May 132018
 
 May 13, 2018  Posted by at 9:18 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  8 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Le repos 1932
This painting has a story. It’s very funny. Read below.

 

Bill Gross’s Wife Paints Fake Picasso, Swaps It With Real Thing In Divorce (NYP)
Fed To Deliver ‘Punch In The Face’ Markets Aren’t Prepared For – Boockvar (CNBC)
Who’s Most Afraid of a Latin American Debt Crisis? (DQ)
Can We Blame The Bankers? (Pettifor)
UK’s 17-Year Wage Squeeze The Worst In Two Hundred Years (Tily)
EU Set To Push For 6-Month Extension To Brexit Transition Period (Ind.)
The Hard Border Is Too Hard A Question (G.)
Half A Million ‘Hidden’ Young People In UK Left Without State Help (Ind.)
UK Campaigners Slam £1 Million Incentive To Store Nuclear Waste (G.)
Italy Could Blow Up Europe As We Know It (Pol.eu)
Italy’s Radical M5S And League On Verge Of Forming Government (G.)
EU’s Mogherini: Iran Nuclear Deal Will Hold (Pol.eu)
Damage To North Korea’s Nuclear Test Site Is Worse Than Anyone Thought (Ind.)
Bad Bitches From Mars (Jim Kunstler)

 

 

Bill Gross’s wife. About the Picasso above.

Bill Gross’s Wife Paints Fake Picasso, Swaps It With Real Thing In Divorce (NYP)

A woman locked in a contentious divorce with her bond-trader husband took a Picasso off his wall and replaced it with a forgery she made herself. Sue Gross didn’t wait until she and Wall Street titan Bill Gross had finalized their split, swapping out a 1932 Pablo Picasso painting entitled “Le Repos” hanging in their bedroom with her own rendering. The original is expected to fetch as much as $35 million at Sotheby’s Monday evening. The painting, which depicts Picasso lover Marie-Thérèse Walter, had belonged to them jointly. But a coin flip in August 2017 amid the couple’s divorce proceedings awarded Sue full custody of Picasso’s depiction of his sleeping mistress, which the couple had owned since 2006.

After the flip, Bill Gross tried to make arrangements for the piece to be transferred from his Laguna Beach, Calif., house to his ex-wife, sources told The Post. But the ex-Mrs. Gross said that was unnecessary; she already had taken the real thing. The couple’s art collection had been appraised by Sotheby’s in January 2017 amid the divorce proceedings, but Bill learned only later the Picasso was appraised in a different location than Laguna Beach. Bill was shocked Sue already had the piece, a source said, adding that Bill said, She stole the damn thing. In November testimony, the ex-wife readily admitted to swiping the Picasso, citing an e-mail Bill sent to her where he instructed her to “take all the furniture and art that you’d like”.

“And so I did,” she said. But it wasn’t quite that simple, as testimony revealed the ex-wife’s prowess for both painting and artful deception. “Well, you didn’t take it and leave an empty spot on the wall, though, did you?” lawyers for Bill Gross asked. “No,” Sue responded. “You replaced it with a fake?” the lawyer asked. “Well, it was a painting I painted,” Sue responded. “A replication of the Picasso?” the lawyer asked. “A replication, yes,” Sue answered. “And it had the Picasso signature and everything, didn’t it?” the lawyer asked. “Not exactly . . .” she said. “Whose signature was it? Sue Gross?” the lawyer asked.

“I don’t remember how I signed it. Bill will remember because I painted it at home years ago,” she said. “Did you tell him that you took the Picasso?” the lawyer asked. “No. We didn’t speak for a year and a half,” she answered just before the line of questioning turned to a 7-foot, 300-pound rabbit sculpture she also admitted taking.

Read more …

“..it’s very rare that the Fed engineers soft landings, and I’m not a believer that they’re going to do it again this time.”

Fed To Deliver ‘Punch In The Face’ Markets Aren’t Prepared For – Boockvar (CNBC)

Markets already know the Federal Reserve will deliver more rate hikes this year. They’re just not prepared for how much it will hurt, according to Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer of Bleakley Advisory Group. “The Fed is trying to ease the effect of their rate hike cycle by being very transparent,” Boockvar told CNBC’s “Futures Now” this week. It is “trying to convince us that quantitative tightening is like watching paint dry.” Fed chair Jerome Powell is carrying on Janet Yellen’s legacy of full transparency by prepping the markets as best as he can for inevitable monetary tightening. The Fed’s message of ‘steady-as-she-goes’ rate increases has calmed Wall Street into thinking this will mostly be a smooth path higher.

Boockvar expects tighter monetary policy will have a far greater impact than the Fed is telegraphing, and the market is anticipating. “Regardless of how they tell us, regardless of how they do it, there’s still a rise in the cost of capital, there’s still a drain of liquidity,” he said. He used a colorful analogy for the shock the markets will be dealt, even with the Fed’s fair warning. “If I gave you a month’s notice that I’m going to punch you in the face, when I punch you in the face, it’s still going to feel the same, it’s still going to hurt,” he said. Even worse, it’s more like two blows: While the Fed hikes interest rates, it’s also shrinking its balance sheet, Boockvar points out. “The biggest risk to the market is that they’re really tightening twice through the reduction of the size of their balance sheet,” said Boockvar.

[..] “At the same time, they’ll likely raise two more times this year, so the rise in interest rates to me is very noteworthy,” said Boockvar. “In a very over-levered, credit-dependent economy, that is my main concern because it’s very rare that the Fed engineers soft landings, and I’m not a believer that they’re going to do it again this time.”

Read more …

Spain.

Who’s Most Afraid of a Latin American Debt Crisis? (DQ)

Economic history appears to be rhyming once again in Latin America. Perennial credit-basket-case Argentina was one of the first countries to suffer a major currency crisis this century. Now, its government has asked the IMF for a brand-new bailout. But if this classic last-gasp fix was meant to calm the markets, it isn’t working. Previous Latin American debt crises have taught us two things: • The direct impact on the general populace, already suffering from sky-high poverty rates, is devastating; • Once the first domino falls, contagion can spread like wildfire. The debt crisis of the early 1980s, which spread to virtually all corners of the region, famously paved the way to Latin America’s “lost decade.”

Mexico’s Tequila Crisis of 1994-5 at one point became so serious that it almost brought down some of Wall Street’s biggest banks. At the moment, as long as the US dollar and US yields continue to rise, emerging market jitters can be expected to grow. As British financial correspondent Neal Kimberley notes, markets often behave like predators, running down what they perceive as the weakest prey first — a role being filled, with usual aplomb, by Argentina. Emerging market weakness is by now a generalized trend. The jitters could soon spread to Latin America’s two largest economies, Brazil and Mexico, which between them account for close to 60% of Latin America’s GDP. Both of the countries face general elections in the next two months.

[..] But it’s not just countries that are at risk of contagion; so, too, are global companies with a big stake in the affected markets. Few companies are more exposed to Latin America than large Spanish ones. Some were already burnt in Argentina’s last crisis and default. But in the aftermath of Spain’s real estate collapse, opportunities at home dried up to such an extent that access to Latin America’s fast-growing economies became a godsend. But it could soon become a curse.

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What makes austerity dangerous.

Can We Blame The Bankers? (Pettifor)

At a Rethinking Economics conference in Oslo last month I pointed out that western politicians and economists are repeating policy errors of the 1930s. The pattern of a global financial crash, followed by austerity in Europe and the UK, led in those years to the rise of populism, authoritarianism and ultimately fascism. The scale of economic and political failures and missteps led in turn to a catastrophic world war. Today that pattern – of a global financial crash, austerity and a rise in political populism and authoritarianism – is evident in both Europe and the US. And talk of war has risen to the top of the US political agenda. Why have we not learnt lessons from the past?

The “fount and matrix” (to quote Karl Polanyi) of the international financial system prior to its collapse in 1929, was the self-regulating market. The gold standard was the policy by which the private finance sector, backed by economists, central bankers and policy-makers, sought to extend the domestic market system to the international sphere – beyond the reach of regulatory democracy. In the event, the 1929 stock market crash put an end to the delusional aspirations of Haute Finance: namely that financiers could detach their activities from democratic, accountable political oversight. (Polanyi, The Great Transformation 1944).

Between 1929 and 1931 the losses from the US stock market crash were estimated at $50bn. It was the worst economic failure in the history of the international economy. Within three years of the crash millions of Americans were unemployed, and farmers were caught between rising debts and deflating commodity prices. In Germany between 1930 and 1932, Heinrich Brüning, the Chancellor, with the tacit support of Social Democrats, imposed a savage austerity programme that led to high levels of unemployment and cuts in welfare programmes. This in turn led to the demise of social democracy, the rise of fascism and ultimately a global war.

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Again, austerity. Theresa May trumps Napoleon.

UK’s 17-Year Wage Squeeze The Worst In Two Hundred Years (Tily)

A decade on from the financial crisis, real wages today are still worth £24 a week less than they were in 2008. By the time they’re forecast to return to their pre-crash level in 2025, real wages will have been in decline for 17 years – the longest period since the beginning of the nineteenth century. The TUC compared the current wage squeeze (including the forecast) with every major earnings crisis over the past two centuries. We found that the only slump longer than the one we’re experiencing today was the 24 years between 1798 and 1822, a period when Europe was ravaged by the Napoleonic Wars and their aftermath. In fact, real wages even recovered faster during the Great Depression (10 years) and after the Second World War (7 years), as the chart below shows:


Year zero is the pre-crisis peak. Outcomes in subsequent years are measured as an index relative to that point. The real wage index returns to 100 when the crisis is over.

The current crisis not only dwarfs all others during the last century; it is the biggest since the period between 1798, when Nelson destroyed the French Fleet at the Battle of the Nile, and 1822, when the economy finally began to recover from the devastation of the Napoleonic Wars:

Read more …

What’s the difference?

EU Set To Push For 6-Month Extension To Brexit Transition Period (Ind.)

The EU is to push for an optional six-month extension to the Brexit transition period to be built in to the UK’s withdrawal agreement, The Independent understands. European Commission officials will seek the extension to give the EU added flexibility, but it comes as key figures in the UK also look to extend the transition to give time to implement new customs arrangements. Next week a crunch meeting will see Theresa May’s top ministers try to agree what kind of customs relations to seek in negotiations, with both of her proposed options potentially needing more time than the current transition allows. The Independent has been told by two sources in Brussels that the EU wants the six-month extension to protect its own interests, as Brexit negotiations come to their most critical phase.

One said: “Of course they are aware of the sensitivity around the issue in London, but it is about giving the commission more leeway if needed, at the end of the transition to get things in place.” A second official in Brussels said it would be normal for the commission to seek the added time, simply as a safety precaution given the uncertainty surrounding the British position. The commission is expected to try to put the optional six-month extension into the withdrawal agreement late on in the negotiations process, in order to maximise the chance of it being accepted. According to the current withdrawal agreement text, the transition period is set to last around 18 months from the end of March 2019 until December 2020 – to give time for both sides to get their houses in order before new legal and trade systems come into play.

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They have no clue how to solve this. This whole Brexit preparation thing is just a waste of time.

The Hard Border Is Too Hard A Question (G.)

[..] it would be satisfying to rewind and show that the reason many now believe Britain must stay connected to the EU for five years or so relates to complex customs rules and how they cannot be reconciled with open borders. Parliament only took notice when MPs on the Brexit select committee damned the government’s dithering. The committee’s message was that keeping the Irish border open and at the same time installing border controls with the EU couldn’t work. Ever since their report last December, the border contradiction has travelled through Whitehall like a virus, forcing civil servants to drop what they are doing in a desperate bid to find a cure. As one senior civil servant put it, officials are too busy finding a way to put the right export stamp on a sheep’s backside to think about anything else.

So far, no cure has been found and the situation is looking desperate. Foreign companies have virtually switched off the stream of investment into the UK. By the end of last year, OECD figures show foreign direct investment down by half on the average seen from 2012 to 2015 and by 90% on the bumper inflow of funds seen in 2016. [..] Even the most confident Brexiters have noticed the economy flagging under the weight of the customs union uncertainty. It’s such a quandary that last week Tory MPs were openly considering adding another three years to the transition deal just to give the brightest minds in the civil service enough time to sort it out. That would take the UK’s membership of the customs union to 2023.

They recognise that any attempt to stay inside an economic zone with the EU – whether that be the “Norway option”, under the banner of the European Economic Area, or the “Swiss option”, which involves negotiating upwards of 100 separate trade agreements – comes with a demand for free movement of labour. That, as we know, is an unacceptable outcome for Leave voters.

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Throwing away much of a generation. Just like in Greece.

Half A Million ‘Hidden’ Young People In UK Left Without State Help (Ind.)

Almost half a million young people are at risk of “a life of unemployment and poverty” after being left without any state help to survive and find work, ministers have been warned. The alarm has been raised over a staggering number of “hidden jobless” who have “fallen off the government radar”, despite promises of intensive support to achieve their potential. The new research has found that 480,000 16- to 24-year-olds are missing out on both benefits and advice – no less than 60 per cent of the official total of young jobless. Strikingly, many of them have good job prospects, boasting impressive GCSE qualifications and having continued with their education beyond 16.

But they refuse to go to job centres because they are “unhelpful” or they “fear being treated badly” – due to the threat of sanctions – while others lack the necessary documents. A senior MP has now demanded answers from ministers, while campaigners are urging the government to let them plug the gap where the state is failing young people. Frank Field, the chairman of the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, told The Independent: “It seems as though a small army of unemployed young people have fallen through the gaps in the safety net without any official data recording whether they are destitute. “If we are to prevent them from being consigned to a life of unemployment and poverty, a first move must involve gathering accurate data on which young people are without either a job or an income, so they can then receive appropriate support.”

Read more …

One word: Yucca.

UK Campaigners Slam £1 Million Incentive To Store Nuclear Waste (G.)

MPs from both major parties have attacked the government’s latest incentive to entice communities into volunteering to host Britain’s first deep underground store for nuclear waste as “completely inadequate”. Ministers have offered up to £1m per community for areas that constructively engage in offering to take part in the scheme, and a further sum of up to £2.5m where deep borehole investigations take place. The aim is to find a permanent underground geological disposal facility (GDF) that could store for thousands of years the waste from Britain’s nuclear energy and bomb-making programmes. The scheme could involve building stores under the seabed to house highly radioactive material. It is predicted that the UK is likely to have produced 4.9m tonnes of nuclear waste by 2125.

But critics say the inducements offered by the government – part of the consultations it launched this year – to ensure local cooperation are “simply not good enough”, and point to the example of France, which has a similar amount of nuclear waste. It offers around €30m (£26.5m) a year as local support for districts neighbouring the site at Bure, in north-east France, and has also offered €60m in community projects. [..] The government is seeking to dispose of the UK’s nuclear waste underground because current storage facilities are both ineffective and expensive to maintain. A GDF would involve sealing the waste in rock for as long as it remains a hazard. The plan was also criticised by the Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, who said the UK should stop making nuclear waste and stop building new reactors.

“We are still pouring untold billions of taxpayer money into propping up an industry that the free market would have killed off years ago,” he said. “In return, we will be compounding the catastrophe of a nuclear waste build-up, which we are no closer to solving than we were when the industry was born.” Nina Schrank, energy campaigner at Greenpeace UK, added: “The lack of seriousness with which the UK government treats nuclear legacy issues makes it predictable that their quest for a suitable site has been so unsuccessful that they are looking again at the Irish Sea, which Sellafield turned into one of the most radioactively contaminated seas in the world.”

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“..we all know what usually happens when the EU goes on the ballot (see France and Netherlands in 2005, Ireland in 2008, Britain in 2016, pick your year in Denmark)”

Italy Could Blow Up Europe As We Know It (Pol.eu)

As Italy’s leading vote-getters work through the weekend to hammer out a coalition deal — about time, some might add, two months after the election — the EU and Brussels establishments are in a state of heightened anxiety. A government of the 5Stars (anti-establishment, in media shorthand) and the League (far right, ditto) together, or somehow alone, is unprecedented. Never before in any of the six original EU countries, much less one of its leading powers, have parties deeply skeptical toward the EU grabbed the reins of power. If that happens, the consequences for Italy and the EU could be felt for months and years to come. But the appetizer has been served. A surprise election outcome that sidelined Italy’s more traditional left and right parties and catapulted this odd couple into the limelight is disrupting European politics in unexpected ways.

[..] an Italian euro-exit is hardly off the table either. Beppe Grillo, the 5Stars’ founder, last week revived the idea of forcing a referendum on Italy’s membership in the single currency. It is, after all, in the party’s DNA — and we all know what usually happens when the EU goes on the ballot (see France and Netherlands in 2005, Ireland in 2008, Britain in 2016, pick your year in Denmark). Italy’s high debt, low growth and terrible demographics make it an unhappy fit in a eurozone dominated by northern economic powerhouses. If anything, the speculation about the intentions of any government with the 5Stars in it hardly helps boost investor confidence in Italy.

[..] The success of these two parties brings home the changed mood among Italians. That’s especially true for the young. In a 2017 poll, just over half of people under 45 said they would vote to leave the EU if Italy holds a referendum on EU membership (while 68 percent of respondents over 45 supported staying in the bloc). Young adults in Italy have memories only of economic stagnation and crisis. While domestic politics and finance can be blamed for much of that, the heavy hand of the EU is often present in the tale of woe.

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Just yesterday, Berlusconi got permission to run again. So maybe no new government yet?

Italy’s Radical M5S And League On Verge Of Forming Government (G.)

When Italians went to the polls in early March, the message was loud and clear: it was time for the parties that had dominated politics since the early 1990s to vacate the stage. Over 50% of voters backed two outsider parties, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and the far-right League. Over two months later, the pair are on the verge of forming a coalition government that could break decisively with the centrist policies that went before. Matteo Salvini, leader of the League (formerly the Northern League), and his M5S counterpart, Luigi di Maio, have been thrashing out a deal that could be revealed as soon as Sunday. “The Italian people want this government,” said Mattia Diletti, a professor at Sapienza University in Rome.

“They want to see something new, and I think Sergio Mattarella [Italy’s president] understands this.” Salvini and Di Maio, an odd couple who have spent most of the past two months hurling insults at each other, are working to put together a policy document and are expected to update Mattarella on Sunday. Di Maio has said that “considerable steps forward” have been made on a policy programme, with agreement on issues such as tougher laws on immigration, reform of pensions, a flat tax and a universal basic income. But it is unclear who Italy’s next prime minister will be. The names mooted in the Italian press include the League’s deputy leader, Giancarlo Giorgetti; Giampiero Massolo, chairman of shipbuilder Fincantieri and ex-chief of the secret service, and Elisabetta Belloni, the foreign ministry’s secretary general.

In any event, the candidate is likely to be someone who will heed Mattarella’s thinly disguised warning to the coalition on Thursday against retreating from Europe. M5S has softened its stance on the EU, saying it would like to open discussions on “some treaties” rather than pull Italy out, while Salvini has said he wants to “defend Italy” within the bloc.

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Hmmm…doubtful at best: .. the secret of change — and we need change — is to put all energies not in destroying the old, but rather in building the new.

So change, but decided by the same people…

EU’s Mogherini: Iran Nuclear Deal Will Hold (Pol.eu)

The Iran nuclear deal can survive without the United States’ support, Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said Friday. Speaking at a State of the Union conference, Mogherini said she has received assurances from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani that the country would stand by the agreement, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw and reimpose sanctions on Iran earlier this week. “We are determined to keep this deal in place,” Mogherini said, adding that only Iran has the power to unilaterally wreck the deal.

The Italian diplomat will meet with the foreign ministers of Germany, France and the United Kingdom — the three European powers that brokered the nuclear deal along with the EU, U.S., China and Russia — in Brussels Tuesday to discuss the future of the agreement. The European diplomats will also meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Europeans are seeking to demonstrate that they can still deliver most of the economic benefits Tehran was promised in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons program and allowing a robust system of international inspections, as well as persuade European companies active in Iran not to abandon their deals out of fear of being penalized by the U.S.

In her speech, Mogherini took several shots at Trump, though she did not mention the U.S. president by name, saying: “It seems that screaming, shouting, insulting and bullying, systematically destroying and dismantling everything that is already in place, is the mood of our times. While the secret of change — and we need change — is to put all energies not in destroying the old, but rather in building the new. “This impulse to destroy is not leading us anywhere good,” she added. “It is not solving any of our problems.”

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And he’s going to make closing it into a wonderful ceremony. Everyone’s welcome.

Damage To North Korea’s Nuclear Test Site Is Worse Than Anyone Thought (Ind.)

The damage to North Korea’s nuclear test site after its latest missile firing is believed to be worse than previously thought, it has been reported. Space-based radar showed that after the initial impact of the blast, which took place in September 2017, a large part of the underground Punggye-ri test site caved in. Chinese scientists had previously said that due to a partial collapse of a mountain near the test region that part of the site was no longer useable. The new research, from a study published in Science magazine, confirms this is likely to be the case. Sylvain Barbot, one of the authors of the study, said: “This means that a very large domain has collapsed around the test site, not merely a tunnel or two.”

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I made that title up.

Bad Bitches From Mars (Jim Kunstler)

I sense that with Schneiderman we’ve reached the zenith in this comic phase of American cultural collapse. The same week, Vanity Fair Magazine ran this item about the pop star Rihanna: Rihanna’s lingerie collection will drop on Friday [today], and there’s one very special addition that is making people lose their minds: her line, Savage x Fenty, will feature handcuffs. [Fenty is Ms. Rihanna’s surname.] Just days after she reimagined the Pope at the Met Gala, Rihanna is reminding us that this is still her week. She told Vogue that it was only natural that Fenty Beauty, which launched last fall, feature a lingerie line for women who want to express agency over their own looks and bodies…. ‘Women should be wearing lingerie for their damn selves,’ Rihanna [told Vogue]. I want people to wear Savage x Fenty and think, I’m a bad bitch.’”

[..] The Martian in me sees America turning into something like a Fellini movie, a panorama of fabulous excess and sinister fantasy, with the more malign forces of commerce propelling the garbage barge to ever darker extremes at the edge of a flat earth. On one part of the edge stands President Trump, all greatness and little goodness; and on the other edge stand characters like Eric Schneiderman and Harvey Weinstein, deposed champions of social justice — now cultural blood-brothers in the Sexual Predators Hall of Infamy. Mr. Schneiderman was all set to drag Mr. Weinstein, figuratively speaking, over several miles of broken glass and old Gillette blue blades in the state courts, and now it looks like the former NY AG himself may submit to a death of a thousand cuts by civil litigation, or maybe even a trip to one of his old criminal courtrooms, if the ever-vengeful Governor Andrew Cuomo has his wicked way.

If America were an X-rated billiard parlor, I’d think it had run the table on political sex stories, with nothing but the eight-ball of doom left on the table, and a wrathful deity — the Pope’s boss, shall we say — standing there chalking up his cue stick. When he sinks that last shot, a new game will get underway. I believe it will have to do with financial markets and currencies, and a lot more will hang on the outcome. The break itself should be a doozy — all those colored balls banging into each other and dropping into oblivion.

Read more …

 


For your Sunday calm: Philip Glass paints both the river flowing by, and the traffic of New York City, all at the same time. For him, in the end, it’s the same thing.

 

 

May 092017
 
 May 9, 2017  Posted by at 8:13 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  4 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Self portrait 1938

 

Macron Is Not The Solution To Europe’s Top Existential Threat (CNBC)
“Europe’s Not Out Of The Woods With Macron Win” (ZH)
Commodities Send Ominous Signal On Global Economy (BBG)
Traders Are Fleeing the Options Market (WSJ)
The Debt-Bubble Landmine Obama Left For Trump (NYP)
Canadians Buy Record Number of New Cars With Record Amount of Financing (BD)
Majority of Consumers Now See Canadian Home Prices Rising (BBG)
Over 50% of Canadians $200 or Less Away From Not Being Able To Pay Bills (Gl.)
Quebec’s Finance Minister: Don’t Dawdle on NAFTA Overhaul (BBG)
Chinese Stocks Head For Longest Losing Streak In 3 Years (BBG)
How China Keeps Its Financial System From Collapsing (ZH)
Parts of Asia Will Grow Old Before Getting Rich, IMF Warns (BBG)
Italy Adds Bum Note To Macron’s Ode To Euro Zone Joy (R.)
The Rock-Star Appeal of Modern Monetary Theory (Nation)
To Bury Nuclear Waste, Dig Deeper Than Yucca Mountain (BBG)
Dangerous Times in the Aegean and Cyprus (K.)
New Refugee Center Planned On Chios As Tensions Simmer (K.)
Nearly 200 Missing, 11 Dead As Migrant Boats Sink Off Libya (AFP)
Hundreds Of Migrants Feared Dead In Mediterranean Over Weekend (R.)

 

 

Macron wants Eurobonds, anathema to Germany et al because they would allegedly “sharply reduce each euro zone government’s motivation to pursue sensible fiscal policies..”.

Many in Brussels want a banking union, anathema to quite a few countries. There is no democratic way that leads to such a union. It’s like handing the EU the keys to your country.

Macron Is Not The Solution To Europe’s Top Existential Threat (CNBC)

The future of the euro zone is dependent on a common commitment to solid government finances, says Commerzbank’s chief economist, and France’s new president-elect does not bring the bloc any closer to achieving this reality. The pro-EU and centrist candidate, Emmanuel Macron, stormed to victory against his far-right political rival, Marine Le Pen, on Sunday and is now poised to become France’s youngest ever premier. However, the former economy minister is in favor of joint bond issuance which, according to Jörg Krämer, would sharply reduce each euro zone government’s motivation to pursue sensible fiscal policies. “The EU can’t keep feeling its way from one election to the next. At some point an election might go the wrong way – and if that happens in a large country, the survival of the monetary union would be in jeopardy,” Krämer said in a note.

Commerzbank’s chief economist also warned the repeated near misses of anti-EU political leaders in several European elections in recent years would not last forever and suggested the monetary union’s survival now rests on the bloc’s ability to create a genuine banking union. “To lay these existential risks to rest, the euro zone at long last needs a common commitment to solid government finances. The monetary union’s long-term survival depends on it. But new French President Macron won’t bring this any closer to reality,” he added. Meanwhile, just one day after the pro-business and market-friendly candidate Macron secured his country’s presidential election, EC President Juncker publically lambasted high state spending in the euro zone’s second largest economy. “With France, we have a particular problem … The French spend too much money and they spend too much in the wrong places. This will not work over time,” Reuters reported him as saying in Berlin on Monday.

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Le Pen would have lost against anyone. But tons of Europeans still don’t like what the EU has become. All it takes is a candidate somewhere who’s not Le Pen or Wilders.

“Europe’s Not Out Of The Woods With Macron Win” (ZH)

It appears the chairmen of UBS have plenty to say on Europe.Following former UBS chairman Peter Kurer’s comments that “to the elites, the EU is a means to get rich quickly and export their problems,” UBS current chairman Axel Weber has warned bankers that Europe is not “out of the woods” from its political risks even after Emmanuel Macron’s reassuring victory in the French presidential election. Peter Kurer recently remarked on the end of the Euro…

“Following an unfortunate combination of wrong decisions at the top and the uncontrolled flourishing of a self-serving bureaucracy, the union has moved in a direction where it has become a prisoner of its own constructed reality. The EU was a great idea but it has been ridden to death. Back in 1992, almost half of Swiss voted to join the European Economic Area, including the traveller. If there was a vote today on joining the union, the latest polls say just 15% would vote yes. The EU had its chances. It squandered them, and maybe it will come to an end in the foreseeable future under the weight of its burdens: La messa e finita, andate in pace.”

And over the weekend speaking in Tokyo, as the FT reports, UBS Chairman Axel Weber said that political risk in Europe remained “actually quite high” even though “we’ve seen the centre hold in France” with Macron’s victory over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, and even though all the signs were that the centre will also hold in the upcoming German location elections.

“That doesn’t mean Europe is out of the woods,” he told the International Institute of Finance’s spring meeting. “There is still Italy where it is very unclear that the centre will hold. And there is still Greece.” He continued: “Where you find some bright side….there are (also) some downside risks that are not really priced into the market but could derail (Europe).” “Brexit is a time bomb… and the countdown is on. It will be two years from now,” Mr Weber said. He added that “if the British really do leave the customs union and single market there could be a lot of volatility which could impact on the global economy”.

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How long can bubbles hold?

Commodities Send Ominous Signal On Global Economy (BBG)

By almost any measure last week was a bad one for commodities, as practically every part of the market lost value. West Texas Intermediate crude oil fell under $44 per barrel, Brent crude broke below $50 per barrel and copper tested $5,500 per metric ton. In China, coal and iron ore tumbled. Gold, the supposed ultimate haven, dropped to almost $1,225 per ounce. Last week’s purge capped a steady decline in prices since mid-April and, more broadly, since February based on the Bloomberg Commodities Index. Although much of the blame is being tied to rather high and growing inventory levels, a lack of real demand shouldn’t be discounted. The market is experiencing something greater than a technical correction or speculative positioning. It is signaling something ominous about the state of the global economy.

So while Friday saw a small recovery, it appears to be merely a “dead cat bounce” rather than a sign of any market bottom. Traders have reason to question global economic strength. They are concerned about fresh signs of an over-extended Chinese economy and an ongoing slowdown in developed markets faced with aging demographics. In the U.S., they question President Donald Trump’s infrastructure promises along with his administration’s relaxed standards in the mining and drilling sectors, whose commodities we already have too much of. OPEC’s output cuts have failed to do enough to stymie the global oil glut as U.S. drillers add to their rig counts. Such negative sentiment has carried through in the equity markets, particularly among commodity-producing nations such as Australia, Canada and Brazil.

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A liquidity problem. And a confidence one.

Traders Are Fleeing the Options Market (WSJ)

Falling volumes and spiraling costs are pushing trading firms out of U.S. options, raising concerns about fragility in a market that investors rely on to protect portfolios. Trading has dwindled in most areas of the market, and investors and traders are grappling with increasing fragmentation. Liquidity, the crucial ability to do trades without significantly moving prices, has deteriorated, according to interviews with market participants and data reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Options on key indexes, exchange-traded funds and high-volume stocks dominate trading. Meanwhile, there is less activity in the rest of the listed U.S. options world. The stresses prompted at least six prominent options market makers to exit from the business since 2012. Market makers are firms willing to both buy and sell using automated programs.

Thomas Peterffy, a pioneer of electronic options trading, said in March that his firm, Interactive Brokers, would pull the plug on options market making. KCG Holdings announced its exit from retail options market making last year, while UBS and Credit Suisse have also left automated options market making. JP Morgan and Bank of America made similar decisions in 2014, according to people familiar with the matter. “Most market makers congregate in the highly traded products,” Mr. Peterffy said in an interview. “It’s difficult for a market maker to maintain hundreds of thousands of bids and offers all the time.” It is hard to pinpoint what triggered the trader exodus, but industry experts say as firms leave, liquidity gets further drained, which spurs more market makers to retrench.

The dangerous feedback loop could sap appetite for options, key derivative securities that investors use to manage risk in their portfolios. “We could ill afford to lose any more market makers at this junction,” said Alan Grigoletto, who previously worked at the Boston Options Exchange, and now runs Grigoletto Consulting while trading options in his retirement account. Data show the liquidity bifurcation. Index and ETF options volume rose in April by 28% and 4%, respectively, data from the Options Clearing Corporation show. Meanwhile, total equity options volume shrank by 10% from the prior year.

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The car loans issue keeps growing.

The Debt-Bubble Landmine Obama Left For Trump (NYP)

President Trump came in for much jeering when he told reporters he had “inherited a mess” from President Barack Obama. On the economy, though, Obama did indeed leave behind a hidden mess: a seemingly healthy jobs market dependent on cheap debt. When this debt bubble bursts, just as the last one did, the manufacturing jobs Trump wants to save will be in even greater peril. [..] who is borrowing for used cars – and at much higher interest rates – is a huge concern. People with not-great credit scores have always made up about a fifth of the auto-loan market. But the percentage of people borrowing even though they have really bad credit scores has surged, reports Bloomberg. It’s now a third of the subprime auto-bond market, up from just 5% seven years ago. A Standard & Poor’s analysis of just one big subprime auto bond tells the story.

Last week, a company called DriveTime, which sells used cars in 26 states to people with bad credit, was in the market to issue $442 million worth of bonds backed by auto loans. The average credit score of borrowers was 538 — indicating a history of serious default. And, as S&P notes, “today’s subprime customer appears to be . . . weaker . . . than that of several years ago,” because people who defaulted right after the housing crash at least had the excuse that they were caught up in a global bubble. These loans are for people who have no choice but to borrow to buy a car, and no bargaining power on the interest rate they pay: close to 20%. Even though the borrowers pay through the nose, they depend on cheap global credit. With interest rates still near record lows, lenders have to take ever more risk in a low-interest-rate environment to make a little money.

As for that risk: Delinquency rates are rising, with 4.32% of subprime borrowers in general at least 60 days late last year, up from 3.52 two years earlier, says S&P. The bigger risk here isn’t the risk to investors, though. The auto-loan market is still much smaller than the housing market, and the investment world hasn’t created trillions of dollars of derivative securities based on this market (at least not that we know of). And unlike with houses, no one ever expects the value of a car to increase with use. No, this bubble presents a much more direct risk to the economy — and manufacturing jobs. If people with terrible credit can’t borrow an average of nearly $18,000 to buy a used car (what the DriveTime customer pays), the market for used cars collapses. That, in turn, affects the market for new cars. Indeed, the US auto industry has seen sales decline this year, after clocking half a decade of record highs.

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Canadians do the subprime car thing too.

Canadians Buy Record Number of New Cars With Record Amount of Financing (BD)

Canadians aren’t just buying real estate, they’re also treating themselves to new cars. According to a new release from Statistics Canada, sales of new cars reached a record high for February. Great for automobile manufacturers, but not so great for the economy. Debt-fuelled financing makes this more of a warning sign than a boom-time trend. Sales of new motor vehicles across Canada rose to an all-time record for February. The month saw 125,284 sales – a 2.74% increase from the same time last year. The largest segment of sales were seen in Ontario, where 41% of them occurred. This is up slightly from 2016, where Ontario accounted for 39% of sales. Booming real estate prices, and massive numbers for car sales… Ontario better be facing the greatest economy its ever experienced, or it’s in trouble.

Consumers are purchasing more expensive vehicles too. Over $5 billion was spent on new vehicles for the month, bringing the average to $40,100 – up 3.4% from the same time last year. Ontario was below the average for the country, where the average price was $39,400. While prices are lower in Ontario, they’re not exactly budget vehicles either. The uptick in average sale price is due to longer financing terms for buyers. According to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC), Canadians are “increasingly purchasing more car than they can afford,” due to longer financing becoming fashionable. The agency notes that average leases have crept up 2 months, every year since 2010. According to the Bank of Canada (BoC), the average loan was 74 months as of 2015.

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The Canadian debt issue is turning into a total craze.

Majority of Consumers Now See Canadian Home Prices Rising (BBG)

Expectations for Canada’s housing market are heating up, with more than half of respondents in a weekly telephone survey predicting home prices will rise, the first time the measure has topped 50% in records dating back to 2008. The bullishness comes even as a run on deposits at Toronto-based mortgage lender Home Capital leads to heightened scrutiny of a market which policy makers have said is divorced from economic fundamentals. The broad Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index fell to 59 in the week ended March 5. Some 50.1% of respondents said they expect local home prices to rise. The figure has climbed for six straight weeks and is higher than the average for the series of 37.1%. Thepercentage of people surveyed in the week ending May 5 who said local home prices will decline in the next six months slid to 10% from 10.7%.

“Consumer sentiment on real estate has gone from hot to hotter,” said Nanos Research Group Chairman Nik Nanos. Housing has led the world’s 10th largest economy over most of this decade as exporters have struggled. The latest burst of housing momentum has led policy makers to question whether it’s being led by supply and demand or by speculation. The Ontario Securities Commission opened hearings into whether Home Capital failed to properly disclose an internal probe into fraudulent mortgage applications, a shakeup in a nation lauded for having the world’s safest banks. The latest Toronto figures also showed prices up 25% in April from a year earlier, still close to the 30% March pace that Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa called unsustainable on April 20 when he imposed a foreign buyers tax. Those events haven’t led to more bets on a price decline either, and housing optimists now outnumber pessimists by a factor of five to one.

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So much in debt they can’t pay their bills. Maybe someone should take a look at Canadian inequality, too.

Over 50% of Canadians $200 or Less Away From Not Being Able To Pay Bills (Gl.)

More than half of Canadians are living within $200 per month of not being able to pay all their bills or meet their debt obligations, according to a recent Ipsos survey conducted on behalf of accounting firm MNP. “With such a small amount of wiggle room, any kind of unanticipated hardship, such as a job loss or even a car repair, could send an already struggling family into financial despair,” said Grant Bazian, president of MNP’s personal insolvency practice, which is one of the largest in Canada. For 10% of Canadians, the margin of error when it comes to household finances is even thinner, at $100 or less. But those with anything at all left at the end of the month were in better shape than many: A whopping 31% of respondents said they already don’t make enough to meet all their financial obligations.

Debt is causing Canadians a fair bit of stress, the polling suggests, but few appear to be on track to buff up their monthly financial cushion. Two-thirds of survey takers said they are “less than very confident” about their ability to create an emergency fund. Another hair-raising finding from the survey: Roughly 60% said they don’t have a firm grasp of how interest rates affect debt repayments. The statistic helps explain why many indebted Canadians end up taking on more debt and high-cost loans, said Bazian. “That’s how so many end up in an endless cycle of debt,” he noted. But the data also raises the question of whether Canadians understand the implications of an interest rate hike by the Bank of Canada (BoC). A decision by the BoC to start lifting its key policy rate from historic lows would raise the cost of carrying debt across the country.

The Bank uses interest rates, among other tools, to influence inflation and economic activity. Many economists believe it could start to raise rates in the first half of 2018, as economic growth picks up pace. Although the BoC will probably lift rates gradually and over time, the impact on Canadian wallets will be substantial. For example, as Global News has reported before, a onepercentage point rise in the BoC’s key interest rate would likely push up variable mortgage rates by a similar amount. A variable mortgage rate that’s currently set at 3%, for example, would go up to 4%, which represents a 33% increase in interest payments for the mortgage holder. That’s an extra $83 a month for every $100,000 in outstanding mortgage debt.

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Quebec has strong US trade ties.

Quebec’s Finance Minister: Don’t Dawdle on NAFTA Overhaul (BBG)

Quebec Finance Minister Carlos Leitao has a message for government officials considering a renegotiation of NAFTA: Time is of the essence. “If we are going to renegotiate Nafta, then let’s do it,” Leitao said in an interview Friday at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. “The worst case scenario would be if we spend years talking about renegotiating, but don’t actually do it and it just keeps hanging around and doesn’t get addressed. The longer it drags on, the bigger the real impact on investment.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is facing a lengthy trade battle with the U.S., which also includes calls for a new softwood lumber pact and Donald Trump’s complaints about Canada’s system of protectionist dairy quotas.

It’s all set to drag on as the president has yet to trigger a 90-day notice period to Congress to renegotiate Nafta. The last softwood lumber dispute lasted five years. “The problem with the uncertainty is we don’t know what kind of process we will have,” Leitao said. “Is this going to be along the same lines as the last Nafta negotiations? That was very systematic. There were panels on various issues. It’s that kind of certainty that we would like. The actual nuts and bolts will take time.” Leitao has good reason to be wary of protracted trade battles, with his most recent budget already predicting Quebec’s economic growth will lag behind the Canadian average. Output in Quebec will grow 1.7% this year before slowing to 1.6% in 2018, budget forecasts show. That’s less than the 2.2% and 2.3% forecast for all of Canada over the same period.

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Deleveraging.

Chinese Stocks Head For Longest Losing Streak In 3 Years (BBG)

Chinese stocks pared declines, with technical indicators signaling that a five-day slide may have been overdone. The Shanghai Composite Index was little changed at 3,077.78 as of 1:07 p.m. local time, after declining as much as 0.7% earlier in the day. Consumer shares were the worst performers on the CSI 300 gauge, while telecom companies led gains. The Hang Seng Index climbed 0.4%. An intensifying campaign to reduce leverage in the financial system pushed the Shanghai benchmark to a 2.4% loss in the five days through Monday. This drove the gauge’s relative strength index to below 30, a level that suggests to some traders that an asset is oversold.

The nation’s banking regulator said Monday that lenders should carry out collateral pressure tests at least once a year, while the Securities Times reported that some rural banks had suspended interbank businesses temporarily while officials conduct spot checks. “Some stocks appeared to be very cheap at current levels, and this triggered some bargain hunting,” said Banny Lam, head of research at CEB in Hong Kong. State-owned enterprises that dominate old growth industries, such as banks and commodity producers, have been among the hardest-hit by the deleveraging drive, while new-economy shares remain in favor among overseas investors. That’s led to a wide gap between the nation’s two main offshore gauges: the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index and the MSCI China Index.

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Much collateral doesn’t actually exist. Wealth management products, shadow banks, it’s all not much more than a mirage. It takes faith.

How China Keeps Its Financial System From Collapsing (ZH)

With “risk” in most of the developed world seemingly a long forgotten four-letter word, as seen by today’s plunge in the VIX to a level not seen in 34 years, traders hoping for some “risk event” have been confined to the recent turmoil in China, where overnight not only did trade data disappoint, with both imports and exports missing, but bond yields jumped to the highest level since 2015, dragging stocks lower even as the local commodity crash slammed iron ore and copper to new YTD lows.

While largely a “controlled” tightening, meant to contain China’s out-of-control shadow banking system, the recent gyrations in Chinese capital markets are starting to have a profound impact on local funding, resulting in a collapse in new bond issuance, and according to FT calculations, in April the number of aborted issues rose to 154, up from 94 in March, 32 in February and 31 in January.

As DB added, “local bond markets are practically shut for corporates. In fact, YTD issuance is down 40%+ yoy and net issuance has been negative in three out of the first four months this year. A number of issuers are being forced to cancel bond issuances (over RMB100 billion YTD) and there were reports (Bloomberg) of even CDB halting issuance (though subsequently denied). Some AA corporates are now issuing at north of 7%.” These signs of mounting stress in China’s $9.3 trillion bond market come less than a month after the country’s banking regulator, Guo Shuqing, was quoted as supporting a campaign to sort out chaotic practices, and threatening to resign if the banking system became “a complete mess”.

[..] whether or not China keels over and has a hard (or worse) landing, will depend on the PBOC; when (not if) the central bank gets involved, will depend on how soon China’s banks and various CD-funded financial institutions run out of collateral (whether it exists or not) to sell, such as iron ore, copper, precious metals, bonds and even stocks. This will hardly come as a surprise. As we showed last month, the only reason the Chinese banking system hasn’t imploded, is due to nearly CNY 10 trillion in central bank liquidity support for the local banks, just under 100% of China’s GDP.

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Europe too.

Parts of Asia Will Grow Old Before Getting Rich, IMF Warns (BBG)

Asia’s rapidly aging population means the region is shifting from being the biggest contributor to the global workforce to subtracting hundreds of millions of people from it, according to the International Monetary Fund. The reversal of the so-called “demographic dividend” will drag on global growth and also that in Asia, the world’s fastest growing region, the IMF warned in its annual outlook for the area. The population growth rate will fall to zero for Asia by 2050 – it’s already negative in Japan – and the share of the population who are working-age has already hit its peak, the IMF estimates. That means the ratio of the population aged 65 and older will be almost two and a half times the current level by 2050, and even higher in East Asia.

“The speed of aging is especially remarkable compared to the historical experience in Europe and the United States,” the IMF said. Per capita income in Asia relative to the U.S. remains at much lower levels than those achieved by mature advanced economies in the past. “Countries in Asia will have less time to adapt policies to a more aged society than many advanced economies had,” the fund wrote. “As such, parts of Asia risk becoming old before becoming rich.” For economic growth, the aging process could erode up to one percentage point from annual output over the next three decades in Japan, and between 0.5-0.75 percentage point in China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand.

While some bright spots remain, such as India and Indonesia, demographics could subtract 0.1 of a percentage point from annual global growth over the next three decades, the IMF estimates. It also means Asia is at risk of falling into secular stagnation if an older population leads to excessive savings and low investment renders monetary policy ineffective. The demographic shift will also likely keep downward pressure on real interest rates and asset returns for most major countries in Asia, the IMF said. “Adapting to aging could be especially challenging for Asia, as populations living at relatively low per capita income levels in many parts of the region are rapidly becoming old,” the IMF said.

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It’s time to come clean on how bad Italy is really doing.

Italy Adds Bum Note To Macron’s Ode To Euro Zone Joy (R.)

Italy is adding a bum note to Emmanuel Macron’s ode to joy. While it’s encouraging that a Europhile will take the French presidency after Sunday’s vote, attention can now turn to Europe’s other crisis-in-waiting. Elections are coming in Italy, and there are more of the ingredients for a populist shock than in France. The economy has fared much worse since the creation of the euro zone, with growth averaging zero since 2001, according to the IMF. GDP per capita has fallen in that time. The IMF expects the unemployment rate to reach 11.7% this year, 2 percentage points higher than in France. Anti-EU forces are also spread widely across Italy’s messy political landscape. Stagnation has fuelled support for the 5-Star Movement, which could lead Italy out of the euro zone and currently polls just below 30%.

Mainstream parties are shaky. The left fragmented after former prime minister Matteo Renzi lost his referendum on constitutional reform in December. The right is an awkward alliance between ageing former premier Silvio Berlusconi and more radical anti-EU parties, like the Lega Nord. The risk is that 5-Star forms a coalition with the Lega after elections that must take place by May next year. The economy is picking up, but tighter monetary policy, as the European Central Bank reins in bond buying, could strangle the recovery, as could an overly stern fiscal policy. Italy needs to cut spending or increase taxes by 2percentage points to meet European targets through 2019. Job losses from the restructuring of banks and bankrupt national airline Alitalia could become a lightning rod for anti-EU sentiment.

Europe can help. Italy is likely to miss its fiscal targets anyway, but loosening bloc-wide budget rules to encourage investment and spread out cuts over a long period would cement the recovery. A strong France, aided by Macron’s victory, might persuade Germany to spend more, and give other countries freer rein. However, even if a political shock is avoided, the next election may produce a weak government with no mandate for taking tough decisions to boost growth. Italy could be bringing discord to the region for years.

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MMT must go mainstream.

The Rock-Star Appeal of Modern Monetary Theory (Nation)

To a layperson, MMT can seem dizzyingly complex, but at its core is the belief that most of us have the economy backward. Conventional wisdom holds that the government taxes individuals and companies in order to fund its own spending. But the government—which is ultimately the source of all dollars, taxed or untaxed—pays or spends first and taxes later. When it funds programs, it literally spends money into existence, injecting cash into the economy. Taxes exist in order to control inflation by reducing the money supply, and to ensure that dollars, as the only currency accepted for tax payments, remain in demand.

It follows that currency-issuing governments could (and, depending on how you lean politically, should) spend as much as they need to in order to guarantee full employment and other social goods. MMT’s adherents like to point out that the federal government never “runs out” of money to fund the military, but routinely invokes budget constraints to justify defunding social programs. Money, in other words, isn’t a scarce commodity like silver or gold. “To people who’ve worked in financial markets, who work at the Fed, this isn’t controversial at all,” says Galbraith, who, while not an adherent, can certainly be described as “MMT-friendly.”

The decisions about how to issue, lend, and spend money come down to politics, values, and convention, whether the goal is reducing inequality or boosting entrepreneurship. Inflation, MMT’s proponents contend, can be controlled through taxation, and only becomes a problem at full employment—and we’re a long way off from that, particularly if we include people who have given up looking for jobs or aren’t working as much as they’d like to among the officially “unemployed.” The point is that, once you shake off notions of artificial scarcity, MMT’s possibilities are endless. The state can guarantee a job to anyone who wants one, lowering unemployment and competing with the private sector for workers, raising standards and wages across the board.

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No matter how deep you dig, you can’t guarantee safety for a million years. That’s what’s halted Yucca Mountain. The Bloomberg editors don’t understand the issue either.

To Bury Nuclear Waste, Dig Deeper Than Yucca Mountain (BBG)

Energy Secretary Rick Perry is right to say the U.S. needs a long-term solution to its massive nuclear waste problem. It also makes sense for Perry and some members of Congress to see Yucca Mountain as part of that solution – though many Nevadans promise to make sure it won’t be. But even if Yucca can survive the political fight, it can’t be the only option for disposing of America’s spent nuclear fuel. More than 75,000 metric tons of the stuff are cooling in pools and casks at dozens of power-plant sites around the country. That’s already too much to fit in Yucca Mountain, and the total grows by more than 2,000 tons a year. Other strategies are needed, ideally ones that are less politically radioactive. Consider, for instance, the idea of sinking the waste into boreholes that reach three miles below ground – 15 times as deep as the proposed chambers inside Yucca. Such shafts could be drilled in states that, unlike Nevada, benefit from the use of clean, reliable nuclear power.

Boring into the Earth’s deep rock layers could provide the kind of bury-it-and-forget-it underground disposal necessary for material that will remain dangerous for hundreds of millennia. Local opposition can still be expected; in North and South Dakota, residents have shouted down some plans to dig test holes. That’s why a so-called consent-based strategy, identifying locations with both the appropriate geology and an agreeable population, is necessary. If hosting a waste site means more funding for local public works and services, more communities might be willing to accept one. (This proved to be the case in Carlsbad, New Mexico, home to a storage place for low-level waste from nuclear weapons.) A familiarity with nuclear power may also encourage acceptance, perhaps because there is a nuclear plant in the area employing people and providing power.

The same approach could also be used to locate six or seven centers where waste from several nuclear plants could be stored while it awaits burial. Such containment facilities could also include research centers – mini national laboratories where scientists could work out new ways of reprocessing fuel and perhaps conduct demonstration projects for reactors designed to use safer fuels. The one thing the U.S. should not do is continue to neglect the growing quantities of nuclear waste. Over the past few decades, electricity ratepayers have contributed more than $34 billion to a national fund to pay for a geologic disposal site. And because none yet exists, taxpayers are forking over billions more to enable nuclear-plant operators to manage interim storage. The political barriers to solving this problem may be high, but further delay – and an undue fixation on Yucca Mountain – won’t make them any easier to overcome.

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Turkey will provoke Greece at some point, and US and Europe had better prevent that from happening.

Dangerous Times in the Aegean and Cyprus (K.)

The concept of gray zones (the claim that the sovereignty of a number of islands and islets in the Aegean is undetermined) was a novel idea that Turkey came up with 20 years ago. At some point, Ankara reached the point of including the Greek island of Gavdos in its gray zones list. Whenever Athens made an official request regarding the islands or rocky outcrops that Turkey had on its list, the answer was always very vague: “Anything that is not clearly included the bilateral agreements that set out Greece’s borders with other countries.” At first, many people thought this was a bargaining chip that Ankara would trade as part of a grand bargain. They were wrong. The failure to settle differences between Greece and Turkey gave Ankara the opportunity to add more issues to the agenda.

Over time, these have become permanent and ever-expanding. Currently, Turkey considers significant parts of the Aegean to be gray zones. This includes islands that have been inhabited for decades. It is questioning Greek sovereignty through its actions, not just its words, by the frequent presence of naval vessels in Greek waters and overflights by fighter jets. Over the last few months, it has being doing this more systematically and openly. Greece’s approach has also changed. The doctrine that existed in the wake of the Imia crisis in 1996, when the two countries almost went to war, was based around not building up tension following various incidents and maintaining a low profile.

[..] A dangerous situation is also playing out in Cyprus. The Turks are trying to impose the concept of gray zones there as well. July (when a new round of drilling for hydrocarbons is due to begin off Cyprus) promises to be a difficult month. Ankara will attempt before then to intimidate the companies that plan to start drilling or try to obstruct them if they are not scared off by threats.

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Prison camps are no solution.

New Refugee Center Planned On Chios As Tensions Simmer (K.)

The exact site for the creation of a new so-called pre-departure camp for migrants and refugees on the island of Chios will be determined by May 20, authorities said on Monday. The new camp will come as tensions at overcrowded reception centers on the eastern Aegean island continue to simmer, with almost daily clashes between stranded migrants of different ethnicities. “The experience of Lesvos and Kos where such centers have been created is positive,” said Lieutenant General Zacharoula Tsirigoti of the Greek Police in a press briefing Monday on Chios. Pre-departure centers are deemed essential as they house refugees and migrants returning to Turkey. Tsirigoti added that building a new center on the island is a “one-way street” as locals – many of whom have campaigned for the immediate removal of all migrants and refugees from Chios – say the situation has reached breaking point and that the large police force on the island has been unable to cope.

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The season is just starting: “..the trend points to around 250,000 people arriving over the course of 2017”. There is no place for these people in Italy and Greece.

Nearly 200 Missing, 11 Dead As Migrant Boats Sink Off Libya (AFP)

Eleven migrants have died and nearly 200 are missing after two boats sank off the coast of Libya, UN agencies said Monday citing survivors, in the latest such tragedy. The first involved an inflatable craft which left Libya early Friday with 132 people on board, only to start deflating a few hours later, before overturning. Some 50 survivors were picked up by a Danish container ship, the Alexander Maersk, which was alerted to divert by Italian coastguards and dropped them off on Sunday in Pozzallo, southern Sicily. Representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) were able to meet them on Monday to hear their accounts. Survivors told them that women and children were among those missing.

At the same time, the bodies of 10 women and one child were found Monday on a beach in Zawiya, 50 kilometres (31 miles) west of Tripoli, according to an official for the Libyan Red Crescent. Then on Sunday seven migrants – a woman and six men – were rescued by Libyan fishermen and coastguards off the coast of the Libyan capital. An IOM spokesman who met them said they had set out on a boat with at least 120 people on board, including about 30 women and nine children. In all more than 6,000 migrants were rescued Friday and Saturday in international waters off the coast of Libya and brought to Italy, while several hundred were rescued in Libyan waters and taken back to Libya.

The number of people leaving Libya in the hope of starting a new life in Europe is up nearly 50% this year compared with the opening months of 2016. With most departures coming in the warm summer months, the trend points to around 250,000 people arriving over the course of 2017. Some 500,000 migrants were registered in Italy in the three years spanning 2014-16.

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Europe’s reputation is tarnished for decades. But everyone thinks they can deflect responsibility. Time for skin in the game.

Hundreds Of Migrants Feared Dead In Mediterranean Over Weekend (R.)

More than 200 migrants are feared to have died in the Mediterranean over the weekend, according to testimony from survivors, and several bodies, including that of an infant, have washed up on a Libyan beach. About 7,500 people have been rescued off the coast of Libya since Thursday, the Italian and Libyan coastguards said. Two groups of survivors told the organizations that hundreds drowned when their rubber boats began to deflate before rescuers arrived. More than 60 are feared dead and three bodies were recovered on Saturday, survivors brought to Sicily on Sunday told Italian coastguards. The boat left Libya carrying about 120, they said. There was some discrepancy in the numbers. Based on its interviews with some of the survivors in Pozzallo, Italy, the U.N. refugee agency estimated the number of dead at more than 80.

Separately, Libya’s coastguard picked up seven survivors over the weekend who said they had been on a boat packed with 170 migrants. Aid agency International Medical Corps, which gave medical care to the survivors, also confirmed their account. “We rescued on Sunday seven illegal migrants – six men and a woman,” said Omar Koko, a coastguard commander in the western city of Zawiya. “According to these survivors, there were 170 on board the boat, which sank because of overloading.” Among those missing were more than 30 women and nine children, Koko said. Eleven bodies washed up on the shore west of Zawiya, said Mohanad Krima, a spokesman for the Red Crescent in Zawiya. “All the bodies are of female victims and there is a girl of less than one year old,” he said.

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Nov 042016
 
 November 4, 2016  Posted by at 9:56 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  Comments Off on Debt Rattle November 4 2016


DPC Madison Street east from Fifth Avenue, Chicago Sep 1 1900

Both US Parties Need to Worry About Poverty (BBG)
The End of a Great Industrial Power: France Car Production Collapses (Gef.)
The Sad Case Of Japan Should Serve As A Warning For China (BBG)
China Faces Looming Bulge in Currency Pressure (WSJ)
Egypt Central Bank Devalues Currency By 48% In Exchange For IMF Loan (AlJ.)
‘The FBI Is Trumpland’: Anti-Clinton Atmosphere Spurred Leaks (G.)
US Voters Fear The Media Far More Than Russian Hackers (WE)
Trump is Half Right and Half Wrong about Mosul (Di Lorenzo)
Tory MPs Warn High Court Trio Of Early Election If They Don’t Back Down (DM)
Government Pension Plans Are Headed For Disaster (Mises Inst.)
Toronto Home Prices Surge in October, Undaunted by New Rules (BBG)
Turkey Police Round Up Kurdish Party Leaders in Midnight Raids (BBG)
Turkey Appears To Have Closed Most Of The Internet (Ind.)
Historic Climate Pact Enters Into Force (AFP)
Early Closings Of US Nuclear Plants Leave Toxic Waste With Nowhere To Go (BBG)

 

 

Poverty is a problem the US flatly denies and ignores.

Both US Parties Need to Worry About Poverty (BBG)

There’s a reason presidential nominee Donald Trump’s message of a declining America is inspiring support in Republican strongholds: poverty is worsening in his party’s congressional districts, a new analysis by the Brookings Institution shows. The poverty rate increased in nearly all – 96% – of the Republican-controlled districts between 2000 and the 2010-2014 period, according to a study by Elizabeth Kneebone, a fellow with the institute. She analyzed Census data and figures from the American Community Survey. The population living in poverty in all Republican districts climbed by 49%, compared with a 33% increase in Democratic areas. A big theme of this presidential election campaign that will be decided on Nov. 8 has been the battle to win low-income voters who feel left behind from the economic expansion.

Trump’s rallies have been often packed with middle-class supporters who are receiving his message to “make America great again.” Both him and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton have promised to raise the minimum wage and deal with the affordability of college and childcare. Neighborhoods in Democrat-leaning districts also have a high proportion of poor people. Combined, the poverty rate in districts represented by Democrats was higher at 17.1% in 2010-14 than the 14.4% in Republican areas. However, the overall number of poor residents was larger in Red districts at 25.1 million compared with 22.7 million in Blue districts, the study found. “Poverty and opportunity should be more than a top-of-the-ticket conversation,” Kneebone said. “Challenges of poverty cut across the political divide and touch all 436 congressional districts.”

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France suffers from the same disease as all Southern European contries. As long as it stays in the Eurozone, this can only get worse.

The End of a Great Industrial Power: France Car Production Collapses (Gef.)

French industry has been contracting since the adoption of the euro. It was not able to recover after either of the 2001 or 2008 crises because the euro, a currency stronger than the French franc would be, has become a burden to France’s economy. The floating exchange rate works like an indicator of the strength of the economy and like an automatic stabilizer. A weaker currency helps to regain competitiveness during a crisis, while a stronger currency supports consumption of foreign goods. China has been accused of artificial devaluation of its currency to prop up exports, while the ECB’s policy has had an opposite effect for the economy of France and some South European countries: the euro has become too strong; whereas for Germany’s it has become too weak.

That is why the common currency has increased consumption and imports in less productive countries and strengthened German competitiveness and exports. Because of the euro France could not regain international competitiveness in the world’s market after the 2001 crisis, so its industry has been slowly dying ever since. What we are saying is not that weakening your currency is a solution to boost a never-ending growth. The floating exchange rate is a great tool for bad times, which is excellently known in Poland, where there was no recession because of, among others, a temporarily weaker national currency. France and South European countries have just given this tool over to the ECB and they were not able to have a quick recovery. Just like Germany has had with an undervalued euro in their case.

Today, according to the Eurostat, industry (except construction) makes up 14.1% of the French total gross value added, while in 1995 it was 19.2%. The EU’s average is still 19.3%, but in Germany 25.9%. Moreover, the share of industry in total employment in France is only 11.9%, also under the EU’s average (15.4%) and the German level (18.8%). One of the imprints of the dying French manufacturing under the ECB rules is automotive sector collapse. According to OICA data, the world’s car production almost doubled in the years 1997-2015 from 53 million vehicles produced yearly to 90 million. At the same time, Germany increased its car production by 20% from 5 to 6 million. What happened in France, once the proud producer of beautiful and modern vehicles?

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Deflation.

The Sad Case Of Japan Should Serve As A Warning For China (BBG)

China and Japan may seem to inhabit alternative economic universes. After more than two decades of stagnation, Japan is a fading global power that can’t seem to revive its fortunes no matter what unorthodox gimmicks it tries. By contrast, China’s ascent to superpower status appears relentless as it gains wealth, technology, and ambition. Yet these Asian neighbors have a lot in common, and that doesn’t bode well for China’s economic future. The sad case of Japan should serve as a cautionary tale for China’s policymakers. Beijing pursued almost identical economic policies to Tokyo’s to generate its rapid development. Now China’s leaders are repeating the missteps the Japanese made that tanked Japan’s economy and thwarted its revival.

30 years ago, few foresaw the decline of Japan, either. Japan was the East Asian giant poised to overtake the U.S. as the world’s top economy. Driving that ascent was an economic system that many considered superior to laissez-faire American capitalism. By fostering close, cooperative ties among the state, big corporations, and banks, Japan’s policymakers encouraged investment and guided a national industrial strategy. Bureaucrats in Tokyo interfered with markets to a degree unthinkable in the U.S. by protecting nascent industries and directing financing to favored sectors and companies. Backed by such support, Japanese companies burst onto the world stage and pushed their American competitors to the wall. But even as Japan appeared destined for greatness, its economy was, in reality, starting to rot.

Those clubby ties among finance, business, and government misallocated capital and led to wasteful investments. Growth was given a boost by cheap credit in the second half of the 1980s, but that also helped inflate debt levels and stock and property prices. When this “bubble economy” burst in the early 1990s, the financial industry was flattened. Japan has yet to fully recover. [..] The methods Beijing employed to generate rapid growth—directing finance, nurturing targeted industries, and promoting exports—are replicas of Japan’s. And since the state in China’s “state capitalism” plays an even larger economic role than Japan’s officious bureaucracy does, the Chinese government interferes with markets to a greater degree.

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More record lows every day.

China Faces Looming Bulge in Currency Pressure (WSJ)

Markets have grown more accustomed to the slow-motion decline in the value of the Chinese yuan. The currency’s next milestone, however, may usher in a more challenging period. China’s currency has fallen nearly 4% against the dollar this year, with a chunk of that move taking place over the past month, though there has been a small recovery in recent days. Recent dollar strength is certainly a factor in the minds of China’s currency managers in deciding when to intervene and when to let the yuan slide. Beijing has spent more than $500 billion in reserves to manage the yuan’s slide over the past two years on a balance-of-payments basis. Still, the yuan has slipped from 6.06 a dollar to above 6.75. That is getting close to 6.82, the level around which the yuan was pegged for an extended period from 2008 until 2010.

Currency traders could be accused of overplaying such historical levels having an effect on current trading. But in this case, it may have more than just a psychological impact. The two years in which the yuan was stuck around 6.82 was also the period of the largest inflows into the Chinese economy, to the tune of $764 billion, noted Kevin Lai of Daiwa Securities. Quantitative easing in the U.S. was in full effect and trillions flowed to emerging markets, especially China. Individuals and companies that borrowed in dollars or brought money in as a carry trade may have hung on until now, figuring they haven’t lost money on the exchange rate. But seeing the yuan get back to the rate when they brought it in could hasten transfers.

Unlike the period from 2008 to 2010, when interest-rate differentials vastly favored bringing money to China, and the exchange rate was pegged, the difference between dollar rates and yuan rates have narrowed substantially, plus the Chinese have to account for the possibility the yuan will weaken further. That explains why Federal Reserve rate increases have such a powerful effect on China’s capital flows. [..] It isn’t inevitable that the bulge of money that flowed in from 2008 to 2010 will necessarily leave. But outflows do continue to bubble below the surface. The ghosts of inflows past may yet haunt China’s future.

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Lagarde poking a stick into a hornest nest.

Egypt Central Bank Devalues Currency By 48% In Exchange For IMF Loan (AlJ.)

Egypt has devalued its currency by 48%, meeting an important demand set by the IMF in exchange for a $13bn loan over three years to overhaul the country’s economy. Thursday’s much anticipated decision by the Egyptian Central Bank followed a sharp and sudden decline this week in the value of the dollar in the unofficial market, dropping from an all-time high of 18.25 pounds to around 13 to the US currency. The devaluation pegs the Egyptian pound at 13 to the dollar, up from nearly nine pounds on the official market. The IMF’s executive board has yet to ratify the $12bn loan provisionally agreed by Egypt and the IMF in August.

Egypt’s central bank increased interest rates by three percent to rebalance currency markets following weeks of turbulence. A shortage of dollars in the economy had put the currency under intense downward pressure in recent months. A rapid slide on the black market to 18 earlier this week pushed the importers to cease buying, with the rate strengthening to 13 late on Wednesday, creating a rare opportunity for the central bank to devalue. The central bank said the new exchange rate was non-binding and would serve as “soft guidance to jumpstart the market”.

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Even this can be turned into an anti-everyone-but-Hillary piece, as the Guardian proves.

‘The FBI Is Trumpland’: Anti-Clinton Atmosphere Spurred Leaks (G.)

Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election. Current and former FBI officials, none of whom were willing or cleared to speak on the record, have described a chaotic internal climate that resulted from outrage over director James Comey’s July decision not to recommend an indictment over Clinton’s maintenance of a private email server on which classified information transited. “The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent. This atmosphere raises major questions about how Comey and the bureau he is slated to run for the next seven years can work with Clinton should she win the White House.

The currently serving FBI agent said Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel,” and that “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.” The agent called the bureau “Trumplandia”, with some colleagues openly discussing voting for a GOP nominee who has garnered unprecedented condemnation from the party’s national security wing and who has pledged to jail Clinton if elected. At the same time, other sources dispute the depth of support for Trump within the bureau, though they uniformly stated that Clinton is viewed highly unfavorably. “There are lots of people who don’t think Trump is qualified, but also believe Clinton is corrupt. What you hear a lot is that it’s a bad choice, between an incompetent and a corrupt politician,” said a former FBI official.

Sources who disputed the depth of Trump’s internal support agreed that the FBI is now in parlous political territory. Justice department officials – another current target of FBI dissatisfaction – have said the bureau disregarded longstanding rules against perceived or actual electoral interference when Comey wrote to Congress to say it was reviewing newly discovered emails relating to Clinton’s personal server. [..] Comey’s decision to tell the public in July that he was effectively dropping the Clinton server issue angered some within the bureau, particularly given the background of tensions with the justice department over the Clinton issue. A significant complication is the appearance of a conflict of interest regarding Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, who met with Bill Clinton this summer ahead of Comey’s announcement, which she acknowledged had “cast a shadow” over the inquiry.

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It’s only a poll of 1000, but perhaps the US voter is not completely stupid.

US Voters Fear The Media Far More Than Russian Hackers (WE)

Voters fear the media far more than Russian hackers when it comes to tampering with election results. According to a Suffolk University/USA Today poll, 46% of likely voters believe the news media is “the primary threat that might try to change the election results.” The national political establishment was the second most-suspected group at 21%, and another 13% were undecided. Foreign interests, including “Russian hackers,” ranked fourth with 10% and “local political bosses” came in last with 9% of likely voters as the main threat to truthful election results. The poll results found 51% of likely voters were either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about the possibility of violence erupting on election day or afterwards.

The poll of 1,000 likely voters was taken between Oct. 20 and Oct. 24 and followed the release of private emails by the hacking group WikiLeaks that revealed cozy relationships between some prominent media stars and the Clinton campaign. The WikiLeaks dump also discovered Donna Brazile, the interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, forwarded a debate question to Clinton that was later asked at a CNN Democratic town hall. Brazile at the time was a CNN contributor. The poll found 39% of likely voters believe the media is coordinating coverage with individual political campaigns, while 48% said the media is reporting “completely of its own accord.” The Gallup Poll has found trust in the media to have sunk to an historic low. A September Gallup survey found just 32% of American adults saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media,” a number that has dropped 8 %age points from last year.

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“.. keeping Boobus Americanus fooled into believing that that guy in the black pajamas with the giant sword will be in their neighborhood next week..”

Trump is Half Right and Half Wrong about Mosul (Di Lorenzo)

In his campaign stump speech Donald Trump ridicules Obama for publicly announcing four months in advance that “we” will be invading Mosul, Iraq to kick out ISIS there and capture its leaders. No element of surprise there. Twelve minutes after the announcement, said Trump, and the ISIS leaders were gone. Trump is right to mock this foolish talk. The element of surprise is what military commanders dream about. Stonewall Jackson’s famous flanking maneuver at the Battle of Chancellorsville (VA), where his 60,000-man army outflanked and surprised the 133,000-man Army of the Potomac with a crushing defeat is still to this day taught at military academies around the world.

But Obama is not that stupid. He’s just not interested in winning the “war on terra,” as Dub-Yuh called it. His main interest is keeping Boobus Americanus fooled into believing that that guy in the black pajamas with the giant sword will be in their neighborhood next week chopping off heads if we ever stop intervening in the Middle East. It’s all theater, in other words. That’s why the regime announces some big new military escalation every few months, lest Boobus forgets that he’s supposed to be frightened into acquiescing in the never-ending explosive growth of the military-industrial complex and the relentless growth of the state in general that it nourishes.

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The mess will only get deeper unless Brits stop blaming each other.

Tory MPs Warn High Court Trio Of Early Election If They Don’t Back Down (DM)

Theresa May could be forced to hold an early election if judges and Remain campaigners do not back down in the war against Brexit, Tory MPs warned last night. On a frantic day at Westminster, the Prime Minister vowed to appeal yesterday’s High Court verdict which would allow Parliament to frustrate or even scupper the process of Britain leaving the EU. No 10 sent a clear message to the courts that 17.4 million voters had backed Brexit and that they should not get in the way of ‘delivering the best deal for Britain’. David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, said that – if yesterday’s verdict was upheld by the Supreme Court – a full Act of Parliament would be required to trigger Brexit.

This would allow MPs or unelected peers to table amendments that could dictate the terms of Brexit or even halt the process. But Mr Davis warned that heading down this path would be a huge mistake. And senior Tories said that, if MPs and peers did try to frustrate Brexit, a General Election was almost inevitable, suggesting Mrs May would have no option but to trigger an ‘immediate’ poll in early 2017. Last night, Mr Davis said: ‘Parliament voted by six to one to give the decision to the people, no ifs or buts, and that’s why we are appealing this to get on with delivering the best deal for Britain. ‘Parliament is sovereign and has been sovereign, but of course the people are sovereign.

‘The people are the ones who parliament represents…17.4 million of them, the biggest mandate in history, voted for us to leave the EU. ‘We’re going to deliver on that mandate in the best way possible for the British national interest. ‘The people want us to get on with it and that is what we intend to do.’ Ex-justice minister Dominic Raab said the verdict had opened ‘Pandora’s box’. He added: ‘I think the elephant in the room here is if we get to the stage where [Remainers] allow this negotiation to even begin, I think there must be an increased chance that we will need to go to the country again. ‘I think that would be a mistake and I don’t think those trying to frustrate the verdict in the referendum will be rewarded.’

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A global phenomenon. “..the political process [..] actually rewards those who underfund the present and defray costs onto future generations.”

Government Pension Plans Are Headed For Disaster (Mises Inst.)

The combined debt held by U.S. public pension plans will top $1.7 trillion next year, according to a just-released report from Moody’s Investors Services. This “pension tsunami” has already forced towns like Stockton, California and Detroit, Michigan into bankruptcy. Perhaps no government mismanaged their pension as badly as Puerto Rico, where a $43 billion pension debt forced the commonwealth to seek protection from the federal government after having defaulted on its obligations to bondholders — a default which is expected to spread to retirees in the form of benefit cuts. While the disastrous outcome of Puerto Rico’s pension plan – which is projected to completely run out of assets by 2019 – represents the worst-case scenario, the same series of events that led to its demise can be found in most public pension plans nationwide.

There are three primary culprits that can be found in nearly every state suffering from a public pension crisis: 1) The use of accounting gimmicks that are designed to shift costs onto future generations – an approach outlawed for private pension plans and rejected by both public and private plans in Canada and Europe. 2) Lawmakers, acting in their political self-interest, who have catered to the past demands of government unions to enrich their members’ benefits while passing the costs onto future generations. 3) A broken governance structure where public pension board members are actually penalized in tangible ways for acting responsibly, and are rewarded by choosing to delay the day of reckoning. Perhaps the most concise assessment of public pensions came from the former chief actuary for the nation’s largest public pension fund – CalPERS – who noted simply that: “Politics and pensions just don’t mix.”

And it’s not just “liberal” states like California who have succumbed to the siren call of public pensions. My home state of Nevada – historically thought to be a bastion of limited government thought – is in a proportionally deeper hole than our California neighbors! [..] In theory, government is ostensibly designed to override the allegedly short-sighted, greedy nature of individual actors with policies that are long-term oriented and designed to maximize the general welfare. Yet, as the case of public pensions (not to mention infrastructure spending, the national debt, entitlements, etc.) reveals, the political process actually does the exact opposite: it actually rewards those who underfund the present and defray costs onto future generations.

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Just ask yourself: who profits?

Toronto Home Prices Surge in October, Undaunted by New Rules (BBG)

Toronto home sales rose to a record and prices surged in October, showing little effect so far from new government rules designed to bring stability to the market. Sales in Canada’s biggest city rose 12% to 9,768 transactions from the same month a year earlier, while average prices jumped 21% to C$762,975 ($569,852), according to the Toronto Real Estate Board. The average price of a detached home was C$1,034,077, up 26% on the year. New listings rose 0.9% to 13,377 homes. “Until we experience sustained relief in the supply of listings, the potential for strong annual rates of price growth will persist, especially in the low-rise market segments,” Jason Mercer, the board’s director of market analysis, said in a statement on Thursday.

The market remained hot even as Finance Minister Bill Morneau unveiled new federal rules in October that included a stress test for home-loan borrowers and came into effect halfway through the month. The rules also stiffened requirements for low-ratio mortgage insurance and closed a tax loophole. Toronto’s march higher contrasts with Vancouver’s continued sales decline since the provincial government enacted a tax on non-Canadian home buyers. Sales in the west coast city fell 39% in October over the prior year, while prices for all residential properties climbed to an average of C$919,300, a 25% jump from a year earlier and a 0.8% decline from September.

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The west uses the Kurds when it comes to fighting ISIS, but leaves them hanging when it comes to Erdogan’s delusions.

Turkey Police Round Up Kurdish Party Leaders in Midnight Raids (BBG)

Turkish police began rounding up Kurdish lawmakers in post-midnight raids on Friday, extending a crackdown on the opposition as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan consolidates power following a July 15 coup attempt. Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, co-chairs of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, also known as the HDP, were among those detained, according to CNN-Turk. At Erdogan’s request, parliament had passed a law in May stripping the party’s lawmakers of their immunity from prosecution, which allows them to be charged with terrorism-related offenses. Last year, Demirtas looked to be a rising political star in Turkey. He led a pro-Kurdish party to win seats in parliament for the first time, passing the threshold of 10% of the national vote.

He also ran for president in 2014, and campaigned on a promise to prevent Erdogan from winning the power he seeks to transfer the seat of power in Turkey from parliament to an enhanced executive presidency. The police raids were carried out in Diyarbakir, Turkey’s largest Kurdish-majority city, and in the capital Ankara, according to Haberturk newspaper. Sirri Sureyya Onder, a member of parliament representing Istanbul, was also detained in Ankara, it said. Over the weekend, police arrested the elected mayors of Diyarbakir and later replaced them with government appointees. Demirtas had said that members of his party wouldn’t abide by orders to appear before courts, saying they’d become servants of the ruling party and were illegitimate.

Erdogan says the HDP is merely a front for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a group classified by Turkey and allies – including the U.S. and EU – as a terrorist organization. The HDP is the third-largest party in Turkey’s parliament, holding 59 of the legislature’s 550 seats.

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Could still be an incident, but it would fit the pattern.

Turkey Appears To Have Closed Most Of The Internet (Ind.)

Much of the internet appears to have gone down in Turkey. People in the country are having problems accessing much of the internet’s biggest websites and services, including Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Twitter and more. The website Down Detector confirmed problems in the country, particularly in the west. Some have reported that the sites are simply slow, but that it is still possible to access them. Others say they are down entirely. It isn’t clear whether the outage has been caused by an intentional ban, a cyber attack or just an accident. Some reported that issues with Turk Telecom appeared to be the cause of the problems.

Turkey Blocks, a website that tracks issues with the internet in Turkey, claimed that web traffic including that for WhatsApp was subject to throttling, where connections are slowed down to the point they are unusable. It claimed that the internet ban was related to the arrest of some political activists the night before the outage went into effect. The issue began overnight but has been going on throughout the day, according to local reports. The internet in general seems to be having a rocky few weeks – recently, it went down for almost a full day after a strange cyber attack on the internet’s infrastructure that appeared to be executed by webcams.

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Yeah, yeah, CON21. Mankind is capable of producing huge amounts of hot air in more ways than one.

Historic Climate Pact Enters Into Force (AFP)

A hard-fought pact to stave off worst-case-scenario global warming enters into force Friday after record-fast ratification by nations reassembling next week for a fresh round of UN climate talks. Dubbed the Paris Agreement, it is the first-ever pact binding all the world’s nations, rich and poor, to a commitment to cap average global warming by curbing planet-warming greenhouse gases from burning coal, oil and gas. “Humanity will look back on November 4, 2016, as the day that countries of the world shut the door on inevitable climate disaster,” UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa said. While cause for celebration, “it is also a moment to look ahead with sober assessment and renewed will over the task ahead,” she said.

This meant drastically cutting emissions in the short term, “certainly in the next 15 years,” Espinosa pointed out a day after a UN report said current trends were steering the world towards climate “tragedy”. By 2030, said the UN Environment Programme, annual greenhouse gas emissions will be 12 to 14 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) higher than the desired level of 42 billion tonnes. The 2014 level was about 52.7 billion tonnes. 2016 is on track to become the hottest year on record, and carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere passed an ominous milestone in 2015. On Friday, the Eiffel Tower in Paris as well as government and public buildings in Marrakesh, New Delhi, Sao Paulo and Adelaide, among others, will be lit up in green to mark the entry into force of the historic pact.

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“..interim storage sites while the government develops a permanent solution..” Baloney. There is no permanent solution. Yucca Mountain was discarded after a judge ruled the government had to guarantee safe storage for 100,000 years. There is no such guarantee.

Early Closings Of US Nuclear Plants Leave Toxic Waste With Nowhere To Go (BBG)

Under a 1982 law, the U.S. government, not the utilities, is responsible for disposing of radioactive waste that can take thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of years to degrade. But more than a half-century after nuclear energy powered the first American home, the U.S. Department of Energy still doesn’t have a permanent solution for the waste left behind. It’s a problem that will only get worse. On October 24, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station near Blair, Nebraska, became the fifth nuclear plant to close in five years. Of 119 reactors in the U.S., 20 are now being decommissioned and a half-dozen more are expected to close prematurely, nudged out by cheap natural gas and growing use of renewables.

Beyond that, “the big wave of retirements really starts coming in around 2030,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz warned last month at an event in Washington. Among experts, the nuclear waste debate invariably turns on the fleeting nature of human institutions in dealing with an element that the Environmental Protection Agency has said must be isolated for 10,000 years to protect humans and the environment from toxic radiation. “The problem with federal agencies is that the management structure changes every few years,” said Allison Macfarlane, a former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which licenses and regulates civilian use of radioactive material. “In hundreds of years, will these institutions be there, will they care, will they pay?” That’s one issue. A second is where exactly to put the waste.

The safest thing to do is to bury it deep underground, below the water table and within a stable rock formation. Congress picked such a site in 1987: a desert ridge in Southern Nevada known as Yucca Mountain. The site abuts a nuclear weapons testing ground where 928 atomic tests were conducted between 1951 and 1992. While a few Nevada counties agreed with the selection, the state government didn’t, and the Yucca solution soon devolved into a decades-long political fight that crossed party lines and spanned presidential administrations. In 2010, President Barack Obama finally scrapped the plan altogether, declaring the site unworkable.

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