- "Now Is The Time To Plan For The Next Recession," Think Tank Urges Britain
“Now Is The Time To Plan For The Next Recession,” Think Tank Urges Britain
Britain isn’t ready for a recession and must consider new innovative countercyclical buffers when it arrives, the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank, said on Monday.
Researchers at the foundation said the Bank of England (BoE) would have difficulty fighting off a recession because interest rates are already near the zero lower bound.
In the last recession, the BoE was able to cut interest rates from 5% to near zero. Now rates are .75%, which means the next round of cuts will have minimal stimulative effects on the real economy.
A foundation spokesperson said quantitative easing delivered about two-thirds of support to the economy during the last recession by reducing longer-term interest rates. But with GB10Y already near the zero level, quantitative easing might not be as effective as before.
“Today even long-term rates are now very close to zero, with 10-year government borrowing costs now below half a percent,” a foundation spokesperson said.
The think-tank warned that deep interest rate cuts into negative territory along with quantitative easing could have very little stimulative effects, which means the BoE currently has a depleted tool kit ahead of a recession that could strike in the near term.
The foundation said global central banks and countries are actively reviewing tools available for central banks amid the threat of a worldwide recession. It said the UK and BoE have been slow to review their policy tool kits, has called for a thorough evaluation of the available tools.
Researchers asked the government and central bank officials to review the pros and cons of a higher inflation target.
The think-tank also called for shovel-ready infrastructure projects and direct payments to households to cushion the economy during the upcoming downturn.
“Now is the time to plan for the next recession – because the one thing we know for certain is that it will happen,” James Smith, Research Director at the Resolution Foundation, said.
“The UK today faces the highest recession risk since the financial crisis, and lower-income households are now more exposed to a downturn than they were back then.”
The foundation’s report comes as Britain’s economy contracted in Q2 for the first time in seven years as the cloud of uncertainty brought by Brexit discouraged business investment and prompted some consumers to put off major purchases as well.
For the three months ended June, GDP contracted 0.2% compared to the previous quarter, according to the Office for National Statistics. That’s lower than what experts had expected (they had forecast growth to be flat). The biggest drag was a drop in manufacturing output, which caused the production sector to shrink by 1.4%. Construction also weakened while critical service sector yielded no growth at all.
The contraction marks the first time the economy has shrunk since 2012.
The contraction comes amid rising fears that Britain could crash out of the European Union on Oct 31 without a deal as negotiations with the EU remain at an impasse. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has committed to leaving on Oct 3. with or without a deal, causing the economy to weaken and likely usher in a recession.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/11/2019 – 02:45 - Will Denmark Become Like Sweden?
Will Denmark Become Like Sweden?
Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,
Denmark has experienced 10 bombings since February. The latest took place on August 27 in a residential complex, Gersager, in the Greve area, very close to Copenhagen. No one was injured, but the building was seriously damaged. This year, the Swedish city of Malmö has experienced 19 bombings. An August 16 editorial in the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende said:
“No one wants Swedish conditions where shootings and bombings have reached an extreme degree. In addition to conflicts in the gang environment, there have been bombing attacks against police stations as well as courthouses, a town hall and the Swedish Tax Agency in Malmö in recent years.”
The piece was published after the Danish Tax Authority in Copenhagen was bombed on August 6, destroying its façade; one person was injured. Two Swedish citizens were charged with the attack. “The Swedish suspects have names that indicate that they have a different ethnic background than Swedish, but there is as yet no knowledge of the motives that may have driven them,” Berlingske wrote.
A few days later, on August 10, Copenhagen experienced another bombing that caused material damage, this time against a police station in Nørrebro.
Shortly after the bombings of the Danish Tax Authority and the Copenhagen police station, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen held a press conference. The government, she said, views the bombings “as an attack on our authorities and thus also our society”. She added that the government plans to strengthen the border with Sweden. “We have a challenge. It should not be the case that you can travel from Sweden to Denmark and place dynamite in the middle of Copenhagen”. She stressed that the border “has our full attention. And it needs to be strengthened”.
While the motives behind the Danish bombings are apparently unclear, Swedish journalist, Joakim Palmkvist, who has been following crime developments in Sweden, told TV2 Nyheder that there are certain similarities between the bombings in Denmark and Sweden: Whereas the bombing targets in Sweden have often been residential complexes, businesses or restaurants, the police have also been targeted several times. Most recently a town hall was targeted in Landskrona and hit by a large explosion. According to Palmkvist, Swedish police believe that these bombings are due to mainly two motives: Blackmail, when criminals want money or services from their victims; or as revenge against the police for moving against the criminals.
Sweden is exporting not only its bombings to Denmark. Gang crime, with its shootings and murders, has also traveled across the border. In July, three Swedes were arrested in Stockholm on suspicion of a double homicide of two Swedish men in the Danish city of Herlev on June 25: a Swedish gang leader and another man had been shot dead. The two men were reportedly killed in Denmark as part of a conflict between the Swedish gangs “Dödspatrullen” (“the death patrol”) and ‘Shottaz’.
Although the dramatic escalation has been imported from Sweden, Denmark is experiencing its own problems with crime, especially that committed by male migrants. As reported by Berlingske Tidende in April:
“The figures [from the report for 2018 from Statistics Denmark, the national statistics agency, ‘Immigrants in Denmark in 2018’] show that crime in 2017 was 60% higher among male immigrants and 234% higher in male non-Western descendants than the entire male population. If one takes into account, for example, that many of the descendants are young, and Statistics Denmark does so in the report, the figures are 44% for immigrants and 145%for descendants, respectively. If further corrected, for both age and income, of immigrants and descendants from non-western countries, the figures are 21% and 108%”.
As for the nationality of the criminal migrants, Berlingske Tidende reported:
“At the top of the list are male Lebanese who, as far as [their] descendants are concerned, are almost four times as criminal as average men, when [the figures are] adjusted for age. [That is] sharply followed by male descendants from Somalia, Morocco and Syria. The violence index is 351 for descendants from non-western countries. They are 3.5 times more violent than the population as a whole. Descendants from Lebanon have an index of violent crimes of 668 when corrected for age.”
On August 25, a 31-year-old woman, Karolina Hakim, was shot to death in broad daylight in Ribersborg, a peaceful, relatively affluent area of Malmö. The murder sent shock waves through Sweden, not least because the woman was holding her newborn baby in her arms. The man who was accompanying the woman, reportedly the father of her child, is mentioned in Swedish media as having been part of a spectacular robbery in Denmark in 2008, for which he was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Only two days later, an 18-year-old woman was shot to death in an apartment in Stockholm.
Denmark is still relatively far from having reached the kind of crime epidemic that is currently plaguing Sweden. However, given the proximity of the two countries, the open borders and the apparent free flow of criminals across the borders — not to mention Denmark’s own crime level — there seems little to stop the situation in Denmark from getting out of control and becoming increasingly more like Sweden.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/11/2019 – 02:00 - Erdogan Breaks Silence: Says The US Sent 30,000 Truckloads Of Weapons To Syria
Erdogan Breaks Silence: Says The US Sent 30,000 Truckloads Of Weapons To Syria
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has called out the US for delivering more than 30,000 weapon-laden trucks to Syria to support the PKK-linked People’s Protection Units (YPG) terrorist group, reported Press Tv.
#BREAKING Turkey not to remain silent to over 30,000 weapon-laden trucks sent by US to N.Syria as Turkey only country in region to fight, says Erdogan
— ANADOLU AGENCY (ENG) (@anadoluagency) September 7, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Speaking at the Justice and Development Party’s meeting in Eskişehir, a city in northwestern Turkey, Erdogan said he wouldn’t sit back in the shadows anymore about a superhighway of weapons supplied by the US, amounting to more than 30,000 truckloads of weapons, equipment, and ammunition to northern Syria to support YPG terrorists.
Erdogan further criticized the Trump administration for its “lack of commitment” to construct a safe zone in Syria along the Turkish border. He added that he would “sort out” the issue with President Trump at a meeting later this month.
“We must resolve this … There are differences between what is said and what has been done,” Erdogan said.
Washington and Ankara have been at odds with one another of who should control northeast Syria, where YPG terrorist and other Kurdish militias have had the luxury of receiving American weapons.
Ankara has viewed the YPG as an extension of its own Kurdish militancy, insisting the US needs to cut ties with the terrorist organization.
Erdogan also criticized the European Union for the lack of support regarding the millions of Syrian refugees.
He said Ankara has already spent $40 billion hosting four million Syrian refugees, adding that a new project could be announced momentarily to resettle one million refugees in northern Syria.
“Our goal is to settle at least one million Syrian brothers and sisters in our country in this safe zone,” said Erdogan. “If needed, with support from our friends, we can build new cities there and make it habitable for our Syrian siblings.”
The European Union has given Turkey $7 billion since 2015 to restrict the flow of migrants. But with Turkey granting millions of refugees asylum status, the migrant problem is worsening through 2019.
“If there is no safe zone we can’t overcome this,” Erdogan said.
Syrians have already begun traveling to Europe again. Turkish and international refugee officials warned about new waves of migrants headed towards the continent. Over 500 refugees landed by vessel in the Greek island of Lesbos earlier this month.
Erdogan also touched on falling interest rates and said they would also lead to lower inflation rates.
“Inflation is falling, so are interests and they will fall even further. The capital market board will convene on Thursday, and I believe interests will fall afterward,” Erdogan said.
Erdogan has just given the world a dose of reality of where some of the weapons used by terrorists in Syria are coming from.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/11/2019 – 01:00 - 9/11 Solidified The Destruction Of Our Freedom
9/11 Solidified The Destruction Of Our Freedom
Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,
The 9/11 attacks not only killed thousands of Americans, they also led to America’s forever wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iran, and elsewhere, which have brought about the deaths of thousands of other Americans and millions of foreigners. But the 9/11 attacks did more than that. They also fortified the U.S. government as a national-security state, which solidified the destruction of the freedom of the American people.
What is a national-security state? It is a type of governmental structure that has an enormous, permanent military-intelligence establishment. In the case of the United States, that means the Pentagon, the vast military-industrial complex, foreign military bases, the CIA, and the NSA. It also means power — enormous power, not only for the overall government, but also within the governmental structure itself. To place things in a general context, Egypt is a national-security state. So are China, Cuba, and Russia. And the United States.
It wasn’t always that way. America was founded as a limited-government republic, which is the opposite of a national-security state. No Pentagon, no vast military-industrial complex, no foreign military bases, no CIA, and NSA. Just a relatively small army.
That’s the way the Framers and our American ancestors wanted it. The last thing they wanted was the type of governmental structure under which we Americans live today. In fact, if the proponents of the Constitution had said to the American people after the Constitutional Convention that the Constitution was going to bring into existence a national-security state, they would have died laughing, thinking it was a big joke. Once they had realized that it wasn’t a joke, they would have summarily rejected the deal and continued operating under the Articles of Confederation, a third type of governmental system under which the federal government’s powers were so few and weak that the federal government hadn’t even been given the power to tax.
The post-World World II revolution
The revolutionary change occurred after World War II. Although the war against Nazi Germany had just ended in victory, U.S. officials told Americans that, unfortunately, they could not rest. That was because, they said, the U.S. now faced a foe that was arguable more dangerous than Nazi Germany. That foe was the Soviet Union, which, ironically, had served as America’s partner and ally during the war. U.S. officials maintained that America now faced a vast post-war communist conspiracy to take over the world, including the United States, one that was based in Moscow, Russia. (Yes, that Russia!)
U.S. officials said that the only way to prevent this conspiracy from succeeding was to convert the U.S. government to the same type of governmental system that the Soviets had, which was a national-security state. Continuing as a limited-government republic, they said, would almost certainly result in defeat for America and a communist takeover of our nation.
Omnipotent government
That’s how we ended up with a national-security state type of governmental system, along with all of the dark-side powers that come with it. Assassination. Kidnappings. Torture. Regime-change operations. Sanctions. Embargoes. Invasions. Wars of aggression. Occupations. Coups. Secret surveillance. Indefinite detention. Secret prison camps. Military tribunals. Denial of due process of law. Out of control federal spending and debt, in large part owing to ever-increasing budgets for the national-security establishment. In other words, all of the things that one would have expected from the Soviet Union were now part and parcel of the “arsenal of freedom” wielded by the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.
Never mind that none of this was authorized by the Constitution, the charter that called the federal government into existence. U.S. officials maintained that the Constitution was not a “suicide pact.” Continuing to follow it meant certain defeat at the hands of the Reds, they said. It was necessary to abandon constitutional niceties, they maintained, to save America.
Implicit in all the Cold War hoopla was that if the Cold War were ever to end, Americans could have their limited-government republic back. Of course, U.S. officials never thought for a moment that that would happen. The national-security state was a racket that was supposed to go on forever.
But then in 1989, the racket suddenly and unexpectedly came to an abrupt end. Financially broke and uninterested in continuing the Cold War, the Soviet Union declared an end to it, dismantled itself, and brought Soviet troops home from East Germany and Eastern Europe.
Interventionism and a new official enemy
That should have resulted in the restoration of America’s limited-government republic, but it didn’t. Having lost its official Cold War enemy, the U.S. national-security establishment found a new one by going into the Middle East and embarking on a killing spree, especially in Iraq, where it killed hundreds of thousands of people from 1991 through 2003. The victims including Iraqi children, hundreds of thousands of them. When US Ambassador to the UN under the Bill Clinton regime, Madeleine Albright, was asked by “Sixty Minutes” whether the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children were “worth it,” she responded that while the issue was a hard one, the deaths were in fact “worth it.” By “it,” she meant regime change in Iraq.
Not surprisingly, the U.S. mass killing of Iraqis, along with its decision to station U.S. troops near the Muslim religion’s holiest lands, along with the unconditional military support of the Israeli government, led to terrorist retaliation, beginning with the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the attack on the USS Cole, the attacks on the U.S. embassies in East Africa, and then the 9/11 attacks.
The 9/11 attacks then led to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by the interventions in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere, which necessarily entailed a fortification and strengthening of America’s national-security state form of governmental structure. They also led to the Patriot Act, which eviscerated the Fourth Amendment as well as to a formalized assassination program, including the power to assassinate Americans … to torture people, including Americans … to indefinitely detain American citizens and others as “enemy combatants” in the forever “war on terrorism” … to conduct secretive surveillance schemes over the American people and others … and to conduct intrusive searches at airports through the TSA … to impose more deadly sanctions and embargoes on foreign citizens … and to initate more coups and other regime-change operations.
It all adds up to the destruction of American liberty. There is only one way to get our freedom back: the dismantling of the national-security state and the restoration of a limited-government republic.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/10/2019 – 23:45 - Chinese Auto Sales Crash For The 14th Time In 15 Months, Falling 9.9%
Chinese Auto Sales Crash For The 14th Time In 15 Months, Falling 9.9%
Chinese auto sales continue to plunge deeper into recession, with the country’s China Passenger Car Association releasing preliminary data for August that in no way indicates that the trend could be slowing.
Instead, it has been a “historically prolonged slump” for the world’s largest car market, according to Bloomberg.
The CPCA reported on Monday that sales of sedans, SUVs, minivans and multipurpose vehicles in August fell 9.9% to 1.59 million units.
It has been the industry’s largest downturn in three decades and automakers are still facing headwinds as trade tensions with the U.S. continue. China has tried to roll out several stimulus measures to help the industry, including loosening car purchase restrictions, but they have done little to encourage consumption thus far.
Preliminary data from MarkLines on Japanese automakers selling in China shows Nissan and Honda posting 2.0% and 5.9% gains, respectively, while Toyota sales fell 3.8% and Mazda sales suffered the largest blow, down 20.7%. We will revisit this data toward the middle of the month, when it is updated to include additional manufacturers from around the globe.
Top Chinese SUV maker Great Wall Motor Co. saw its first half profit lower by an astounding 59% and SAIC Motor Corp., China’s biggest automaker, also cut its sales forecast recently and predicted its first annual sales decline in at least 14 years. Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd. saw sales fall 19% in August.
Finalized data from July shows that Japanese sales led the charge, posting an 11.2% gain, while Chinese brands, American brands and French brands all fell by double digits.
For July, three of the top 4 best selling models in China were manufactured by VW, who made up 5 of the 10 best selling models in the country. Toyota, Haval, Honda and Nissan also edged their way into the top 10 list of models sold.
Exports from China in July also fell significantly:
Overall vehicle exports in July totaled 81,000 units, reflecting a 15.5% m/m decrease and a 14% y/y decline. Passenger car exports totaled 60,000 units, reflecting a 12.5% m/m decrease and a 12.9% y/y decline. Commercial vehicle exports totaled 21,000 units, reflecting a 23.1% m/m decrease and a 17% y/y decline.
And while China continues its struggles, other large markets, like India, are also tumbling. India posted a 41% sales drop for automobiles in August, the largest such drop on record. U.S. automakers eeked out a slight rebound in sales, but were helped along by the Labor Day weekend partially falling in August.
We will update this post as more data from August becomes available.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/10/2019 – 23:25 - Japan And Germany Hysterically Race To Shut Down Nuclear Power (And Their Sovereignty)
Japan And Germany Hysterically Race To Shut Down Nuclear Power (And Their Sovereignty)
Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Recently, the Japanese government announced that they will be shutting down the remaining 7 nuclear reactors at the Daiichi plant that was hit by a major earthquake and tsunami in 2011. This will bring the total number of nuclear reactors down to 33 (compared to 54 in 2011), only 7 of which are in active operation at any given time. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a good thing.
Since the tsunami hit on April 11, 2011 killing 18 000 civilians, there has been a tendency to refer to the event falsely as “Japan’s nuclear crisis”. The fear that has spread across the world resulted in one of the most devastating attacks on sovereign nations which could have only been executed had we done this to ourselves.
Japan – a nation which became the world’s 3rd largest economy due largely to its commitment to advanced scientific and technological progress and early embrace of nuclear power, has lost much of the energy self-sufficiency it once enjoyed when 25% of its electricity came from nuclear which today has fallen to 3%. Since the shutdown Japan has been forced to massively increase its imports of oil, natural gas and coal bringing in 9 million barrels/day and building 45 new coal plants. This dependency has not only subject it to the whims of the speculative markets, but also to the uncertain stability of the Middle East oil production.
Due to the hysteria unleashed in the wake of Fukushima, Germany was quick to follow the fear wave and declared that its full exit from nuclear by 2022 causing it to vastly increase its imports of fossil fuel from Russia, the Netherlands and USA (and ironically nuclear energy imports from France whose use of nuclear amounts to 70% of its energy basket). Once shut down in 2022, Germany will lose 22GW (or 11% of total capacity).
The fact is that to this day, not one Fukushima death is traceable to radiation exposure. While a meltdown did strike three of the ten reactors in the Daiichi complex, those which suffered damages used outdated technology and cut corners in safety standards such that no coolants were available once electricity was lost after the 8.9 earthquake struck. Those deaths which did occur in the aftermath, had more to do with heart attacks caused by the vast fear-driven evacuation of 160 000 citizens from towns across the coast of Japan- many of which remain abandoned to this day as 100 000 are still considered “nuclear refugees”. After extensive testing, the WHO found radiation levels of evacuees to be undetectable… a fact which has done little to reverse the deeply embedded fears within the Japanese zeitgeist.
The Positive Effects of Low Dose Radiation
Just to put it into perspective, nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s put over 100 times the radioactive waste into the atmosphere and oceans than what was released in Fukushima. In Utah, radiation in the 1950s and 1960s were also well over 100 times greater than the worst of Fukushima due to atomic bomb testing, but the state has enjoyed the lowest rates of cancer across America for over 60 years. Also of note, scientists studying A-Bomb survivors who received ionizing radiation in WWII were surprised to discover abnormally long life spans and low rates of cancer.
Today, in spite of the craze to ban Japanese tuna and other seafood from western markets for years, the actual radiation levels are far below the 1200 becquerel limit set by FDA standards and one would get larger doses of radiation by eating a banana or flying in an airplane. Believe it or not, but the Potassium-40 of an average banana releases 3000 beta decays/second and is deemed very good for living tissue and is known as “Low Dose Radiation” which is found in all bio-organic life and natural background radiation from food, the soil and sky.
The Fallacy of Decarbonisation
For those in Japan and Germany celebrating that the exit from nuclear is providing an opportunity to embrace solar and wind energy, a sad slap of reality has also occurred. Not only have energy costs skyrocketed wherever green energies been built, but the toxic waste caused by those photovoltaic cells far outpaces anything produced by the dirtiest nuclear reactor.
In 2017, the Japanese Ministry of the Environment issued the warning that by 2040, Japan would accumulate over 800 000 tons of solar panel waste with no means of disposal- which is 300 times greater than nuclear power. Solar panels have life expectancies of 25 years, after which their disposal becomes nearly impossible as they contain similar heavy metals and toxins as is found in computers and cell phones. They also contain vast toxic metals such as lead and carcinogens such as cadmium.
Disproving the very definition of “renewable energy”, wind mills (which are as tall as a Boing 747) cannot produce the energy density to melt the steel and produce the material needed to build a windmill.
Germany’s celebrated de-carbonisation scheme has resulted in a total failure with no carbon reduction after a 10 year effort, sky rocketing energy prices and a vast destruction of ecosystems. The think tank Frontier Center recently wrote of Germany’s energy debacle:
“Construction of solar and wind “farms” has already caused massive devastation to Germany’s wildlife habitats, farmlands, ancient forests and historic villages. Even today, the northern part of Germany looks like a single enormous wind farm. Multiplying today’s wind power capacity by a factor 10 or 15 means a 200 meter high (650 foot tall) turbine must be installed every 1.5 km (every mile) across the entire country, within cities, on land, on mountains and in water.”
Radioactivity is Natural!
The idea that radiation is deadly has been spread by a Malthusian lobby which has pushed the absurd notion that ALL doses of radiation are deadly under the theory of the Linear No-Threashold Model (LNT) which was adopted as a standard of medicine in 1959. This LNT hypothesis asserts without evidence that if a lot of radiation will kill you 100% of the time, a fraction of that dose will kill you a fraction of the time… which is equivalent to saying that if drinking 100 liters of water will kill you 100% of the time, drinking 1 liter of water will kill you 1% of the time.
Nicholas Fisher, a nuclear expert at Stony Brook University in New York responded to the fear mongering by reminding his readers that “we live on a radioactive planet in a radioactive universe. All life has evolved in the presence of natural radioactivity.”
Without that natural radiation emitted by stars, supernova, earth’s soil, cosmic radiation etc, then our very cellular functions break down and we get sick. This was demonstrated in tests conducted on lab rats in the 1990s which were isolated from natural background radiation, including in their food. People with arthritis and cancers have been recorded for generations to receive great benefits by soaking their bodies in radiation-rich mineral waters in Ukraine or the radioactive black soil beaches of Brazil proving that low dose radiation is beneficial for life. Another surprising 2010 study proving the benefits of radiation followed 250 000 nuclear workers found a much lower rate of cancer mortality relative to control groups.
Fear of radiation is a fraud pushed by a Malthusian lobby whose goal has been to dismantle the sovereign nation state by getting its victims to undermine their own basis of existence. This is the realization of the Trilateral Commission policy announced by Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker who called for a “controlled disintegration” of industrial civilization in 1978. This is the program of Maurice Strong as he decapitated Canada’s nuclear program in the 1990s and called for the collapse of industrial civilization. This is the policy which is at the heart of the Green New Deal being spread by London bankers like Mark Carney and Prince Charles which is really just another name for de-population.
This is the program which China and Russia have rejected under the emerging global framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. China is planning to triple its nuclear sector by 2032 to power its vast growth program and Russia’s ambitious nuclear energy program is tied directly to Putin’s recent decision to challenge the Liberal Malthusian order by name. Any nation committed to raising the living standards and productive powers of its people cannot tolerate a de-carbonization or de-nuclearization plan for even a minute.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/10/2019 – 23:05 - 'America-Hating' EU Competition Czar Margrethe Vestager Appointed To 2nd Term
‘America-Hating’ EU Competition Czar Margrethe Vestager Appointed To 2nd Term
To the chagrin of the largest Silicon Valley tech giants and President Trump, EU anti-trust enforcer Margrethe Vestager will hold on to her position for another 5-year term under incoming European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the FT reports.
The return of Vestager will almost certainly infuriate Washington, which has accused her of trying to hamper American firms’ ability to do business in Europe.
President Trump famously dubbed Vestager the “tax lady” and accused the Dane back in June of ‘hating the US’ during an interview with Fox Business.
During her first term, Vestager made a name for herself by pursuing high-profile crackdowns on US tech firms, including her multiple record fines for Google and her push for the Irish government to claw back taxes from Apple.
Margrethe Vestager
And over the next five years, Vestager will see her remit broadly expanded. In addition to covering all things anti-trust and anti-competitive, Vestager will also oversee Brussels’ digital policy in her additional role as executive vice-president of the new European Commission, not long after Europe published stringent user-privacy regulations known as the GDPR.
Von der Leyen said Vestager’s expanded portfolio of digital and competition issues was a “perfect combination.”
“There is a huge field in front of her. The only aspect that matters on portfolios is quality and experience. Margrethe Vestager has done an outstanding job as a commissioner for competition,” she added.
On Tuesday, von der Leyen announced the names of her 27-strong team, Reuters reports. She emphasized Europe’s leadership in combating climate change – including passing its own “Green Deal”, while combating technological threats and responding to a “growing unease” among younger Europeans. The incoming EC president emphasized that her team would take on critical “geopolitical” issues, suggesting that the European Commission will be playing a greater role in world affairs, whether the world likes it or not.
“We will take bold action against climate change, build our partnership with the United States, define our relations with a more self-assertive China and be a reliable neighbor, for example to Africa,” she said.
In addition to Vestager, one of the other bold-faced names to join von der Leyen is Ireland’s Phil Hogan, who will be the Commission’s point-person on trade. This will eventually involve negotiating new trade pacts with the EU, and possibly the US if President Trump decides to slap auto tariffs on the Continent.
Ursula von der Leyen
Former Italian Prime Minsiter Paolo Gentiloni will serve as the commissioner in charge of the economy at a time when Europe is on the cusp of sliding into a recession, and as Germany reportedly contemplates introducing a “shadow budget” that could unleash badly needed fiscal stimulus.
However, Gentiloni could soon find himself in an awkward position as he and former Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis will be tasked with maintaining economic discipline throughout the bloc, including with the Continent’s third-largest economy, Italy. Though Matteo Salvini and his League party have been ousted from Italy’s ruling coalition, the lefti-wing anti-establishment Five Star Movement could still seek to expand Italy’s budget deficit beyond what the European Unions guidelines will allow.
SJWs will appreciate the fact that von der Leyen’s team is roughly gender balanced, with 13 women and 14 men. Though perhaps she could have offered even more balance by including one or two officials who reject the gender binary.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/10/2019 – 22:45 - Escobar: The Inside Story Of The First Iran Nuclear Deal
Escobar: The Inside Story Of The First Iran Nuclear Deal
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,
This is the last of a three-part series from a world exclusive interview with Lula, the former Brazilian president, who remains in jail.
Lula on fights with Hillary, talks with Ahmadinejad, Obama “good but nervous and too young”…
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, left, with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, center, and Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan celebrate the signing of a nuclear fuel swap deal in Tehran in May 2010. Photo: AFP / Wilson Pedrosa / Agenciia Estado
As we advanced past the first hour of a historic interview – see here and here – at a Federal Police building in Curitiba, southern Brazil, where Lula has been incarcerated for over 500 days as part of the lawfare endgame in a complex coup, former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was on a roll.
“Let me tell you about Iran.”
He felt relaxed enough to start telling stories of political negotiation at the highest level. He had already set the context. Nuggets abounded – especially focusing on the sometimes rocky relationship between Brasilia and Washington. Here are only three examples:
1) On the overall relationship with the US:
“People think that I’m angry at the Americans. On the contrary, we had a very healthy political relationship with the US, and that should be the case for Brazil. But to be subservient, never.”
2) On dealing with George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton:
“Bush accepted ideas with more fluidity than Obama. Obama was much tougher with Brazil. I’m certain that Hillary Clinton does not like Latin America, and she didn’t like Brazil. I had two big fights with her, one in a meeting in Trinidad-Tobago and another in Copenhagen [at the climate conference COP-15]. She arrived late, bossing everyone around. I said, ‘Lady, hang on. Wait for your turn. I’ve been here for three days.’ The petulance and arrogance of the Americans disturbs me, even if I think that the United States is always an important nation, and we should always maintain a good relationship.”
“Our main political gesture was Dilma [Rousseff, then the Brazilian president] traveling to the US, but Obama, it seems to me, had very little influence.”
“It was fantastic, Obama’s capacity to deliver beautiful speeches, but the next day nothing happened, nothing, nothing. I think the United States was too big for Obama, he was too young, too inexperienced.”
“And you know that the US State Department is very powerful…. I think Obama was a good man. When I went to visit him the first time … I left with a lingering doubt: there was no one remotely similar to him in the meeting. I said to myself, ‘This guy has no one matching him here.’ And in our conversation, I said, ‘Obama, you may be the President of the United States who has the greatest possibility to effect change in this country. Because you only need to have the audacity that black people had to vote for you. The people have already granted you the audacity. Make the best of it.’
But then, nothing much happened.”
3) On hybrid war:
“We tried to organize intelligence in the Air Force, the Navy, along with Federal Police intel, but among them there were some pretty serious fights. Whoever has intel has power, so no one wants to relay information to the competitor…. I imagined that after it was clear [from Edward Snowden’s revelations about National Security Agency surveillance] that … the United States was investigating Brazil … I imagined we would have a tougher position, maybe talking to the Russians and the Chinese, to create another system of protection. “
And that would set the scene for the inside story of the first Iran nuclear deal, clinched in Tehran in 2010 by Iran, Brazil and Turkey, and centered on a nuclear fuel swap, years before the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action reached in Vienna in 2015 by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany.
History will register that as Donald Trump smashed the JCPOA, Hillary Clinton scotched the original deal less than 24 hours after it was clinched, calling instead for a new round of sanctions against Iran at the UN Security Council.
This is how I reported it for Asia Times. Lula, in early 2010, had already told Hillary in person it was not “prudent to push Iran against the wall.”
So what really happened in Tehran?
Meeting Khamenei, Ahmadinejad
“I was in New York. And [then Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad didn’t like me. He showed respect, but his preferential relationship here in the continent was with [Bolivian President] Evo Morales and my friend [Venezuela’s Hugo] Chavez… Then one day in New York, I decided to talk to Ahmadinejad, because he had said it was a lie that six million Jews had died. And then I said, ‘Look, Ahmadinejad, I came here because I wanted to know if it’s true that you said that the Jews want to be heroes because they died in the war. I wanna tell you something: The Jews did not die in the war. The Jews were victims of a genocide. They were not soldiers fighting. They were free men, women and children who were taken to concentration camps and killed, that’s different.’
“He said, ‘I know,’ and I said, ‘If you know, tell it to everyone, it’s not possible to deny that six million people were killed.’ … Well, during this conversation I said, ‘I’d like to go to Tehran to talk to you about the nuclear bomb. What do I want from you? I want you to have the same right that Brazil has. Brazil enriches uranium for scientific and peaceful purposes. I want you to do enrichment the same way as Brazil. But if there’s an atomic bomb, I’m against it.’
Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks in Tehran on February 2019. Photo: AFP / Anadolu / Religious Leader’s Press Office
“Then I sent [Foreign Minister] Celso Amorim ahead, a few times. We cultivated a relationship with Turkey. It was something very funny. I met the great Ayatollah Khamenei, I had a meeting with him, I think he fell in love with me because I told him my life story. When I told him that I ate bread for the first time when I was seven years old, I thought, ‘I think I won this guy.’ He lavished extraordinary attention on us. We talked for over two hours. Then I left Khamenei and went to talk to the president of their congress; he looked like a czar. Then I went to dinner with Ahmadinejad, while Celso Amorim was negotiating with their prime minister.
“Ahmadinejad was not getting to the point, and I said, ‘Let me tell you something.’ And we had two interpreters: one who translated him into English, and Celso, who translated from English to me. I said, ‘You know that I’m here being bashed by the Americans. Hillary Clinton called the Emir of Qatar to tell me that I could not come, to tell me that I would be fooled. When I arrived in Moscow, [then-president Dmitri Medvedev said, ‘Hillary called, asking me to tell you not to go [because] the Iranians are liars.’ There was even a media joke: They were asking about the chance of a deal. Medvedev said ‘10%,’ and I said ‘99% – we are going there and we are going to do it.’
Obama nervous
“Then I arrived, I was sitting down with Ahmadinejad, and I said, ‘Hey, little guy [laughs], you know that I’m here, I’m losing my friends. Obama is nervous with me – Obama was the most nervous among them all, Angela Merkel does not want me to be here. The only one more or less favorable was [then-French president Nicholas] Sarkozy, and I came here because I think Iran is a very important country, not only from the point of view of your population but from the point of view of your culture. And I want Iran not to suffer the consequences of an embargo because an embargo is worse than war. In war, you kill soldiers. With an embargo you kill children, you kill people with serious illnesses.’
“It was already 10pm at night and I said, ‘I’m not leaving here without a deal.’ Up to this moment, there was no chance of a deal. Around midnight I was discussing things with my aides at the hotel. I was even imagining the headlines in Brazil, against my trip. Then Celso arrived at one in the morning and said, ‘There’ll be a deal.’
“Then we went there the next day, lots of talking, there was this guy who was an aide to Ahmadinejad and was always whispering in his ear, and Ahmadinejad demanded to change a word. So I told him, ‘Damn, get this guy outta here. Every time he comes here you change your mind.’ Then he said, ‘Lula, can we make a deal without signing it?’ And I said, ‘Nah…. Do you know what Sarkozy thinks about you? Do you know what Obama thinks about you? Do you know what Angela Merkel thinks about you? They all think Iranians are liars. So, in Brazil, we’ve got a thing called ‘black on white’. You gotta sign.’ So he agreed. We signed, Brazil, him [Iran] and Turkey.
Lula and US President Barack Obama, on left, meet with other leaders in Copenhagen in December 2009 at the COP15 Climate Conference. Photo: AFP
No talk, no deal
“I imagined I would be invited to the White House, or to Berlin by Angela Merkel…. So imagine my surprise when they were so nervous. You know that kid that goes to school, gets an ‘A,’ tells his mother and the mother thinks it’s a bad thing? I think they were pissed because Brazil could not possibly have achieved what they did not. They started to diss us, so what did I do? I took a letter that comrade Obama had sent, saying what would be good for the United States. And the Reuters news agency released Obama’s letter. And the letter was the same thing as the deal we clinched.
“It happened that Mrs. Hillary didn’t know about Obama’s letter…. Later, I was at a G-20 meeting, I approached Angela Merkel and said, ‘Have you talked to Ahmadinejad?’ I talked to Sarzoky, said, ‘Have you talked to Ahmadinejad?’ No. Approached Obama, said, ‘Have you talked to Ahmadinejad?’ ‘No.’ ‘Damn, how come you want a deal, but you don’t talk? You subcontract the negotiation? Then I understood that the world in the past had had leadership much, much more competent, left and right, people who knew how to discuss foreign policy.”
After hearing this story I asked Lula – the ultimate instinctive politician – if he felt Obama had stabbed him in the back: “No,” he replied. “I think, have you ever received a gift you didn’t know how to put it together?”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/10/2019 – 22:25 - Richest Americans Could Lose Hundreds Of Billions Of Dollars Under Warren Wealth Tax
Richest Americans Could Lose Hundreds Of Billions Of Dollars Under Warren Wealth Tax
If Elizabeth Warren were to succeed in winning the Democratic nomination, then improbably go on to defeat President Trump in the general election, the wealthiest Americans could collectively lose hundreds of billions of dollars to her “wealth tax” over a span of decades.
Two French economists recently published their calculations in a paper where they gamed out the impact of Warren’s wealth tax on the top 15 richest Americans. They found that these families would have seen their net worth decline by more than half to $453.9 billion, had Warren’s plan been in place since 1982.
The paper was published by Cal Berkeley professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.
Though their paper relies on some assumptions, its findings raise some interesting questions ahead of Thursday’s debate among Democratic Party presidential contenders, as the country debates what should be done to address yawning income and wealth inequality, according to Bloomberg.
To be sure, the authors calculations also don’t take into account any steps billionaires might take to reduce their exposure to the tax, including saving less or giving more money.
Over the time frame explored by the study, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ $160 billion fortune (before his divorce settlement) would have been reduced to $86.8 billion.
Meanwhile, Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates would have seen his $97 billion fortune shrink to just $36.4 billion.
The economists’ calculations show how a wealth tax of just a few percentage points might erode individual fortunes over time.
Of course, billionaires of more recent vintage would experience smaller declines in net worth because they would have been subject to the tax for shorter periods of time.
Warren has proposed that the wealthiest 75,000 households pay an annual tax of 2% on each dollar of their net worth above $50 million. This sum would rise to 3% on every dollar above $1 billion. Warren insists this would combat rising wealth inequality.
Critics claim that the tax would be difficult to administer and easy to avoid.
The two economists used figures tabulated by Forbes Magazine to establish individuals’ net worth.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/10/2019 – 22:05
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