people and less than a tenth of its freshwater. It is predicted that in twelve years the demand for water in India will be twice the amount on hand. Beijing draws water from an aquifer beneath the city. From being used faster than rain can replenish it, the aquifer has dropped several hundreds of feet in the last forty years, and in places the city is sinking four inches every year. As for the world’s stock, however, nearly all of the water on earth is salty; less than 3% is fresh. Some of that is in rivers, lakes, aquifers, and reservoirs—the Great Lakes contain one fifth of the freshwater on the earth’s surface—and we have stored so much water behind dams that we have subtly affected the earth’s rotation; but two thirds of all the freshwater we have is frozen in the earth’s cold places as ice or permafrost, leaving less than 1% of the world’s total water for all living things.

Much of that gets a rough ride. American ponds and streams and lakes and rivers contain fungicides, defoliants, solvents, insecticides, herbicides, preservatives, biological toxins, manufacturing compounds, blood thinners, heart medications, perfumes, skin lotions, antidepressants, antipsychotics, antibiotics, beta blockers, anticonvulsants, germs, oils, viruses, hormones, and several heavy metals. Not all of these are cleansed from water before we drink it.

It’s already there.

• Venezuela Heads For Refugee Crisis Moment Comparable To Mediterranean (R.)

The exodus of migrants from Venezuela is building toward a “crisis moment” comparable to events involving refugees in the Mediterranean, the United Nations migration agency said on Friday. Growing numbers are fleeing economic meltdown and political turmoil in Venezuela, where people scrounge for food and other necessities of daily life, threatening to overwhelm neighbouring countries. Officials from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru will meet in Bogota next week to seek a way forward. In Brazil, rioters this month drove hundreds back over the border. Peru tightened entry rules for Venezuelans, requiring them to carry passports instead of just national ID cards, though a judge in Ecuador on Friday rolled back a similar rule enacted there.

Describing those events as early warning signs, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, Joel Millman, said funding and means of managing the outflow must be mobilised. “This is building to a crisis moment that we’ve seen in other parts of the world, particularly in the Mediterranean,” he said. On Thursday, the IOM and UN refugee agency UNHCR called on Latin American countries to ease entry for Venezuelans, more than 1.6 million of whom have left since 2015.

Millions of people moving to Peru and Chile? Maybe helping them at home is a better idea. Get the CIA out of Caracas first.

• Ecuador Opens “Humanitarian Corridor” For Venezuelan Migrants (AFP)

Desperate Venezuelan migrants who made it across the border in time were breathing a sigh of relief hours before Peru’s tightened controls came into effect Saturday, preventing those not carrying passports from entering. “We have been on the road for five days. We traveled by bus and saw people, Venezuelans, walking along the road,” Jonathan Zambrano, 18, told AFP. Thousands of migrants fleeing the crippling economic crisis in their homeland had faced a race against time to cross into Peru from either Ecuador or Colombia after last week’s announcement from Lima that they had one week to enter before a passport would be required.

Until Saturday, a simple identity card was enough for Venezuelans heading south to escape food and medicine shortages, hyperinflation and failing public services back home. At one border crossing, Peruvian officers handed out balloons to exhausted children, but many Venezuelans feared it would be a different story once the new rules come into force. “People arrive with very few resources and after having traveled, five or six days being the shortest. There are people who’ve been traveling for months,” Regine de la Portilla of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR told AFP.

Ecuador opened a “humanitarian corridor” on Friday and lifted its own entry restrictions to facilitate the Venzuelans’ travels to Peru, one of the region’s fastest growing economies with 4.7 percent growth projected for next year. Ecuadoran Interior Minister Mauro Toscanini said Friday that 35 busloads of migrants were on the move along the route authorities had opened to Peru.

This is Australia. Forget about housing bubbles and yokel PM’s. This is Australia.

• ‘Begging To Die’: Succession Of Critically Ill Children Moved Off Nauru (G.)

A girl suffering “resignation syndrome” and who is refusing all food and water has been ordered off Nauru by an Australian court, as a succession of critically ill children are brought from the island. At least three children have left the island since Thursday, and reports from island sources say at least three more children, as young as 12, are “on FFR” – food and fluid refusal. The current crisis on the island is overwhelming medical staff, who are referring dozens of children for transfer off the island, only to have their decisions rebuffed by Australian Border Force officials on the island or department of home affairs bureaucrats in Canberra. Two children were moved off the island with their families on Thursday.

Early on Friday morning, a 14-year-old refugee boy suffering a major depressive disorder and severe muscle wastage after not getting out of bed for four months, was flown directly from Nauru to Brisbane with his family. There are concerns, doctors say, he may never be able to walk normally again. Later on Friday, in the federal court, Justice Tom Thawley ordered another girl – given the designation EIV18 by the court – to be moved to Australia for urgent medical treatment. Court orders prevent publication of the girl’s age – other than the fact she is a child – her name or country of origin. [..] The girl has been inside the supported accommodation area of the regional processing centre for three weeks, and has been refusing food and water for much of that time.

Before she, too, fell into acute depression and “resignation syndrome”, and refused to eat or drink anything, she had been one of the brightest and most articulate of the refugee children on Nauru. “Before she got sick, she was the best-performing student,” a source familiar with the girl and her condition told the Guardian. “She had a dream to be a doctor in Australia and to help others. Now, she is on food-and-fluid refusal and begging to die as death is better than Nauru.”

Debt Rattle June 22 2018

Jun 222018

June 22, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:08 am Finance Tagged with: Brexit, cheetah, debt relief, ECB, energy, Eurogroup, Greece, IMF, Italy, Korea, migrants, QE, separated, water 14 Responses »

Wassily Kandinsky Yellow-Red-Blue 1925

• Could China’s Next Target Be the US Housing Market? (Forsyth)

• Next Central Bank Puts QE Unwind on the Calendar (WS)

• Eurogroup Deal For Greece Clinched After Marathon Session (K.)

• IMF Welcomes Greek Debt Deal But Has Reservations On Long-Term (R.)

• Germany Has Made Over $3 Billion Profit From Greek Crisis (KTG)

• Greek GDP Is Low, But Food Prices Are High (K.)

• EU Is Getting Ready For No-Deal Brexit – Juncker (G.)

• Multi-Decade Outsourcing Boom Comes to Sticky End in the UK (DQ)

• Energy Is The Primary Driver Of The Economy (EI)

• Italy To Pick Up Migrants, Impound German Charity Ship (R.)

• People Donate Millions To Help Separated Families (AP)

• 2 Koreas Meet To Arrange Reunions Of War-Split Families (AP)

• Tourism Preventing Kenya’s Cheetahs From Raising Young (G.)

• India Is Facing Its Worst-Ever Water Crisis (ZH)

They can’t really sell Treasuries. MBS, though…

• Could China’s Next Target Be the US Housing Market? (Forsyth)

While so much attention is focused on foreign purchases of Treasuries, the big action has been in U.S. agencies, most of which consist of mortgage-backed securities from government-sponsored Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. In April, overseas investors bought $20 billion of agencies, bringing their 12-month total to $186 billion, or over $100 billion more than Treasuries. Asia accounted for $160 billion of those purchases, including $24 billion from China. U.S. corporations also get key support for their borrowing habit from abroad. Foreign investors bought $128 billion of corporate bonds in the latest 12 months, although just $1.6 billion in April. As for equities, overseas investors bought $82 billion ($6 billion in the latest month).

The numbers show that, even more than Uncle Sam, U.S. home borrowers depend on the kindness of strangers. China could retreat from bolstering the American housing market merely not reinvesting the monthly MBS interest and principal payments, resulting in a stealth tightening of mortgage credit. The housing market is already in the doldrums, as May’s weaker-than-expected existing home sales at an annual rate of 5.43 million, 100,000 less than forecast and below April’s 5.45 million annual pace. That disappointing home sales pace comes with unemployment at just 3.8%. But with single-family home prices up 5.2% from a year ago, home sales are sluggish. A further push up in mortgage rates, already at seven-year highs, would further crimp this key sector of the U.S. economy.

Do we see nerves there?

• Next Central Bank Puts QE Unwind on the Calendar (WS)

Markets were surprised today when the Bank of England took a “hawkish” turn and announced that three out of nine members of its Monetary Policy Committee – including influential Chief Economist Andrew Haldane, who’d been considered dovish – voted to raise the Bank Rate to 0.75%, thus dissenting from the majority who kept it at 0.5%. This dissension, particularly by Haldane, communicated to the markets that a rate hike at the next meeting in August is likely. The beaten-down UK pound jumped. But less prominent was the announcement about the QE unwind. Like other central banks, the BoE heavily engaged in QE and maintains a balance sheet of £435 billion ($577 billion) of British government bonds and £10 billion ($13 billion) in UK corporate bonds that it had acquired during the Brexit kerfuffle.

Before it starts shedding assets on its balance sheet, however, the BoE wants to raise the Bank Rate enough to where it can cut it “materially” if needed, “reflecting the Committee’s preference to use Bank Rate as the primary instrument for monetary policy,” as it said. In this, it parallels the Fed. The Fed started its QE unwind in October 2017, after it had already raised its target range for the federal funds rate four times. The BoE’s previous guidance was that the QE unwind would start when the Bank Rate is “around 2%.” Back in the day when this guidance was given, NIRP had broken out all over Europe, and pundits assumed that the BoE would never be able to raise its rate to anywhere near 2%, and so the QE unwind could never happen.

Today the BoE moved down its guidance about the beginning of the QE unwind to a time when the Bank Rate is “around 1.5%.” The Fed’s target range is already between 1.75% and 2.0%. The Fed leads, other central banks follow. And by August 2, the BoE’s Bank Rate may be at 0.75%. From that point forward, the QE unwind may only be three rate hikes away.

Many headlines talk about debt relief. But that’s not what this is. It’s just another bunch of loan extensions and a €15 billion new loan. There will be many more years of austerity and creditor oversight. No, the bailout has not been completed.

• Eurogroup Deal For Greece Clinched After Marathon Session (K.)

After several hours of negotiations, Greek officials and representatives of the country’s international creditors reached an agreement on securing the sustainability of the country’s debt in the early hours of Friday. Greece is to receive a loan tranche of 15 billion euros (3.3 billion euros of which would be used to pay off part of the country’s debt to the ECB and IMF), European officials said. Greece will also get a 10-year extension for the repayment of its European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) loans and an additional grace period of 10 years on interest payments. The extension of the repayment period of the EFSF loans and the size of the final bailout tranche had been a sticking points in the talks.

These two issues were the focus of several trilateral meetings between Greek Foreign Minister Euclid Tsakalotos and his French and German counterparts, Bruno Le Maire and Olaf Scholz. At a press conference announcing the details of the deal, European Economic and Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici spoke of a “historical moment for Greece” and said a new chapter was beginning for the country. He expressed “great satisfaction” in seeing Greece emerge from eight years of financial support.

“Tonight’s Eurogroup agreement achieves what we have been calling for, a credible, upfront set of measures, which will meaningfully lighten Greece’s debt burden, allow the country to stand on its own two feet, and reassure all partners and investors,” he said. Eurogroup President Mario Centeno struck a similar note. “This is it,” he said. “After eight long years, the Greek bailout has been completed.”

The IMF has caved on debt relief. Even though it knows it must be accorded.

• IMF Welcomes Greek Debt Deal But Has Reservations On Long-Term (R.)

The IMF welcomed on Friday a deal on debt relief for Greece reached by Athens’ euro zone creditors saying it will improve debt sustainability in the medium term, but maintained reservations on the long term. Euro zone finance ministers earlier on Friday offered Greece a 10-year deferral and maturities extension on a large part of past loans as well as 15 billion euros in new credit to ensure Athens can stand on its own feet after it exits its third bailout in August. “The additional debt relief measures announced today will mitigate Greece medium-term financing risks and improve medium term debt prospects,” the IMF managing director Christine Lagarde told a news conference.

But she added that the fund will not join the expiring 86-billion-euro bailout as the time “has run out”, and maintained “reservations” on the long term sustainability of the Greek debt, which runs until 2060. The fund will begin assessing the sustainability of the Greek debt “as early as next week”, Lagarde said, adding that the fund will remain engaged in Greece and will participate to the monitoring of the Greek economic performance and reforms after the end of the program.

“Contrary to all right-wing myths, Germany has benefited massively from the crisis in Greece..”

• Germany Has Made Over $3 Billion Profit From Greek Crisis (KTG)

Germany has earned around 2.9 billion euros in profit from interest rate since the first bailout for Greece in 2010. This is the official response of the Federal Government to a request submitted by the Green party in Berlin. The profit was transmitted to the central Bundesbank and from there to the federal budget. The revenues came mainly due to purchases of Greek government bonds under the so-called Securities Markets Program (SMP) of the European Central Bank (ECB). Previous agreements between the government in Athens and the eurozone states foresaw that other states will pay out the profits from this program to Greece if Athens would meet all the austerity and reform requirements.

However, according to Berlin’s response, only in 2013 and 2014 such funds have been transferred to the Greek State and the ESM. The money to the euro bailout landed on a seggregated account. As the Federal Government announced, the Bundesbank achieved by 2017 about 3.4 billion euros in interest gains from the SMP purchases. In 2013, approximately 527 million euros were transferred back to Greece and around 387 million to the ESM in 2014. Therefore, the overall profit is 2.5 billion euros. In addition, there are interest profits of 400 million euros from a loan from the state bank KfW.

“Contrary to all right-wing myths, Germany has benefited massively from the crisis in Greece,” said Greens household expert Sven Christian Kindler said and demanded a debt relief for Greece. “It can not be that the federal government with billions of revenues from the Greek interest the German budget recapitalize,” Kindler criticized. “Greece has saved hard and kept its commitments, now the Eurogroup must keep its promise,” he stressed.

And here’s why the Greek recovery story is simply falsehood.

• Greek GDP Is Low, But Food Prices Are High (K.)

Greeks may be among the poorest citizens in the European Union, but that does not mean low prices for basic products and services in this country. According to figures published on Wednesday by Eurostat, Greece was the 17th most expensive country among the 28 EU member-states last year, with the general price level standing at 84 percent of the EU average. However, in the most basic category – food – price levels in Greece stood above the bloc’s average, having a significant negative impact on living standards. Eurostat figures had shown on Tuesday that the per capita GDP in Greece in 2017 amounted to just 67 percent of the EU average, while real private consumption stood 23 percent below the EU mean rate.

A key role in food prices remaining at such high levels – in spite of the decade-long crisis – has been played by a succession of hikes in the value-added tax: From a 9 percent rate on food imposed in 2009, many food products now bear a VAT rate of 24 percent, making Greece the 13th most expensive country for food across the bloc. High indirect taxes also explain the particularly high prices in tobacco and alcoholic beverages in Greece, which make this country the 12th most expensive in the EU in this category.

A hard Brexit will be very unpretty. Airbus talked today about moving 14,000 jobs out of the UK. And they won’t be the last.

• EU Is Getting Ready For No-Deal Brexit – Juncker (G.)

The EU needs to be realistic about the dangerous state of the Brexit negotiations and is preparing to deploy its trillion-pound budget to cushion the bloc from the prospect of a no-deal scenario, the European commission president has warned. With the two sides still far apart on the “hardest issues”, just days from a crunch leaders’ summit in Brussels, Jean-Claude Juncker told the Irish parliament on Thursday he was stepping up preparations for a breakdown in talks, and even drafting plans aimed at keeping the peace in Northern Ireland. The problem of avoiding a hard border with the Republic – said by the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, to be akin to a “riddle wrapped in an enigma” – is threatening to thwart all attempts to make progress on a wider deal.

With Theresa May refusing to countenance what Juncker described as the bloc’s “bespoke and workable solution”, of the Northern Ireland effectively staying in the customs union and single market, it was crucial for the 27 EU member states to prepare for the worst outcome, the commission president said. Juncker told Irish MPs and senators in a joint session of parliament in Dublin: “With pragmatism comes realism. As the clock to Brexit ticks down, we must prepare for every eventuality, including no deal. This is neither a desired nor a likely outcome. But it is not an impossible one. And we are getting ready just in case.

“We will use all the tools at our disposal, which could have a cushioning impact. The new long-term budget for our union from 2021 onwards has an in-built flexibility that could allow us to redirect funds if the situation arose. “We will also earmark €120m (£105m) for a new peace programme which has done so much in breaking down barriers between communities in Northern Ireland and the border counties.”

More things coming to an end in Britain.

• Multi-Decade Outsourcing Boom Comes to Sticky End in the UK (DQ)

The United Kingdom, widely considered to be the birthplace of the modern incarnation of the public-private partnership (PPP), in which private firms are contracted to complete and manage public projects, could be one of the first countries to jettison the model. The collapse in January of 200-year old UK infrastructure group Carillion, whose outsized role in delivering public services earned it the moniker “the company that runs Britain,” has fueled concerns that other big outsourcing groups could soon follow in its doomed footsteps. Last week the CEO of Interserve, another large outsourcing group, revealed that the government has given the firm a red rating as a strategic supplier, meaning it has “significant material concerns” about the company’s finances.

Fears are growing that Carillion was not a one-off episode but rather the swan song of a deeply flawed and dying business model. Those fears were hardly assuaged by the release this week of a damning parliamentary report into the UK government’s practice of outsourcing public projects through so-called Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs). PFI deals were invented in 1992 by the Conservative government and then enthusiastically rolled out by the subsequent Labour government. The schemes usually involved large-scale public buildings such as new schools and hospitals which were previously funded by the UK Treasury. Under PFI they were put out to tender with bids invited from developers who put up the investment to build new schools, hospitals or other schemes and then leased them back.

[..] The Treasury’s incapacity to measure the actual benefits of PFI should be of grave concern to British taxpayers given that the interest rate of private-sector debt — these projects are debt financed — can be as much as 2 to 3.75 percentage points higher than the cost of government borrowing. Even if the government doesn’t enter into any new PFI-type deals, it will pay private companies £199 billion, including interest, between April 2017 until the 2040s for existing deals, in addition to some £110 billion already paid. That’s for 700 projects worth around £60 billion. British taxpayers could clearly “get a much better deal,” the report concludes.

John Lounsbury posted this talk by Steve from late 2016 again. And why not? Economics denies the role of energy…

• Energy Is The Primary Driver Of The Economy (EI)

Economic theory has failed to incorporate the role of energy in production for two centuries since the Physiocrats, according to Prof. Steve Keen. In this video he derives a production function that includes energy in an essential manner. It implies that economic growth has been driven by the increase in the energy throughput capabilities of machinery. Prof. Keen argues that all economic gain can be traced to the use of energy which we receive at no cost from the sun. Capital and labor participate in the economy only by use of this energy.

The Dutch play a strange role in this.

• Italy To Pick Up Migrants, Impound German Charity Ship (R.)

Italy appeared to relent on Thursday after at first refusing to accept 226 migrants on board a German charity rescue ship, saying later in the day it would take them in but would impound the vessel. Anti-immigrant interior minister Matteo Salvini initially said the Dutch-flagged ship Lifeline should take the people it plucked from the Mediterranean to the Netherlands and not Italy. But transport minister Danilo Toninelli, who oversees the coastguard, later said it was unsafe for the 32-metre vessel to travel such a great distance with so many people on board. “We will assume the humanitarian generosity and responsibility to save these people and take them onto Italian coastguard ships,” Toninelli said in a video posted on Facebook.

Earlier this month Salvini pledged to no longer let charity ships bring rescued migrants in Italy, leaving the Gibraltar-flagged Aquarius stranded at sea for days with more than 600 migrants until Spain offered them safe haven. The Dutch government denied responsibility for the vessel, something Toninelli said Italy would investigate. The Italian coastguard would escort Lifeline “to an Italian port to conduct the probe” and impound the ship, he said. Also on Thursday, the German charity Sea Eye which operates another Dutch-flagged ship, the Seefuchs, said in a statement it was ending its sea rescue mission after the Dutch government told them that it was no longer responsible for the vessel.

Please make sure it’s spent well.

• People Donate Millions To Help Separated Families (AP)

In an outpouring of concern prompted by images and audio of children crying for their parents, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are donating to nonprofit organizations to help families being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border. Among those that have generated the most attention is a fundraiser on Facebook started by a Silicon Valley couple, who say they felt compelled to help after they saw a photograph of a Honduran toddler sobbing as her mother was searched by a U.S. border patrol agent. The fundraiser started by David and Charlotte Willner had collected nearly $14 million by Wednesday afternoon.

The Willners, who have a 2-year-old daughter, set up the “Reunite an immigrant parent with their child” fundraiser on Saturday hoping to collect $1,500 — enough for one detained immigrant parent to post bond — but money began pouring in and within days people had donated $5 million to help immigrant families separated under the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy that criminally prosecutes all adults caught crossing the border illegally. “What started out as a hope to help one person get reunited with their family has turned into a movement that will help countless people,” the couple said in a statement released by a spokeswoman Wednesday. The couple, who were early employees at Facebook, declined to be interviewed.

“Regardless of political party, so many of us are distraught over children being separated from their parents at the border.” The money collected from more than 300,000 people in the United States and around the world will be given to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, a Texas nonprofit that that offers free and low-cost legal services to immigrants.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in doesn’t sit still.

• 2 Koreas Meet To Arrange Reunions Of War-Split Families (AP)

North and South Korean officials are meeting to arrange the first reunions in three years between families divided by the 1950-53 Korean War. Friday’s meeting at the North’s Diamond Mountain resort comes as the rivals take reconciliation steps amid a diplomatic push to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis. Seoul’s Unification Ministry said the meeting will discuss ways to carry out an agreement on the reunions made at a summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. The two summits between Kim and Moon have opened various channels of peace talks between the Koreas, including military talks for reducing tensions across their tense border and sports talks for fielding combined teams at the upcoming Asian Games in Indonesia.

Even if we don’t shoot them, we find other ways to kill them off.

• Tourism Preventing Kenya’s Cheetahs From Raising Young (G.)

High levels of tourism can lead to a dramatic reduction in the number of cheetahs able to raise their young to independence, new research has found. A study in Kenya’s Maasai Mara savannah found that in areas with a high density of tourist vehicles, the average number of cubs a mother cheetah raised to independence was just 0.2 cubs per litter – less than a tenth of the 2.3 cubs per litter expected in areas with low tourism. Dr Femke Broekhuis, a researcher at Oxford University and the author of the study, surveyed cheetahs in the reserve between 2013 and 2017 to assess how the frequency of tourist vehicles affected the number of cheetah cubs that survived to adulthood.

“During the study there was no hard evidence of direct mortality caused by tourists,” such as vehicles accidentally running over cubs, Broekhuis said. “It is therefore possible that tourists have an indirect effect on cub survival by changing a cheetah’s behaviour, increasing a cheetah’s stress levels or by minimising food consumption.” Broekhuis said she has seen as many as 30 vehicles around a single cheetah at the same time. “The most vehicles that we recorded at a cheetah sighting was 64 vehicles over a two-hour period,” she said.

Too many tourist vehicles can reduce a cheetah’s hunting success rate, the study suggests, and even if the hunt is successful, the disturbance from tourists could cause a female to abandon her kill, making her less likely to be able to provide for her young. Broekhuis said it was “crucial that strict wildlife viewing guidelines are implemented and adhered to,” and suggested limiting the number of vehicles around a cheetah to five and not allowing them to get any closer than 30 metres.

The shape of things to come.

• India Is Facing Its Worst-Ever Water Crisis (ZH)

India is facing its worst-ever water crisis, with some 600 million people facing acute water shortage, a government think-tank says. The Niti Aayog report, which draws on data from 24 of India’s 29 states, says the crisis is “only going to get worse” in the years ahead. Around 200,000 Indians die every year because they have no access to clean water, according to the report. And as The BBC reports, many end up relying on private water suppliers or tankers paid for the by the government. Winding queues of people waiting to collect water from tankers or public taps is a common sight in Indian slums. Indian cities and towns regularly run out water in the summer because they lack the infrastructure to deliver piped water to every home.

• 600 million people face high-to-extreme water stress. • 75% of households do not have drinking water on premise. 84% rural households do not have piped water access. • 70% of our water is contaminated; India is currently ranked 120 among 122 countries in the water quality index. India faces more than one problem – all compounding the nation’s crisis: Droughts are becoming more frequent, creating severe problems for India’s rain-dependent farmers (~53% of agriculture in India is rainfed17). When water is available, it is likely to be contaminated (up to 70% of our water supply), resulting in nearly 200,000 deaths each year.

Interstate disagreements are on the rise, with seven major disputes currently raging, pointing to the fact that limited frameworks and institutions are in place for national water governance. And that means massive problems lie ahead… 40% of the Indian population will have no access to drinking water by 2030 with 21 cities running out of groundwater by 2020 – affecting 100 million people which will cut 6% from GDP by 2050. What remains alarming is that the states that are ranked the lowest – such as Uttar Pradesh and Haryana in the north or Bihar and Jharkhand in the east – are also home to nearly half of India’s population as well the bulk of its agricultural produce.

Debt Rattle March 19 2018

Mar 192018

March 19, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:32 am Finance Tagged with: Abe, Apple, Boris, Facebook, Kim, novichok, NSA, Putin, rate rise, Russia, Schengen, Trump, water 6 Responses »

Ernest R. Ashton Evening near the Pyramids 1898

• Facebook And Cambridge Analytica Face Mounting Pressure Over Data Scandal (G.)

• Boris Johnson Ramps Up Anti-Russia Rhetoric (G.)

• Why Default Rates Are Subdued Even As Corporate Debt Levels Hit Records (MW)

• How Seriously is the Treasury Market Taking the Fed? (WS)

• 65% of Americans Save Little or Nothing (CNBC)

• Developing Countries At Risk From US Rate Rise, Debt Charity Warns (G.)

• Rising US Interest Rates May Damage Gulf Economies (MEE)

• Kim Jong-Un Has Committed To Denuclearisation, Says South Korea (G.)

• Kim Jong-Un Caught Off Guard by Trump’s Quick Agreement to Meet (BBG)

• Japan: Embattled Shinzo Abe Blames Staff Over Land Sale Scandal (AFP)

• Apple Is Secretly Developing Its Own Screens for the First Time (BBG)

• Canadian Household Debt Hits Record $1.8 Trillion (CP)

• German Interior Minister Wants More Internal EU Border Controls (DW)

• Water Shortages Could Affect 5 Billion People By 2050 – UN (G.)

Facebook knows more about you than your friends and family do. No, really. But it can’t figure out -for years- that its data are being downloaded and used?! Yeah, I’ll buy that.

The real issue here should be what Facebook itself uses its -or should that be ‘your’- data for, and what intelligence services do with it.

• Facebook And Cambridge Analytica Face Mounting Pressure Over Data Scandal (G.)

Facebook and that worked with Donald Trump’s election team have come under mounting pressure, with calls for investigations and hearings to explain a vast data breach that affected tens of millions of people. In Britain, the head of the parliamentary committee investigating fake news accused Cambridge Analytica and Facebook of misleading MPs after revelations in the Observer that more than 50m Facebook profiles were harvested and used to build a system that may have influenced voters in the 2016 presidential campaign. The Conservative MP Damian Collins said he would call the heads of both companies, Alexander Nix and Mark Zuckerberg, to give further testimony.

His intervention came after a whistleblower spoke to the Observer and described how the profiles, mostly of US voters, were harvested for Cambridge Analytica, in one of Facebook’s biggest ever data breaches. The disclosures caused outrage on both sides of the Atlantic; in the US, a state attorney general has called for investigations and greater accountability and regulation. There have been reports that Cambridge Analytica is trying to stop the broadcast of a Channel 4 News exposé in which Nix is said to talk unguardedly about the company’s practices. According to the Financial Times, reporters posed as prospective clients and secretly filmed a series of meetings, including one with the chief executive. The report is due to air this week.

Very little credibility so far. From descriptions of the nerve agent, it would seem impossible that “..at least 38 people in Salisbury had been identified as having been affected by it..” and all lived to tell it. Is the whole Novichok story a fabrication? Know what, Boris? Why not show the proof you claim to have?!

• Boris Johnson Ramps Up Anti-Russia Rhetoric (G.)

Boris Johnson will today seek to convince the EU foreign affairs council to join him in fresh condemnation of Russia after his explosive claims that Moscow has been creating and stockpiling nerve agent novichok and working out how to use it for assassinations. Scientists from the UN-backed Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons arrive today to analyse samples of the agent used to poison the former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The foreign secretary made his claims after Russian EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov issued blanket denials and said British agents might have used their stockpiles at Porton Down.

As the row enters its third week, Johnson dismissed Chizhov’s comments, saying they were “not the response of a country that really believes it’s innocent”. On Sunday, Vladimir Putin, fresh from a profoundly unsurprising electoral victory, denied any such nerve agents existed and said the idea of carrying out such a killing during an election campaign would be “rubbish, drivel, nonsense”. The latest theory to gain prominence is that the Skripals were poisoned via his car’s ventilation system. The report, from ABC news in the US, came as counter-terrorism police renewed their appeal for sightings of Skripal’s burgundy BMW 320D saloon car on 4 March. ABC also reported that at least 38 people in Salisbury had been identified as having been affected by the nerve agent.

Zero interest rates?!

• Why Default Rates Are Subdued Even As Corporate Debt Levels Hit Records (MW)

U.S. corporate debt levels stand above crisis highs even as default rates among the most leveraged firms remain subdued. With an economy hitting its stride, it’s perhaps no surprise that the high-yield bond market is placid. The extent of the divergence between debt levels and defaults, however, is worrying to some analysts who feel rising corporate indebtedness will eventually catch out unwary investors and deflate the junk-bond market. But beyond complacency John Lonski at Moody’s Capital Market Research, argued that globalization and the tendency of U.S. businesses to hoard cash as reasons why corporate debt levels may no longer move in sync with default rates and credit spreads.

The high-yield default rate in the fourth-quarter of 2017 fell to 3.3%, even as U.S. nonfinancial-corporate debt ended in 2017 at 45.4% of GDP. This compares with a much higher default rate of 11.1% in the second quarter of 2009, with corporate debt levels at 45% of GDP. Granted, the current levels come with the economy in the eighth year of an expansion, while the second quarter of 2009 marked the final quarter of the longest and deepest U.S. recession since the Great Depression. The yield spread between high-yield bonds and safe government paper, as represented by the 10-year Treasury note narrowed to an average 3.63 percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2017, from an average 12.02 percentage points in the second quarter of 2009.

The tight credit spreads reflects that borrowing costs are still close to historic lows, and that investors are demanding minimum compensation for holding arguably the riskiest debt in the bond market. One answer “might be supplied by the ever increasing globalization of U.S. businesses where the more relevant denominator is not U.S. GDP, but world GDP” said Lonski. The fortunes of U.S. companies are now wove into the broader global economy. When commodity prices took a hit in 2015 and early 2016, crimping growth in China and other emerging markets, high-yield bonds were also slammed.

If they keep up the forward guidance, everyone will sleep on. But will the yield spread sleep too?

• How Seriously is the Treasury Market Taking the Fed? (WS)

Back in October 2015, the three-month Treasury yield was 0%. Many on Wall Street said that the Fed could never raise interest rates, that the zero-interest-rate policy had become a permanent fixture, like in Japan, and that the Fed could never unload the securities it had acquired during QE. How things have changed! On Friday, the three-month Treasury yield closed at 1.78%, the highest since August 19, 2008. When yields rise, by definition bond prices fall:

Back in October 2015, the three-month Treasury yield was 0%. Many on Wall Street said that the Fed could never raise interest rates, that the zero-interest-rate policy had become a permanent fixture, like in Japan, and that The Fed’s target range for the federal funds rate has been 1.25% to 1.50% since its last rate hike at the December FOMC meeting. In other words, the three-month yield is already above the upper limit of the Fed’s target range after the next rate hike. So the market has fully priced in a rate hike at the FOMC meeting ending March 21. And it’s also starting to price in another rate hike in June. In this rate-hike cycle, the Fed has engaged in policy action only at meetings that are followed by a press conference.

There are four of these press-conference meetings per year. The next two are this week and June. If, in this cycle, the Fed hike rates at an FOMC meeting that is not followed by a press conference – there are also four of them this year – it would be considered a “monetary shock” that the Fed decided to administer to the markets. It would be like a rate hike of 50 basis points instead of the expected 25 basis points. There would be a hue and cry in the markets around the world. But I think the Fed isn’t ready to spring that on the markets just yet. Maybe later. The two-year yield rose to 2.31% on Friday, the highest since August 29, 2008:

Back in October 2015, the three-month Treasury yield was 0%. Many on Wall Street said that the Fed could never raise interest rates, that the zero-interest-rate policy had become a permanent fixture, like in Japan, and that In past rate hike cycles, the two-year yield reacted faster to rate-hike expectations than the 10-year yield. This is happening now as well. The 10-year yield has its own dynamics that are not in lockstep with the Fed’s rate-hike scenario. On Friday, the 10-year yield closed at 2.85%, within the same range where it had been since late February, tantalizingly close to 3%:

Back in October 2015, the three-month Treasury yield was 0%. Many on Wall Street said that the Fed could never raise interest rates, that the zero-interest-rate policy had become a permanent fixture, like in Japan, and that [..] After the surge of the two-year yield, the difference between the two-year and the 10-year yield – the “two-10 spread” – has narrowed again. On Friday, it was at 54 basis points. In the chart below, note the narrowing at the end of last year to 50 basis points, then the mini-spike, as the 10-year yield surged faster than the two-year yield, and the recent fallback:

Always the same braindead question: “What’s keeping Americans from saving?” We still don’t know?!

• 65% of Americans Save Little or Nothing (CNBC)

Despite a low unemployment rate and increasing wage growth, Americans still aren’t saving much. That’s according to a new survey from Bankrate.com, which found that 20% of Americans don’t save any of their annual income at all and even those who do save aren’t putting away a lot. Only 16% of survey respondents say that they save more than 15% of what they make, which is what experts generally recommend. A quarter of respondents report saving between 6 and 10% of their income and 21% say they sock away 5% or less.

At this rate, many people could be setting themselves up to fall short in retirement, Bankrate warns. “With a steady, significant share of the working population saving nothing or relatively little, it’s virtually guaranteed that they’ll be unable to afford a modest emergency expense or finance retirement,” says Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate. “That amounts to a financial fail.” The economy might be prospering now, but that won’t last forever: “The party has to stop sometime, and when it does, employers will lay off workers,” the study says. In fact, Bankrate estimates that half of the American population won’t be able to maintain their standard of living once they stop working.

A report from GoBankingRates found similar results: Over 40% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for when they retire. What’s keeping Americans from saving? “Expenses” was the No. 1 answer of 39% of respondents. Another 16% say they don’t have a “good enough job” to be able to save, which presumably means they aren’t earning enough. “The average American has less than $5,000 in a financial account, a quarter to a fifth of what you should have, and those aged 55 to 64 who have retirement savings only carry $120,000 — which won’t last long in the absence of paychecks,” the survey reports.

How strong will this make the dollar?

• Developing Countries At Risk From US Rate Rise, Debt Charity Warns (G.)

The expected rise in US interest rates will increase financial pressures on developing countries already struggling with a 60% jump in their debt repayments since 2014, a leading charity has warned. The Jubilee Debt Campaign said a study of 126 developing nations showed that they were devoting more than 10% of their revenues on average to paying the interest on money borrowed – the highest level since before the G7 agreement to write off the debts of the world’s poorest nations at Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005. Five of the countries on the charity’s list – Angola, Lebanon, Ghana, Chad and Bhutan – were spending more than a third of government revenues on servicing debts.

Developing country debt moved down the international agenda following the Gleneagles agreement in which the G7 industrial countries agreed to spend £30bn writing off the debts owed to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank by the 18 poor countries. But developing country debt is now once again being closely monitored by the IMF, which says 30 of the 67 poor countries it assesses are in debt distress or at risk of being so. Lending to developing countries almost doubled between 2008 and 2014 as low interest rates in the west led to a search for higher-yielding investments. A boom in commodity prices meant many poor countries borrowed in anticipation of tax receipts that have not materialised.

But the Jubilee Debt Campaign said the boom–bust in commodity prices was only one factor behind rising debt, pointing out that some countries were paying back money owed by former dictators, while others had been struggling with high debts for many years but had not been eligible for help. The campaign said developing countries were also vulnerable to a rise in global interest rates as central banks withdrew the support they have been providing since 2008. [..] The US Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates this week – with the financial markets expecting two or three further upward moves during 2018.

Tim Jones, an economist at the Jubilee Debt Campaign, said: “Debt payments for many countries have risen rapidly as a result of a lending boom and fall in commodity prices. The situation may worsen further as US dollar interest rates rise, and as other central banks reduce monetary stimulus. Debt payments are reducing government budgets when more spending is needed to meet the sustainable development goals.”

A few economies that have not done well.

• Rising US Interest Rates May Damage Gulf Economies (MEE)

[..]The latest available data shows that Oman, for instance, has a debt equivalent to 31.4% of their GDP for 2016, which is up from 4.9% in 2014, according to TradingEconomics.com. That jump in debt coincided with a fall in oil prices from more than $100 a barrel in mid-2014 to a low of $26 in early 2016. Rising rates also tend to increase costs for businesses, says Rosso. And the higher costs of borrowing ultimately means that fewer businesses that request loans from banks will receive the money they need. In short, growth in the available credit in the economy will slow. If we learned nothing else from the financial crisis of 2008-2009, it is that the world of business runs on credit. Slower credit growth usually means slower economic growth.

The base case is that among the countries with the dollar peg such as Saudi Arabia, UAE and Oman, the increased interest rates will likely drag on growth for their economies. The timing is really pretty bad for some of the countries involved. For instance, the Saudi economy shrank by 0.43% in the quarter ending September 2017, according to TradingEconomics.com. The prior quarter was worse; the economy sank 1.03%. Two quarters of negative growth is generally seen as a recession. Will the impact of rising rates push Saudi’s economy back into another recession? It’s hard to tell so far, but there is a risk. Similar problems seem likely for some other countries in the dollar-peg group.

The latest data from Oman is awful as well, although not as recent as that on Saudi Arabia. That economy contracted 14.1% in 2015, followed by another 5.1% decline in 2016. Likewise, the UAE has seen its growth steadily decline in each of the five years through 2016 from 6.9% to 3% most recently. That would not be bad for economic growth, but it is going in the wrong direction.

That’s quite the statement.

• Kim Jong-Un Has Committed To Denuclearisation, Says South Korea (G.)

South Korea’s foreign minister has said that North Korea’s leader has “given his word” that he is committed to denuclearization, a prime condition for a potential summit with President Donald Trump in May. Trump has agreed to what would be historic talks after South Korean officials relayed that Kim Jong-un was committed to ridding the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons and was willing to halt nuclear and missile tests. North Korea hasn’t publicly confirmed the summit plans, and a meeting place isn’t known. South Korea’s Kang Kyung-wha said Seoul has asked the North “to indicate in clear terms the commitment to denuclearization” and she says Kim’s “conveyed that commitment.” She told the CBS programme Face the Nation that “he’s given his word” and it’s “the first time that the words came directly” from the North’s leader.

Only include this because it’s exactly what I said last week. Kim still hasn’t publicly agreed to meet.

• Kim Jong-Un Caught Off Guard by Trump’s Quick Agreement to Meet (BBG)

U.S. President Donald Trump’s immediate willingness to meet Kim Jong Un for nuclear talks likely caught the North Korean leader by surprise, forcing him to consider his position before responding publicly, the South Korean foreign minister said. “We were all quite surprised by the readiness of that decision,” South Korea’s Kang Kyung-wha said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday. “It was an extremely courageous decision on the part of President Trump. We believe the North Korean leader is now taking stock.” Trump agreed to meet with Kim on March 8 after a briefing from South Korean officials.

The summit, expected to take place in a few months, would represent the first time a U.S. president has met a North Korean leader – either Kim or his father or grandfather – and is part of an overall strategy to dismantle that nation’s rapidly advancing nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang has already detonated what it described as a hydrogen bomb capable of riding an intercontinental ballistic missile to cities across the U.S., and Kim has threatened to use nuclear arms against Americans. The summit, if it occurs, will likely follow an already-scheduled meeting between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in to take place in South Korea, at which denuclearization will also be discussed, Kang said.

Yeah, Shinzo, the Russians did it.

Tyler earlier: “82% of Asahi poll respondents said Abe bears responsibility for the doctored documents relating to the Moritomo scandal”

• Japan: Embattled Shinzo Abe Blames Staff Over Land Sale Scandal (AFP)

Japan’s embattled prime minister has hit back at critics over a favouritism and cover-up scandal that has seen his popularity plunge and loosened his grip on power. In a statement in parliament, Shinzo Abe stressed he had not ordered bureaucrats to alter documents relating to a controversial land sale. “I have never ordered changes,” he said. The scandal surrounds the 2016 sale of state-owned land to a nationalist operator of schools who claims ties to Abe and his wife Akie. The sale was clinched at a price well below market value amid allegations that the high-level connections helped grease the deal. The affair first emerged early last year, but resurfaced after the revelation that official documents related to the sale had been changed.

Versions of the original and doctored documents made public by opposition lawmakers appeared to show passing references to Abe were scrubbed, along with several references to his wife Akie and Finance Minister Taro Aso. Aso has blamed the alterations on “some staff members” at the ministry. But Jiro Yamaguchi, a politics professor at Hosei University in Tokyo, said the public was “not at all convinced” by this explanation. “Why was the land sold at a discount price? Without any political pressure, this could never happen, and voters are angry about it,” said Yamaguchi. The prime minister repeated an apology, saying he “keenly felt” his responsibility over the scandal that has “shaken people’s confidence in government administration.”

The affair is hitting Abe’s ratings hard, with a new poll in the Asahi Shimbun showing public support nosediving by 13 percentage points from the previous month to 31%. The figure is the lowest approval rating for Abe in the poll since his return to power at the end of 2012.

A different kind of protectionism.

• Apple Is Secretly Developing Its Own Screens for the First Time (BBG)

Apple is designing and producing its own device displays for the first time, using a secret manufacturing facility near its California headquarters to make small numbers of the screens for testing purposes, according to people familiar with the situation. The technology giant is making a significant investment in the development of next-generation MicroLED screens, say the people, who requested anonymity to discuss internal planning. MicroLED screens use different light-emitting compounds than the current OLED displays and promise to make future gadgets slimmer, brighter and less power-hungry. The screens are far more difficult to produce than OLED displays, and the company almost killed the project a year or so ago, the people say.

Engineers have since been making progress and the technology is now at an advanced stage, they say, though consumers will probably have to wait a few years before seeing the results. The ambitious undertaking is the latest example of Apple bringing the design of key components in-house. The company has designed chips powering its mobile devices for several years. Its move into displays has the long-term potential to hurt a range of suppliers, from screen makers like Samsung, Japan Display, Sharp and LG to companies like Synaptics that produce chip-screen interfaces. It may also hurt Universal Display, a leading developer of OLED technology. Display makers in Asia fell after Bloomberg News reported the plans. Japan Display dropped as much as 4.4%, Sharp tumbled as much as 3.3% and Samsung slid 1.4%.

“$22,837 per person, not including mortgages…”

• Canadian Household Debt Hits Record $1.8 Trillion (CP)

Canadians’ collective household debt has climbed to $1.8 trillion as an international financial group sounds an early warning that the country’s banking system is at risk from rising debt levels. Equifax Canada says consumers now owe $1.821 trillion including mortgages as of the fourth-quarter of 2017, marking a 6% increase from a year earlier. Although nearly half of Canadians reduced their personal liabilities, roughly 37% added to their debt to push the average amount up 3.3% to $22,837 per person, not including mortgages.

The fresh numbers come as an international financial group owned by the world’s central banks says Canada’s credit-to-GDP and debt-service ratios show early warning signs of potential risk to the banking system in the coming years. The latest report by the Bank for International Settlements says Canada’s credit-to-GDP gap and debt-service ratios have surpassed critical thresholds and are signalling red, pointing to vulnerabilities. The group, however, cautions that these indicators should not be treated as a formal stress test, but as a first step in a broader analysis.

From Merkel’s own camp.

• German Interior Minister Wants More Internal EU Border Controls (DW)

Germany should consider stepping up its border controls, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said on Sunday. “Not that many border points in Germany are permanently occupied,” Seehofer told German weekly newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag, adding: “We will now discuss whether that needs to change.” Seehofer also appealed for the suspension of the Schengen Agreement, which allows free movement within the EU bloc. “Internal border checks [between EU member states] must be in place so long as the EU fails to effectively control the external border,” he said, adding: “I don’t see it being able to do this in the near future.” The reintroduction of border controls is a prerogative of EU member states. Under EU rules they must remain an exception and respect the principle of proportionality.

Germany’s temporarily reintroduced border controls continue until May 12 and have been imposed on the land border with Austria and on flight connections from Greece because of the “security situation in Europe and threats resulting from the continuous secondary movements,” according to the European Commission. Seehofer’s comments follow EU demands in February that Germany and four other Schengen members – Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Norway – lift their border controls when the current agreed terms run out in May. [..] Seehofer is a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU).

Waterwars in waterworld.

• Water Shortages Could Affect 5 Billion People By 2050 – UN (G.)

More than 5 billion people could suffer water shortages by 2050 due to climate change, increased demand and polluted supplies, according to a UN report on the state of the world’s water. The comprehensive annual study warns of conflict and civilisational threats unless actions are taken to reduce the stress on rivers, lakes, aquifers, wetlands and reservoirs. The World Water Development Report – released in drought-hit Brasília – says positive change is possible, particularly in the key agricultural sector, but only if there is a move towards nature-based solutions that rely more on soil and trees than steel and concrete.

“For too long, the world has turned first to human-built, or ‘grey’, infrastructure to improve water management. In doing so, it has often brushed aside traditional and indigenous knowledge that embraces greener approaches,” says Gilbert Houngbo, the chair of UN Water, in the preface of the 100-page assessment. “In the face of accelerated consumption, increasing environmental degradation and the multi-faceted impacts of climate change, we clearly need new ways of manage competing demands on our freshwater resources.” Humans use about 4,600 cubic km of water every year, of which 70% goes to agriculture, 20% to industry and 10% to households, says the report, which was launched at the start of the triennial World Water Forum.

Global demand has increased sixfold over the past 100 years and continues to grow at the rate of 1% each year. This is already creating strains that will grow by 2050, when the world population is forecast to reach between 9.4 billion and 10.2 billion (up from 7.7 billion today), with two in every three people living in cities. [..] By 2050, the report predicts, between 4.8 billion and 5.7 billion people will live in areas that are water-scarce for at least one month each year, up from 3.6 billion today, while the number of people at risk of floods will increase to 1.6 billion, from 1.2 billion.

Debt Rattle June 16 2017

Jun 162017

June 16, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:02 am Finance Tagged with: bailout, Brexit, Comey, debt relief, EU, Greece, May, Putin, refugees, Russia, Trump, water 17 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Dora Maar au chat 1941

• ‘It’s A ‘Scary’ Time With A Global Crisis On The Way’ (CNBC)

• Angry Trump Decries Being Target Of Russia Probe (AFP)

• Putin Comey Comment ‘Remark On Circus-like Russia Nonsense Gripping US’ (RT)

• Theresa May Is Now Almost As Unpopular As Pre-Campaign Corbyn (YouGov)

• UK Student Loan Debt Soars To More Than £100 Billion (G.)

• UK Gov Still Hasn’t Submitted Brexit Papers For Talks Starting Monday (Ind.)

• Germany, Austria Slam US Sanctions Against Russia (AP)

• Debt Deal Gives Clarity To Markets – Greek FinMin Tsakalotos (AP)

• Eurogroup Approves Greek Loans, Details Debt Relief, IMF To Join (K.)

• IMF Won’t Fund Greek Bailout Until It Gets More Clarity On Debt Restructuring (CNBC)

• Have The Greek Bailouts Worked? (BBC)

• Greek Government Sabotages Its People With Water Privatization Scheme (Occupy)

• Half of Athens’ Ambulances Are Out Of Action (AP)

• Uptick In Migrant Arrivals Eyed With Concern By Greece’s Islanders (K.)

Louis Vuitton CEO knows it; where’s the rest?

• ‘It’s A ‘Scary’ Time With A Global Crisis On The Way’ (CNBC)

A financial crisis could be just around the corner, according to the chief executive of LVMH, who has described the global economic outlook as “scary”. “For the economic climate, the present situation is…mid-term scary,” Bernard Arnault told CNBC Thursday. “I don’t think we will be able to globally avoid a crisis when I see the interest rates so low, when I see the amounts of money flowing into the world, when I see the stock prices which are much too high, I think a bubble is building and this bubble, one day, will explode.”

Arnault, who is responsible for the world’s largest luxury goods company, couldn’t say whether the crash would be imminent or within the next few years, but he insisted that almost a decade on from the global financial crisis of 2008, one was due. “There has not been a big crisis for almost ten years now and since I’ve had a business I have seen crises more than every ten years, so be careful.” Longer term, however, Arnault said he was “optimistic”, pointing to advances in technology and innovation, which he said would stimulate the economy.

The echo chamber expands.

• Angry Trump Decries Being Target Of Russia Probe (AFP)

President Donald Trump responded angrily to reports he is under criminal investigation Thursday, deriding a “witch hunt” against him led by some “very bad” people. Trump responded to reports he is personally being investigated for obstruction of justice with a characteristic scorched earth defense: claiming mistreatment of historic proportions and calling into question the probity of his accusers. “You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history – led by some very bad and conflicted people!” Trump said in an early morning tweet. Trump did not directly address the allegations that he is being probed for possibly obstructing justice – a potentially impeachable offense. Nor did he deny he has entered the miniscule ranks of sitting presidents who have become the subject of a criminal investigation.

“They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice,” he wrote. Trump’s young presidency has been battered by allegations — under investigation both by Congress and the FBI — that Russia interfered to sway the 2016 election in his favor, in possible collusion with Trump’s campaign team. The FBI probe, now in the hands of special prosecutor Robert Mueller, shifted its focus to allegations of obstruction in the days after Trump fired the agency’s then director James Comey on May 9. The new allegations against Trump center on his own admission that he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation, and suggestions he asked several top intelligence officials for their help altering the direction of the inquiry.

“..that sounds very strange when a special service chief records a conversation with the commander-in-chief and then gives it to the media via his friend.”

• Putin Comey Comment ‘Remark On Circus-like Russia Nonsense Gripping US’ (RT)

Russia wants ties with the US improved, but the American domestic political situation is close to hopeless and while the Russian door is open, no one is going to lose their breath waiting to hold it open, political analyst Adam Garrie said, commenting on Putin’s statement. On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin held his annual live marathon Q&A session with the public, titled: “Direct Line with the president.” During the session, he said Russia was ready to grant former FBI director James Comey asylum. “[Comey] suddenly said that he had recorded a conversation with the president, and then gave the recording of this conversation to the media via his friend. Well, that sounds very strange when a special service chief records a conversation with the commander-in-chief and then gives it to the media via his friend. Then what’s the difference between the FBI director and Mr. [Edward] Snowden? Then he is not the head of the special services, but a human rights advocate who defends a certain position,” Putin said.

Political analyst Adam Garrie described the parallel between Comey and Snowden as “brilliant.” “It was a masterful moment for Vladimir Putin,” he told RT. “With all the lies and disinformation about the Russian president in Western mainstream media, people forget that, like most intelligent men, he’s got a wonderful sense of humor, he can be very cheeky, he can be sarcastic.” “Like Snowden, who thought he was doing a public good, Comey said that he thought he was doing the same. Should things get hairy for Comey, the doors to Russia are equally open to him.

I thought that was a very important remark by Putin on the whole sort of circus-like element of the whole Russia nonsense that’s gripping and probably will grip for some time the pundits in Washington. It just makes it clear that the entire tone of Putin’s statements about America is that we [Russia] want to get on with having good relations. It’s crucial not just bilaterally, but to the wider world, if the two of the three major superpowers do have improved relations, but that the situation domestically in America is close to hopeless – so that while the Russian door is open, no one in Russia is going to lose their breath or their cool waiting to hold it open,” Garrie said.

She has no authority to negotiate anything anymore. That is a much bigger problem than people seem to think.

• Theresa May Is Now Almost As Unpopular As Pre-Campaign Corbyn (YouGov)

New YouGov research highlights just how badly the election campaign and result damaged the public’s view of both the Prime Minister and the Conservative party and how much it boosted Labour and its leader. In April, Theresa May had a healthy net favourability rating of +10. At the end of May, following the campaign and negative reception of the Conservative manifesto, it fell to -5. Following the election result it has plummeted to -34. The Prime Minister is currently about as unpopular as Jeremy Corbyn was in November last year, when he scored -35. Meanwhile, the Labour leader has experienced a remarkable turnaround in public perception. Having experienced increasingly worse favourability ratings since Theresa May took office last summer, Jeremy Corbyn sank to a low of -42 in late April, just after the election was called.

However, the public’s view of the Labour leader improved markedly over the campaign, reaching -14 in the last YouGov favourability survey before election day. Now, following the result, his net favourability score is +0 – meaning that as many people now have a favourable view of him as have an unfavourable view. [..] It is remarkable that there has been such a sharp turnaround for the leaders of the two main political parties. When the election was called, Theresa May was secure in her position and many were speculating over the future of the Labour leader. Now, the roles are reversed, with Jeremy Corbyn having silenced his critics and won over large sections of the public while the Prime Minister faces criticism from across the board.

Burden the young. An idea with future.

• UK Student Loan Debt Soars To More Than £100 Billion (G.)

Student loan debt in the UK has risen to more than £100bn for the first time, underlining the rising costs young people face in order to get a university education. Outstanding debt on loans jumped by 16.6% to £100.5bn at the end of March, up from £86.2bn a year earlier, according to the Student Loans Company. England accounted for £89.3bn of the total. “Lots of prospective and current university students will see these figures and worry about being part of an increasing pool of graduate debt,” said Jake Butler of at money advice website Save the Student. “As fees increase this number will only go up, as more and more money is lent out each year. There is some cause for concern here, mainly for the government, as it is now widely accepted that the majority of graduates will never pay off their whole student loan debt before it is wiped off 30 years after their graduation.”

Sorana Vieru, the vice-president for higher education at the National Union of Students, said student debt had risen to “eye-watering levels”. The rise in student debt has been driven partly by rules introduced in 2012, allowing universities in England to charge up to £9,000 a year in tuition fees. In the year ending 31 March 2012, student debt was less than half the current level, at £45.9bn. Jeremy Corbyn made younger voters a key focus of Labour’s election campaign, promising to scrap tuition fees for new university students. A strong turnout among 18- to 24-year-olds at last week’s election helped the party to win 262 seats, an increase of 30. Sebastian Burnside, a senior economist at NatWest, said student debt was rising at a faster pace than any other form of debt, and eclipsed credit card debt of £68bn. “These latest figures show student debt is becoming of greater priority with every passing year. Student debt is the fastest growing type of borrowing and is rapidly becoming economically significant.”

Maybe May intends to blame the EU and gather Brits together against them?

• UK Gov Still Hasn’t Submitted Brexit Papers For Talks Starting Monday (Ind.)

The British Government has still not sent papers outlining its opening position for Brexit talks to the European Union, despite negotiations beginning on Monday. EU sources told The Independent Brussels had sent its “positioning papers” to London four days ago and while similar documents were expected in return, nothing has arrived as Theresa May’s administration struggles to get on its feet. Brexit Secretary David Davis confirmed on Thursday that talks to pull Britain out of the EU will begin on Monday regardless, despite cabinet splits over how to approach them and Ms May’s withdrawal plans not even being cemented in a Queen’s Speech.

Chancellor Philip Hammond cancelled a speaking event in which he was expected to signal new softer Brexit proposals focusing on jobs, amid fears it might spark an internal row with other Tories demanding Ms May stick to her immigration-centred approach. It came as the Prime Minister confirmed that a Queen’s Speech would go ahead, but only on 21 June – two days later than originally planned. It is still unclear if she has locked in the support of the Northern Irish DUP to prop her up in the House of Commons and give her the majority she needs to pass a vote approving the agenda set out in the Queen’s Speech. Conservatives signalled that talks with the unionists could even continue beyond the start of Brexit talks and the Queen’s Speech, as Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams warned that any deal struck could breach the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland.

On Monday this week, the EU sent to London its positioning papers, officially outlining its negotiating stance ahead of talks, and had expected similar documents to come back in good time before discussions begin. But with the EU’s papers arriving as Ms May staved off a cabinet coup, convinced backbenchers to support her and held talks about realigning Brexit plans, nothing had been sent back to Brussels by Thursday night. One source across the Channel said it was “unbelievable” that the UK had still not sent the “basic” papers for the start of negotiations, with just over three days left before they begin. They added: “The talks are beginning on Monday. There are no positioning papers yet. It’s a basic thing that should happen beforehand. It doesn’t bode well.”

Haha, Gazprom.

• Germany, Austria Slam US Sanctions Against Russia (AP)

Germany and Austria voiced sharp criticism Thursday of the latest U.S. sanctions against Moscow, saying they could affect European businesses involved in piping in Russian natural gas. The United States Senate voted Wednesday to slap new sanctions on key sectors of Russia’s economy and individuals over its interference in the 2016 U.S. election campaign and its aggression in Syria and Ukraine. The measures were attached to a bill targeting Iran. In a joint statement, Austria’s Chancellor Christian Kern and Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said it was important for Europe and the United States to form a united front on the issue of Ukraine, where Russian-based separatists have been fighting government forces since 2014.

“However, we can’t accept the threat of illegal and extraterritorial sanctions against European companies,” the two officials said, citing a section of the bill that calls for the United States to continue to oppose the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would pump Russian gas to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea. Half of the cost of the new pipeline is being paid for by Russian gas giant Gazprom, while the other half is being shouldered by a group including Anglo-Dutch group Royal Dutch Shell, French provider Engie, OMV of Austria and Germany’s Uniper and Wintershall. Some Eastern European countries, including Poland and Ukraine, fear the loss of transit revenue if Russian gas supplies don’t pass through their territory anymore once the new pipeline is built.

Gabriel and Kern accuse the U.S. of trying to help American natural gas suppliers at the expense of their Russian rivals. They said the possibility of fining European companies participating in the Nord Stream 2 project “introduces a completely new, very negative dimension into European-American relations,” they said. In their forceful appeal, the two officials urged the United States to back off from linking the situation in Ukraine to the question of who can sell gas to Europe. “Europe’s energy supply is a matter for Europe, and not for the United States of America,” Kern and Gabriel said.

It’s getting close to outright lying.

• Debt Deal Gives Clarity To Markets – Greek FinMin Tsakalotos (AP)

Greece’s finance minister says financial markets now have “much greater clarity” about the future of Greece’s debts, which will help the country regain market access when its current bailout program ends next year. Speaking after a meeting of the eurozone’s 19 finance ministers, Euclid Tsakalots said the country can “look forward with much greater confidence.” As well as securing €8.5 billion in bailout funds, which will help Greece meet a big summer repayment, Tsakalotos won a promise on future measures to ease the country’s debt burden and possible IMF financial involvement in the coming year. Greece has relied on bailout money for seven years and hopes that it will be able to stand on its own feet when the bailout ends. Tsakalotos said one big benefit from the deal Thursday was that future debt repayments could be linked to Greece’s growth. In essence, that could mean payments could be postponed in the event of an adverse shock.

No , there are no details on debt relief, that’s the whole story.

• Eurogroup Approves Greek Loans, Details Debt Relief, IMF To Join (K.)

Greece’s international creditors agreed on Thursday to approve the disbursement of €8.5 billion in bailout loans and to detail medium-term debt relief measures following talks in Luxembourg. Describing the agreement as “a major step forward,” Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem said the deal aimed to get Greece standing “on its own feet again,” noting that debt relief would be linked to the country’s growth rates, in line with a proposal that had been promoted by French officials. The deal also outlined the participation of the IMF in Greece’s third bailout with the Fund’s chief Christine Lagarde saying she would formally recommend the IMF’s participation with $2 billion on a standby basis.

As regards the debt relief aspect of the agreement, Lagarde remarked that it was not the best solution for Greece as it was only an agreement in principle but the “second best” solution. European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Pierre Moscovici sought to focus on the positive aspects of the deal. “Tonight, Greece can see the light at the end of its long tunnel of austerity,” he said. “From tonight, the watchwords are jobs, growth and investment.” His comments were echoed by Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos who, in a separate press conference, said the deal provided greater clarity, for both citizens and investors, “more light at the end of the tunnel.” A spokesperson for the European Central Bank, whose bond buying program Greece wants to join, described the Eurogroup agreement as “a first step towards securing debt sustainability.”

However it remained unclear whether the deal was adequate to pave the way for the ECB to buy Greek bonds or not. The breakthrough last night came after Athens appeared to have shifted its stance slightly from earlier in the week when tensions between Greece and Germany had peaked and two top government ministers had said publicly that Athens mistrusts German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. Speaking from Thessaloniki, where he met Israeli and Cypriot leaders for talks on energy cooperation, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras remarked to reporters, “The good guys win in the end.” Greek officials have insisted over the past week that Greece has won the right to debt relief.

“Greece has fulfilled its commitments and adopted the required reforms. Now it is time for the Europeans to comply with their commitments on debt relief,” President Prokopis Pavlopoulos said in comments published in Germany’s Handelsblatt. He appealed to Schaeuble to abandon his persistent opposition to Greek debt relief. “Anything else would not be worthy of a great European politician,” he said. “It is important for us that our creditors secure the viability of the debt. Otherwise the ECB cannot buy Greek state bonds,” he said, referring to the European Central Bank.

But the article above said “IMF to join”!

• IMF Won’t Fund Greek Bailout Until It Gets More Clarity On Debt Restructuring (CNBC)

The IMF wants Greek debt to become more sustainable before it channels funds into the country’s bailout program, the organization’s managing director Christine Lagarde told CNBC. “For us to engage and for us to participate financially, more needs to be clarified, defined and approved in terms of restructuring,” she said late on Thursday. “What we believe will be needed is a deferral of interests, an extension of maturity, and a mechanism by which there is an adjustment based on growth … this is where further discussion and negotiation is needed.” Lagarde was speaking in Luxembourg after European finance ministers approved a €8.5 billion loan for Athens that will enable the cash-strapped nation to meet a major July repayment deadline.

European countries have been shouldering the burden of Greece’s current €86 billion rescue fund — its third bailout package since 2010. The IMF financially contributed to Athens’ previous bailouts but refused to join the current pact because it believes Greece needed debt relief — something that European creditors aren’t comfortable with. The organization’s absence has been a thorn in the sides of heavyweight European countries, particularly Germany, who view IMF participation as a key credibility factor. For Berlin to continue backing euro zone loans to Athens, Germany’s parliament is now insisting on IMF contribution. On Thursday, the IMF agreed to offer Athens a standby arrangement of less than $2 billion but won’t be disbursing any of the funds until euro zone countries offer more detail on potential debt relief measures in 2018.

“I’ve always said that the (bailout) program walks on two legs: the leg of policies and the leg of debt sustainability,” Lagarde told CNBC on Thursday. Athens has proved its commitment to key structural reforms, which cover pensions, tax, serial procedures, and labor markets, but the second leg of the bailout program — debt restructuring — needs to be further clarified, she continued. “Progress has been made today, no question about it but more is needed.” Lagarde praised Thursday’s loan agreement, stating that Athens would now be protected from future crisis moments because its financial needs in terms of debt service will be low.

“It (Athens) will actually produce a primary surplus and it should be, in terms of liquidity and stability, in a fairly solid situation to develop its economy to cultivate growth, generate investment , and proceed with the privatization that they have agreed to complete.” On the matter of Brexit negotiations, the IMF chief advised European and U.K. officials to adopt a risk-averse approach. “What is more predictable, more certain, can be calibrated, can be anticipated, can be transitioned into, is going to be more reliable and safer for the people and the economy.” Circumstances were still too premature for the IMF to forecast future economic developments, she added.

They have for Germnay, yes.

• Have The Greek Bailouts Worked? (BBC)

As eurozone finance ministers meet in Brussels for crucial talks on Greece, Reality Check looks at whether the bailouts the country has received have secured Greece’s economic survival or just created unsustainable debt. Neither Greece nor its creditors would say they are happy with how it has worked out. In 2010, when the Greek debt crisis started, Greece received €110bn in bailout money. And in 2012, the country received a second bailout of €130bn. These loans, from the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), were deemed necessary to stop Greece going bankrupt. In exchange, Greece was required to make deep public spending cuts, raise taxes and introduce fundamental changes to the public sector and labour legislation. In August 2015, the eurozone countries agreed to give Greece a third bailout, of up to €86bn, on the condition of further changes.

The next tranche of that bailout, which Greece needs in order to honour repayments due in July, is being discussed at the eurozone finance ministers’ meeting on Thursday. In 2010, they managed to keep Greece in the euro and prevented the collapse of the common currency. So, from the perspective of the eurozone as a whole, a chaotic “Grexit” did not happen. But seven years on, and many more billions of euros later, was this price worth paying, both from the point of view of Greece’s creditors and of the Greek people? It is impossible to know what the situation would be like now had Greece not received the bailouts, but the consequences of receiving them have been painful. For the Greek people, the bailouts and the austerity measures implemented with them have come at a huge cost.

• Unemployment remains staggeringly high: 22.5% of Greeks were unemployed in March 2017. And almost half of people under the age of 25 were out of work
• Those who do work, earn less. The minimum monthly wage at the beginning of the crisis was €863. It has now fallen to €684
• Pensioners have been hit particularly hard. Pension changes since 2010 mean 43% of pensioners now live on less than €660 a month, according to the Greek government
• Government spending on health was almost halved between 2010 and 2015, while the education budget was cut by 20%

Greece’s creditors, strongly influenced by Germany, demanded that Greece start spending less than it earned. In 2016, for the first time, Greece achieved this. The surplus is small, at €1.3bn or 0.7% of GDP. But this can hardly be seen as a success – the economy has shrunk and the overall debt pile is still going up, not down.

Tsipras is not going to grow a pair anymore. Rule 1 for every country and society should be: Never give up your water.

• Greek Government Sabotages Its People With Water Privatization Scheme (Occupy)

The “fire sale” privatization of Greece started in 2015, following the infamous Syriza referendum in which more than three-fifths of the Greek people voted to reject Troika-imposed bailout conditions – and yet their government, led by Alexis Tsipras, chose to accept the deal anyway. The privatization process reached its peak the next year, when the Greek government sold the public transport giant TrainOSE to the Italian company Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane S.p.A for 45 million euros. This happened after a very brief bidding period and despite considerable employee pushback, including a 24-hour strike that paralyzed the country. Now, a second round of fire sales is taking place ahead of the upcoming third bailout negotiations for Greece, whose current bailout package will expire in August 2018.

Since last year, the sale of the country’s roads, rights to the use of its ports, and other public sector resources have only yielded around €4 billion – a far cry from the projected €50 billion that were promised when the privatization plan was put in motion. At best, it will result in a 6 billion euro profit, nowhere near enough to cover the ailing Greek economy’s massive overhead spending. In 2016, under the EYATH initiative (representing Thessaloniki’s public sector water workers) and activists, Save Greek Water was launched in an attempt to curb the Syriza administration’s efforts to privatize public water reserves. The initiative enjoyed enormous support from the public and media, and seemed to curbing further efforts to move the privatization talks forward. That was until last December, when an article published by Stavroula Symeonidou, president of the Workers Union of DEYA of Drama, revealed that Greece’s public water sector was being purposefully sabotaged by its own government.

“…DEYAs are not financially dependent on the State/Central Government, therefore they do not, in any way whatsoever, contribute to the public debt… however they are equally restricted in (actually barred from) recruiting any new personnel, which means that over time their already limited resources will reach zero,” Symeonidou wrote. The article also warned about the danger of further levies being imposed on Greek farmers using public water sources like ground- and rainwater wells. This dire prediction came to pass last month, when an “irregular water source charge” was imposed on the major rural regions of the country, directly targeting farmers and households in the affected areas. According to a statement released by the Syriza administration, 2.5% of the proceeds from this levy will be invested in the interest of supporting the Greek public sector – but not the DEYA initiative. This is being seen as an obvious attempt to further hobble any resistance to privatization.

Let me guess, this is part of making the country competitive again? This is criminal.

• Half of Athens’ Ambulances Are Out Of Action (AP)

Greece’s financial woes have clobbered spending on state-provided health services, even as demand has spiked because fewer Greeks can pay for private treatment. Some of Athens’ ambulances have up to 1 million kilometers (620,000 miles) — nearly three times the distance to the moon — on the clock, and about half are idle because of a lack of spare parts. At night, fewer than 40 vehicles cover a population of more than 4 million. Paramedic Dimitris Dimitriadis says the service is obliged to respond to every call it receives, even if the callers are just taking advantage of a rule that patients brought to hospitals by ambulance jump the line for treatment. “But then you also get elderly people who can’t afford a taxi fare to the hospital, so they call an ambulance,” he said, driving toward a reported suicide in central Athens. Upon arrival, the crew was told that the injured person had been taken to a hospital by relatives.

Unions say rescuers do their best against the odds, focusing on getting urgent cases to emergency treatment within minutes of receiving a call. But other patients, who may still require hospital treatment, can end up waiting well over an hour. Athens ambulance workers’ union leader Giorgos Mathiopoulos says about 70 of the capital’s 140 ambulances are out of action, and the fleet needs to be doubled in size. “Up to 30% of the immobilized ambulances can’t be repaired” and many are stripped for parts to keep others going, Mathiopoulos said. “When we’re trying to get to an incident as fast as possible … and the ambulance has that many kilometers on the clock, it’s a worry.”

Something’s going to break.

• Uptick In Migrant Arrivals Eyed With Concern By Greece’s Islanders (K.)

Official data on Thursday showed an uptick in refugee and migrant arrivals from Turkey to Greece’s shores, increasing concerns among residents on the Aegean islands that have borne the brunt of the refugee crisis. A total of 151 people were reported as entering Greece in 24 hours on Thursday, 74 of whom landed on Chios, 54 on Lesvos and 23 on other islands, slightly above the 146 arrivals in the previous 24-hour period. According to official figures, the number of migrants and refugees that reached Greece between June 8 and Thursday morning came to 538, a significant rise from May when daily arrivals were in the double digits.

The upsurge is stoking fears on islands such as Chios that are already struggling to cope with thousands of refugees and migrants stranded by slow processing and deportation procedures. Residents of Chios held a rally on Thursday night to protest plans for a pre-departure facility on the island, where authorities said they will temporarily detain dozens of migrants who are not eligible for asylum before they are deported. Protesters say that the official line in favor of the facility, pointing to a decrease in arrivals on Lesvos since a similar center was opened there, are disproved by the uptick observed in recent days. A similar rally was also held on the island of Samos on Thursday.

Debt Rattle November 20 2016

Nov 202016

November 20, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:15 am Finance Tagged with: amateurs, bailout, basic income, Brexit, deflation, Italy, NSA, Obama, pardon, Snowden, water 3 Responses »

Wynand Stanley Cadillac touring car at Yosemite in snow 1919

• Peak & Decline of International Reserves: Massive Asset Deflation Ahead (SRSR)

• “Developed Countries’ Currencies Solely Driven By Politics” (CNBC)

• How A Universal Basic Income Would Transform Society (Agnos)

• End London’s Role as a Clearing-House for Dirty Money (G.)

• Europe’s Leaders To Force Britain Into Hard Brexit (O.)

• Italy’s Crisis Turns into a Multi-Headed Hydra (DQ)

• Italian Banks ‘Not Necessarily Bankrupt’ But Awfully Close (NYT)

• ‘Political Amateurs Are Conquering The World’ – Beppe Grillo (EN)

• Bruegel Institute Chief: 4th Bailout Seems Inevitable for Greece (GR)

• Slovenia Adds Water To Constitution As Fundamental Right For All (AFP)

• EU Ministers At Odds Over Immigration, No Compromise In Sight (R.)

• Pentagon and Intelligence Chiefs Urge Obama To Remove NSA Chief (WaPo)

• Obama Claims He Cannot Pardon Snowden but He Knows That’s Not True (TD)

Causation and correlation of energy and economics are not nearly as clear as implied here, but the trends are interesting.

• Peak & Decline of International Reserves: Massive Asset Deflation Ahead (SRSR)

The world is sitting at the edge of a massive deflationary cliff. Even though Central Banks are desperately trying to keep the world’s financial assets from plunging down into the great depression below, signs suggest they are losing the battle. One critical sign is the peak and decline of International Reserves. Hugo Salinas Price has been keeping an eye on International Reserves for quite some time. In his recent article, A Reversal In The Trend Of International Reserves, he stated the following:

International Reserves peaked on August 1, 2014, at $12.032 Trillion dollars, and as of October 28, 2016 they stood at $11.066 Trillion dollars. International Reserves stood at about $10 Trillion in 2011, but the rate of growth slacked off; the weekly increases in Reserves (which Bloomberg used to publish every Friday) stalled and became smaller, week by week. As mid-2014 came around, the increases were quite small. It was clear that the trend was for ever-smaller increases, and that could only mean that finally there would be no increase, which would be immediately followed by decreases in the total of International Reserves held by Central Banks. That is exactly what took place.

Hugo Salinas Price explains in the article, “that the increases of International Reserves take place when the Reserve Currency issuing countries effect payments to the rest of the world.” Basically, countries such as the United States that run trade deficits, exchange fiat money or Treasuries for goods from other countries. This shows up as an increase in International Reserves. Now, what is important to understand about the chart above is the timing of the PEAK & DECLINE of International Reserves. I had an email exchange with Mr. Salinas on what I believe was the leading factor in why the International Reserves peaked and declined. When I went back and looked at a five-year price chart of a barrel of oil (West Texas), I found a very interesting coincidence:

The price of a barrel of West Texas Crude fell below $100 starting at the beginning of August, 2014…. TO THE DATE. Even though the oil price had traded between $85-$100 over the past three years, it averaged over $95. However, by the end of 2014, it had fallen by more than half. This had a profound impact on International Reserves as the low oil price gutted the energy-commodity-goods producing countries. These are the countries that hold the majority of International Reserves. So, as the price of oil continued to stay below $50 a barrel, these countries had to sell Bonds and acquire cash to fund their own domestic account deficits. Thus, the peak and decline of International Reserves occurred right at the same time, the peak and decline of high oil prices. THIS IS NO COINCIDENCE.

Free markets still exist in name though…

• “Developed Countries’ Currencies Solely Driven By Politics” (CNBC)

The G10 currency market is driven solely by political events, one strategist told CNBC Friday. Dominic Bunning, FX Strategist at HSBC said that whereas a range of events had impacted the performance of G10 currency pairs, now it is only politics. “In G10, everything is driven by politics. We used to think about economics and cyclical stories and structural stories and balance of payments etc but now all we care about is politics,” Bunning said. He explained that if you have a strong political view then you make trading decisions on the basis of that. “If you think the euro zone is going to break up then by all means sell the euro,” Bunning said, while warning that he doesn’t have a strong view on euro.

On sterling however, Bunning said the weakness is likely to continue. “We still think there is a strong weakness in sterling even though it is relatively lower because the political outlook in the UK is very challenging.” The G10 currencies are the U.S. dollar, the euro, the pound, the yen, the Swedish krona, the Norwegian krone, the Australian dollar, the New Zealand dollar, the Swiss franc and the Canadian dollar. A number of these currencies have seen a lot of volatility since the start of the year owing to political uncertainties in their respective countries or on a global level. The biggest events this year have been the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union and the U.S. presidential elections.

While sterling is down more than 16% since the Brexit vote on June 23, the euro has been on its worst losing streak since the currency arrived in 1999. The dollar, meanwhile, has been seeing some strength, rising to a 14-year high against a basket of currencies on the growing perception that the economic policies of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will push up consumer prices. While traders are growing more bullish on the dollar, HSBC’s Bunning warned that it is not great for emerging market currencies. “You need to be selective in terms of your currency choices. I don’t think it’s a dollar bull run against everything but I do think if you look at the outlook for emerging market currencies, particularly the high-yield currencies at the moment, it is very hard to have a positive currency view.”

Plenty of lofty ideals and ideas out there, but UBI, if it does at all, will happen only out of necessity.

• How A Universal Basic Income Would Transform Society (Agnos)

No child’s dream is to make lots of money. We certainly aren’t born with any innate need for money itself. But at some point in our lives, we are introduced to money and the need to earn it. For many, it comes at a time when we are just beginning to learn about the world and what excites us. We start to open the doors to all of life’s possibilities, when the adult in the room says, “It’s really nice that you want to feed people in need, but what are you going to do to earn a living?” “You mean I can’t actually do what I really want to do?” we wonder. With a universal basic income (UBI) – where the government replaces all other forms of monetary assistance with a yearly stipend given to every adult of say, $20,000 per year – this would all change.

For the first time in human history, people would be able to make their childhood wishes a reality, instead of being forced to work in jobs they are aren’t passionate about just to survive. Today, humanity has the ability to create a world of sustainable abundance where everyone has access to everything they need and much of what they desire. But this requires a shift in long held societal views. Changing the view that money is a reward for hard work and private property is an extension of the self will be difficult. A shift in mindset is needed to see everyone as inherently worthy, rather than in terms of their ability to produce. For this reason, it is important to understand the philosophical justification for a UBI, as it reveals some of the deep underlying flaws of our capitalistic economy and the way it views human nature. Given these flaws, how we fund a UBI will go a long way toward the effectiveness of the shift in mindset from an age of ownership to an age of access.

Let us stop and imagine what we might do if we no longer had to work in order to meet our basic needs. Presently, we are all burdened with the stress that comes with knowing that failure to earn a living could result in social isolation. Imagine the psychological shift in knowing that no matter what happened, you would always have a roof over your head and food to eat without having to give away your precious time and energy. How would not having to work to survive change your day to day life? What would you do instead? A UBI has the potential to unleash unimaginable amounts of human time, energy, creativity, and passion that has the potential to radically transform society. Instead of everyone working to survive, people would have the means to pursue their own dreams, and to spend more quality time with their family, friends, and community.

The Heart of Darkness.

• End London’s Role as a Clearing-House for Dirty Money (G.)

The National Crime Agency says up to £90bn is laundered through the UK each year, while an estimated £120bn worth of UK property is owned by offshore shell companies. Some 75% of properties whose owners are under investigation for corruption made use of offshore corporate secrecy to hide their identities. And according to the director of the National Crime Agency, “the London property market has been skewed by laundered money. Prices are being artificially driven up by overseas criminals who want to sequester their assets here in the UK.” Those assets are far too often being extracted from developing nations desperately in need of tax revenues. A century on from Heart of Darkness, the Democratic Republic of the Congo still ranks near the bottom of the UN Human Development Index, with one in seven children dead before the age of five.

And, as in Conrad’s time, London’s imperial connections are helping to facilitate the exploitation of this asset-rich nation. Diamond and mineral wealth is being extracted by political elites, funnelled via London to old remnants of empire in the overseas territories, then repatriated via Kensington townhouses back to the UK. Our financial, accountancy and property agents are the beneficiaries, the people of the DRC and househunters of London the losers. [..] We are told that much of London’s success is because of its unimpeachable legal system and absence of corruption. But that is no good if, under the banner of the rule of law, we are also aiding and abetting exploitation. In Surrey mansions and Mayfair sit the lost wealth, the never-built hospitals and unopened schools of too many developing nations.

“.. the only way to deal with Brexit is hard Brexit. Otherwise we would be seen to be giving in to a country that is leaving. That would be fatal.”

• Europe’s Leaders To Force Britain Into Hard Brexit (O.)

European leaders have come to a 27-nation consensus that a “hard Brexit” is likely to be the only way to see off future populist insurgencies, which could lead to the break-up of the European Union. The hardening line in EU capitals comes as Nigel Farage warns European leaders that Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National, could deliver a political sensation bigger than Brexit and win France’s presidential election next spring – a result that would mean it was “game over” for 60 years of EU integration. According to senior officials at the highest levels of European governments, allowing Britain favourable terms of exit could represent an existential danger to the EU, since it would encourage similar demands from other countries with significant Eurosceptic movements.

One top EU diplomat told the Observer: “If you British are not prepared to compromise on free movement, the only way to deal with Brexit is hard Brexit. Otherwise we would be seen to be giving in to a country that is leaving. That would be fatal.” The latest intervention by Farage will only serve to fuel fears in Europe that anti-EU movements have acquired a dangerous momentum in countries such as France and the Netherlands, following the precedent set by the Brexit vote. Ukip’s interim leader, who predicted both the vote for Brexit and Donald Trump’s US victory, said that while Le Pen was still more likely to be runner-up to an establishment candidate next May, she now had to be taken seriously as a potential head of state. “She will clearly win through to the second round. And after what has happened elsewhere, only a fool would say she would have no chance of winning overall. France is a deeply, deeply unhappy country. If she were to win, it would be game over for the EU.”

“It’s a banking crisis, an economic crisis, a debt crisis, and a political crisis all rolled into one..”

• Italy’s Crisis Turns into a Multi-Headed Hydra (DQ)

Bank stocks have surged just about everywhere since Trump’s election, with one exception: Italy. In the last month only one large Italian bank has seen its shares rise, and that’s the 500-year old bank at the center of Italy’s banking crisis, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, whose nearly worthless shares jumped to €0.24. Shares of Italy’s other large banks have suffered heavy losses. Over the past week alone, shares of Italy’s largest bank, Unicredit, plunged 15%, as did the shares of Banca Popular and UBI Banca. Shares of Italy’s second largest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, fell just under 10%. The recent losses compound what’s been a miserable year for Italy’s banking stocks. The best performing stock is the investment bank Mediobanca, which is down a mere 24% for 2016. During the same period, Unicredit has shed over 60%, UBI Banca 65%, Banco Popolare 80%, and Monte dei Paschi 85%.

It’s not just banks’ shares that are flashing all the wrong signals. UniCredit’s five-year credit default swap surged to 221.2 basis points on Friday, meaning it now costs €221,200 to insure €10 million of UniCredit’s debt against default over five years. As with all major crises, Italy’s current predicament is a multi-headed hydra. It’s a banking crisis, an economic crisis, a debt crisis, and a political crisis all rolled into one, and all coming to a head at the same time. Italy’s economy has been in reverse ever since it joined the euro 17 years ago. Since 2007, its GDP has shrunk by a staggering 10%. In the meantime its public debt has continued to grow, reaching 135% of GDP today, the highest level of any Eurozone country with the exception of Greece. And now the yield on Italy’s 10-year bond is on the rise, hitting 2.09% on Friday in a NIRP world, its highest point in over 13 months.

If Renzi loses the referendum next month, how much longer can this can be kicked?

• Italian Banks ‘Not Necessarily Bankrupt’ But Awfully Close (NYT)

Victor Massiah has grown weary of talk that the Italian banking system is so threadbare and stuffed with terrible loans that it threatens Europe with another financial crisis. The mansion that serves as local headquarters for the bank he runs, UBI Banca, one of Italy’s largest lenders, does not feel like a place on the verge of running out of money. An inlaid marble fireplace sits in a conference room beneath wooden beams worthy of a castle. A statue of the Greek goddess Athena stands triumphantly over a staircase. “As you can see,” he says, sweeping a hand across the scene, “we’re not necessarily bankrupt.” Among policy makers alert for signs of the next financial disaster, Italy’s mountain of uncollectable bank debt is a subject discussed in tones ordinarily reserved for piles of plutonium.

Its banks seem at once too big to fail and eminently capable of doing so, menacing the global economy. For years, Italian lenders have muddled through, hoping time would cure their afflictions. But Italy’s economy has been terminally weak, not growing at all over a recent 13-year stretch. Bad loans have festered. Good loans have deteriorated. Italy’s problems are Europe’s problems. Nearly one-fifth of all loans in the Italian banking system are classified as troubled, a toll worth €360 billion, at the end of last year, according to the International Monetary Fund. That represents roughly 40% of all the bad loans within the countries sharing the euro. In recent weeks, the world’s focus has shifted to Germany’s largest lender, Deutsche Bank, on fears that it could be forced to seek a rescue.

But if Deutsche has become the crisis of the moment, Italy is the perpetual threat that could, at any moment, present the world with an unpleasant surprise potent enough to send legions of officials descending on Rome to try to contain the damage. The Italian government has sought to spend more money to spur the economy. But European leaders, led by Germany, have enforced rules limiting budget deficits. And Italian banks have held tight to cash and are reluctant to lend, starving an already anemic economy of capital. All of which leaves Italy and Europe, and to some extent the global economy, with a formidable conundrum. Europe may never regain economic vigor so long as Italy’s banks are a slow-motion emergency. But Italy’s banks cannot get healthy without growth. And Italy’s economy can’t grow without healthy banks.

One of the few thinking men left in Europe.

• > ‘Political Amateurs Are Conquering The World’ – Beppe Grillo (EN)

euronews “Beppe Grillo, our meeting takes place at a time that, without undue exaggeration, can be labelled ‘historic’. That’s to say, the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States. What’s your take on that?” Beppe Grillo, Leader of the Five Star Movement “It’s an extraordinary turning point. This corn cob – we can also call Trump that in a nice way – doesn’t have particularly outstanding qualities. He was such a target for the media, with such terrifying accusations of sexism and racism, as well as being harassed by the establishment – such as the New York Times – but, in the end, he won. “That is a symbol of the tragedy and the apocalypse of traditional information. The television and newspapers are always late and they relay old information.

They no longer anticipate anything and they’re only just understanding that idiots, the disadvantaged, those who are marginalised – and there are millions of them – use alternative media, such as the Internet, which passes under the radar of television, a medium people no longer use. “With Trump, exactly the same thing has happened as with my Five Star Movement, which was born of the Internet: the media were taken aback and asked us where we were before. We gathered millions of people in public squares and they marvelled. We became the biggest movement in Italy and journalists and philosophers continued to say that we were benefitting from people’s dissatisfaction. We’ll get into government and they’ll ask themselves how we did it.”

euronews “There is a gap between giving populist speeches and governing a nation.” Beppe Grillo “We want to govern, but we don’t want to simply change the power by replacing it with our own. We want a change within civilisation, a change of world vision. “We’re talking about dematerialised industry, an end to working for money, the start of working for other payment, a universal citizens revenue. If our society is founded on work, what will happen if work disappears? What will we do with millions of people in flux? We have to organise and manage all that.”

euronews “Do you think appealing to people’s emotions is enough to get elected? Is that a political project?” Beppe Grillo “This information never ceases to make the rounds: you don’t have a political project, you’re not capable, you’re imbeciles, amateurs… “And yet, the amateurs are the ones conquering the world and I’m rejoicing in it because the professionals are the ones who have reduced the world to this state. Hillary Clinton, Obama and all the rest have destroyed democracy and their international policies. “If that’s the case, it signifies that the experts, economists and intellectuals have completely misunderstood everything, especially if the situation is the way it is. If the EU is what we have today, it means the European dream has evaporated. Brexit and Trump are signs of a huge change. If we manage to understand that, we’ll also get to face it.”

Europe’s MO. Keep squeezing.

• Bruegel Institute Chief: 4th Bailout Seems Inevitable for Greece (GR)

Bruegel Institute Chief Zsolt Darvas said that there are two possible solutions for Greece’s debt problems following 2018. One is huge debt restructuring or a fourth bailout program for the country. Speaking with Greek daily Ta Nea, the Hungarian economist said that even if Greece has the expected development for 2017-2018, debt will still be at a high rate. He does not believe that Greece will be able to borrow from the markets at a reasonable rate under the current circumstances. Darvas expects to see some form of debt restructuring within a time framework to bond maturation, along with a lowering or freezing of interest rates. He said that this per se may still not be enough for Greece to avoid a fourth bailout program.

Regarding investments, Darvas said that the height of Greece’s debt is not helping draw investors. Another problem is the excessive bureaucracy. The OECD indexes also show Greece’s weaknesses. When asked about U.S. President Barack Obama’s support for debt relief for Greece, Darvas said that he fears that Obama cannot influence European decisions regarding Greece. In the past, there were no results when he or other members of the government called for debt relief. He considers this unlikely to change. He does not believe that there will be any decision regarding debt relief until after the German elections.

Every country, every society, should make protection of basic needs their number one priority. They are indeed ‘not a market commodity’.

• Slovenia Adds Water To Constitution As Fundamental Right For All (AFP)

Slovenia has amended its constitution to make access to drinkable water a fundamental right for all citizens and stop it being commercialised. With 64 votes in favour and none against, the 90-seat parliament added an article to the EU country’s constitution saying “everyone has the right to drinkable water”. The centre-right opposition Slovenian Democratic party (SDS) abstained from the vote saying the amendment was not necessary and only aimed at increasing public support. Slovenia is a mountainous, water-rich country with more than half its territory covered by forest.

“Water resources represent a public good that is managed by the state. Water resources are primary and durably used to supply citizens with potable water and households with water and, in this sense, are not a market commodity,” the article reads. The centre-left prime minister, Miro Cerar, had urged lawmakers to pass the bill saying the country of two million people should “protect water – the 21st century’s liquid gold – at the highest legal level”. “Slovenian water has very good quality and, because of its value, in the future it will certainly be the target of foreign countries and international corporations’ appetites. “As it will gradually become a more valuable commodity in the future, pressure over it will increase and we must not give in,” Cerar said.

Only Greece and Italy need worry about this now. The rest can sit pretty. It’ll cost them the EU though.

• EU Ministers At Odds Over Immigration, No Compromise In Sight (R.)

European Union interior ministers were at odds on Friday over how to handle immigration, with heated discussions between states who want more burden sharing and those who oppose any kind of obligatory relocation. “We are looking for compromises but at the moment they are not there,” said Thomas De Maiziere of Germany, which last year took in about 900,000 migrants and refugees. The ministers disagreed over a proposal by the EU’s current chair Slovakia on reforming the bloc’s asylum system, which collapsed last year as 1.3 million refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa reached Europe and member states quarrelled over how to handle the influx.

Overall, the arrivals have decreased from last year but they continue unabated in Italy and tens of thousands of people are still stuck in Greece and Italy, sometimes in dire conditions. Despite agreeing last year to relocate 160,000 people from Italy and Greece, eastern European countries, including Slovakia, Poland and Hungary, have refused to take any in. “We cannot pretend that the quotas as we know them now are working,” said Robert Kalinak of Slovakia. “The 160,000 is only a very small part of the million that came to Europe last year and we only relocated less than 10,000 people. Even those who were for this system were not successful. We want to come up with a system that would be effective.”

The mess below the surface.

• Pentagon and Intelligence Chiefs Urge Obama To Remove NSA Chief (WaPo)

The heads of the Pentagon and the nation’s intelligence community have recommended to President Obama that the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, be removed. The recommendation, delivered to the White House last month, was made by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., according to several U.S. officials familiar with the matter. Action has been delayed, some administration officials said, because relieving Rogers of his duties is tied to another controversial recommendation: to create separate chains of command at the NSA and the military’s cyberwarfare unit, a recommendation by Clapper and Carter that has been stalled because of other issues.

The news comes as Rogers is being considered by President-elect Donald Trump to be his nominee for director of national intelligence to replace Clapper as the official who oversees all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies. In a move apparently unprecedented for a military officer, Rogers, without notifying superiors, traveled to New York to meet with Trump on Thursday at Trump Tower. That caused consternation at senior levels of the administration, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel matters. [..] Carter has concerns with Rogers’s performance, officials said. The driving force for Clapper, meanwhile, was the separation of leadership roles at the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, and his stance that the NSA should be headed by a civilian.

[..] Rogers, 57, took the helm of the NSA and Cyber Command in April 2014 in the wake of revelations by a former intelligence contractor of broad surveillance activities that shook public confidence in the agency. The contractor, Edward Snowden, had secretly downloaded vast amounts of digital documents that he shared with a handful of journalists. His disclosures prompted debate over the proper scale of surveillance and led to some reforms. But they also were a black eye for an agency that prides itself on having the most skilled hackers and cybersecurity professionals in government. Rogers was charged with making sure another insider breach never happened again. Instead, in the past year and a half, officials have discovered two major compromises of sensitive hacking tools by personnel working at the NSA’s premier hacking unit: the Tailored Access Operations. One involved a Booz Allen Hamilton contractor, Harold T. Martin III, who is accused of carrying out the largest theft of classified government material.

Even if he would pardon Snowden, Manning, Assange, what would their lives look like?

• Obama Claims He Cannot Pardon Snowden but He Knows That’s Not True (TD)

In a big interview with the German media outlet Der Spiegel, President Obama was asked about his interest in pardoning Ed Snowden in response to the big campaign to get him pardoned. Obama’s response was that he could not, since Snowden has not been convicted yet: ARD/SPIEGEL : Are you going to pardon Edward Snowden? Obama:” I can’t pardon somebody who hasn’t gone before a court and presented themselves, so that’s not something that I would comment on at this point. I think that Mr. Snowden raised some legitimate concerns. How he did it was something that did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community. If everybody took the approach that I make my own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system.

At the point at which Mr. Snowden wants to present himself before the legal authorities and make his arguments or have his lawyers make his arguments, then I think those issues come into play. Until that time, what I’ve tried to suggest – both to the American people, but also to the world – is that we do have to balance this issue of privacy and security. Those who pretend that there’s no balance that has to be struck and think we can take a 100-percent absolutist approach to protecting privacy don’t recognize that governments are going to be under an enormous burden to prevent the kinds of terrorist acts that not only harm individuals, but also can distort our society and our politics in very dangerous ways. And those who think that security is the only thing and don’t care about privacy also have it wrong.”

This is simply incorrect – as is known to anyone who remembers the fact that Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon before he had been indicted. And it appears that the President knows this. Because, as the Pardon Snowden campaign points out, Obama pardoned three Iranian Americans who had not yet stood trial. That happened this year. So for him to say it’s impossible to pardon someone who hasn’t gone before the court is simply, factually, historically wrong. And there’s a Supreme Court ruling that makes this abundantly clear. 150 years ago, in the ruling on Ex Parte Garland, the Supreme Court stated: “The power of pardon conferred by the Constitution upon the President is unlimited except in cases of impeachment. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment. The power is not subject to legislative control.”

‘Old’ media write their own death warrant.

• The Real Fake News List (Liberty Report)

We’ve seen the make-shift “fake news” list created by a leftist feminist professor. Well, another fake news list has been revealed and this one holds a lot more water. This list contains the culprits who told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and lied us into multiple bogus wars. These are the news sources that told us “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” They told us that Hillary Clinton had a 98% chance of winning the election. They tell us in a never-ending loop that “The economy is in great shape!” This is the real Fake News List (and it’s sourced):

Debt Rattle August 30 2016

Aug 302016

August 30, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:19 am Finance Tagged with: Apple, Banks, bubble, Dotcom, food bank, Greece, jobless, oil, refugees, water, wealth 3 Responses »

Wynand Stanley Ice-packed Buick motor stunt, San Francisco 1922

• Banks Get Ready For ‘Economic Nuclear Winter’ (CNBC)

• The “Devastating” Truth Behind America’s Record Household Net Worth (ZH)

• We Have Passed The Peak Of The Bubble (Maloney)

• Oil Discoveries at 70-Year Low (BBG)

• House Price Gloom In Canada A Lesson For Australia (AFR)

• Unemployed Italians Lead Europe in Abandoning Job Hunt (BBG)

• Apple Facing Back Taxes Running Into Billions Over Ireland Deal (G.)

• Life After Community Death: A Food Bank (G.)

• Judge: Kim Dotcom Can Livestream Legal Fight Against The US (AP)

• 60% Of South Asia’s Groundwater Too Contaminated To Use (AFP)

• China Regulator To Curb News That Promotes ‘Western Lifestyles’ (R.)

• EU Seeks To Protect Greek Statistics Office From Its Own Government (BBG)

• Greek GDP Contraction In First Half 2016 Was Worse Than Thought (Kath.)

• Turkey Warns Refugee Deal To Collapse Unless EU Grants Visa-Free Travel (Kath.)

• 6,500 Migrants Rescued Off Libya Coast Overnight By Italian Coastguard (AFP)

Beautiful Brexit as the bubble burster.

• Banks Get Ready For ‘Economic Nuclear Winter’ (CNBC)

The first half of 2016 has been a roller-coaster for financial markets. A combination of uncertainties surrounding the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union and weaker-than-expected corporate earnings results across the region means a tough second half looms. European banks, in particular, have had a very tough six months as the shock and volatility around Brexit sent banking stocks south. Major European banks like Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse saw their shares in free-fall after the referendum’s results were announced. In the U.K., RBS was the worst-hit, with its shares plunging by more than 30% since June 24. The current uncertainty over when the U.K. will start the process of quitting the EU has banks on tenterhooks. But a source told CNBC that banks are “preparing for an economic nuclear winter situation.”

Speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the topic, a source from a major investment bank told CNBC that financial services firms have put together a strategy in place that takes into account the worst-case scenario that could happen by the end of this year. “This could mean triggering Article 50, referendum in other European nations leading to a break-up of the euro or sterling hitting below $1.20 or lower. The banks are ready for anything now,” the source said. The source further explained that the challenge in 2016 is nothing compared to when the Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 and the banking sector is this time a lot more resilient. “Markets hate uncertainty and the events this year have unfortunately created a lot of mystery around what is going to happen next.”

It’s all a bubble.

• The “Devastating” Truth Behind America’s Record Household Net Worth (ZH)

Every quarter, as part of its Flows of Funds statement, the Fed releases a detailed breakdown of America’s assets and liabilities, of which the most interesting section is the one dealing with US household wealth and debt, and most importantly, their net worth. The last such release in June showed that as of March 31, total US household assets rose decidedly above $100 trillion, hitting an all time high $102.6 trillion, offset by $14.5 trillion in liabilities, resulting in $88.1 trillion in household net worth. It is worth noting that of this $100+ trillion in assets, 69% was in the form of financial assets (stocks, mutual funds, pensions, deposits, etc), and only $31.5 trillion was real, tangible assets including $26 trillion worth of real estate.

[..] as Pedro da Costa points out, when one looks beneath the surface, a “devastating” picture emerges: US inequality like no-one has seen it before. To help with this peek behind the scenes, we look at the latest, just released CBO report on Trends in Family Wealth, which shows that far from equitable, US wealth has never been so skewed. The picture in question:

Here are the CBO report’s summary findings: In 2013, aggregate family wealth in the United States was $67 trillion (or about four times the nation’s gross domestic product) and the median family (the one at the midpoint of the wealth distribution) held approximately $81,000, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. For this analysis, CBO calculated that measure of wealth as a family’s assets minus its debt. CBO measured wealth as marketable wealth, which consists of assets that are easily tradable and that have value even after the death of their owner. Those assets include home equity, other real estate (net of real estate loans), financial securities, bank deposits, defined contribution pension accounts, and business equity. Debt is nonmortgage debt, including credit card debt, auto loans, and student loans, for example.

But to get to the stunning punchline, one has to read The section on How Is the Nation’s Wealth Distributed? Here is the answer: In 2013, families in the top 10% of the wealth distribution held 76% of all family wealth, families in the 51st to the 90th percentiles held 23%, and those in the bottom half of the distribution held 1%. Average wealth was about $4 million for families in the top 10% of the wealth distribution, $316,000 for families in the 51st to 90th percentiles, and $36,000 for families in the 26th to 50th percentiles. On average, families at or below the 25th percentile were $13,000 in debt.

“These people are just absolutely dangerous. They are going to drag the entire world economy down.”

• We Have Passed The Peak Of The Bubble (Maloney)

What the central banks are doing has never worked and they keep on trying – you just hit that nail a little bit harder each time because it isn’t working. They have these theories and they think that the theory is correct that this – and no matter what the results are they say well, we just didn’t do enough of it. Japan has been trying this for 30 years now and it hasn’t worked. These people are just absolutely dangerous. They are going to drag the entire world economy down. You talked about the helicopter money that is now happening in Europe and so on. That is going to be coming to the United States soon. Coming to a Central Bank near you. It always has damaging results. They don’t look at this. It is a huge wealth transfer.

The immorality of an entity and everywhere I go I take a look at – when I would go speak in Singapore or Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Colombia, Peru doesn’t matter – Russia – everywhere I go I take a look, I go on the websites of the central bank for that country and I start gathering information. I haven’t found a central bank that is part of the government. They are all private. Here is a private entity that is allowed to create currency and now they are buying bonds from corporations? They can buy stocks. When they write a check and they buy something, currency is created and it enters circulation. A very large portion of it is Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac stuff. It is the mortgage backed securities. And so that means that they own real estate. This private corporation is able to counterfeit and purchase real estate legally. The morality of this is insane.

Keynesian economics isn’t even remotely plausible. But it’s what is taught all over the world. They don’t understand fundamental economics. This is the problem that we have: all economies on the planet are being run by economists that don’t understand economics. The purchasing power that is contained in currency is basically the agreement that we have as a society that we are all going to use that currency and we trust that currency and we store hours of our lives. We trade hours of our lives for currency. We work. That is the purchasing power. Then that currency measures the goods and services in a society. The true wealth.

They think that they can actually print wealth. When they print new units of currency, the only way it can get purchasing power is the moment that it is spent in the circulation – it has to steal it from somewhere else because it is empty when it comes into existence. There is no work that went into it. There are no hours of life traded for it. There is no product or service that it represents until it is spent in circulation and then it steals that purchasing power from all other units of currency. It is fraud. It is theft. They can’t actually stimulate an economy. All they can do is warp it. They can steal purchasing power from some areas of the economy and transfer it to another area of the economy pushing that area into a bubble. It is very, very disruptive.

“EIA estimates that global oil demand will grow from 94.8 million barrels a day this year to 105.3 million barrels in 2026. “ I do not.

• Oil Discoveries at 70-Year Low (BBG)

Explorers in 2015 discovered only about a tenth as much oil as they have annually on average since 1960. This year, they’ll probably find even less, spurring new fears about their ability to meet future demand. With oil prices down by more than half since the price collapse two years ago, drillers have cut their exploration budgets to the bone. The result: Just 2.7 billion barrels of new supply was discovered in 2015, the smallest amount since 1947, according to figures from consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. This year, drillers found just 736 million barrels of conventional crude as of the end of last month. That’s a concern for the industry at a time when the U.S. EIA estimates that global oil demand will grow from 94.8 million barrels a day this year to 105.3 million barrels in 2026.

While the U.S. shale boom could potentially make up the difference, prices locked in below $50 a barrel have undercut any substantial growth there. New discoveries from conventional drilling, meanwhile, are “at rock bottom,” said Nils-Henrik Bjurstroem at Oslo-based consultant Rystad Energy. “There will definitely be a strong impact on oil and gas supply, and especially oil.” Global inventories have been buoyed by full-throttle output from Russia and OPEC. They’ve flooded the world with oil despite depressed prices as they defend market share. But years of under-investment will be felt as soon as 2025, Bjurstroem said. Producers will replace little more than one in 20 of the barrels consumed this year, he said.

We rapidly get used to seeing bubbles as new normal.

• House Price Gloom In Canada A Lesson For Australia (AFR)

A commodity economy with record-breaking property prices, fuelled by ultra-low interest rates and Chinese buyers, raises taxes on foreign homebuyers. While the scenario is eerily similar to Australia, it is actually Canada and early signs are the property market is rapidly cooling. The unravelling could offer insight for Australians contemplating the state of the expensive local real estate market. A record one in five Canadians expect house prices to fall. The number of property price pessimists has nearly doubled since a 15% foreign buyer tax on Vancouver homes took effect on August 2. In the first two weeks since the tax came into effect, home sales fell 51% in the metropolitan area, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver said.

Nanos Research chairman Nik Nanos told The Australian Financial Review that real estate was the “canary in the mine” for the Canadian economy and the foreign acquirer tax has had an immediate “chill” effect on confidence. “If we see a significant slide in confidence in real estate there will be an immediate negative knock-on effect on the Canadian economy because right now there is no energy [oil] economy to fall back on,” he said. The price of Canada’s biggest export, oil, has crashed over the past two years, much like iron ore and coal prices in Australia. Like Sydney and Melbourne, real estate prices in Canada’s most-liveable cities have surged in recent years.

A combination of low borrowing costs, strong demand, limited housing supply because of red tape and, anecdotally, foreign buyers mainly from China seeking to park their money in perceived safe havens offshore, pushed up values. Vancouver house prices soared 30% in the year ended May 31, and prices shot up 15% in Canada’s biggest city of Toronto. The median price for detached houses in Vancouver jumped to $C1.6 million.

And you think this Union can stay together?

• Unemployed Italians Lead Europe in Abandoning Job Hunt (BBG)

Going from the final quarter of 2015 through March of this year, 37% of unemployed Italians gave up their job search, while only 13% landed new work and a full half found their status unchanged. On the opposite end of the scale, very few Greeks – just 1% – gave up their job hunt while only 4% found new employment in the economically hard-pressed nation.

Deductible from its US taxes.

• Apple Facing Back Taxes Running Into Billions Over Ireland Deal (G.)

Apple could face back taxes running into billions with the European commission expected to rule against the company on Tuesday over its arrangements with the Irish government. A ruling by Margrethe Vestager, the European competition commissioner, could make Apple liable for billions of euros. Irish officials expect the commission to declare the arrangements unlawful under state aid rules. A decision against Apple and Ireland after a two-year investigation would rebuff US efforts to persuade the commission to drop its interest amid warnings about retaliation from Washington. The commission has been investigating whether Apple’s tax deals with Ireland, which have allowed the company to pay very little tax on income earned throughout Europe, amounted to state aid.

The commission opened a formal inquiry in September 2014 after publishing preliminary findings suggesting deals between Apple and Ireland in 1991 and 2007 involved state aid that was incompatible with the EU’s internal market. Apple and Ireland have denied repeatedly that they have a special deal. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has called the investigation “political crap” and said his company and Ireland would appeal against a ruling that Apple received state aid. The investment bank JP Morgan has warned that if the commission requires Apple to retroactively pay the Irish corporate tax rate of 12.5% on the pre-tax profits it collected via Ireland it could cost the company as much as $19bn.

Of course I can’t read a story like this about a food bank in Britain without thinking about the project you and I are supporting in Greece -all over Greece. Where conditions are much worse still. I hope the Brits who read this realize that.

• Life After Community Death: A Food Bank (G.)

I never expected to leave a food bank feeling optimistic. To visit a kitchen serving hundreds of free summer-holiday meals to kids who might otherwise go hungry – and come away pondering the lessons Westminster, and especially Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, should learn. But then, until last week, I hadn’t met the two women who run the Neo cafe. To understand what an achievement Neo is, you have to see what it’s up against. There’s the area, for a start: Birkenhead, now practically a byword for social deprivation. In parts of this town the life expectancy for baby boys is lower than in North Korea. Since the Brexit vote there’s been a boom in hand-waving commentary on “left-behind” Britain.

The columnists and studio guests should come here for a day, and see what their talking points look like as lived experience. Industrial decline? The once great shipbuilder Cammell Laird still clings on, but many of the other big employers have been wiped out. Insecure work? The usual features of an exploitative jobs market are all present, from zero-hours contracts and temp agencies to, most of all, low wages. And of course austerity, from benefit sanctions to multimillion pound cuts at Wirral council. Impose such conditions on a family and you create misery. Push them across an entire community and you get breakdown.

Widespread economic insecurity produces social instability. Relationships fail. Colin, a twentysomething on temp work, describes how his partner had to move out because “I couldn’t make my pay packet feed two”. Stop-start work makes planning budgets hard enough – it makes planning families impossible. Neighbours move in then move out, so you never know who’s living next door – and you’d all rather leave. One grandmother, Wendy, remembers how she cried on being offered a council house in Rock Ferry, the patch of town that’s home to Neo. Then Anne and Trish chip in with other problems: druggies and no-go areas, so that a kid from this estate can’t go to that one. Here, the horizons have shrunk so far that the neighbourhood can seem like a trap.

Good. Let’s hear it.

• Judge: Kim Dotcom Can Livestream Legal Fight Against The US (AP)

Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom will be allowed to livestream his legal bid to halt his extradition to the United States, a New Zealand judge ruled Tuesday. Dotcom and three of his colleagues are appealing a December lower-court decision which allows them to be extradited to the U.S. to face conspiracy, racketeering and money-laundering charges. If found guilty, they could face decades in jail. Dotcom’s lawyer Ira Rothken told AP he was pleased with the decision. “It provides everybody in the world with a seat in the gallery of the New Zealand courtroom,” Rothken said. “It’s democracy at its finest.” Rothken said the livestreaming would begin Wednesday on YouTube. He said there would be a 20-minute delay to prevent any evidence that was protected by the court from becoming public. The appeal is expected to last six weeks.

Justice Murray Gilbert, the New Zealand judge hearing the appeal, had asked other media about Dotcom’s request and didn’t receive any objections. Rothken said the U.S. had opposed the plan on the basis it could taint a potential jury pool and could cede court control over evidence. December’s lower-court ruling came nearly four years after the U.S. shut down Dotcom’s file-sharing site Megaupload, which prosecutors say was widely used by people to illegally download songs, television shows and movies. Megaupload was once one of the internet’s most popular sites. Prosecutors say it raked in at least $175 million and cost copyright holders more than $500 million. But Dotcom and colleagues Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato argue they can’t be held responsible for people who chose to use the site for illegal purposes.

Rothken said the lower-court judge made an error of law in his ruling, and that broad safe-harbor provisions protect internet service providers from the types of charges his clients face.

750 million people. Add China’s polluted water, and you get well over a billion.

• 60% Of South Asia’s Groundwater Too Contaminated To Use (AFP)

60% of the groundwater in a river basin supporting more than 750 million people in Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh is not drinkable or usable for irrigation, researchers have said. The biggest threat to groundwater in the Indo-Gangetic Basin, named after the Indus and Ganges rivers, is not depletion but contamination, they reported in the journal Nature Geoscience. “The two main concerns are salinity and arsenic,” the authors of the study wrote. Up to a depth of 200m (650ft), some 23% of the groundwater stored in the basin is too salty, and about 37% “is affected by arsenic at toxic concentrations”, they said.

The Indo-Gangetic basin accounts for about a quarter of the global extraction of groundwater – freshwater which is stored underground in crevices and spaces in soil or rock, fed by rivers and rainfall. Fifteen to twenty million wells extract water from the basin every year amid growing concerns about depletion. The new study – based on local records of groundwater levels and quality from 2000 to 2012 – found that the water table was in fact stable or rising across about 70% of the aquifer. It was found to be falling in the other 30%, mainly near highly populated areas.

Xi trying to assert power he doesn’t have.

• China Regulator To Curb News That Promotes ‘Western Lifestyles’ (R.)

China will crack down on social and entertainment news that promotes improper values and “Western lifestyles”, the country’s broadcasting regulator said, the latest effort at censorship in an already strictly regulated media environment. President Xi Jinping has embarked on an unprecedented drive to censor media that do not reflect the views of Communist Party leaders. Authorities have already issued rules limiting “foreign-inspired” television shows and put tougher penalties on the spread of rumors via social media. Social and entertainment news must be dominated by mainstream ideologies and “positive energy”, the official Xinhua news agency said late on Monday, citing the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT).

News content should not make improper jokes, defile classics, or “express overt admiration for Western lifestyles”, the regulator said in a circular, according to Xinhua. “They should also avoid putting stars, billionaires or Internet celebrities on pedestals”, and not advocate overnight fame or hype family disputes, Xinhua said. China’s legislature this week is also reviewing a draft law that would require film industry workers to maintain excellent “moral integrity”, after recent cases in which celebrities had been arrested for drug offences and prostitution, Xinhua said in a separate report. Xi has been explicit that media must follow the party line, uphold the correct guidance on public opinion and promote “positive propaganda”. The term “positive energy” is a catch phrase that has been favored by China’s propaganda and internet authorities under Xi, referring to content that is morally uplifting and patriotic.

A curious case of Brussels intervention. There’s nary a soul in Greece who doubts that Georgiou greatly exaggerated the Greek budget deficit in 2009 in order to make an EU bailout inevitable. Now the EU wants to label Greece’s scrutiny of this as “political interference in administrative matters”. But matters such as these can be investigated in simple ways: an objective look at the numbers. That’s not politics, but accounting. Thing is, if Georgiou did this, it was in collusion with the EU.

• EU Seeks To Protect Greek Statistics Office From Its Own Government (BBG)

Greece’s finance chief said the next international aid payout to the country may be delayed as the European Union stepped up warnings about domestic political meddling in the Greek state. Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos raised the possibility of the government in Athens failing to qualify on time for a €2.8 billion disbursement due in September from the euro area. That’s what remains of a €10.3 billion tranche that finance ministers approved in principle three months ago. “If there is a delay, it’ll be days not weeks,” Tsakalotos told Bloomberg News in Brussels on Monday before a meeting with EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici. “Part of the reason for the meeting is to discuss the process to ensure there aren’t delays.”

Slipping timetables have been a regular feature of loan payouts to Greece since it first turned to the euro area and the IMF for a rescue in 2010. Now in it’s third bailout, the country faces continued creditor warnings about backsliding on overhauls that are a condition for aid. The European Commission sent the latest salvo to Athens, saying on Monday that criticism of the former head of Greece’s statistical agency by allies of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras risks undermining the credibility of Greek fiscal data. The commission, the EU’s executive arm, said the Greek government must push ahead under its aid program with commitments to curb political interference in administrative matters.

“The commission has long urged the implementation of the pillar of the program related to the modernization of the Greek state and public administration,” Margaritis Schinas, chief spokesman at the 28-nation body, told reporters in Brussels. “This also includes the need to depoliticize the Greek administration.” The political controversy centers on Andreas Georgiou, who faces felony charges in Greece for reporting a 2009 budget deficit that was more than five times the EU limit and that unleashed the euro-area debt crisis. The EU has vouched for data submitted by the Hellenic Statistical Authority under Georgiou from 2010 to 2015 and validated by EU statistics office Eurostat.

Greek Minister of State Nikos Pappas, Tsipras’s closest aide, asked publicly in early August whether Georgiou inflated the spending gap to force the country into a rescue. Avgi, a newspaper affiliated with Tsipras’s anti-austerity Syriza party, labeled Georgiou an “executioner” in an Aug. 4 editorial.

And the Troika ensures it can only go downhill from here.

• Greek GDP Contraction In First Half 2016 Was Worse Than Thought (Kath.)

The contraction of the Greek economy in the first half of the year has turned out to be greater than originally estimated. The revised data released on Monday by the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) recorded a bigger drop in GDP on an annual basis, which will make it even more difficult for the government to meet the fiscal targets set for this year. Using previously unavailable data, ELSTAT has now calculated that first quarter GDP declined by 1% and not 0.8% year-on-year, while in the April-June period it fell by 0.9% and not 0.7% as originally thought.

That was the fourth consecutive quarter with a GDP contraction. Consumer spending fell 1.9% in the second quarter on an annual basis, exports of goods and services contracted 11.4% (with goods increasing 2.98% and exports dropping 26.5%), while imports declined 7.1%. Gross capital investments posted a 7% increase. On a quarterly basis, consumer expenditure dropped 0.2% from the first quarter, investment rose 1%, exports fell 1% and imports shrank 0.4%, ELSTAT data showed.

Any attempt at granting visa-free travel now would break up the EU.

• Turkey Warns Refugee Deal To Collapse Unless EU Grants Visa-Free Travel (Kath.)

In an interview with Kathimerini published on Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has warned the EU that if it doesn’t grant Turkish citizens via-free travel to Europe by October “at the latest,” then Ankara will not continue implementing a deal struck in March with Brussels to stem the flow of migrants to Europe. “Despite the fact that irregular migration in the Aegean is now under control, we do not see the EU keen on delivering its promises,” he said, insisting that Turkey cannot continue on its own to stop irregular migration toward the EU while the latter does not assume its obligations. “We expect visa liberalization for Turkish citizens at the latest in October 2016,” said Cavusoglu, who was on an unofficial visit to Crete yesterday and held talks with his Greek counterpart Nikos Kotzias, stressing the potential to further develop Greek-Turkish relations.

Visa liberalization was one of the conditions set by Turkey to sign up to the agreement, which was criticized by human rights groups, to stop the influx of migrant arrivals to Europe which reached more than a million last year. “We did our share in this cooperation… We have prevented new loss of lives and crushed migrant smuggling rings.” The EU missed a deadline late June for the granting of visa-free travel for Turks, saying it had not met all 72 pre-conditions set by Brussels to grant visa-fee travel. The EU also demanded Ankara review its anti-terrorism law. Ankara refused, saying it is critical in its fight against Islamic State and Kurdish militants.

Numbers are rising again. This will stop only when we stop bombing and squeezing these people.

• 6,500 Migrants Rescued Off Libya Coast Overnight By Italian Coastguard (AFP)

Around 6,500 migrants were rescued off the coast of Libya, the Italian coastguard said, in one of its busiest days of life-saving in recent years. Dramatic images of one operation showed about 700 migrants crammed onto a fishing boat, with some of them jumping off the vessel in life jackets and swimming towards rescuers. A five-day-old baby was among those rescued along with other infants and was airlifted to an Italian hospital, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which took part in operations.

“The command centre coordinated 40 rescue operations” that included vessels from Italy, humanitarian organisations as well as the EU’s border agency Frontex, saving 6,500 migrants, the coastguard wrote on Twitter. “We’ve been particularly busy today,” a spokesman for the Italian coastguard told AFP. On Sunday more than 1,100 migrants were rescued in the same area. The total number of arrivals in Italy this year now stands at 112,500, according to the UN’s refugee agency and the coastguard, slightly below the 116,000 recorded by the same point in 2015.

(Really) Alternative Banking Systems

Aug 212016

August 21, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 1:23 pm Finance Tagged with: cold, curtains, mould, Nelson Lebo, New Zealand, permaculture, stream banks, velocity, water 4 Responses »

Dorothea Lange Home of rural rehabilitation client, Tulare County, CA 1938

Our by now regular contributor Dr. Nelson Lebo III, the New Englander ‘lost’ in New Zealand, sent me another article, and it’s great (well, in my view). His title for the article may put some people on the wrong foot, but I think that’s alright.

I’ve been to New Zealand a few times, and Nicole of course has even moved there, so I was aware of how poorly constructed many homes are -and often made of wood-, but I’d never heard of ‘curtain banks’. Still, they exist all over the country. Turns out, lots of New Zealand homes are so damp and moldy that curtains can literally save lives, and certainly make them more comfortable/bearable. But many people are too poor to be able to afford curtains. Hence the curtain banks. I’d be curious to know if similar initiatives exist anywhere lese on the planet. Do let me know.

Nelson’s second ‘bank’ is made of/filled with water. Agriculture, in particular the one-trick pony of the dairy industry, has caused the land to deteriorate so badly that water washes off the hillsides and the land without natural barriers like trees and shrubs left to stop and naturally regulate it. In other words, there is no ‘water bank’ or ‘stream bank’ left. I really like Nelson’s comparing this velocity of water to the velocity of money in a financial system.

Dr. Nelson Lebo III: Banks…what is there to say that hasn’t already been said? If you read the Automatic Earth, if you watch Max Keiser, if you’ve followed The Crash Course, there is no comment about financial institutions I can make that would add to the critique. That’s not my gig anyway. My gig is to offer realistic, achievable, grass roots, no-excuses alternatives to the dominant neoliberal consumerist paradigm. One approach I’ve gravitated toward over the years goes by the name of permaculture.

Permaculture has been around for decades. You’ve probably heard of it but do you know what it is? Yeah, that’s the problem. My observations are that the eco design methodology known as permaculture suffers in two fundamental ways: a confusing name and dogmatic application by inexperienced converts. The name is the name – no changing it at this point – and there is no antidote for dogma. But for a general audience of readers I’d like to lay out the ethics and practice of permaculture in the clearest ways possible – by using concrete examples.

Example One: The Permaculture Ethics

When engaging with permaculture as a design methodology, practitioners are bound to follow a simple code of ethics: care for the environment; care for people; and, share surplus resources. I appreciate this ethical code because it helps distinguish a permaculturist from anyone else who may be involved in some aspect of the ‘sustainability movement’ such as an organic farmer, recycler, green builder, eco-entrepreneur or local currency advocate.

This is not to say that a permaculturist cannot engage in all of these (indeed they do), but that anyone who practices one or more than these is not necessarily engaging with the permaculture ethics. Think of large-scale organic farms in California that truck in “certified organic” inputs and ship out bags of lettuce thousands of miles to the East Coast. Not permaculture.

People may take a permaculture course or buy a permaculture book for various reasons, but these do not necessarily make them a practicing permaculturist. I like to make the point that the difference between a permaculturist and a survivalist is 100 cases of baked beans and a gun. If you ain’t sharing, it ain’t permaculture.

I also appreciate the ethics because they are an integral part of the design process. In other words, the ethics can be used to help shape a larger project. An example of this is the ‘curtain bank’ that we recently opened in our community.

Those unfamiliar with curtain banks can be forgiven as many developed countries around the world have decent standards for housing that include high performance windows and central heating. But most of the New Zealand housing stock has been variously described as “sub-standard”, “abysmal”, “horrid”, and “a joke.” Mind you, that’s a bad joke instead of a funny one.

The majority of homes in this country are so cold that curtains must be used as a serious way to reduce heat loss. It is not uncommon for overnight indoor temperatures to drop into the mid-single-digits Celsius and daytime indoor temperatures to barely reach double-digits. I’ve heard stories of frost on the inside of windowpanes.

To add insult to injury, we also suffer from wealth and income inequality that make the purchase of new or even second-hand curtains out of reach for many families. As a result curtain banks have popped up in cities around the nation to redistribute second-hand curtains free of charge.

Applied Permaculture Ethics

Sharing surplus resources : People of means replace their curtains for various reasons, but most often for aesthetic ones. If the curtains are still in good condition and free of mould, they can be dropped off at the curtain bank, which makes them available for other households. Like any bank it accepts deposits and grants withdrawals. No fees. No contracts. No interest rates.

While traditional banks have the privilege to ‘lend money into existence’ we cannot lend curtains into existence, although it would be nice. We rely on donations from good people in our community to be passed on to other good people in our community. Which brings us to the next ethic.

Caring for people : It’s no secret that there is a link between sub-standard housing and illness in New Zealand. Sadly, most of the housing in our city is cold and/or damp. These unhealthy homes are especially hard on children and seniors. Many lack adequate curtaining.

Getting properly installed curtains, insulating blinds and window blankets into as many homes as possible helps make the occupants more comfortable and healthier. This is straight up caring for people by addressing some fairly basic needs.

Care for the earth : Improving the ‘thermal envelope’ of a home is the best way to save the energy required for heating and cooling. Saving energy is generally considered good for the environment by reducing carbon emissions or reducing the number of rivers dammed or even reducing the number of solar panels that need to be manufactured.

In these ways curtain banks tick all of the boxes for the permaculture ethics.

Example Two: Applied Eco-Design

The other example I’ll share is a direct application of eco-design: imitating nature to develop or reestablish robust ecological systems. The latter of these is sometimes called ‘regenerative design’.

Most of New Zealand is plagued by a legacy of bad farming practices most easily described as overgrazing steep slopes and allowing stock to foul streams.

We took possession of our small farm two years ago and have been working persistently to – dare I say it – ‘heal the land.’ Currently we are in the process of reestablishing a wetland and protecting the streams from stock. Additionally, we are planting native trees and poplar poles on steep hillsides to prevent slips, reduce erosion and provide bee fodder.

We are doing all this because that’s what nature wants. In other words, that’s the way the land was 1,000 years ago (less the non-native poplars) and given enough time that’s what it would revert to after the permanent removal of large hooved mammals. Our work just speeds up the process and allows for a continued agricultural function, which we are still figuring out.

All of this work is supported by our amazing Regional Council, which offers expert advice, low-cost poplar poles, and matching funding for fencing and native plantings. I cannot speak highly enough of these programmes. Horizons Regional Council does a fantastic job of looking at the big picture and applying holistic solutions. Unlike most government bodies and agencies, they get it.

Lake Horowhenua Planting Day

Forests and wetlands play important roles in moderating seasonal water flows across large land areas. In other words they store water high on the landscape during wet periods and release it slowly during dry periods. It works like a bank by accepting deposits and granting withdrawals.

Much of the farmland in our region suffers from extreme weather on both ends – wet and dry. Neither is good for stock, nor good for farmers, nor good for water quality, nor good for anyone living downstream. It’s a lose-lose-lose-lose situation and the reasons are clear: not enough trees on hillsides and streamsides. That’s basically it.

The solution is to build resilient waterways by imitating nature. Projects like ours are the best way that landowners and supportive communities can directly address the extreme weather events associated with a volatile changing climate.

The restoration work on our farm will help – to a tiny degree – everyone who lives and works downstream and downriver from us by keeping water out of the system during peak rain events. This is critical to our community that already faces tens of millions of dollars in repair bills from the last two major rain events that occurred just 13 months apart.

Given enough farmers with enough will and enough government assistance there is no reason we could not fence off all the streams in our region and plant all the steep hillsides to appropriate species. It’s much cheaper than cleaning up over and over again after serial flood events.

Alternative Banking

So what this is all about is developing alternative banking systems – stream banks and curtain banks among others – and getting communities involved. This is what resilience is all about (see also Resilience is The New Black and Climate, Energy, Economy: Pick Two)

This is the heart and soul of permaculture design thinking, and it is the best way to address the two biggest issues facing humanity: wealth inequality and climate change.

When I dip my toe into the financial news media on occasion I hear this phrase: “the velocity of money” as it pertains to the “health of the economy.”

I thought of the phrase the other day while meeting with a client on managing storm water on their large rural property after they had already done everything wrong. Yes, they had done absolutely everything wrong and I was trying to get them to understand that channelizing water only makes it go faster and cause more damage. The damage was obvious after the last major rain event – that’s why they called me in for an assessment.

As I explained the biological – rather than engineering – solutions, I felt we were going around in circles because they did not really want to hear what I had to say. They just wanted to be rid of the water. Sorry, but that’s not an option without over half a million dollars to spend on massive underground drains, which don’t solve the problem but simply pass it on to everyone downstream. And besides, they don’t have the money anyway.

Finally, I simply said, “The only possible solution is to slow the water and spread the water. It’s the only way to stop the damage.”

And that has me thinking. Should we apply the same approach to dollars?

I reckon a critical piece of the puzzle for neglected rural economies like ours is to slow and spread the flow of money as much as possible before it inevitably drains back to the major centres of power and wealth.

Dorothea Lange wrote about the photograph at the top, back in November 1938:

“Home of rural rehabilitation client, Tulare County, California. They bought 20 acres of raw unimproved land with a first payment of 50 dollars which was money saved out of relief budget (August 1936). They received a Farm Security Administration loan of $700 for stock and equipment. Now they have a one-room shack, seven cows, three sows, and homemade pumping plant, along with 10 acres of improved permanent pasture. Cream check approximately 30 dollars per month. Husband also works about ten days a month outside the farm. Husband is 26 years old, wife 22, three small children. Been in California five years. ‘Piece by piece this place gets put together. One more piece of pipe and our water tank will be finished’. From Shorpy.

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