- Visualizing China's Belt And Road Investment Map
The fifth anniversary of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was recently marked in Beijing.
This 900 billion U.S. dollar transcontinental development project was launched in the autumn of 2013 when president Xi Jinping proposed the building of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road – the two main segments of the ambitious economic cooperation campaign. As Statista’s Agne Blazyte explains:
The first one refers to a half-dozen land corridors connecting China with Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, the Middle East and, from there, Europe.
The second one is a sea route linking Asia, Africa and Europe.
This “project of a century”, as Xi Jinping calls it, is meant to improve connectivity between Asia, Europe and Africa, and consequently to increase trade and development. Undoubtedly, BRI is also a geopolitical plan to boost China’s regional power.
You will find more infographics at Statista
By now, more than 100 countries and international organizations have signed BRI cooperation agreements with China.
So far, given that most of investment projects are associated with infrastructure development, BRI has mainly benefited China’s state-owned enterprises. Some regions of the vast investment landscape are doing better than others.
Due to proximity to China and the demand for better infrastructure, Southeast Asia remains a high priority for China’s SOEs. Other important beneficiaries are India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, partly due to the size of their populations and growing market potential.
- Escobar: Decoding The Hypersonic Putin On A Day Of Remembrance
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
Sitting alongside French President Macron during the 100th anniversary to commemorate the end of World War I, Putin and Trump stole the show in Paris…
The Elysee Palace protocol was implacable. Nobody in Paris would be allowed to steal the spotlight away from the host, President Emmanuel Macron, during the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day marking the end of World War I.
After all, Macron was investing all his political capital as he visited multiple World War I battlefields while warning against the rise of nationalism and a surge in right-wing populism across the West.
He was careful to always place the emphasis on praising “patriotism.”
A battle of ideas now rages across Europe, epitomized by the clash between the globalist Macron and populism icon Matteo Salvini, the Italian interior minister.
Salvini abhors the Brussels system. Macron is stepping up his defense of a “sovereign Europe.”
And much to the horror of the US establishment, Macron proposes a real “European army” capable of autonomous self-defense side by side with a “real security dialogue with Russia.”
Yet all these “strategic autonomy” ideals collapse when you must share the stage, live, with the undisputed stars of the global show: President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin.
So the optics in Paris were not exactly of a Yalta 2.0 conference. There were no holds barred to keep Trump and Putin apart. Seating arrangements featured, from left to right, Trump, Chancellor Angela Merkel, Macron, his wife Brigitte and Putin. Neither Trump nor Putin, for different reasons, took part in a “walking in the rain” stunt evoking peace.
And yet they connected. Sir Peter Cosgrove, the governor general of Australia, confirmed that Trump and Putin, at a working lunch, had a “lively and friendly” conversation for at least half an hour.
No one better than Putin himself to reveal, even indirectly, what they really talked about. Three themes are absolutely key.
On the Macron-proposed, non-NATO European army: “Europe is … a powerful economic union and it is only natural that they want to be independent and … sovereign in the field of defense and security.”
On the consequences of such an army: It would be “a positive process” that would “strengthen the multipolar world.” On top of it, Russia’s position “is aligned with that of France.”
On relations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Washington: “It is not us who are going to withdraw from the INF Treaty. It is the Americans who plan to do that.” Putin added that Moscow has not scheduled military drills near NATO borders as an attempt to appease an already tense situation. Yet Russia has “no issue with” NATO drills and expects at least a measure of dialogue in the near future.
Enter the Avangard
Vast sectors of the US Deep State are in denial, but Putin may have been able to impress on Trump the necessity of serious dialogue due to an absolutely key vector: the Avangard.
The Avangard is a Russian hypersonic glide vehicle capable of flying over Mach 20 – 24,700km/h, or 4 miles per second – and one of the game-changing Russian weapons Putin announced at his ground-breaking March 1 speech.
The Avangard has been in the production assembly line since the summer of 2018, and is due to become operational in the southern Urals by the end of next year or early 2019.
In the near future, the Avangard may be launched by the formidable Sarmat RS-28 intercontinental ballistic missile and reach Washington in a mere 15 minutes, flying in a cloud of plasma “like a meteorite” – even if the launch is from Russian territory. Serial production of Sarmat ICBMs starts in 2021.
The Avangard simply cannot be intercepted by any existing system on the planet – and the US knows it. Here is General John Hyten, head of US Strategic Command:
“We don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us.”
Iran as the new Serbia?
I wish I had been in Paris – my home in Europe – to follow these concentric World War I–related plots live. But it was no less fascinating to follow them from Islamabad, where I am now, back from the northern part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The British Empire used 1.5 million to 2 million Indian colonial subjects to fight, and die, for empire in that war. Quite a few were Punjabis, from what is now Pakistan.
As for the future, Trump is certainly aware of Russia’s hypersonic breakthroughs. Trump and Putin also talked about Syria, and might have touched on Iran, although no one at the working lunch leaked anything about it.
Assuming the dialogue continues at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires at the end of November, Putin might be able to impress on Trump that just as Serbia catalyzed a chain of events that led great powers to sleepwalk into World War I, the same could happen with Iran leading to the terrifying prospect of World War III.
Team Trump’s obsession on strangling Iran into economic submission is a no-go, even for the Macron-Merkel-led European Union. On top of it, the Russia-China strategic partnership simply won’t allow any funny – reckless – games to be played against a crucial node of Eurasia integration.
Putin won’t even need to go hypersonic to make his case to Trump.
- Autonomous Vehicles And The Rise Of Mobile Sex Workers
Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) have the potential to revolutionize the way people live, work and travel across cities… oh, and have sex, according to a new study from the Annals of Tourism Research titled: “Autonomous vehicles and the future of urban tourism.”
Co-authors Scott Cohen, a tourism professor at the University of Surrey, and Debbie Hopkins, a transportation instructor at the University of Oxford, discovered that CAVs have the potential to reshape the night-time visitor economy.
“It’s only a natural conclusion that sex in autonomous vehicles will become a phenomenon,” Cohen told The Washington Post, citing convenience and the interior redesigns of CAV automobiles.
Hopkins & Schwanen said mass market penetration and growth in public acceptance of CAVs could be as early as 2025, first in parts of Asia, Europe, and the US, and are forecasted by some to be the primary means of transportation globally by 2040.
The academics searched over 150 studies on the future of automobiles and attempted to envision the technology’s impact on the night-time visitor economy: How could CAVs transform the sex industry?
Silicon Valley transportation analyst forecast that the economy is less than a decade away from the series production of driverless cars – some futurists predict that traditional taxis will be obsolete.
With no driver costs, auto and tech companies could reinvest more into the customer experience. Interiors may become more spacious with bedding and or a massage chair, analysts said.
Enter “hotels-by-the-hour” on wheels, Cohen said, “a fleet of rolling love making bedrooms.” Tourists could summon the autonomous vehicle with a prostitute of their choice via the app on a basic smartphone.
“It is just a small leap to imagine Amsterdam’s Red Light District ‘on the move,’ ” Cohen and Hopkins wrote. Sex, they noted, “plays a central role in many tourism experiences. ”
Given the potentially short timeline until CAVs enter the mass market, mobile prostitution could disrupt the entire underground economy by the mid-2020s: “While [driverless cars] will likely be monitored to deter passengers having sex or using drugs in them,” the authors warned, “such surveillance may be rapidly overcome, disabled or removed.”
Cohen said law enforcement agencies should prepare for such looming threats, indicating that CAVs could provide cover for black market participants.
Missy Cummings, a mechanical engineering professor at Duke University, told The Washington Post that major tech firms and automakers across the world are currently developing and testing autonomous vehicles.
Back in March, one of Uber’s test cars killed a pedestrian. It was later learned Uber employees had disabled the automatic-braking features so the vehicle would not slow erratically during testing, The Washington Post said.
Kate Devlin, the author of “Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots,” said a fully tinted driverless vehicle cannot hide everything.
“Self-driving cars track a lot of data,” she said.
Devlin warned that autonomous vehicles would be collecting data on the occupants inside. Unlike a hotel room, they will have artificial intelligence monitoring cameras, microphones, and sensors. This means implications for sex workers are even more complicated:
“Would this be good in terms of sex workers’ security in that it could provide location information for safety,” Devlin said, “or could such data be used against sex workers where such work is criminalized?”
Sex on wheels could be coming to a city near you by 2025. It would not shock us if silicone robots replace human sex workers by that time.
- The End Game In Afghanistan Is Beginning
Authored by Lawrence Sellin, op-ed via The Daily Caller,
China and Pakistan have plainly stated their plans for Afghanistan and South Asia.
According to a press release from the November 12 conference held at Islamabad’s Pakistan-China Institute, “Pakistan-Afghanistan-China Trilateral Dialogue supports the CPEC [China-Pakistan Economic Corridor] as key to peace and regional cooperation.”
Pakistani news outlets emphasized the point, one stating, “Pakistan and China on Monday urged Afghanistan to join the Belt & Road Initiative as well as the CPEC.”
Is it a coincidence that such plain speaking occurs in parallel with an uptick in the frequency and intensity of Taliban attacks inside Afghanistan?
Within a span of a few days, Jaghori – long considered a safe district – was being overrunby 1,000 Taliban, while other Taliban killed at least twelve Afghan soldiers and four tribal elders during an attack on a military base in Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province. And bombs continue to explode in Kabul.
In an effort to lure the Taliban to the bargaining table, the Trump administration may ask the Afghan government to postpone presidential elections – a move the Taliban will undoubtedly construe as a sign of American weakness because they have always claimed the Kabul regime as illegitimate.
In that respect, the Taliban are correct. Other than a “presence” in Afghanistan, the United States has no strategic cards to play.
There is no military solution in Afghanistan, at least from the standpoint of the manner in which we have conducted the war.
After an initial small-footprint victory in late 2001, driving the Taliban out of Afghanistan, the U.S. chose to mount an exhaustive and expensive counterinsurgency campaign with its nation-building component.
At the same time, Pakistan, sustaining the Taliban, waged a proxy war in Afghanistan, much like Pakistan’s and, indirectly, China’s reported support and use of the Islamic extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and its affiliates against India.
Pakistan has always controlled the operation tempo of the war as well as the supply of our troops in landlocked Afghanistan.
U.S. inability or unwillingness to attack Taliban safe havens in Pakistan or forcing Islamabad to withdraw its support, essentially rendered a counterinsurgency victory unachievable. It is an obvious deduction the Pentagon should have made long ago, except for its blind love affair with Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency.
After 17 years of strategic mismanagement, the Trump administration is left only with bad options. Getting out of Afghanistan is inevitable. Given the current trends, we couldn’t stay even if we wished to do so.
We should let Pakistan and China “win” and then help them ruin their victory.
Clearly, CPEC is the foundation upon which China and Pakistan intend to exploit their triumph, which is highly vulnerable to the very instability they were inciting in Afghanistan.
Forty years ago, Pakistani President Zia ul Haq said that to control Afghanistan, the country should be kept “boiling at the right temperature.”
Like a frog, CPEC will be slowly boiled in South Asia’s pot of instability. CPEC is the flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s blueprint for global domination. As the maxim, widely attributed to Napoleon, says “Never interfere with the enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself.”
That is, by harnessing the potential power of ideological fissures, ethnic fault lines and differing national interests, in essence, the ability to manage instability, the U.S. can transform an untenable “presence” into longer-term regional leverage.
- Trump To Submit Written Replies To Mueller Probe Questions "In Coming Days"
It’s been nearly a year since Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors started negotiating with President Trump’s lawyers about the prospects for a presidential interview, a request that Trump once said he’d be happy – even eager – to oblige, until his lawyers explained that the downside risks (Trump falling into a perjury trap and possibly winding up in jail) far outweighed the upside (a minor PR victory).
Somewhere around July, Mueller began to realize that his only leverage to try and force an in-person interview, the possibility that he could subpoena the president, wasn’t all that threatening. Given the very flimsy legal precedent and the confirmation of another friendly conservative justice (Neil Gorsuch), subpoenaing a sitting president would be more trouble than it was worth, and far too unorthodox for a man who has built his career on respecting precedents. So, over the summer, Mueller finally conceded, and agreed to accept written answers to his team’s questions, while also agreeing to limit the scope of his inquiry to the probe’s original purpose: The Trump campaign’s ties to Russia (allegations of obstruction of justice would just have to wait).
Which brings us to Tuesday, when CNN reported that Trump’s finalized and, we imagine, thoroughly vetted answers would be submitted to Mueller “in the coming days,” just as his team is said to be busy working on another indictment, or string of indictments.
Trump reportedly met with his lawyers on Monday to give the answers one last review before submitting them.
The meeting was the latest as the responses are finalized, and the source said the answers could be submitted to the special counsel in the coming days. The questions focus on Russia collusion and not obstruction of justice and are part of an agreement reached with Mueller’s team to “move forward,” according to the source.
However, as CNN pointed out, there are still “issues that remain unresolved” – such as whether Trump will answer questions about whether he obstructed justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey, or whether an in-person interview might still be a possibility.
But there are other issues that have not been resolved, including answering questions about obstruction and whether the President will sit down for an interview with special counsel.
As CNN previously reported, Trump was meeting with lawyers about the questions before the midterms as he was preparing to remove Jeff Sessions as attorney general.
The move to replace Sessions with acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, who has been openly critical of the special counsel, comes as the White House braces for a return of public activity on the Russia investigation following a pre-election quiet period, according to people briefed on the matter.
Whitaker will now oversee the Mueller investigation, which had previously been under the purview of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
However, Trump’s appointment of Matt Whitaker as acting attorney general over Rod Rosenstein suggests that he has taken the necessary precautions to ensure that Mueller will wrap up his probe in a timely manner, as Whitaker has refused to recuse himself and Mitch McConnell has said that any legislation to protect Mueller would be dead in the water.
Drafts of what were said to be questions submitted by Mueller leaked back in May. But questions about whether these were the final set, or represented just one round in the negotiations, remain.
- Mauldin: A Worldwide Debt-Default Is A Real Possibility
Authored by John Mauldin via Forbes.com,
Is debt good or bad? The answer is “Yes.”
Debt is future spending pulled forward in time. It lets you buy something now for which you otherwise don’t have cash yet.
Whether it’s wise or not depends on what you buy. Debt to educate yourself so you can get a better job may be a good idea. Borrowing money to finance your vacation? Probably not.
The problem is that many people, businesses, and governments borrow because they can. It’s been possible in the last decade only because central banks made it so cheap.
It was rational in that respect. But it is growing less so as the central banks start to tighten.
Earlier this year, I wrote a series of articles (synopsis and links here) predicting a debt “train wreck” and eventual liquidation. I dubbed it “The Great Reset.” I estimated we have another year or two before the crisis becomes evident.
Now I’m having second thoughts. Recent events tell me the reckoning could be closer than I thought just a few months ago.
Debt Doesn’t Fuel Growth Anymore
Central banks enable debt because they think it will generate economic growth. Sometimes it does. The problem is they create debt with little regard for how it will be used.
That’s how we get artificial booms and subsequent busts. We are told not to worry about absolute debt levels so long as the economy is growing in line with them.
That makes sense. A country with a larger GDP can carry more debt. But that is increasingly not what is happening.
Let me give you two data points.
Hoisington Investment Management’s Lacy Hunt tracks data that shows debt is losing its ability to stimulate growth. In 2017, one dollar of non-financial debt generated only 40 cents of GDP in the US. It’s even less elsewhere. This is down from more than four dollars of growth for each dollar of debt 50 years ago.
This has seriously worsened over the last decade. China’s debt productivity dropped 42.9% between 2007 and 2017. That was the worst among major economies, but others lost ground, too. All the developed world is pushing on the same string and hoping for results.
Now, if you are used to using debt to stimulate growth, and debt loses its capacity to do so, what happens next? You guessed it: The brilliant powers-that-be add even more debt.
Here’s How Much Debt We Actually Have
This is classic addiction behavior. You have to keep raising the dose to get the same high.
But centuries of history show that every prior debt run-up eventually took its toll on the economy. There is always a Day of Reckoning.
The US economy is so huge and powerful that our current $24.5 trillion government debt (including state and local) could easily grow to $40 trillion before we meet that day. We are one recession away from having a $30 trillion U.S. government debt total.
It will happen seemingly overnight. And deficits will stay well above $1 trillion per year every year after that, not unlike now.
Even though a budget deficit is under $800 billion this year, we added over $1 trillion of actual debt. That is due to “off budget” items that Congress thinks shouldn’t be part of the normal budgetary process.
It includes things like Social Security and Medicare They vary from time to time and year to year and can be anywhere from $200 billion to almost $500 billion.
And here’s the point that you need to understand. The U.S. Treasury borrows those dollars and it goes on the total debt taxpayers owe. The true deficit that adds to the debt is actually much higher than the number you see in the news.
Household and corporate debt is growing fast, too. And not just in the U.S.
Here’s a note from Economic Cycle Research Institute’s Lakshman Achuthan:
Notably, the combined debt of the US, Eurozone, Japan, and China has increased more than ten times as much as their combined GDP [growth] over the past year.
Yes, you read that right. In the last year, the world’s largest economies are generating debt 10X faster than economic growth. Adding debt at that pace, if it continues, will boost the debt-to-GDP ratio at an alarming rate.
Lakshman continues.
Remarkably, then, the global economy—slowing in sync despite soaring debt—finds itself in a situation reminiscent of the Red Queen Effect we referenced 15 years ago, when tax cuts boosted the US budget deficit much more than GDP. As the Red Queen says to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
This Won’t End Well
I am trying to imagine a scenario where this ends in something less than chaos and crisis. The best I can conceive is a decade-long (and possibly more) stagnation while the debt gets liquidated.
But realistically, that won’t happen because debtors won’t let it. And they outnumber lenders. For this reason, something like “the Great Reset” will happen first.
The rational course would be to delay the inevitable as long as possible. Yet in the U.S. we’re rushing it.
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- Feds "Harden" San Diego – Tijuana Border As LGBT Caravan Migrants First To Arrive
In anticipation of the approaching Central American migrant caravan, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that work began on Tuesday to “harden” the border crossing between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego.
U.S. soldiers install barbed wire on the border with Mexico, seen from Colonia Libertad in Tijuana on Monday. (Joebeth Terriquez/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) The work comes as the first wave of migrants arrived in Tijuana Monday; approximately 80 gay, lesbian and transgender asylum seekers who were bussed ahead by an anonymous organization after they say intolerant fellow asylum seekers were harassing them.
Apparently the caravan is full of bigots who can’t wait to get into the United States.
“We were discriminated against, even in the caravan,” said Erick Dubon, 23, from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, who has been traveling with his boyfriend, Pedro Nehemias, 22. “People wouldn’t let us into trucks, they made us get in the back of the line for showers, they would call us ugly names.” –WaPo
“They experienced a lot of violence, including having the shelter they were staying in robbed and set on fire,” said immigration lawyer Nicole Ramos. “They are vulnerable.”
A second group of 360 migrants made it to Tijuana on Tuesday morning.
CBP closed four lanes at the heavily trafficked San Ysidro and Otay Mesa ports of entry in San Diego in order “to install and pre-position port hardening infrastructure equipment in preparation for the migrant caravan and the potential safety and security risk that it could cause,” according to CBS News and PBS.
On Thursday, 1,100 Marines from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in California were deployed to support border security, CBS San Diego affiliate KFMB reported. They were primarily tasked with installing concertina wire and pre-positioning jersey barriers, barricades and fencing.
…
The thousands of Central American migrants left shelters in Guadalajara early Tuesday and were taken by bus to a highway tollbooth to wait for rides to their next destination. Most appeared intent on taking the Pacific coast route northward to the border city of Tijuana, which was still about 1,350 miles away. The migrants have come about 1,500 miles since they started out in Honduras around October 13. While the caravan previously averaged only about 30 miles a day, the migrants are now covering daily distances of 185 miles or more, partly because they are relying on hitchhiking rather than walking.
“CBP has been and will continue to prepare for the potential arrival of thousands of people migrating in a caravan heading towards the border of the United States,” said Pete Flores, CBP’s director of San Diego field operations.
In Texas, meanwhile, approximately 5,600 troops have laid approximately 1,000 feet of razor wire fencing along the Texas side of the Rio Grande river underneath the McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge, as soldiers work to support US Customs and Border Patrol efforts to prevent the asylum seekers from entering the country.
The first groups to arrive in Tijuana were served breakfast before walking toward the beach to look for a place to remain until they attempt to cross into the United States. Tijuana Municipal Migration Affairs Office director, César Palencia, said that there is enough shelter space for 900 migrants in the city, however they still need more mattresses, blankets and clothes for new arrivals.
Palencia is concerned that there won’t be enough resources for the large group of at least 3,000 migrants expected in a couple of weeks.
“We are expecting more of these little groups, but we don’t know right now exactly what we are going to do with the big caravan,” he said. “But we will make room.”
Meanwhile, some of the LGBT migrants have received a tepid welcome from Tijuana residents.
The arrival in Tijuana of the LGBT group has not been welcomed by everyone. Santiago Alvarez, a police officer on duty outside their rental house, said that people have stopped by “knocking on the door, shouting things, telling them to leave.” –WaPo
“A few of the migrants left to go buy a couple of things, and they were harassed and insulted in the street,” said Alvarez.
The rest of the migrants are expected to trickle in over the next few weeks, unless anonymous organizations bus them to the border sooner.
- Nationalists, Patriots, & Former Rothschild Bankers
Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
If and when a former Rothschild banker starts telling us what the words in our respective languages actually mean, beware. Even if he has dozens of professional speech writers and spin doctors to do it for him. And even if the meaning and interpretation of words, though they may seem easily translatable, differ between English, French, German, Russian, Chinese to such an extent that Lost in Translation may appear to be an understatement.
But if you’re that Rothschild banker who became president of France through a process that nobody will ever understand, and you host the 100th commemoration of perhaps the worst war ever in history, to be ‘celebrated’ with ‘leaders’ none of whom have exhibited any memory through their actions of the ‘This must never happen again’ that the war ended with, you can expect to get away with bending both history and language.
Macron’s entire audience was ready for, and willing to absorb, a message that seemed so benevolent and sincere and loving, and that perhaps most of all was yet another jab at one of his guests, the American president. They were eating it up. As long as they can appear to stand together against Trump, they can make their people, their voters, and perhaps even each other forget how divided they themselves are.
It was nothing but one more circus, one more theater piece, albeit this one extremely carefully scripted for many months and by many of the finest directors and script writers France has to offer. The underlying theme: the EU is good, so is the UN, NATO is good etc. The list would include the IMF, World Bank and on and on. Big global institutions are good, the bigger the better, and criticism of them is not.
Macron’s spin doctors had come up with a few choice lines to express these sentiments. And since I couldn’t find anyone who had looked at those lines with anything but silent and blind admiration (undoubtedly only due to the solemn occasion) , please allow me. Here’s some of the things Macron said, the way they were translated into English, according to Anglo media:
“The old demons are rising again, ready to complete their task of chaos and of death.”
“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism.
“In saying, ‘Our interests first, whatever happens to the others’, you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it live, that which causes it to be great and that which is most important: its moral values.”
Well, yes, the old demons are rising again. Or rather, they have been for years. French arms sales to countries and their often dictatorial leaders who one could classify as ‘nationalists’ have never really abated in the past 100 years. As a country, as a society, at least on the leadership level, nothing has been learned. The only ‘excuse’ Paris could provide for this is that all the other countries who sent away their young and strong to be slaughtered never learned a thing either.
But the spin doctors’ finest hour comes after this: “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism.” I’m not a linguist, but I know enough about languages -and so do you- to know this is utter nonsense. You may attempt to find some differences between nationalism and patriotism, if you want, but they will never be each other’s opposite. Unless you either are Macron looking for a catchy line or you write his speeches for him.
Obviously, Macron said this because Trump declared himself a nationalist recently. And Macron could now claim that this means Trump is not a patriot. Which we all know is hollow talk. Because Trump said it while speaking about trade, about the US economy. Which does nothing to ‘prove’ he doesn’t love his country. But that is what Macron suggests. He claims patriots love their country, and since nationalism is the opposite of patriotism, Trump does not love America.
Also, and again referring to Trump without mentioning him (if only he had the guts), Macron alleged that nationalists don’t care one bit about what happens to anyone who’s not a citizen of their country. Whereas it is much more likely to mean -I’m treading softly here- that there are people who look out for their own people first, and others after, and they expect all countries to do the same. Macron does the same. A long way away from “whatever happens to others”.
Trump was elected because many Americans feel shortchanged, because jobs have disappeared, because they can’t make ends meet. Macron was elected for largely similar reasons: the existing political system failed to protect people. In many other countries, the exact same dynamics are playing out. Macron’s answer to this is to emphasize -make that celebrate- the importance of the exact institutions that have been instrumental in making it all happen.
Ergo: Macron is a globalist. Or maybe I should say he believes in globalism, before someone chimes in to link this to Judaism. Macron believes in global economies and global institutions, whereas Trump does not. The Donald recognizes that global banks and multinationals are responsible to a large extent for the loss of American jobs to low-wage countries. His tariffs, especially on China, address exactly that. Even if he’s clearly conflicted when it comes to US companies who profit from the exact same thing.
Still, that doesn’t mean Trump is not a patriot. But that is precisely what Macron insinuated on Sunday. According to him, one can’t be both a nationalist and a patriot. He might have done better to let the millions who died a 100 years ago, and whom he commemorated, have their own say on that. Did the unfortunate frail forms bleeding to death in the trenches see themselves as nationalists or patriots? Wouldn’t that have been the last thing on their minds? And doesn’t that question tell the entire story?
Doesn’t it put into perspective Macron’s veiled attacks on Trump while the latter was sitting right there? The wonderboy banker trying to gain some sort of moral superiority over the real estate mogul over the heads and rotten bodies and memories of the French and British AND American troops who died deaths the western world can no longer even imagine (while they actively help inflicting them on Yemen) ? And then the entire media run with how beautiful Macron’s words, nay dedications, were?
100 years after the ‘Never Again’, France, Britain, Germany, Russia and the US are still selling billions worth of arms to regimes they know will abuse them. As long as they get their cut, right? The suggestion that Trump is somehow worse than the rest is ludicrous. If anything Trump is a little better on the warmonger front. He still has to prove that, true. The rest have proven their role already though.
Last thought: Xi Jinping is going out of his way to claim China is opening up its economy. That makes him a globalist, right? And globalists can only be nationalists, according to Macron, never patriots? Can we get someone to ask Xi how he sees this? And what about Vladimir Putin? Russia’s been bounced off the global stage through sanctions and allegations, but perhaps he would still like to be a globalist. So is Putin a nationalist or a patriot? Asking for a friend.
Again, according to Macron, you can’t be both. You think about that. What are you?
- A Robot Now Runs AllianceBernstein's Fixed Income Trading
Three things are certain: death, taxes, and that the already thin gap between human trader and algo is narrowing ever further.
AllianceBernstein’s new virtual assistant can now suggest to fixed income portfolio managers what the best bonds may be to purchase using parameters such as pricing, liquidity and risk, according to Bloomberg. The machine has numerous advantages to humans: “she” can scan millions of data points and identify potential trades in seconds. Plus she never needs to take a cigarette or a bathroom break.
The new virtual assistant, dubbed
Skynet 2.0“Abbie 2.0”, specializes in identifying bonds that human portfolio managers have missed. She can also help spot human errors and communicate with similar bots like herself at other firms to arrange trades, making humans redundant. This is the second iteration of AllianceBernstein‘s electronic assistant which debuted in January of this year, but could only build orders for bonds following precise input from humans.
Sourcing bonds that are easy to trade is done by Abbie 2.0 reaching out to another AB system called ALFA, which stands for Automated Liquidity Filtering and Analytics. The AFLA system gathers bids and asks from dealers and electronic trading venues to work out the best possible trades.
For now, humans are still required: Jeff Skoglund, chief operating officer of fixed income at AB told Bloomberg that “humans and machines will need to work closer than ever to find liquidity, trade faster and handle risks. Our hope is that we grow and use people in ways that are more efficient and better leverage their skills.”
What he really means is that his hope is to fire as many expensive traders and PMs as possible to fatten the company’s profit margins. Which is why the virtual assistant already helps support a majority, or more than 60% of AllianceBernstein‘s fixed income trades. The “upgrades” that are coming for the new assistant will help it include high-yielding investment grade bonds, before expanding to other more complex markets in the coming months. AB says that they will still rely on humans to make the final decisions on trades. For now.
While the original version of the assistant had to be told how much a portfolio manager wanted of a specific bond, the new version now mines data pools to be proactive, making sizing suggestions to portfolio managers. Among other things, the assistant looks at ratings of companies, capital structure and macro data such as social and geopolitical risks.
This is just another step in the industry becoming machine oriented in order to help cut costs, save time and avoid errors, especially in relatively illiquid bond markets. Liquidity could become even more of a factor if the economy slips into recession over the next couple of years.
Electronic trading in general is becoming more pronounced in fixed income as banks act more like exchanges instead of holding bonds on their balance sheet. All the while, regulations have encouraged the shifting of bond trading to exchanges. More than 80% of investors in high-grade bonds use electronic platforms, accounting for 20% of volume, according to Bloomberg.
Skoglund concluded, “We expect to be faster to market and capture opportunities we otherwise would not have caught by using this system. There’s a liquidity problem right now that could become significantly more challenging in a risk-off environment.“
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