Oct 062019
 
 October 6, 2019  Posted by at 10:14 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  15 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Cow on the seashore 1886

 

Powell: Fed’s Job To Keep Economy In A ‘Good Place As Long As Possible’ (CNBC)
Auto Imports From Mexico Surge As US Sales Decline (WS)
The Ukraine Affair Is Damning, All Right – Just Not In The Way You Think (RT)
Trump Told Theresa May He Doubted Russia Was Behind Skripal Poisoning (G.)
US Media Now Filled With Former Intelligence Agents (Rania Khalek)
Hong Kong Democrats To Challenge Mask Ban In Court (HKFP)
Hong Kong Mask Ban Spurs New Mass Protest On Sunday (BBC)
Epstein Victim Says Leslie Wexner “Responsible For What Happened To Me” (Hill)
24 State Attorneys General Launch Legal Challenge Against Purdue Pharma (Hill)

 

 

This is so incredibly stupid and nobody calls him out over it.

Powell: Fed’s Job To Keep Economy In A ‘Good Place As Long As Possible’ (CNBC)

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell described the U.S. economy on Friday as being solid, noting the central bank must do what it can to keep it there. “While not everyone fully shares economic opportunities and the economy faces some risks, overall it is— as I like to say— in a good place,” Powell said in prepared remarks delivered at a “Fed Listens” event in Washington. The event is part of a monetary policy communication review by the Fed. “Our job is to keep it there as long as possible.” Powell’s comments came after a raft of disappointing data releases this week. On Tuesday, the Institute for Supply Management said U.S. manufacturing contracted to its weakest level in a decade.


The ISM also said Thursday that the U.S. services sector grew at its slowest pace since August 2016. The Labor Department, meanwhile, reported weaker-than-expected jobs growth for September. This batch of weaker-than-forecast economic numbers led traders to ratchet up their bets on easier monetary policy from the Fed. Market expectations for a rate cut later this month are around 80%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool. “While we believe our strategy and tools have been and remain effective, the U.S. economy, like other advanced economies around the world, is facing some longer-term challenges—from low growth, low inflation, and low interest rates,” Powell said, adding the Fed is “examining strategies” that will help it achieve its inflation goal of 2%.

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Something ain’t happening.

Auto Imports From Mexico Surge As US Sales Decline (WS)

Automakers continue to shift their production base from the U.S. to Mexico, where labor costs pale in comparison with those in the U.S., despite growing opposition from U.S. auto workers and their unions. U.S. imports of new vehicles from Mexico surged by 8% in the first three quarters of 2019, according to the auto manufacturers association AIMA, released by Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). This surge has occurred even as total deliveries of vehicles to end-users in the US fell by 1.6%. Between January and September 2019, 2.03 million new vehicles were dispatched from assembly plants in Mexico to the U.S. market, 158,000 more than during the first three quarters of 2018.


In the last eight years, auto imports from Mexico have almost doubled, from 1.3 million in 2011 to 2.57 million last year, at annual growth rates of between 6.3% and 13.9%. Barring any major supply chain hiccups, the U.S. is on track to import over 2.7 million new vehicles from Mexico this year. The latest figures cement Mexico’s position as number one exporter of automobiles to the US, ahead of Canada in second place. According to AIMA, 16% of the 12.7 million cars and other light vehicles delivered in the U.S. in the first three quarters of 2019 were assembled in Mexico.

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Nebojsa Malic, senior writer at RT: “It’s curious how the same treatment was not given a few months ago to the anti-Trump text messages of FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page..”

The Ukraine Affair Is Damning, All Right – Just Not In The Way You Think (RT)

Democrats say texts and transcripts involving US officials dealing with Ukraine prove President Donald Trump should be impeached. What they actually confirm, however, is the extent to which the US treats Ukraine as a vassal. At the heart of the latest media firestorm are the text messages between US diplomats and Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. House Democrats seeking to impeach Trump have already sent a subpoena to the White House seeking more documents, and their allies in the media have proclaimed the texts to be “damning.” Much of the brouhaha centers on messages from Bill Taylor, charge d’affaires at the US Embassy in Kiev, who is the only one to suggest the military aid to Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s meeting with Trump are being “conditioned” on investigations of Hunter Biden and Ukraine’s role in 2016 meddling in the US election.

In one of the exchanges with US ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, dated September 9, Taylor spells out what would become the Democrats’ argument for impeachment: “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” Sondland’s admonishment of Taylor – “I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quo’s of any kind.” – is somehow being held up as an admission of wrongdoing, along with his request for a phone call instead of continued texts. Just like that, all of a sudden, the controversy about the so-called “whistleblower” who may have colluded with House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff (D-California) before filing his complaint – based on hearsay – is declared “irrelevant” and the texts are held up as the Holy Grail of impeachment proceedings.

It’s curious how the same treatment was not given a few months ago to the anti-Trump text messages of FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, when the entire media establishment twisted itself into pretzels to explain that when Strzok said “we’ll stop” Trump from becoming president what he really meant, you see, was something totally innocuous and not sinister at all. House Republicans have blasted the diplomatic texts as “cherry-picked” by the other party, and argued that the closed-doors testimony of Kurt Volker, former US special envoy to Ukraine who participated in the exchanges, painted a completely different picture. Reading the transcript of Volker’s opening statement, obtained and published Friday by investigative reporter John Solomon and the Federalist, seems to back that claim.

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Sacrilege. BTW, where is Skripal? Hiding out with Wexner and Maxwell?

Trump Told Theresa May He Doubted Russia Was Behind Skripal Poisoning (G.)

Donald Trump disputed that Russia was behind the attempted murder of a former Russian spy in a tense call with Theresa May, it has emerged. Despite the widespread conclusion that Vladimir Putin’s regime was behind the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia last year, the US president is said to have spent 10 minutes expressing his doubts about Russian involvement. According to the Washington Post, Trump “harangued” May about Britain’s contribution to Nato in a phone call with Britain’s then prime minister in the summer of last year, before disputing Russian involvement in the Skripal case.


“Trump totally bought into the idea there was credible doubt about the poisoning,” said a figure briefed on the call. “A solid 10 minutes of the conversation is spent with May saying it’s highly likely and him saying he’s not sure.” The Skripals were left fighting for their lives after the novichok attack in Salisbury, while a policeman was also left seriously ill. A second policeman was recently discovered to have been injured in the attack. Two Russian agents, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, were identified as the likely culprits. However, they later appeared on Russia’s state-funded TV station RT, claiming they visited the “wonderful” English city as tourists to see its cathedral.

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Any day now, CNN can start a spook soccer team.

US Media Now Filled With Former Intelligence Agents (Rania Khalek)

After years in the shadows overseeing espionage, kill programs, warrantless wiretapping, entrapment, psyops and other covert operations, national security establishment retirees are are turning to a new line of work where they can carry out their imperial duties. That is, propagandizing the public on cable news. Reborn as cable news pundits, these people are cashing in. So many years working in the dark, only to emerge in the studio lights of the same networks that rail all day everyday against state TV from countries that America hates. I’m talking about people like… Below is but a partial list of prominent former spooks turned mainstream media pundits and analysts, to say nothing of the even greater numbers of retired generals the network continuously rely on.

• Former CIA Director John Brennan who is now an NBC News senior national security and intelligence analyst.
• Fran Townsend, former homeland security advisor to George W. Bush. She’s now a CBS News senior national security analyst.

But CNN takes the cake — it’s the biggest spook show of all.
• Jim Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, now a CNN national security analyst.
• Retired General Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and the NSA, now a CNN national security analyst.
• Asha Rangappa, former FBI special agent, now CNN legal analyst.
• James Gagliano, a retired FBI supervisory special agent, now a CNN law enforcement analyst.
• Tony Bliken, former deputy secretary of state and former deputy national security advisor, and now CNN global affairs analyst.
• Mike Rogers, former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, now CNN national security commentator.
• Samantha Vinograd senior advisor to the national security advisor under President Obama, now CNN national security analyst.
• Steven Hall, retired CIA chief of Russia operations, now a CNN national security analyst.
• Philip Mudd, former CIA counter-terrorism official, now CNN counter-terrorism analyst.

…Welcome to the spook show!

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Kyle Bass on Twitter: “Bank runs all over Hong Kong now. ATM machines running out of cash but there is something more important…failed leader carrie lam(b) can now officially confiscate bank accounts and assets without recourse. The HK legal system is essentially gone.”

Challenge was already thrown out by the High Court in the meantime.

Hong Kong Democrats To Challenge Mask Ban In Court (HKFP)

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy lawmakers will challenge the newly imposed mask ban in court, arguing that Chief Executive Carrie Lam broke the law when she bypassed the legislature. Filed jointly by all 24 democrats, the lawsuit targeted the Emergency Regulations Ordinance (ERO) – the colonial-era law that grants the city’s leader and her council of advisors wide-ranging powers to “make regulations on occasions of emergency or public danger.” Democrats called for the mask ban to be suspended, before a proper judicial review hearing can be held. The court will hear their first round of arguments at Sunday 10am.


The lawmakers said that Lam “circumvented” the constitutional framework of One Country, Two Systems when she invoked the ERO to ban facial coverings at legal and unauthorised protests from Saturday. “Since the Handover, there has never been an occasion when the chief executive enacted legislation without going through LegCo,” said Civic Party lawmaker Dennis Kwok. On Friday, the High Court dismissed a bid by activists Lester Shum and “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung to suspend the law, saying that their case was not strong enough to outweigh the government’s rationale. Kwok said that the democrats’ lawsuit was different, as they had special standing as lawmakers to make constitutional arguments.

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Lam: “We cannot allow rioters any more to destroy our treasured Hong Kong.”

That is HER treasured HK, not THEIRS?

Hong Kong Mask Ban Spurs New Mass Protest On Sunday (BBC)

Thousands of anti-government protesters have turned out for marches in Hong Kong despite pouring rain, spurred into action by a government ban on masks. Many defiantly covered their faces as they set off from several points in a co-ordinated response to the ban, which the High Court upheld on Sunday. Metro services, which were attacked by rioters on Friday, have resumed in some parts of the Chinese city. The masks have become the latest focus in months of pro-democracy protests. Police use of live bullets against protesters this week, leaving two people injured, has also fuelled the unrest. Chief executive Carrie Lam introduced the ban by invoking powers dating back to colonial rule by the British.

Demonstrators fear that democratic rights are being eroded in the semi-autonomous territory under Chinese rule. Many more people have turned out than on Saturday, when a small march was held in the aftermath of Friday’s rioting. Two groups set off at the same time from the Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui districts, the South China Morning Post reports. Shops could be seen closing early while luxury and chain stores were closed in Causeway Bay. On Friday, both businesses and railway stations were attacked by rioters. Hosun Lee, a protester in Causeway Bay, told AFP news agency he feared more emergency laws were on the way. “The anti-face mask law is the first step,” he said.

Ms Lam vowed on Saturday to prevent further violence, saying: “We cannot allow rioters any more to destroy our treasured Hong Kong.” She justified the law against masks as a response to the demonstrators’ “extreme violence” which was, she said, endangering Hong Kong’s public safety. A second legal challenge to the mask ban, which was brought by opposition legislators, was rejected by the High Court. The legislators had argued that the prohibition was unconstitutional because it denied the rights of free expression and free assembly.

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Wexner is walking around free, as is Ghislaine. Not sure about Skripal.

Epstein Victim Says Leslie Wexner “Responsible For What Happened To Me” (Hill)

A woman allegedly attacked by Jeffrey Epstein said she holds Victoria’s Secret billionaire Leslie Wexner “responsible for what happened to me” because she was staying on a property monitored by Wexner and his wife and guarded by his security team, the Washington Post reported. Maria Farmer stayed in a home that was a half-mile away from Wexner’s home in New Albany, Ohio during the summer of 1996 while she was creating two paintings for the film “As Good as it Gets.” Farmer was employed by Jeffrey Epstein at the time, and while she was staying in the house in Ohio, she alleges that Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell sexually assaulted her.


When she tried to leave the home after the alleged assault, Farmer said a security guard employed by Wexner told her “You aren’t leaving,” and “You’re not going anywhere.” She said another security guard later took her by the arm, and as she fought against him, he grabbed her so hard she bruised. Farmer said she also tried to call local police and the Franklin County Sheriff’s office. But Wexner had contracted with the office, and a person told her “we work for Wexner,” when she tried to report the crime, Farmer told the Washington Post. She also alleged that she was discouraged from leaving the house without the permission of Abigail Wexler, Leslie Wexler’s wife. She was later picked up by her father at the Washington home.

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“..Purdue gave up to $13 billion in company profits to the Sackler family.”

24 State Attorneys General Launch Legal Challenge Against Purdue Pharma (Hill)

US Attorneys General from 24 states and Washington, D.C. launched a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma this week in an attempt to block the OxyContin maker from avoiding thousands of lawsuits after filing for bankruptcy, Reuters reported. The state officials objected to Purdue Pharma’s request that a U.S. bankruptcy judge block the more than 2,600 lawsuits seeking billions in damages, according to court filings, Reuters reported. The lawsuits argue that the company, along with the Sackler family, were a catalyst in the opioid crisis across the country by not disclosing the addictive risks of opioids. “The Sacklers are billionaires, they are not bankrupt,” the Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey, told Reuters.


“They should not be allowed to use the filing to shield their assets.” Purdue filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy last month, after reaching a settlement between $10 billion and $12 billion for the thousands of plaintiffs involved in the lawsuits. The committee of attorneys who negotiated the settlement said the filing will not stop the company from finalizing the settlement. But Purdue sought the injunction to stop the lawsuits against the company because the Sackler family did not file for bankruptcy, Reuters reported. The Sacklers have offered to give control of Purdue to the plaintiffs and give at least $3 billion towards the settlement. The case filed this week by the state attorneys general also said Purdue gave up to $13 billion in company profits to the Sackler family.

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Aug 112019
 
 August 11, 2019  Posted by at 9:01 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  8 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Man with straw hat and ice cream cone 1938

 

JPMorgan: The Fed Will Need To Restart QE Soon
How Jeffrey Epstein Got His Hooks Into Les Wexner (William D. Cohan)
These Are The Dying Days Of A Rancid Old Order (Hutton)
The Very Idea Of A United Kingdom Is Being Torn Apart By Toxic Nationalism (G.)
Cross-Party Schemes Drawn Up To Prevent A Johnson No-Deal Brexit (O.)
No 10 Cancels Staff Leave, Hinting At Likelihood Of Snap Election (G.)
Brexit Enforcer Cummings’ Farm Took €235,000 In EU Handouts (O.)
British Government’s Hong Kong Intervention Riles China (O.)
Trump’s Financial Carelessness Could Cost His Kids $1.3 Billion In Taxes
Squawkzilla (F.)

 

 

The Fed must drink all the poison it brewed.

JPMorgan: The Fed Will Need To Restart QE Soon

In the latest Flows and Liquidity report from JPMorgan’s Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou published late on Friday, the strategist analyzes various components of market liquidity and concludes that “liquidity will likely continue to tighten gradually in the US banking system even after the Fed has stopped its balance sheet shrinkage.” Specifically, the JPM analysis looks at the bank’s model of US excess money supply, which derives a medium-term money demand target based on 1) the transaction motive, which relates money to nominal incomes and 2) the portfolio motive, which relates money to the nominal values of other assets such as bonds and equities, and 3) the precautionary motive, proxied by US policy uncertainty, whereby agents wish to hold more cash during periods of elevated risk perceptions. This model suggests that this broad US excess liquidity evaporated during the course of 2018 and shifted further into negative or contractionary territory this year.

The last time this measure of US excess money supply had shifted into negative territory was during the euro debt crisis years of 2010- 2012, which prompted the Fed to launch QE2 (as well as Operation Twist and QE3) and also eventually resulted in the ECB violating Article 123 of the Maastricht treat, prohibiting monetary financing of states, and led to Draghi launching his own QE. As Panigirtzoglou further explains, the contraction in JPM’s measure of broad liquidity this year has been mostly more driven by a rise in demand and less by a fall in money supply (relative to US GDP). In particular the main drivers have been the rise in uncertainty and the rise in the stock of US financial assets, both of which depress excess money supply via boosting demand.

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Excellent from Cohan for Vanity Fair. Obviously written before the ‘apparent suicide’. About which there are a million articles, but let’s wait and see if we can get beyond speculation.

How Jeffrey Epstein Got His Hooks Into Les Wexner (William D. Cohan)

Lewis remembered that Wexner didn’t care about the numbers, which is more relevant than ever after Wexner released a letter on August 7 asserting that Jeffrey Epstein had “misappropriated vast sums of money” —at least $46 million—from him, and casting himself as just another of Epstein’s victims. “He didn’t understand the numbers,” Lewis said. “He’s never understood numbers. This is not his strength. This man is a genius at dressing women. This is a guy who feels what they feel. That’s his strength. And I figured that out when I first met him and I don’t know how he got that set up in his brain but in his soul, he has a sense of how people feel when they wear his clothing. And that’s a gift. That’s just what it is. Some guys write music, this guy knows how to dress women. He’s very, very talented.”

[..] Around the same time, Lewis became aware that Jeffrey Epstein had entered Wexner’s life, presumably to manage some of Wexner’s money, as has been widely reported. Lewis couldn’t figure out why Wexner had turned to Epstein to manage his money when Lewis already had an unparalleled track record managing some of Wexner’s money—returning more than 30% a year to his partners for 10 years. (Later, Lewis would find trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission; he pleaded guilty to stock manipulation in 1989, and was barred from the securities industry. President Bill Clinton pardoned Lewis, and a federal court judge later said Mr. Lewis acted for all the right reasons. He was vindicated.)

Lewis says he thinks Epstein was a “con artist” who took advantage of Wexner’s personal weaknesses. “I can’t imagine, frankly, why a man of his intelligence would simply hand the controls over to another guy.” He said Wexner was always a lonely guy. “And this con artist, this fucking idiot, comes into his life,” he continued. “…My feeling is that he had been seduced. And I don’t mean seduced in a physical sense, I mean emotionally seduced out of his loneliness to trust this guy and he figures, he’s so fucking smart he can trust anybody.” Wexner, he said, was “a shy man who got taken” by Epstein.

Wexner was “so bright and so capable,” Lewis continued, “but the talents that he had, those kinds of talents are not financial talents. These are not numbers. He does not look at numbers. He doesn’t want to. What he’s thinking about is the art form of dressing a woman. That’s what he’s good at. That’s what he’s done.” Les Wexner, he said, “would not know a stock from a bond. He does not look at the markets. He does not look at futures or anything like that. That’s not what he does.” Lewis said that Wexner was looking for a friend. “I really believe that,” he said. “And I think that when you see a man who is as bright as he is and he is looking for a friend and he picks the wrong friend, then there’s all hell to pay.”

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Brits are waxing philosophical. Here’s one saying Woodstock led straight to Reagan/Thatcher and then to white supremacy. Fukcing hippies!

These Are The Dying Days Of A Rancid Old Order (Hutton)

Don’t despair. We may be living through an attempted rightwing revolution, but its foundations are rotten. There may be a counter-revolution, as there is after every revolution, and it will be built on much firmer ground. The charlatans may be in control in both Britain and the US, but their time is limited. Their programmes are self-defeating and destructive and they do not speak to the dynamic and increasingly ascendant forces in both our societies. What has happened in the US after the atrocities in El Paso and Dayton is instructive. It is a tipping point. The National Rifle Association may tell Donald Trump repeatedly that any attempt at gun control will not fly with his political base, but Trump can read the runes.

For the Republicans to become the party in de facto defence of what has suddenly become crystallised as white supremacist terrorism would be electoral suicide. The president has to move, not least because, faced with this reality, even his base is shifting. Too many Americans now fear becoming the victims of random murder. Few can dispute that, astonishingly, while the US has 5% of the world’s population, it has 35%-50% of civilian gun ownership, a trend that simply has to be reversed. Within a decade, I am sure, the debate will move on, as white supremacists continue their killing spree, from hardening background checks to debating the constitutional right to bear arms. This must and will happen and it will highlight the marginalisation of rightwing republicanism. And when the political wind changes in the US, it also changes in Britain.

Trump in the US and Boris Johnson in the UK are the extreme culmination of what Reagan and Thatcher began 40 years ago. It started as a legitimate if contestable desire to reframe the postwar settlement, limit the state, promote business and individual self-reliance. But as the great political scientist Samuel Beer famously argued, it was, paradoxically, supported culturally by the individualism, anti-state instincts and nonconformism of the Woodstock generation. Forty years on, continued rightwing political ascendancy has morphed into today’s menacing rightwing ideologies.

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“As the Second World War ended, George Orwell made a distinction between patriots who instinctively love their country and the opposite, a political nationalism that he defined as “power hunger tempered by self-deception..“

The Very Idea Of A United Kingdom Is Being Torn Apart By Toxic Nationalism (G.)

Boris Johnson’s government is hell-bent on conjuring up the absurd and mendacious image of the patriotic British valiantly defying an intransigent Europe determined to turn us into a vassal state. His soundbites, pledging token sums for the NHS and 20,000 more police on the street at some future date, cannot disguise a government driven not by the national interest but by a destructive, populist, nationalist ideology. And with Scottish nationalists pushing a more extreme form of separation and Northern Ireland’s unionists becoming, paradoxically, Northern Irish nationalists – digging in, even if it means, against all economic logic, a hard border with the Irish Republic – we are, at best, only a precariously united kingdom.

Johnson’s flying visits to all corners of the UK have done nothing to dispel the impression that under him the world’s most successful multinational state is devoid of a unifying purpose powerful enough to hold it together and to keep four nationalisms – Scottish, Irish, English and also a rising Welsh nationalism – at bay. Recent polling shows a majority of Scots support Scottish independence. In a new Hope Not Hate poll, many more – 60% – agree a no-deal Brexit will accelerate the demand for independence. Only 15% disagree. What is most worrying is not just that so many think the union will end but how at least for now so few appear to care. Only 30% of British Conservatives (and only 14% of Brexit party voters) would oppose Brexit if it meant the break-up of the union: 56% of Tories (and 78% of Brexit party voters) – in total 70% of Leavers – would go ahead regardless, even if the union collapsed.

[..] As the Second World War ended, George Orwell made a distinction between patriots who instinctively love their country and the opposite, a political nationalism that he defined as “power hunger tempered by self-deception”. He noted its defining features: unreality about the country’s prospects; introversion bordering on the xenophobic; and hate-filled obsessiveness that treats people solely in terms of their loyalty and utility. Orwell argued passionately that the descent into a narrow, chauvinistic nationalism could be halted only by what he called “moral effort”.

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The plotters. Cheap cigars, smoky backrooms and bad scotch.

Cross-Party Schemes Drawn Up To Prevent A Johnson No-Deal Brexit (O.)

Most MPs may now be on the beach, but for those worried about the chances of Britain crashing out of the EU with no deal it has not been the normal break in the sun. For a start, the holiday reading list has been less entertaining than normal. Standing order 24, paragraph 2.7 of the cabinet manual and section 2(3) of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act have become the must-reads of the summer. Family outings have been interrupted by battles to find phone reception at various beauty spots to talk to opposition MPs. After a week that saw Boris Johnson and his key adviser Dominic Cummings make clear threats about leaving the EU whatever the cost at the end of October, concerned MPs have already begun to plan.

New governments, emergency legislation, breaches of convention and court cases are already being proposed by what several described as the “rebel alliance”. Many anti-no deal MPs are also concerned about the lack of coherence so far. All those who spoke to the Observer had doubts that no-deal Brexit could be avoided. “Everyone has to pull together, and that is never a guarantee,” said one former Tory minister trying to coordinate efforts. “We are trying to hold together an unholy coalition of moderate Labour, Labour frontbench, Lib Dems, Scottish Nationalists, minor parties, independents and moderate Tories. It’s difficult.” However, details of some of the plans are already emerging.

Senior figures within both the Labour and Conservative parties believe that the simplest way to stop no deal is through a new law, forcing the prime minister to ask for an extension to Britain’s EU membership. This is the focus of early efforts. The rebels see two possible routes. The easiest move is to hijack any legislation that the government proposes in the autumn. Yet the plotters know that the government may simply refuse to propose any new laws to avoid such an ambush. “The moment there is legislation, we can amend away,” said one plotter. “But their strategy is clearly not to legislate about anything and have endless debates in parliament about the colour green instead.”

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As the MPS are on the beach, the special advisers are not.

No 10 Cancels Staff Leave, Hinting At Likelihood Of Snap Election (G.)

Boris Johnson’s chief of staff cancelled all leave for government advisers until 31 October in a missive on Thursday night, raising further speculation the government is planning for a forced snap election in the aftermath of the UK leaving the EU with no deal. Special advisers were emailed by Johnson’s senior adviser Edward Lister on Thursday night, saying there was “some confusion about taking holiday”. They were told none should be booked until 31 October, with compensation considered “on a case by case basis” for those who had already booked leave, though the email said advisers were free to spend their weekends “as you wish”. “There is serious work to be done between now and October 31st and we should be focused on the job,” the email said.

The directive angered many recipients, who say staff are exhausted and are facing an unprecedented workload in September and October. One recipient described the email as “posturing” and said special advisers, known as “spads”, are being used as part of the PR war to convince the public the government is serious about no deal. Johnson himself also wrote to all members of the civil service telling them the government’s main focus was now to prepare for a no-deal Brexit. In the letter, Johnson said he wanted to underline that the UK would be leaving on 31 October “whatever the circumstances” and that the civil service must prepare “urgently and rapidly” as its top priority.

“I know many of you have already done a great deal of hard work in mobilising to prepare for a no deal scenario, so that we can leave on 31 October come what may,” the letter said. “Between now and then we must engage and communicate clearly with the British people about what our plans for taking back control mean, what people and businesses need to do, and the support we will provide.”

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“His blog clarified the claim, explaining “the Treasury gross figure is slightly more than £350m of which we get back roughly half, though some of this is spent in absurd ways like subsidies for very rich landowners to do stupid things”.

Brexit Enforcer Cummings’ Farm Took €235,000 In EU Handouts (O.)

Boris Johnson’s controversial enforcer, Dominic Cummings, an architect of Brexit and a fierce critic of Brussels, is co-owner of a farm that has received €250,000 (£235,000) in EU farming subsidies, the Observer can reveal. The revelation is a potential embarrassment for the mastermind behind Johnson’s push to leave the EU by 31 October. Since being appointed as Johnson’s chief adviser, Cummings has presented the battle to leave the EU as one between the people and the politicians. He positions himself as an outsider who wants to demolish elites, end the “absurd subsidies” paid out by the EU and liberate the UK from its arcane rules and regulations.

But his critics say the revelation that Cummings has benefited from the system he intends to smash underscores how many British farmers are reliant on EU money that would evaporate if the UK leaves. An Observer analysis of Land Registry documents and EU subsidy databases reveals that a farm in Durham, which Cummings jointly owns with his parents and another person, has received roughly €20,000 a year for most of the last two decades. The revelation opens Cummings up to charges of hypocrisy, as writing on his blog, he has attacked the use of agricultural subsidies “dreamed up in the 1950s and 1960s” because they “raise prices for the poor to subsidise rich farmers while damaging agriculture in Africa”.

He notoriously came up with the claim that leaving the EU would allow the UK to spend an extra £350m a week on the NHS. His blog clarified the claim, explaining “the Treasury gross figure is slightly more than £350m of which we get back roughly half, though some of this is spent in absurd ways like subsidies for very rich landowners to do stupid things”.

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The ‘one country, two systems’ deal runs untiil 2047.

British Government’s Hong Kong Intervention Riles China (O.)

China has lashed out at the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, after he spoke to Hong Kong’s leader about protests that have morphed from a campaign against a controversial extradition bill into rolling street demonstrations demanding electoral reforms. Raab spoke to Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, and stressed the need for “meaningful political dialogue and a fully independent investigation into recent events as a way to build trust” in the territory, the UK Foreign Office said. The former British colony has seen widespread protests in recent months which began with a campaign against a controversial extradition bill and has gone on to include a push for electoral reforms in the Chinese territory.


Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry, said the days where Britain ruled Hong Kong were “long gone … The UK has no sovereignty, jurisdiction or right of supervision over Hong Kong. Affairs of Hong Kong brook no foreign interference. It is simply wrong for the British government to directly call Hong Kong’s chief executive to exert pressure.” A UK foreign office spokesperson said: “The foreign secretary underlined the strength of the relationship between the UK and Hong Kong, noting our support for Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy as provided for in the joint declaration and our commitment to the principle of ‘one country, two systems’.

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Humor.

Trump’s Financial Carelessness Could Cost His Kids $1.3 Billion In Taxes

Forbes estimates that Trump has paid each of his three eldest children—Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump—some $35 million in salary, commissions and bonuses for their work as executives at the Trump Organization, and he has given them modest stakes in a handful of relatively insignificant ventures. The rest of the first family—daughter Tiffany, son Barron and wife Melania—don’t seem to have received much at all. That leaves 73-year-old Donald Trump firmly in control of a $3.1 billion tax time bomb. Simply put, it’s bad planning. The president of the United States, one of the wealthiest people in America, appears to have one of the worst tax strategies in the country.


“It’s puzzling,” says Bruce Steiner, a New York estate lawyer who advises high-net-worth clients. “At death if he’s given away nothing, half of it disappears.” Then again, Donald Trump is also in position to relieve his family of much of the burden by simply repealing the federal estate tax altogether. It’s something he has already tried and failed to do once. Now, two years after the Trump tax cuts tweaked the estate tax rules, but not enough to impact the super-wealthy, Trump’s allies in Congress are trying to kill the tax once more. If they prove successful, it would likely save the Trump family more than $1 billion—enough to make it the most lucrative deal of Donald Trump’s life.

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A 40-inch parrot. Hey, the moa was 10 feet!

Squawkzilla (F.)

Palaeontologists announced they’ve discovered the largest parrot that ever lived, which they named after the Greek demi-god Heracles in reference to its enormous size and strength Islands are natural laboratories for a variety of fascinating avian evolutionary experiments, particularly islands that lack mammalian predators. New Zealand, for example, is home to a variety of peculiar parrots. There’s the mischievous Kea, the world’s only mountain-dwelling parrot who specializes in dismantling automobiles and re-arranging traffic cones, and the kakapo, a flightless nocturnal parrot that looks like a big green owl, and is the only living parrot that shags free-roaming zoologists.

Now there’s a weird new parrot in town, according to an international team of scientists from New Zealand and Australia. The researchers announced the discovery of the fossilized remains of the largest parrot yet identified, standing half as tall as a human adult with a massive beak that could bite through anything it liked. The researchers estimated the giant parrot was 1 meter (39 inches) tall, and weighed roughly 7 kilograms (15.5 pounds). This is approximately the size of the extinct dodo, and twice the size of New Zealand’s critically endangered kakapo, which is the largest and heaviest parrot alive today.

The researchers named the new parrot Heracles inexpectatus — Hercules the unexpected — in recognition of its Herculean size and strength and because its discovery was completely unexpected. Considering how destructive kea are, just imagine what this giant parrot could have chewed up.


Artist’s reconstruction of the giant parrot Heracles, dwarfing a bevy of 8cm high Kuiornis – small prehistoric wrens that lived 9–16 million years ago on New Zealand – scuttling about on the forest floor. Heracles may have eaten other, smaller, parrot species. (Credit: Brian Choo / Flinders University)

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