- UK's Top Doctor Demands Ban For "Killer" Kitchen Knives
Hot on the heels of London Mayor Sadiq Kahn’s city-wide ban on knives, The Express reports that one of Scotland’s leading doctors has called for a ban on “killer” kitchen knives.
Dr John Crichton, the new chairman of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland, wants the sale of pointed kitchen knives to be banned to help reduce the number of fatal stabbings.
Dr Crichton, who took on the role of chairman in June this year, is championing a switch to so-called “R”-bladed knives, which have rounded points and are far less effective as weapons.
As The Express details, he said that research shows many attacks, particularly in households where there has been a history of violence, involve kitchen knives because they are so easily accessible. Dr Crichton believes a switch from sharp-pointed, long-bladed knives to the new design could save lives.
“This is a public health measure and public health measures are always about society deciding on a self-imposed restriction for the public good.”
Maybe – to be safer – all knives should be blunted to a government-mandated level of kill-a-bility… oh and while we are banning dangerous kitchen implements – what about rolling-pins? Perhaps they should be licensed to only those who pass a government-mandated baking sanity test?
- America Hasn't Learned A Thing: Racism, Materialism, & Militarism Still Reign Supreme
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
As a nation, we have a tendency to sentimentalize cultural icons in death in a way that renders them non-threatening, antiseptic and easily digested by a society with an acute intolerance for anything controversial, politically incorrect or marred by imperfection.
This revisionist history has proven to be a far more effective means of neutralizing radicals such as Martin Luther King Jr. than anything the NSA, CIA or FBI could dream up.
This was a man who went to jail over racial segregation laws, encouraged young children to face down police dogs and water hoses, and who urged people to turn their anger loose on the government through civil disobedience. King called for Americans to rise up against a government that was not only treating blacks unfairly but was also killing innocent civilians, impoverishing millions, and prioritizing the profits of war over human rights and dignity.
King actually insisted that people have a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
This is not a message that the government wants us to heed.
No, the government wants us distracted, divided, warring against each other and helpless to free ourselves from a lifetime of bondage and servitude to the powers-that-be.
It’s working.
In life, King was fiery, passionate, single-minded in his pursuit of justice, unwilling to remain silent in the face of wrongdoing, and unafraid of offending those who might disagree with him.
In death, King has been reduced to a lifeless face on a stone monument: mute, immobile and powerless to do anything about the injustices that continue to plague the nation.
America hasn’t learned a thing.
The “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism“ that King railed so passionately against have yet to be conquered.
In fact, the evils of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism have got us in a death grip.
America is still waging endless wars abroad, prioritizing profit margins over principle, and adopting institutionalized racist policies that result in a disproportionate number of people of color being stopped, searched, raided, arrested, thrown in jail, and shot and killed by government agents.
Fifty years later, we have compounded the evils of racism, materialism and militarism with ignorance, intolerance and fear.
Callousness, cruelty, meanness, immorality, ignorance, hatred, intolerance and injustice have become hallmarks of our modern age, magnified by an echo chamber of nasty tweets, government-sanctioned brutality, and “the politics of exclusion.”
“We the people” have become “we the police state.”
By failing to actively take a stand for good, we have become agents of evil.
None of us who remain silent and impassive in the face of evil, racism, extreme materialism, meanness, intolerance, cruelty, injustice and ignorance get a free pass.
Those among us who follow figureheads without question, who turn a blind eye to injustice and turn their backs on need, who march in lockstep with tyrants and bigots, who allow politics to trump principle, who give in to meanness and greed, and who fail to be outraged by the many wrongs being perpetrated in our midst, it is these individuals who must shoulder the blame when the darkness wins.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that,” King sermonized.
The darkness is winning.
It’s winning in our communities. It’s winning in our homes, our neighborhoods, our churches and synagogues, and our government bodies.
It’s winning in every new generation that is being raised to care only for themselves, without any sense of moral or civic duty to stand for freedom.
We are on the wrong side of the revolution.
“If we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution,” advised King, “we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.“
Freedom demands that we stop thinking as Democrats and Republicans and start thinking like human beings, or at the very least, Americans.
Freedom demands that we not remain silent in the face of evil or wrongdoing but actively stand against injustice.
Freedom demands that we treat others as we would have them treat us. That is the law of reciprocity, also referred to as the Golden Rule, and it is found in nearly every world religion, including Judaism and Christianity.
In other words, if you don’t want to be locked up in a prison cell or a detention camp—if you don’t want to be discriminated against because of the color of your race, religion, politics or anything else that sets you apart from the rest—if you don’t want your loved ones shot at, strip searched, tasered, beaten and treated like slaves—if you don’t want to have to be constantly on guard against government eyes watching what you do, where you go and what you say—if you don’t want to be tortured, waterboarded or forced to perform degrading acts—if you don’t want your children to grow up in a world without freedom—then don’t allow these evils to be inflicted on anyone else, no matter how tempting the reason or how fervently you believe in your cause.
As long as we continue to allow ignorance, intolerance, racism, militarism, materialism and meanness to trump justice, fairness and equality, there can be no hope of prevailing against the police state.
Martin Luther King Jr. dared to dream of a world in which all Americans “would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
He didn’t live to see that dream become a reality.
It’s still not a reality. We haven’t dared to dream that dream in such a long time.
But imagine…
Imagine what this country would be like if Americans put aside their differences and dared to stand up—united—for freedom…
Imagine what this country would be like if Americans put aside their differences and dared to speak out—with one voice—against injustice…
Imagine what this country would be like if Americans put aside their differences and dared to push back—with the full force of our collective numbers—against the evils of the police state…
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, tyranny wouldn’t stand a chance.
- Russia's Richest Billionaires Lost Over $16 Billion Today
It was not a great day to be a Russian billionaire…
After Washington unleashed yet another round of sanctions, this time targeting the Oligarch class, Russian stocks plunged the most since 2014, Russian bond spreads blew out the most since 2000, and the Ruble plunged most since Jan 2015
But it was the richest Russians that suffered the most as Bloomberg reports the combined net worth of the country’s wealthiest people fell by $16 billion Monday — erasing all of their year-to-year gains — following last week’s U.S.-imposed sanctions.
Not all the Russian billionaires were hit equally though.
All but one of the 27 Russian tycoons listed on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index lost money, led by Siberian nickel miner Vladimir Potanin, whose fortune declined $2.25 billion.
As RusLetter.com reports, the condition of the billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who fell under personal US sanctions, is rapidly declining. Based on the rating of the richest people of the planet according to Forbes (real time) version at 18:00 Moscow time, it decreased by $ 957 million and in real time is $ 5.3 billion. This was due to a sharp drop on the background of En + London stock exchange by 20% – to $ 9.6 per share.
In addition to Deripaska, six more participants of the Forbes list were also hit: they themselves were included in the new list of sanctions, as well as 12 of their companies. Suleiman Kerimov’s fortunes decreased (by $ 244 million to $ 6.6 billion) and Viktor Vekselberg’s F 10 (by $ 41 million to $ 14.6 billion). The condition of Igor Rotenberg and Kirill Shamalov did not change, and Vladimir Bogdanov and Andrei Skoch even grew by $ 1 million and $ 8 million, respectively.
Before the publication of the “Kremlin report” in which the US authorities promised to name the main friends of Vladimir Putin, against whom restrictions must be imposed, the richest people in Russia were visibly nervous. When the “Kremlin report” was made public, it turned out that it fully coincides with the Russian part of the world ranking Forbes. The Russian billionaires were confused: “Will the sanctions be imposed for the entire Forbes list?” For some time everyone was waiting for new personal sanctions, but problems, as it turned out, do not threaten everyone.
On Friday, April 6, Washington said that now “Russian oligarchs will not have a chance to profit from the Russian corrupt system, they will not be isolated from the consequences of the destabilizing activity of their government.” All assets of their assets in the US are frozen. Citizens of the United States are forbidden to enter into any business relations with them. More details about the seven billionaires who are under sanctions, via Forbes:
Viktor Vekselberg
Assessment of the state: $ 14.4 billion
Place in the world ranking: 89
Source of income: is the founder and chairman of the board of directors of the group “Renova”. Now Vekselberg’s main asset is investment in the Swiss company Sulzer, the manufacturer of pumping equipment. Previously owned assets in the “Sual Holding”, the company Deripaska “Rusal” and “Rosneft”
For which he got on the sanctions list: “for bribing officials associated with the project for the production of electricity in Russia.”
Andrey Skoch
Assessment of the state: $ 4.9 billion
Place in the world ranking: 404
Source of income: a share in USM Holdings (30%) owned by OOO Metalloinvest Managing Company is a large Russian mining and metals company specializing in steel production, as well as a share of Vnukovo airport shares (formally the shares of Skoca are held by his father, pensioner Vladimir Skoch).
For which I got on the sanctions list: “for being a State Duma deputy and having links with Russian organized criminal groups.”
Suleiman Kerimov
State estimation: $ 6.4 billion
Place in the world ranking: 265
Source of income: the Kerimov family owns 83% of the shares in the largest Russian gold mining company Polyus, the international airport of Makhachkala
For which he got on the sanctions list: “for being associated with the Russian government, for money laundering and non-payment of taxes in the amount of 400 million euros for the purchase of villas in Cap d’Antibes”.
Oleg Deripaska
Assessment of the state: $ 6.7 billion
Place in the world ranking: 248
Source of income: holding company En +, which owns blocks of shares of aluminum producer US Rusal and electricity company Eurosibenergo. En + Group is an energy company that is valued at $ 9.8 billion and is managed through the NG “Basic Element”, which also fell under sanctions. Deripaska also controls the GAZ Group, Ingosstrakh, Basel Aero (airports in the Krasnodar Territory), and the Kuban agroholding
For which I got on the sanctions list: “for representing the interests of the Russian government, for money laundering, bribing officials and links with criminal groups.”
Vladimir Bogdanov
Assessment of the state: $ 1.8 billion
Place in the world ranking: 1339
Source of income: a stake in Surgutneftegaz
For which he got on the sanctions list: “for being the general director and deputy chairman of the board of directors of Surgutneftegaz, the company contributed by the US sanctions service to the appropriate list.”
Kirill Shamalov
Condition assessment: $ 1.4 billion
Place in the world ranking: 1650
Source of income: 3.88% stake in Sibur (17%, which he bought from Gennady Timchenko in 2014, in the spring of 2017 he sold Leonid Mikhelson)
For which he got on the sanctions list: “for working in the energy sector of the Russian economy and for marrying Katerina Tikhonova, who is considered Vladimir Putin’s daughter (Bloomberg reported divorce in January), and for a loan from Gazprombank, which was sanctioned.”
Igor Rothenberg
State estimation: $ 1.1 billion
Place in the world ranking: 1999
Source of income: 50% of the shares of RT-Invest Transportation Systems, operator of the Platon system for collection of heavy-duty vehicles, as well as 46.2% of the shares of the Tula Cartridge Plant and 79% of the shares of Gazprom Drilling, which he acquired from his father, Arkady Rothenberg
For which he got on the sanctions list: for his work “in the energy sector of the economy of the Russian Federation”.
- The True Origins Of The US-Chinese Trade War
Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,
China responded to Trump’s tariffs with economic restrictions of its own, though its market has always been notoriously difficult to enter due to Beijing’s own ironically “protectionist” policies designed to safeguard its domestic producers, but the government has been easing its prior regulations in recent years in order to facilitate the country’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) global vision of New Silk Road connectivity. The developing trade war between the US and China threatens to formalize the long-running economic competition between these two Great Powers as they vie with one another over control of the world order, with Washington wanting to retain its erstwhile but fading unipolar dominance while Beijing wants to pioneer the emergence of a multipolar system marked by a diversity of theoretically equal stakeholders.
The friction between these contradictory forces is the basis of the ongoing New Cold War, though there’s a bit more of a backstory to this global struggle than just that.
The US thought that “winning back Beijing” through its late Cold War-era alliance with China against the USSR would allow Washington to do as it pleases to what its decision makers had convinced themselves was their largest proxy state to date, but the US’ betrayal of China through the failed Tiananmen Square Color Revolution attempt of 1989 forever changed how the East Asian country’s communist leaders viewed America. Nevertheless, the naïve liberal-globalists of the Clinton era thought that they could bribe China to remain “loyal” to the US-led global world order that emerged after the Cold War by relying on “win-win” investments that would enrich the American elite while helping China rapidly modernize.
Suffice to say, this presumption proved to be totally false.
The so-called “Washington Consensus” and attendant “rules of the game” are rigged in order to benefit the US and indefinitely perpetuate its global hegemony, which is why China continuously broke the rules to its advantage but was allowed to get away with it for so long because of the aforementioned relationship that it had with naïve liberal-globalist American elites who profited from this system at the expense of average Americans.
The Obama Administration tried to preemptively “balance” the inevitable geopolitical consequences of this trend by proposing the so-called “Group of Two” or “Chimerica” global partnership with China, but Beijing rejected this outreach.
By 2013, China felt confident enough with its newfound strength to announce the world-changing OBOR megaproject that’s designed to bring a definitive end to America’s economic dominance and related unipolar “leadership”, but then the US and China suddenly “switched” global economic roles following Trump’s election.
President Xi’s January 2017 speech at Davos saw him proclaim China as the champion of a reformed version of the globalization model that America once led, while President Trump has made no secret of his preference for the type of protectionist-nationalist policies that the People’s Republic itself embraced in the past.
The rest of the world is now compelled to choose between these competing systems.
Just like during the Old Cold War, however, the new one is seeing the reemergence of another Non-Aligned Movement (Neo-NAM) that’s attempting to strike a “middle ground” by “hybridizing” the best policies of both but in a more complicated and comprehensive way than before because of the inextricable geopolitical and economic dimensions that transcend the former dogmatic adherence to a single ideology. If there’s any “ideology” at all nowadays, then it’s the pure self-interest of Neo-Realism, and it’s here where Russia can play a pivotal role during this transitional period of global systemic change by assisting the Neo-NAM in “balancing” between both “blocs” and reaping the resultant advantages.
- White House Hoping To Trim At Least $120BN From $1.3TN "Omnibus" Spending Bill
Larry Kudlow took viewers by surprise during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” this week when – after offering the usual boilerplate about the White House’s trade beef with China – he mentioned that the White House was considering a “rescission bill” to strip some spending from the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill that President Trump signed into law last month.
Congressional and West Wing sources have apparently confirmed as much with Bloomberg, which reported that the rescission bill – which could ultimately strip $120 billion from nondefense discretionary spending – was under serious consideration.
With the CBO now projecting a $1 trillion budget deficit by 2020 – two years sooner than previously estimated – the urgency for the government to roll back some of its deficit-fueled spending has intensified. And bear in mind, the CBO is now estimating that there won’t be a recession within the next ten years, which would make this the longest economic cycle without a contraction in US history.
As we noted earlier, according to the latest estimates, spending will exceed revenue by $804 billion in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, compared with a projected $563 billion shortfall from June, the non-partisan arm of Congress said in a report Monday. In fiscal 2019, the deficit will reach $981 billion, compared with an earlier projection of $689 billion.
Given the threat that swelling debts pose to the US financial system (not to mention the stock market), Bloomberg reported that the US is planning to ask Congress to pare back some of the domestic spending authorized by the bill.
Meanwhile, the White House is hoping to leave military funding, funding for the opioid crisis and border security untouched.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been working with the administration on a rescission maneuver, though any attempts to roll back spending will likely be opposed by Democrats.
For those who are unfamiliar with the obscure provision, here’s an explanation of “rescission” courtesy of Bloomberg.
The rescissions request makes use of an obscure provision in the 1974 Budget Act that allows the president to request the cancellation of some spending and gives Congress 45 days to approve the measure. Under a 1992 precedent in the Senate that limits debate, Republicans likely could pass the bill without any Democratic support.
“The administration is working to identify potential rescissions and at this point, there is no completed list or dollar amount,” White House budget office spokeswoman Meghan Burris said.
The 2,232-page omnibus bill was roundly criticized by 25 House conservatives, including House Freedom Caucus member Mark Meadows, who almost sunk the bill by turning against it and threatening what would’ve been a third government shutdown this year.
Trump also flirted with opposing the bill after it passed the House, and it wasn’t until Speaker Paul Ryan journeyed to the White House for a lunch meeting where he secured the president’s support.
Still, the president made clear that he was signing the bill because of a national security imperative – and that he opposed the domestic spending concessions Congressional Republicans had permitted. It also, crucially, lacked funding for Trump’s southern border wall. The White House had initially sought nearly $20 billion.
The bill increased military spending by $80 billion this year above previous spending limits and non-defense spending by $63 billion. Trump’s 2018 budget had sought a $54 billion cut to non-defense spending.
Despite having the ability to circumvent the Democrats, both Democratic and Republican aides told Bloomberg the package would face difficulty in the Senate as Republicans – particularly members of the appropriations committee – likely wouldn’t support breaking a good-faith agreement and doing an end-run around their Democratic peers.
“Advancing a rescission package like the one described would lay waste to the notion that Republican leadership negotiated the omnibus in good faith and poison the well for future responsible, bipartisan legislating,” said Matthew Dennis, a spokesman for House Appropriations Committee Democrats on Friday.
Steve Bell, a former Senate Republican budget aide of the Bipartisan Policy Center predicted that because of this, the package will face difficulties in the Senate and may not even be introduced.
Republicans could try to pare back domestic spending by $120 billion to put it in line with the Trump 2018 budget. But the larger the request, the more difficult it will be for moderate Republicans to swallow.
Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a spending watchdog group, said the larger the request from Trump, the more difficult it will be.
“Unless its a really targeted package that just focuses on some egregious waste, it is going to get enough people ticked off that it won’t go through” he said.
Budget watchdogs say they would welcome the chance to reduce the roughly $150 billion spending increase in the omnibus bill.
“I don’t have a view yet on this particular process, but certainly we overspent for FY 2018 and if we can pare the funds backs a bit – both on the defense and non-defense side – that would be an improvement,” Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said.
While it’s reasonable to assume that paring back domestic spending might be unpopular with both Democrats and moderate Republicans, the CBO report cited above is just the latest sign that the White House has dramatically overspent. And at the end of the day, stopping the US from transforming into Greece might be a higher political priority than preserving domestic programs.
- Petro-Yuan Is The Newest Weapon For The China-Russia-Iran Anti-USD Alliance
Authored by Jeff Brown via The Saker blog,
Pictured above, the currency symbols for the old Spanish peseta and the Chinese yuan. Maybe Baba Beijing can synthesize the two of them into a cooling looking petro-yuan logo.
After 25 years of dreams, planning, rumors and testing, the Chinese petro-yuan is now official. Right now, almost all global oil trade is conducted in US dollars, using two benchmark varieties of crude, West Texas Intermediate and North Sea Brent, as the industry standards. It is no accident that these two benchmarks are based on imperial crude, American and British, and the irony of this is surely not lost on Baba Beijing (China’s leadership).
China is not selling oil, so the petro-yuan is a futures purchase contract denominated in renminbi for the country to import the stuff. As the world’s biggest importer of hydrocarbons, Baba Beijing has long felt that pricing all its millions of tons of imports should be in its national currency. Why should China pay for Russian natural gas or Venezuelan crude in Western empire’s currency of global financial control, Uncle Sam’s greenback?
Opinions outside China range from being non-plussed, to claiming it is the most important news in modern financial history, but you would have to search far and wide in Eurangloland (NATO, EU, Israel, Australia and New Zealand) and its heavily censored and suppressed media, to see for yourself. Outside the obligatory statement of fact in financial outlets like the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Reuters and Bloomberg, silence from the West’s mainstream media is deafening, as this screenshot below shows, when searching the topic. Only one mainstream article showed up on page #1 of the web search and that was CNBC from 2017. Even just looking for “petro-yuan” gives identical results. It’s a Western media black hole.
The West’s censorship and suppression of news that reports the truth about China, Russia and Iran is lethally effective. Hitler called it the Big Lie. Eurangloland learned from a master.
Both end points on the above range of ideas are probably exaggerated. But, the fact that any global oil seller can now buy non-US dollar oil contracts is momentous, for sure. In 1971, Richard Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard and got OPEC to restrict global hydrocarbon sales to greenbacks. Thus, overnight, the world’s reserve currency was pure fiat money, which is still being kept propped up by the need for the world economy to buy dollars, in order to purchase the most strategic commodity on earth. Here are two ranges of opinion on Nixon’s decision (from this to this).
Many people don’t want to acknowledge that their decision to switch from the US dollar to the euro, by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, had a lot to do with their countries being invaded, plundered, destroyed, and then they being killed in a highly humiliating and public fashion. In both cases, once they made the switch, it was just months before they were sacked.
Other, more powerful oil producers have already ditched the greenback, but Western empire only knows how to prey on weaker states, like Grenada, Panama, Serbia, Africa and the like. Iran has already stopped using the US dollar, as has Russia with China, which helps explain the West’s vociferous, self-defeating illegal sanctions and embargos on them.
Both Iran and Russia make Uncle Sam brown the backside of his red-white-and-blue bloomers, as well as for the Zionist state of Israel. I don’t even have to mention Eurangloland’s white knuckle fear of China. The China-Russia-Iran anti-dollar alliance versus the West is causing the latter’s elites to suffer from extreme geopolitical dysentery. Vulnerable, and it has to be said gullible Iraq and Libya, yes – but this towering trio not so much, as they are two of the world’s biggest petro-exporters next door to the biggest importer, and all are armed to the teeth with high-tech military hardware. When you look at the map below, it graphically shows how ridiculous it is for these three players to do business in dollars. New York and Washington are so far, far away.
Whatcha gonna do about it, Eurangloland? There’s not a damn this you can do, short of destroying humanity and the world. Sadly, there are many psychopaths in Washington, Brussels, London and Paris who would prefer that, than accept imperial collapse.
As usual, you have to go outside the Great Western Firewall and its propaganda Big Lie, to see the real world. For those who want to delve deeper, RT has done an informative series of articles and the South China Morning Post (SCMP) has done a couple of good ones.
RT:
https://www.rt.com/business/422314-petro-yuan-futures-dollar-death/
https://www.rt.com/business/422448-china-oil-futures-outstrips-brent/
https://www.rt.com/business/422472-russia-china-petro-yuan/
https://www.rt.com/business/422776-trade-war-petro-yuan/
https://www.rt.com/business/422838-petro-yuan-dollar-gaddafi/
https://www.rt.com/business/423461-petro-yuan-us-dollar-oil/SCMP:
http://www.scmp.com/business/global-economy/article/2139646/chinas-yuan-denominated-oil-futures-what-took-you-so-long
http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2139781/yuan-denominated-oil-futures-mark-significant-move - US Futures Spike As Xi Pushes Globalization Agenda, Vows To Open China To The World
It seems the machines never sleep.
Before China’s Xi had even uttered a word – in war or peace – Nasdaq futures were ramping up 1% from the cash close and the S&P and Dow following… And once it was clear that Xi was not going to drop another trade war tape bomb, futures extended gains to the highs of the day session.
What futures loved was the series of traditionally hollow promises from Xi including:
- promise to open up China to the world and expand imports
- “work hard” to import more products that are needed by China’s people
- implement major opening up steps,
- lower auto and auto product import tariff later this year, open sector to higher foreign ownership
- release a measures to broaden market access
- expand the opening of China’s economy
- push forward economic globalization
- relax market threshold, widen access to market; take major measures in opening and sharply widen market access
- implement financial and insurance market opening measures
-
strengthen IP protection for foreign firms (to restructure IP bureau
Then there were the ideological vows:
- China reform and opening will definitely succeed, world should push for free trade
- Cold war mentality is out of place, its a zero sum game, isolationism will hit walls
- Urges dialog as only way to resolve disputes
- Says states must refrain from seeking dominance
- Need to uphold multilateral trading system
Incidentally, many if not all of these promises had been made previously, most extensively during last year’s Party Congress. In the meantime, the only real change was Xi upgrading himself from mere president and crowning himself emperor for life.
Never one to dig too deep between the lines, algos loved the speech and the result has been a vertical lift in risk-assets:
Now where have we seen that kind of vertical ramp before.. and what happened next?
Xi’s speech is being interpreted as somewhat globalist in nature as he plays down tensions and calls for ‘free trade’…
- *CHINA’S XI SAYS COLD WAR MENTALITY IS OUT OF PLACE
- *CHINA’S XI SAYS DIALOGUE IS THE WAY TO RESOLVE DISPUTES
- *CHINA’S XI SAYS SHOULD PUSH FOR FREE TRADE
- *CHINA’S XI CALLS FOR UPHOLDING MULTILATERAL TRADING SYSTEM
- *XI SAYS GLOBALIZATION MUST BE MORE OPEN, INCLUSIVE
- *XI SAYS TO EXPLORE SETTING UP FREE TRADE PORTS
- *CHINA TO REDUCE TARIFF ON AUTO-RELATED PRODUCTS: XI
- *XI SAYS HOPES COUNTRIES WILL LOWER CURBS ON HIGH-TECH TRADE
And a direct jab at Washington:
- *CHINA’S XI SAYS STATES MUST REFRAIN FROM SEEKING DOMINANCE
- *XI SAYS CHINA WON’T BE THREAT TO WORLD, EXISTING GLOBAL SYSTEM
Then Xi heads down the comedy road:
- *XI SAYS CHINA WON’T SEEK SPHERES OF INFLUENCE (apart from building islands in the Pacific)
Many on the sellside agreed with the algos and said Xi’s speech marked de-escalation of trade war risks:
According to Trinh Nguyen, economist at Natixis, Xi’s speech suggests a conciliatory tone with some concession towards market access. Question remains as to how much of the proposals will take place, and whether that’s enough to appease U.S. President Donald Trump. Still, markets will see Xi’s remarks as positive which will help to lower the risks. “Clearly this is positive for EM Asian FX, especially those closest to the China-U.S. trade spat.”
An almost identical take from First Shanghai Securities strategist Linus Yip, who said that “Xi’s speech sends a positive signal to the market since he backs globalization and the opening up of China market,” although concern over trade disputes remains, as Xi is talking about the long-term picture.
Alan Richardson, a fund manager at Samsung Asset Management said that Xi’s comments are positive for globalization but they don’t address Donald Trump’s immediate task of reducing the trade deficit with China.
Some were downright skeptical, and echoed our own perspective, noting that Xi was not at all as conciliatory as the markets made him out to be:
With the speech over, I’m not at all convinced it was anywhere near as conciliatory as some are going to spin it. “New” offers mostly old news, no movement on core issues like Made in China 2025. Quite the contrary, doubled down on rhetoric about “innovation driven growth”.
— Matt Schrader (@tombschrader) April 10, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
For now, and at least until the next Trump tweet, outburst, or Mueller raid, it’s risk is on in US markets (but China’s tech heavy Chinext is down over 1%) as it seems no news is good news in trade wars.
Offshore Yuan strengthened
Live feed below:
- Goldman Dodges MiFID Regulation By Recreating Dark Pools Under A New Name
It wouldn’t be the investment banking industry if large investment banks weren’t constantly thinking of new schemes to skirt regulation for monetary benefit. Which is why it should come as no surprise to anyone that Goldman Sachs has already created, and is likely working on fine-tuning, a method for skirting dark pool trading rules that have been established in Europe.
That’s right, folks. Forget about “dark pools“ and say hello to “stock auctions”. What is the point of “stock auctions”? Basically to be able to place dark pool trades – where orders are kept “off the market” and quiet, almost the exact same way dark pool trades happen. But by giving these transactions a new name, Goldman Sachs thinks it has found a “work around” for MiFID II rules. Bloomberg reported on the emergence of these new auctions this morning, stating:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is taking on the exchanges to win the business of fund managers eager to keep their stock trades hidden in the era of MiFID II price transparency.
The bank has set up a so-called periodic auction service that matched its first trades on March 21, allowing investors to buy and sell shares without tipping their hand to the rest of the market. Exchanges began offering the service earlier. Europe’s largest dark pool, run by Cboe Global Markets Inc., is now doing more business through periodic auctions than it is through its dark markets.
For those who are really looking to have a laugh today, Goldman states that these auctions actually make trading more transparent.
“The launch represents the first bank-led periodic-auction book,” David Shrimpton, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, said by email. “The product will enable our clients to trade in a fair, multilateral and transparent environment.”
Only in the world of Goldman Sachs would brokering orders off of major exchanges for the purpose of keeping them confidential be more transparent.
The article continued, likely rightfully suggesting that these “auctions” will grow in size and frequency as demand for dark pool trades continues, despite the regulation:
Periodic auctions are increasingly seen as a way of sidestepping MiFID II’s curbs on dark trading. UBS Group AG will follow Goldman Sachs with its own service later this month, a spokeswoman said. Both firms are reacting to demand from their biggest customers. Fund managers need to complete their trades without moving share prices against themselves.
The auctions are coming to the fore because 755 European stocks are already banned from trading in dark pools, which hide orders until they have been matched. More names are likely to join that list when the European Union’s markets regulator updates it after the close of trading on Monday.
“Periodic-auction volumes will continue to increase,” said Mark Hemsley, chief executive officer of Cboe’s European arm. “The flipside is that our competitors are trying to get their own offerings out.”
MiFID II was introduced in Europe because regulators found “under intense lobbying from stock exchanges — that dark trading reduced the efficiency of stock markets as a whole. Fund managers, however, still need ways of trading that keep all the best bits of dark pools, so trading venues and banks alike have reacted by coming up with new ways to trade. Rather than driving trading volumes to the stock exchanges, MiFID II may have forced the exchanges’ rivals to become more innovative.”
We’ve already offered our prediction that MiFID would sever off independent research in this article out earlier this year. Now it looks like its being skirted as easily as it was implemented.
Once again we are faced with several follies of government regulation. First off, investment banks and those with the resources usually always find methods around them. Second off, they are obviously suppressing supply of a method for trading and transacting securities that is still in demand. Third, the government has to put its resources directly up against those of investment banks in order to regulate effectively, and this costs everybody, but especially taxpayers, money.
Though difficult to say if the regulators will have a next move in this game of “dark pool regulation chess” they are playing, one thing is for sure – we’re witnessing obvious blow-back to government overreach and regulation where demand is present.
We will keep our eyes open to see if European regulators volley back against these “auctions”.
- Name That 'Bank' – Cheap Debt, High Leverage, & The Largest Margin Loan Ever
The Son also rises
This bull-market avatar is doubling down: Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. (9984 on the Tokyo Exchange and SFTBY on the U.S. Pink Sheets) announced on Friday that it has secured an $8 billion margin loan from a consortium of investment banks backed by its stake in China’s Alibaba Group Holding, Inc. (BABA on the NYSE).
This was one for the record books. Bethany Knight of Riverside Risk Advisors LLC told Bloomberg that: “To my knowledge, I would agree that $8 billion is the largest margin loan ever.” Bloomberg notes that the loan helps SoftBank move closer to an initial public offering of its domestic telecom business Softbank Corp., which had already been utilized as collateral for prior loans. “A successful IPO – possible only after the division proves its independence by canceling debt guarantees – could help the parent raise capital and relieve some of its debt burden.”
On March 9, SoftBank launched a debt exchange offer, presenting its creditors the opportunity to swap existing bonds for new notes due in 2028 for a 100 basis point consent fee. Covenant Review, an independent credit research firm, observed that this was no act of corporate generosity. Holders of existing notes are protected by a covenant stating that if SoftBank loses its investment grade status its telecom subsidiary, Softbank Corp., will guarantee the debt. That protection is set to be eliminated.
So when investors purchased the Existing Notes, they knew that at worst either the Existing Notes would be rated investment grade or the Softbank Corp. guarantee would remain in place. If the Proposed Amendments are successful, then holders would have swapped that protection for the consent fee – and the Existing Notes could well be left with neither an investment grade rating nor a continuing guarantee from Softbank Corp. (or any other subsidiaries for that matter).
Longtime observers of SoftBank’s charismatic and brilliant CEO Masayoshi Son (who is often compared to Warren Buffett) could hardly have been surprised by this latest bold corporate maneuver.
Son, who weathered a 99% loss in Softbank shares following the bursting of the late-1990’s tech bubble, has taken full advantage of the easy money and tech-happy market conditions which have pervaded in the post-2009 era. Softbank shares have advanced by 442% over the past nine years in yen terms (20.7% annualized) outpacing the Nikkei’s 142% gain (11% annualized) over that period.
That impressive rebound, burnished by timely investments in Yahoo! Japan, and the aforementioned Alibaba, has coincided with a flurry of deals, some under the umbrella of SoftBank’s buyout arm, the $100 billion Vision Fund. Last February, SoftBank bought the Fortress Investment Group for $3.3 billion, a hefty 38.6% premium. On Aug. 24, the fund paid $4.4 billion for a minority stake in private concern WeWork Companies, Inc. (founded in 2010 and now the second largest private office tenant in Manhattan). Softbank has also made substantial investments in ride-sharing unicorns Uber Technologies, Inc. and its Chinese peer, Didi Chuxing Technology Co. (which is preparing to commence operations in Mexico, according to Caixin, directly challenging its fellow SoftBank portfolio company).
#1 conglomerate. Source: Softbank presentation PowerPoint slide from Feb. 7
Masa Son’s spendthrift ways haven’t always gone over so smoothly in the company C-suite. On Feb. 26, the Wall Street Journal shed light on the friction between Son and SoftBank directors who don’t always share his deal-making enthusiasm.
Shigenobu Nagamori says he objected when Mr. Son told his board in 2016 that he wanted to pay $32 billion from Arm Holdings PLC. The U.K. chip-design firm was worth a 10th of that, Mr. Nagamori, then a Softbank outside director, says he told Mr. Son. Mr. Son paid it anyway.
To strike quickly, [Son] sometimes commits to investments before getting approval from his fund’s investment committee, some of these people say. And he often spars with his executives and board members over his proposals until they are convinced or acquiesce.
“I’ve opposed almost all of Mr. Son’s proposed investments,” says SoftBank director Tadashi Yanai, president of Fast Retailing Co., operator of Uniqlo clothing stores. Instead of acting like a speculative investor, he says, Mr. Son should focus on “real business.”
A month later, the Journal reported that the dynamics among SoftBank insiders have escalated beyond straightforward strategy disagreements. Specifically intriguing was the mysterious origins of a shareholder campaign to discredit a pair of senior executives at the company, including one (Nikesh Arora), whom the WSJ described as a one-time heir apparent to Son.
At the time, SoftBank couldn’t figure out who was behind the campaign, which the company said was based on false allegations of impropriety and which a board member later called “sabotage.” Both men denied wrongdoing and said they were victims.
People with knowledge of the matter said Alessandro Benedetti, an Italian private-equity investor, was a central figure in that campaign. They said he told associates he was working, in part, for the benefits of a SoftBank insider.
Excessive leverage and value-destructive deals, not palace intrigue, was the crux of a Dec. 15, 2017 bearish assessment of Softbank found in the pages of Grant’s. Total debt reached $154 billion as of Dec. 31, 2017 on a consolidated basis, up from $42 billion on Dec. 31, 2013. Son’s 2013 purchase of U.S. telecom operator Sprint Corp. (SoftBank paid $22 billion for an 83% stake. Sprint’s current market cap is less than $21 billion) is one potential source of trouble, an interruption of Alibaba’s charmed existence is another. The conclusion drawn by Grant’s was evident in the piece’s headline, “Epitome of the cycle:”
Mix the CEO’s exuberance with cheap debt, high leverage and record asset values. Add the excitement of today’s startling advances in robotics and artificial intelligence. Combine with the karmic report that [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman], the Vision Fund’s No. 1 limited partner, is also the rumored buyer of that $450 million road-show da Vinci. Totting them all up, what do you have? Perhaps a corporation destined to read about itself on page one of The New York Times – and not in a flattering way.
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