- The Blob: Still Chasing After Pax Americana
The Blob: Still Chasing After Pax Americana
Authored by Andrew Bacevich via TheAmericanConservative.com,
After all the failure, they still look at our wars in the Middle East as some kind of golden age…
I wish to call attention to an instructive essay about U.S. policy in the Middle East—instructive in the sense that it reveals the utterly impoverished nature of establishment thinking on this subject.
The title of the essay is “The US Has One Last Chance to Halt Its Withdrawal from the Middle East.” The author is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense, who shall remain nameless since I bear him no ill will. Let us refer to him simply as X, in honor of George Kennan, author of a famous 1947 essay offering counsel on how to deal with the Soviet Union. Kennan published that essay under the pseudonym X. And so shall I refer to the author of “One Last Chance.”
Kennan’s purpose was to sound the alarm regarding the Soviet threat and to propose what came to be called the strategy of Containment. The purpose of our present-day Mr. X is to sound the alarm about the United States lowering its profile in the Middle East.
To avert that prospect, he proposes what can only be termed a strategy of staying-the-course-while-ignoring-the-facts.
X concedes that throughout the region, things have not gone especially well for the United States over the last couple of decades. He rightly notes that Americans are “still reeling from costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the continuing chaos in Syria, Yemen, and Libya.” He ever so briefly acknowledges that this is “a region where even pro-American governments are often undemocratic and can be disdainful of fundamental human rights” and “where billions of dollars are spent that would be better used at home.”
Of course, to say that the U.S. has expended billions in the Middle East is the equivalent of saying that my wife and I paid thousands for the home we purchased last year. While nominally correct, the statement is wildly misleading. X has an aversion to actual numbers. He prefers tidy generalizations to specifics.
Yet the essence of X’s argument boils down to this: setting aside these recent errors of judgment by George W. Bush and Barack Obama, U.S. policy in the region has actually been a smashing success. From the end of World War II until ever-so-recently, Washington pursued a course in the Middle East that was reasoned, careful, and eminently wise. “This bipartisan tradition of American leadership worked,” X asserts. While it might have been “imperfect, time-consuming and often unsatisfying,” the nation’s “vital interests in the region remained protected. The U.S. presence was sized to align with those interests, and we were not overextended.” X approvingly calls this a Pax Americana in the Middle East.
When one encounters a claim of an American-constructed Pax, the first rule is to look for what the writer leaves out. In this case, among the incidents and developments that our X totally ignores are these: treating Saudi Arabia as a de facto protectorate; CIA involvement in the 1953 overthrow of the Mossadegh regime; the pro-Israel tilt in U.S. policy dating from the 1960s, to include turning a blind eye to Israel acquiring a nuclear arsenal; the Iranian Revolution; various Arab-Israeli wars; oil “shocks” during the 1970s; the Beirut debacle of 1983; the U.S. role in destabilizing (and then abandoning) Afghanistan; Washington’s support for Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War; the rise of al-Qaeda; and the events of 9/11.
Admit these into the conversation and the question you confront is this one: what Pax? In truth, Pax Americana no more describes the postwar Middle East than the phrase “Long Peace” describes the Cold War. The purpose of such formulations is to preclude actual thinking, attaching labels to preempt analysis.
“It took many decades to build a Pax Americana in the Middle East,” X writes.
Not true: it took only a handful of hours—the time he invested in writing his essay. The Pax Americana is a figment of X’s imagination.
Yet once having conjured up his fictive Pax, X easily convinces himself that it can exist again, if only the next president—he writes off Trump as a total loss—will act to “reestablish American leadership in the Middle East, restore deterrence with our adversaries, and begin renewing trust with our partners and allies.” But what does “leadership” actually mean in this context? What will it entail? What will it cost? Once again, when it comes to specifics, X is essentially silent, offering only this:
“The next commander in chief will require political fortitude to lead the United States back to its traditional role in the region, demonstrating what in previous generations was deemed a profile in courage.”
That and four bucks will get you a latte.
All of that said, I submit that X has written something worthy of reflection. Here on full display is a model of establishment thinking—heavy on clichés, light on substance, and short of memory.
Let me briefly sketch out an alternative narrative that more accurately captures our present predicament.
Since the end of World War II, successive administrations have sought to devise a formula for assuring American consumers access to Persian Gulf oil while also satisfying pressing domestic political interests. Over a period of decades, that effort succeeded chiefly in giving birth to new problems. Out of these multiplying difficulties came the 9/11 attacks and their immediate sequel, a “war on terrorism” meant to settle matters once and for all.
To state the matter bluntly, 9/11 was an expression of chickens coming home to roost, a massive strategic failure that the ensuing military campaigns beginning in 2001 and continuing to the present moment have affirmed. Given the dimensions of that failure, the likelihood of resuscitating X’s illusory Pax is essentially zero.
There is no going back to an imagined Golden Age of American statecraft in the Middle East. The imperative is to go forward, which requires acknowledging how wrongheaded U.S. policy in region has been ever since FDR had his famous tete-a-tete with King Ibn Saud and Harry Truman rushed to recognize the newborn State of Israel.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 00:10 - These Are The States Best (And Worst) Prepared For Another Recession
These Are The States Best (And Worst) Prepared For Another Recession
When the US economy finally starts to cool, and the inevitable recession arrives, the slowdown will affect different states differently. Some states, like Texas, are well-positioned to ride out the downturn thanks to the diversity of industry and low per-capita debt. Others, like Hawaii, will likely bear the brunt of the downturn, a “disaster” that we have discussed in the past.
Inspired by surveys claiming that a majority of executives at Fortune 500 companies expect a recession in 2020, Fit Small Business recently conducted a study to determine which states are best-equipped to survive the next recession, and which states are particularly vulnerable to a downturn. To arrive at their conclusions, the researchers factored in a wealth of data about states’ economies, including their product exports, housing costs, economic strength and diversity, individual debt-to-income ratios and median home values.
Using these data, they concluded that nearly all of the best states for surviving the recession are spread across the south and midwest. Why? Because these states benefit from diverse economies, and their low cost of living and low property prices make them more liveable.
Meanwhile, all the way down at the end of the list, we find Hawaii, the 48th most well-equipped state to survive the next recession.
Why is Hawaii so vulnerable? Well, for one, the state must import nearly all of its fuel, food and consumer staples, which drives up prices.
But that’s not the only reason. Another recent study warned that the slowdown in Hawaii’s economy started around the time when JPM’s Global Manufacturing PMI topped out in late 2017.
And that slowdown is getting more serious, as Hawaii’s tourism-dependent economy struggles with a slump in bookings, and by extension, a slump in tourist spending. The culprit is clear: the strong dollar has hurt tourism from abroad, while anxieties about a slowing economy have caused domestic spending to contract slightly.
And researchers with the state have forecast an increase in Hawaii’s unemployment rate over the coming years, expecting it to climb from its current level (2.8%) to 3.9% in 2022.
For Hawaii, the downturn has already begun.
Read Fit Small Business’s full report here.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 23:50 - The Manchurian Candidate Theory Will Never Die
The Manchurian Candidate Theory Will Never Die
Authored by David Harsanyi via NationalReview.com,
…but now it’s much more than a kooky conspiracy shouted from the margins. It’s headline news.
One of the most durable conspiracy theories of our times finds Vladimir Putin recruiting a billionaire media personality named Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency. In some iterations of the tale, Trump is willingly serving his Kremlin comrades; in others, he is merely the victim of kompromat. In every version he is an asset.
The basic account holds that Putin, who is apparently blessed with seer-like abilities, knew in the late 1970s that Trump, whose political positions would wildly fluctuate over 40 years, was presidential material, and that now, after decades of patiently waiting, the duo’s nefarious plan to cut taxes and place originalists onto the federal bench has finally come to fruition.
In a sprawling July 2018 New York piece headlined, “Will Trump Be Meeting with His Counterpart — Or His Handler? A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion,” Jonathan Chait offered a fully realized rendering of Trump’s potential sedition. Cobbling together every interaction the real-estate developer ever had with Russians — helpfully laid out in a handy Pepe Silvia–like flow chart — Chait posits that Trump might have become a Kremlin asset in 1987 when visited Moscow.
Chait was just asking questions. And I have no doubt the story seems highly “plausible” to partisans who suddenly treat every Russian-bought social-media ad as the next Pearl Harbor.
Which brings me to John Harwood, the DNC’s man in Washington. Piggybacking on a recent tweet by the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg, Harwood brings up Chait’s piece, arguing that that while “conservative media dismissed as ridiculous the idea that Russia might have cultivated Trump for decades, Fiona Hill, a leading US govt Russia expert, now makes clear it’s not ridiculous in the slightest.”
Here’s Harwood on Twitter:
Typing this out for those who’ve called it implausible
Q: why do you believe Putin was targeting Trump from his days as a businessman?
HILL: Because that’s exactly what Putin and others were doing. Again, he was part of a directorate in the KGB in Leningrad. That’s what they did exclusively, was targeting businessmen.
The quote Harwood highlights from Hill’s October 14 testimony specifically points to Putin’s role in exclusively “targeting” American businessmen in the late 1970s, not “for decades.” In an adjacent quote, in fact, Hill argues that everyone was targeted by Russians for decades — not that Trump was “cultivated,” as Harwood asserts — and that it was a mistake to focus only on meddling in relation to the president rather than on meddling in a broader perspective.
Here is Hill:
I firmly believe he was also targeting President Trump, and he was targeting all of the other campaigns as well. And I think that that was the mistake when the 2015 investigations were launched, not to take it from the point of view [of] what Russia was doing to target Americans, no matter who they were in the system.”
And again:
I think that there’s a good chance that was the case and that, you know — and, again, compromising material was being collected on a whole range of individuals. And it was most definitely being collected on Secretary, former First Lady and Senator Clinton as well.
And still again:
So, if Secretary Clinton had won, there would have been a cloud over her at this time if she was President Clinton. There’s been a cloud over President Trump since the beginning of his presidency, and I think that’s exactly what the Russians intended.
The context of her statements are a far cry from “Russia might have cultivated Trump for decades.” Of course, no one can dispute that Russians have been digging up dirt on prominent Americans citizens forever, but the word “cultivate” or “handler” — or any other term that intimates that the president is working for Russians — does not appear, even hypothetically, in any form in the transcript of Hill’s testimony.
Also, does anyone really believe that Harwood types in the media would be grappling with the “cloud” that Fiona Hill, “a leading US govt Russia expert,” now makes clear would be hovering over Hillary Clinton’s head as well, if she had won?
Even if Harwood had accurately conveyed Hill’s claims, we’ve now had three years of intense journalistic effort, wide-ranging congressional investigations, and an independent inquiry that have been unable to turn up a single instance in which Trump was compromised or colluded with Russians.
Anyone paying attention during the 2016 campaign was already well acquainted with the president’s views on Russia: Trump isn’t going to bash Putin because Trump respects Putin, and he strives to build friendly relations with Russia.
I’m sorry to say, Trump’s policies towards Putin differ very little from those of his predecessors. Perhaps no better, they are certainly no worse.
As many others have noted, it was Obama who mocked Romney’s claim that Russia was our most dangerous geopolitical foe.
It was also Obama who told Putin’s stooge Dmitry Medvedev that his administration would have more “flexibility” on missile defense after the 2012 election.
It was Obama who refused to offer lethal military assistance to Ukraine.
It was Obama who canceled the sale of American missile-defense systems to Poland and the Czech Republic to appease Russia.
It was the Obama administration, according to Bill Browder, one of the driving forces behind the Magnitsky Act, who spent two years trying to kill the Act before acquiescing to bipartisan pressure.
It was Obama, not Trump, who capitulated to Russia and gave in on accession to the World Trade Organization.
It was Joe Biden, not Mike Pence, who in 2009 told Medvedev that “the most important item on our agenda” was to restore Russia–U.S. relations after eight years of the Bush administration’s antagonism.
It was also Obama who abandoned the Syrian “red line,” leaving Russia’s allies to massacre thousands of civilians in a broader effort to appease the Iranians. Just because the 44th president habitually aligned the United States with the Islamic regime in Iran doesn’t mean he was a foreign Muslim interloper.
The Manchurian Candidate conspiracy theory is much like birtherism. Too many conservatives rationalized their anger over politics by convincing themselves that Obama wasn’t only a dangerous ideological adversary but a seditious and illegitimate one as well. (One of the people rightly pilloried for doing this was Donald Trump.) The only difference is that Democrats have mainstreamed this kind of destructive paranoia.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 23:30 - Substance Abuse Touches Around Half Of All American Families
Substance Abuse Touches Around Half Of All American Families
According to Gallup, the effects of substance abuse are felt by around half of all American families, with, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, only slight differences were recorded by the survey regarding race or sex.
46 percent of U.S. adults reported having dealt with substance abuse in their families. 18 percent said those were related just to alcohol, while 10 percent said their problems were related just to drugs. Another 18 percent said they had dealt with both.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Women were slightly more likely to report substance abuse being a problem in their families. The difference between non-Hispanic whites and nonwhites reporting problems with substance abuse were two percentage points for alcohol and just one percentage point for drugs.
That widened to 6 and 9 percent, respectively, between people reporting weekly church attendance and people seldom or never attending church service. Whether respondents held a college degree or not actually had a similar impact – people who did not go to or finish college were 7 percent more likely to report alcohol abuse and 4 percent more likely to report drug abuse in their families.
The highest discrepancies were actually recorded in terms of region. Easterners were 9 percent less likely to report alcohol abuse than Westerners, while Midwesterners were 10 percent less likely to report drug abuse than people in the West.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 23:10 - Lacalle: Why A "Crypto-Yuan" Won't Threaten The Dollar
Lacalle: Why A “Crypto-Yuan” Won’t Threaten The Dollar
A state-owned cryptocurrency is, in itself, a contradiction in terms. The main reason why citizens want to use cryptocurrencies or gold is precisely to avoid the government or central bank monopoly of money.
For a currency to be a world reserve of value, widespread means of exchange and unit of measure, there are many things that need to happen, but the first pillar of a world reserve currency is stability and transparency.
China cannot disrupt the global monetary system and dethrone the US dollar when it has one of the world’s tightest capital control systems, a lack of separation of powers and weak transparency in its own financial system.
The U.S. dollar is the most traded currency in the world, and growing according to the Bank of International Settlement. The Yuan is 4% of the currency trade. This is because the financial balance of the US is the strongest, legal and investor security is one of the strongest in the world, and the currency and capital markets are open and transparent.
Unfortunately for China, the idea of a gold-backed cryptocurrency starts from the wrong premise. China’s own currency, the Yuan, is not backed by either global use nor gold. At all. China’s total gold reserves are less than 0.25% of its money supply. Many say that we do not know the real extent of China’s gold reserves. However, this goes back to my previous point. What confidence is the world going to have on a currency where the real level of gold reserves is simply a guess? Furthermore, why would any serious government under-report its gold reserves if it wants to be a safe haven, reserve status currency? It makes no sense.
The Yuan is as unsupported as any fiat currency, like the U.S. dollar, but much less traded and used as a store of value. As such, a cryptocurrency would not be backed by gold either. Even if the government said it was, and deployed all its reserves to the cryptocurrency, what confidence does the investor have that such backing will be guaranteed when the evidence is that even Chinese citizens have enormous limits to access their own savings in gold?
China’s gold reserves are an insignificant fraction of its money supply. Its biggest weakness comes from capital controls, lack of open and independent institutions safeguarding investors and constant intervention in its financial market.
China’s Yuan may become a world reserve currency one day. It will never happen while capital controls remain and legal-investor security is limited.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 22:50 - Hong Kong's "Gravity Defying" Property Market Can't Stay Afloat Forever
Hong Kong’s “Gravity Defying” Property Market Can’t Stay Afloat Forever
Despite its initial resilience to an increasingly aggressive protest movement, Hong Kong’s housing market – previously one of the most unaffordable residential markets in the world – has started to weaken.
But in a story published on Tuesday, WSJ compared the HK housing market to the cartoon villian Wile E. Coyote. While pursuing the Road Runner, sometimes the coyote finds himself running on air, a realization that typically precipitates a steep fall.
If the protests don’t end soon, Hong Kong’s “gravity defying” real-estate market could experience something similar; both residential and commercial markets could be on the cusp of a seriously brutal contraction.
According to recent data, Hong Kong’s economy is in serious trouble. For the first time in a decade, the Special Administrative Region is in a recession. Business activity declined at the fastest pace in at least two decades in October.
But while the Hong Kong economy recorded its worst performance to date last month, in the real-estate market, transactions – i.e. home sales – actually rose in October (though we’d wager that most of this is simply speculators and investors hoping to take advantage of a slight dip in prices).
Still, HK remains one of – if not the most – unaffordable housing markets.
Commercial real-estate has taken a bigger hit. In October, local property agency Midland IC&I recorded only 242 registrations of commercial and industrial businesses, the second-lowest figure since 1996.
Savills, another real-estate agency, found that rents for stores in prime shopping centers around Hong Kong have fallen by more than 15% in the year to September.
HK home prices have more than doubled over the past ten years, and after all of this growth, a dip in property prices might help alleviate some of the economic inequality plaguing Hong Kong.
The only problem is that the banks who are on the hook for these mortgages might risk getting saddled with heavy losses. Since few buildings in the commercial real-estate market are owner occupied, falling commercial rents risk the most immediate harm to banks balance sheets. And there’s one bank that is the most exposed to Hong Kong, it’s UK-based HSBC.
Though residential could do some harm as well.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 22:30 - All It Takes Is A Slipup Or A Nudge
All It Takes Is A Slipup Or A Nudge
Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,
Just prior to a war, the majority of people in the nations that are about to become involved tend to assume that another nation is threatening theirs, whist their own leaders are doing all they can to avoid conflict. This is almost never the case.
The “etiquette” of starting wars is for leaders to claim to their people that the last thing they want is war, but the enemy is goading them into armed conflict and, at some point, retaliation becomes “unavoidable.”
The reason for this etiquette is that, almost invariably, the people of a nation have no desire to go to war.
But if that’s the case, why is world history filled with warfare taking place on a regular basis?
Well, truth be told, there are two groups of people who tend to relish war – the military and the political leaders.
I’ve often quoted Randolph Bourne as saying, “War is the health of the state.” He was quite correct. The larger the nation, the greater the need political leaders have for warfare. After all, there’s no situation in which a people feel more greatly that they need their leaders to take charge, than in a time of war.
Political leaders, after all, thrive on taxation and the oppression of basic rights. And they can get away with taxing a people more heavily during a war. They can also remove basic freedoms “temporarily” in order to keep the people “safe.”
Then, when the war is over, taxes never seem to return to their previous low and freedoms never fully return. With each conflict, the state ratchets up its power over the people.
And in modern times, there’s an additional incentive. Since the end of World War II, the US military-industrial complex has been displeased with the fact that peacetime means diminished revenue for them. Increasingly, they’ve contributed heavily to election campaigns for both major parties in every election.
The repayment for those contributions has always been the same – the political class must find excuses to create a new conflict as soon as another one ends, ensuring the continued revenue of the complex.
This has resulted in the US becoming the first and only country that’s in a consciously created state of perpetual warfare. The cost of this, in 2018, was roughly $600 billion – 54% of all federal discretionary spending.
Much of that cost goes to the maintenance of some 800 military bases across the globe, but the military-industrial complex is forever seeking opportunities for expansion, and having been paid for it with campaign funds, political leaders need to find excuses for new conflicts with regularity.
Presently, world leaders are doing their best to deflect taunts by the US. The self-appointed “world’s policeman” is wagging its finger at North Korea with regard to nuclear weapons development, at Venezuela, seeking to replace their leader with an American puppet, at China with regard to islands in the South China Sea and at a host of countries in the Middle East. To each of these, US leaders have said that armed aggression by the US “cannot be ruled out.” And, “All options are on the table.”
As stated above, the peoples of these countries tend to have no desire to go to war. But political leaders have a vested interest in warfare. In addition, military leaders have a stake in the game.
Imagine having graduated from West Point and having spent your military career as an undistinguished desk jockey. By the time you’ve risen to the rank of general, all you’ve done is push pencils. And yet, the reason you joined up in the first place was to become a military leader, with a chest full of battle ribbons.
This is the conundrum that taunts the more sociopathic military leaders – the George Pattons and the Douglas MacArthurs – who, once they’ve been given a command, tend to become carried away in their zeal to create their own legacy through armed combat. The greater the bloodletting, the greater the victory.
In a leadup to active conflict, such generals tend to be like pit bulls on tight leashes – straining to be released so that they can fulfil their destiny.
In almost every case, there are players on both sides who fit this description. As a result, all that’s needed is a small spark to set off armed conflict.
And generally, the provocation that begins a war is a small one. For World War I, all that was necessary was for an archduke of Austria to be assassinated, by a Bosnian teenager, while riding in an open car.
Within a month, Austria-Hungary and Serbia entered into war. All over Europe, people were astonished at how quickly other countries took up sides. France, Russia, Great Britain and, later, Japan, Greece and the US all teamed up against Austria-Hungary, Germany, Italy and even the Ottoman Empire.
Before the war ended, some four years later, some seventy million military personnel had been involved, plus countless civilians – and all due to a shot fired by a young malcontent.
In most all such cases, when a military retaliates against a minor act of aggression, the people of the respective countries hope that the scuffle will be brief, and life can return to normal. But that’s almost never the way it plays out. Invariably, there are those political and military leaders on both sides who revel in the conflict and are determined to demonstrate that they themselves will emerge as the unquestioned victors.
The technical starting point of any major war is, in fact, incidental. Most any excuse will suffice. What’s necessary is two opponents, each of whom accuses the other of attempting to foment aggression. At that point, all that’s needed to light the spark is a young soldier or agitator with an itchy trigger finger, or a politician with a show of bravado, or a military leader who chooses to break from his orders to stand down.
In many cases, if the war does not start spontaneously, a false-flag incident suffices. One country creates an event which it purports is an act of aggression by its opponent. (The recent events in the Strait of Hormuz have a distinct false-flag odour about them.)
Again, the actual catalyst matters little. Once the rattling of sabres begins, as it has, presently, in the Middle East, all that’s required to create a major war is a slipup or a nudge.
* * *
The US government is overextending itself by interfering in every corner of the globe. It’s all financed by massive amounts of money printing. However, the next financial crisis could end the whole charade soon. The truth is, we’re on the cusp of a global economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. That’s exactly why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent new report with all the details. Click here to download the PDF now.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 22:10 - "She Doesn't Know Who The F**k She's Tweeting": Leon Cooperman Explodes At Elizabeth Warren 'Eat The Rich' Ad
“She Doesn’t Know Who The F**k She’s Tweeting”: Leon Cooperman Explodes At Elizabeth Warren ‘Eat The Rich’ Ad
Billionaire hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman says Sen. Elizabeth Warren “represents the worst in politicians,” and that “she doesn’t know who the fuck she’s tweeting” after the Massachusetts Democrat’s latest salvo against the rich.
A new ad by Warren, titled “Elizabeth Warren Stands Up to Billionaires,” targets Cooperman, along with former CEO of TD Ameritrade Joe Ricketts, former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel according to CNBC.
In it, Cooperman – who joked in September that “they won’t open the stock market if Elizabeth Warren is the next president – has the words “CHARGED WITH INSIDER TRADING” superimposed over his face.
“As far as the accusations of insider trading, I won the case. She’s disgraceful. She doesn’t know who the f— she’s tweeting. I gave away more in the year than she has in her whole f—-ing lifetime,” Cooperman told CNBC on Wednesday.
Days before breaking out in tears on CNBC over the American political divide, sent Warren a Halloween letter in which he said she’s treating him like “a parent chiding an ungrateful child.”
Warren hit back, tweeting “Leon is wrong. I’m fighting for big changes like universal child care, investing in public schools, and free public college.”
Leon is wrong. I’m fighting for big changes like universal child care, investing in public schools, and free public college.
We can do all of that with a #TwoCentWealthTax. Leon can and should pitch in more—so that every kid has the same opportunities he did to succeed. https://t.co/38fJSXKKCJ
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 31, 2019
Other business titans, including J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, have taken on Warren for her attacks on the wealthy.
Her war with business leaders has led to her crafting a strong group of supporters that have propelled her in the polls.
After being behind the Democratic front-runner, former Vice President Joe Biden, by at least 30 points in May, she has surged to being only six points from catching up to his lead, according to a Real Clear Politics polling average. -CNBC
Interestingly, Warren’s poll numbers started tanking after Warren unveiled her wealth tax plan and cooperman said “Her policies are counter-productive, they’re negative for capitalism…you don’t make the poor people rich by making the rich people poor.”
2020 Democratic candidate odds via PredictIt Now, for fun, the inverse of Warren’s odds against the Dow:
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 21:50 - Disney Did In 1 Day What Took HBO 4 Years: 10 Million Streaming Subscribers
Disney Did In 1 Day What Took HBO 4 Years: 10 Million Streaming Subscribers
Somewhere Netflix and Amazon video are sweating.
Disney announced today that Disney+ has reached a stunning 10 million plus subscribers just 24 hours after its launch yesterday in the U.S., Canada, and Netherlands; the figure surprised analysts who had expected a much slower rollout for Disney to reach that level, although let’s just ignore that most of the new “subs” are only there thanks to one of the various free streaming offers (perhaps someone should launch WeStream).
Separately, Apptopia reported 3.2 million mobile app downloads in the first 24 hours, with an estimated 89% of mobile downloads in the U.S., 9% in Canada, and 2% in the Netherlands. In just one day, users spent 1.3 million hours watching it, Apptopia said, more than Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video, but far less than the 6 million hours watched on Netflix.
“Disney should silence naysayers who expressed reservations about a pivot to streaming,” said Geetha Ranganathan, a media analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. “It took HBO Now about four years to reach about 10 million streaming subscribers.”
That’s just the beginning: on Nov. 19, Disney+ will launch in Australia, New Zealand, and Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico’s launch was delayed one week) and will launch in Western Europe on March 31, 2020. While the service experienced first day technical glitches, this was likely due to high consumer demand which was ahead of management’s expectations and not structural issues with the app.
At this fervent adoption rate, Disney could hit its target of 60 million to 90 million worldwide subscribers in just months, if not weeks, and certainly well before the company’s original 2024 goal, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives. This, of course is bad news for legacy streamers such as Netflix, which could see as many as 10% of its customers lured away to rival services such as Disney+ and one from Apple that launched earlier this month.
Commenting on Disney’s stunning disclosure, JPM said that the steep ramp reflects a philosophy of “initial subscribers now; pricing later.” Disney’s willingness to debut its content-rich service at an attractive price point is leading to massive subscriber growth which will likely lead to pricing power later. To be sure, JPM noted questions arise regarding the ARPU despite the strong ramp in subs, including:
- subscribers opting-in to the Verizon deal for a free year of Disney+ from a potential opportunity of ~17-19m eligible Verizon customers;
- subscribers to the bundle with ESPN+ and ad-supported Hulu; and
- subscriber churn following the free seven-day trial. Overall, we are positive on the read-through for subscriber growth at ESPN+ and adsupported Hulu as the combination at $12.99/month is a compelling deal.
Even so, the bank pointed out that “the announcement surpasses our expectations for 5m subs in the first quarter; we now expect 15m subscribers in FQ120 and bump up our full year expectations from 15m to 25m.”
Separately, Disney clinched important last minute deals for its content. Ahead of the Disney+ launch, Disney started to remove on-demand content for cable customers, in our view to create heightened demand for the content and the product.
As a result, nearly all Marvel movies are available to stream in the U.S., including Avengers: Endgame (initially expected to stream on Dec. 11) as Disney struck some last-minute rights deals. Four Marvel films will remain on Netflix through the end of 2019 (Black Panther, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Avengers: Infinity War, and Thor: Ragnarok) and will stream on Disney+ in 2020.As an aside, JPM analyst Alexia Quadrani noted that she was impressed by the content and user experience of Disney+ upon launch: “The recommendations, originals tab, as well as different collections under the search tab make it very easy to navigate through content and find what one is looking for. We did experience some technical issues on launch day, which we think is due to strong demand and not any underlying issues given the service has been in beta for months in the Netherlands.”
Not surprisingly, DIS stock exploded higher on the announcement, climbing as much as 6.8% on Wednesday, its biggest intraday rally in seventh months, and hitting a new all time high.
Netflix shares tumbled 3.7% as its company’s investors assess how big a threat Disney+ will be.
Finally, for those curious, yesterday we showed a full breakdown of which video streaming service is showing what exclusive content; we recreate it below.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 21:33 - Trade Wars Slam Chinese Retail Sales, Investment Growth Weakest In 21 Years
Trade Wars Slam Chinese Retail Sales, Investment Growth Weakest In 21 Years
While it will hardly come as a surprise to anyone following China’s dismal attempts at reflating the economy, which on Monday we learned translated into the lowest Aggregate Financing print since the series was established…
Source: Bloomberg
… reaffirming Beijing’s impotence at stimulating the all-important credit impulse which is barely above cycle lows…
Source: Bloomberg
… tonight’s macro data dump from China is expected to show continued slowing from Q3’s disappointing GDP print.
Bloomberg Economics’ Chang Shu notes that the October activity data are likely to show weakness continuing to spread across China’s economy, as companies adjusted to an additional 15% U.S. tariffs on $110 billion of Chinese goods in September.
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China Industrial Production MEET +5.6% YoY vs +5.6% YoY Exp
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China Retail Sales MISS +7.2% YoY vs +7.8% Exp
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China Fixed Asset Investment MISS +5.2% YoY vs +5.4% Exp.
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China Property Investment FELL to +10.3% YoY from +10.5% YoY
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China Surveyed Jobless Rate FELL to 5.1% from 5.2%
This is the equal weakest retail sales growth since 2003 and weakest Fixed-Asset Investment growth since 1998..
Source: Bloomberg
This data confirms that China’s economy slowed further in October, signaling, as Bloomberg’s Miao Han notes, that policy makers’ piecemeal stimulus is failing to boost output and investment amid ongoing trade tensions with the U.S. and subdued domestic demand.
As a reminder, there was the surprising divergence in the two manufacturing PMI readings, with the “official” version weakening, and the Caixin-labeled version strengthening.
Source: Bloomberg
Dow futures are exuberantly surging overnight as yuan continues to slide – disagreeing vehemently over the chances of a US-China trade deal after their joint celebrations last week…
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, as we just noted, The National Institution for Finance and Development (NIFD) on Wednesday said that China’s economic growth rate will slow to 5.8% in 2020 from an estimated 6.1% this year, a number which is already quite ambitious, not to say artificially goalseeked.
This, as the SCMP notes, is at the bottom end of China’s target range of 6 to 6.5% growth for 2019, and further indicates the continued downward pressure on the economy from the trade war with the United States as well as domestic headwinds.
“The economic slowdown is already a trend,” said former central bank adviser Li Yang, who heads the institute that is affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).
“We must resort to deepened supply-side structural reform to change it or smooth the slowdown, rather than solely rely on monetary or fiscal stimulus.”
The institute’s forecast is in line with the International Monetary Fund, and indicates the challenge that policymakers face to achieve the above 6% growth rate needed in 2019 and 2020 to reach the government’s goal of doubling GDP in 2020 compared to its 2010 level.
As a reminder, a GDP growth rate below 6% would be the first time since the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
Finally, we note that Navarro and his trade hawks in the White House will be pleased at these weak numbers. President Trump has repeatedly said that China needs a deal more than the U.S. does, and these numbers as leverage in their negotiations.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 21:08 -
- Trump To Ask SCOTUS To Decide Tax Case After Appeals Court Loss
Trump To Ask SCOTUS To Decide Tax Case After Appeals Court Loss
President Trump’s accounting firm is just one step away from having to turn over eight years of tax records, after the US Court of Appeals for DC shut down Trump’s last attempt to reconsider the case.
A majority of the court’s 11-judge panel voted to uphold an October 11 decision by a three-judge panel that accounting firm Mazars USA must hand over the records to Congress without a successful appeal. Of those who would have granted a rehearing, two are Trump appointees – Neomi Rao and Gregory Katsas, who served in the Trump administration.
“This case presents exceptionally important questions regarding the separation of powers,” wrote Katsas.
He warned of the “threat to presidential autonomy and independence” and said it would be “open season on the President’s personal records” if Congress is allowed to compel the president to disclose personal records based on the possibility that it might inform legislation. –Washington Post
As a result, Trump will ask the Supreme Court to consider the case, according to Trump attorkey Jay Sekulow, who said in response to Wednesday’s decision that the legal team “will be seeking review at the Supreme Court,” according to the Washington Post.
Sekulow in a statement cited the “well reasoned dissent” in Trump’s decision to go to the Supreme Court.
Trump’s attorneys also are planning to ask the high court as soon as Thursday to block a similar subpoena for the president’s tax records from the Manhattan district attorney, who is investigating hush-money payments in the lead-up to the 2016 election. The New York-based appeals court ruled against Trump this month and refused to block the subpoena to his accounting firm, Mazars USA.
The D.C. Circuit case centers on a House Oversight Committee subpoena from March for the president’s accounting firm records — issued months before the beginning of its impeachment inquiry, related to Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden. –Washington Post
“Contrary to the President’s arguments, the Committee possesses authority under both the House Rules and the Constitution to issue the subpoena, and Mazars must comply,” wrote Democrat-nominated Judges David S. Tatel and Patricia A. Millett.
Rao, the dissenting judge on the October 11 panel, reiterated that she felt the Congressional committee had exceeded its authority with a legislative subpoena “investigating whether the President broke the law.”
“By upholding this subpoena, the panel opinion has shifted the balance of power between Congress and the President and allowed a congressional committee to circumvent the careful process of impeachment,” she wrote.
Rao also wrote Wednesday that the committee “is wrong to suggest” that questions over whether the subpoena is valid “are no longer of ‘practical consequence,'” and that it’s an open question as to “whether a defective subpoena can be revived by after-the-fact approval.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 20:50 - Chinese Think Tank Becomes First Official Body To Predict 2020 GDP Will Drop Below 6%
Chinese Think Tank Becomes First Official Body To Predict 2020 GDP Will Drop Below 6%
While it will hardly come as a surprise to anyone following China’s dismal attempts at reflating the economy, which on Monday we learned translated into the lowest Aggregate Financing print since the series was established…
… reaffirming Beijing’s impotence at stimulating the all-important credit impulse which is barely above cycle lows…
… today a Beijing-based think tank has become the first Chinese economic research institute linked to the government to predict that China’s economic growth rate will slow below 6.0% next year.
The National Institution for Finance and Development (NIFD) on Wednesday said that China’s economic growth rate will slow to 5.8% in 2020 from an estimated 6.1% this year, a number which is already quite ambitious, not to say artificially goalseeked.
This, as the SCMP notes, is at the bottom end of China’s target range of 6 to 6.5% growth for 2019, and further indicates the continued downward pressure on the economy from the trade war with the United States as well as domestic headwinds.
“The economic slowdown is already a trend,” said former central bank adviser Li Yang, who heads the institute that is affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). “We must resort to deepened supply-side structural reform to change it or smooth the slowdown, rather than solely rely on monetary or fiscal stimulus.”
The institute’s forecast is in line with the International Monetary Fund, and indicates the challenge that policymakers face to achieve the above 6% growth rate needed in 2019 and 2020 to reach the government’s goal of doubling GDP in 2020 compared to its 2010 level.
According to the NIFD, China’s exports will be “negatively affected for a long period amid the slowing global economy, private investment may be dampened by trade war uncertainties, while the effects of countercyclical policies will only begin to be evident in the first quarter of next year.”
Li said the government’s fiscal deficit problem will stand out in the future, adding that the government may have to issue more bonds to fulfil its expenditure responsibilities. This could demand more bond holdings by the central bank – i.e., a more aggressive monetization of the deficit – and better coordination and institutional arrangement between fiscal and monetary authorities, suggesting that China may well be the first nation to launch some version of MMT.
“The macro control regime needs to be revamped,” he added.
China’s economy started to slow from 2011, with its growth rate already dropping to 6.0% in the third quarter of 2019, the slowest rate since quarterly growth data was first published in 1992. The continued slowdown has stirred market discussion over whether – and how far – Beijing should loosen its policy stance to support growth, as has occurred in many developed countries, including the United States.
However, with China’s debt already surpassing 300% according to the IIF…
… a continued rise in the nation’s debt level is keeping a lid on policymakers’ leeway. New NIFD data showed that the government’s macro leverage ratio – the total debt to gross domestic product – has recorded an “unsatisfactory” rise so far this year. Government leverage rose 0.7 percentage point to 39.2 per cent in the third quarter and climbed by a total of 2.0 percentage points in the first nine months of the year.
According to China’s own calculations, the country’s overall debt to GDP ratio rose to 251.1% at the end of the third quarter, up 1.6% from the previous quarter. The increase was led by the household sector, with debt rising 1.0 percentage point to 56.3% in the third quarter.
However, with few other levers to pull and despite the surge in debt, the NIFD called for a bigger central government budget deficit to allow for more expenditure to support the economy. At the same time, additional efforts should be made to reduce the leverage of state-owned enterprises, in particular zombie enterprises and local government financing vehicles.
Zhang Xiaojing, deputy director of the CASS’ Institute of Economics, said the extent of the increase in leverage would depend on the growth rate that the government is trying to achieve: “The pressure for economic stabilization next year won’t be as big [as people think],” he predicted, although that may well depend on the status of the trade war with the US.
The NIFD warned of huge uncertainties over the trade tension between China and the US, while also predicting that the yuan exchange rate would fluctuate between 7.0 and 7.2 against the US dollar next year.
“The tariff war may be basically over in 2020, but the bilateral conflicts won’t end easily,” said Zhang Ping, its deputy director, suggesting that as China joins the US in pursuit of foreign capital to funds it soon to be negative capital account, relations between the US and China are only set to deteriorate.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 20:34 - Alibaba To Sell Up To $15 Billion In Stock In Massive Hong Kong Secondary
Alibaba To Sell Up To $15 Billion In Stock In Massive Hong Kong Secondary
Alibaba Group, the title holder for world’s largest IPO, has announced plans for a massive secondary stock offering in Hong Kong to take place in late November, in a vote of confidence for the local financial market as the worst political crisis in the city’s history threatens its status as a global financial hub.
According to public filing, China’s e-commerce giant will issue 500 million new shares, with 487.5 million set aside for international offering and the rest for Hong Kong public. The offering, which was approved by the Hong Kong stock exchange, includes a 75 million share greenshoe option and aims to raise between $10 billion and $15 billion from the sale which would make it the biggest equity fundraising of the year.
Despite the Hong Kong sale, Alibaba, which raised a record $25 billion in 2014 in New York, will retain its US listing, because of its deep capital markets while the group taps into the growing pool of funds in Asia with its latest plan.
According to the SCMP, the massive stock sale will give a much needed boost for the city gripped by more than five months of anti-government protests and a simmering US-China trade war, pushing the local stock exchange on a home run for global IPO crown this year in competition with the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
BREAKING: #Alibaba secondary listing in Hong Kong to happen at end of November:
– Will raise about $13 billion (biggest fundraise this year)
– 500 million shares to be issued
– 75 million shares for greenshoe option
– Will stay listed in UShttps://t.co/YM795EfJND$BABA— Arjun Kharpal (@ArjunKharpal) November 13, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The move represents a major boost for the city gripped by more than five months of anti-government protests and a simmering US-China trade war, and puts the local stock exchange on a home run for global IPO crown this year in competition with the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
Alibaba has been working on a plan to list its shares in Hong Kong – what the company calls its “natural first choice” – since it abandoned the local market for New York in 2014, according to people familiar with the matter. Part of the motivation is to give its army of online shopping customers in mainland China and elsewhere in Asia the opportunity to own its shares.
Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said Alibaba’s secondary listing is “a testimony of Hong Kong’s status as a premier listing platform.”
Quoted by SCMP, “The tension between the US and China in the areas of trade and technology has added to the attractiveness of Hong Kong as an international listing platform for mainland tech companies,” Chan said in response to queries by the Post before the filing. “We strive to become the preferred listing platform for companies in the innovative and technology sector.”
The green light clears the path for Hangzhou-based Alibaba to start a weeklong roadshow this week to drum up interest from institutional and retail investors. The shares in international offering are expected to be price on November 20 or no later than November 25, according to the SEC filing. They will begin trading in Hong Kong on November 26. Cornerstone investors, a unique feature of Hong Kong’s financial market where large investors are invited to anchor important public offerings, will be absent because the shares are so much in demand, according to people familiar with the plan.
With so much attention falling on major shareholder Softbank in recent weeks, key SoftBank executives have agreed to a 90-day lock up on their stakes under the listing plan. Every eight newly issued shares in Hong Kong will be equal to one American Depositary Share traded in New York, the SEC filing shows. Based on the ADS closing price of US$186.97 on November 12, it could raise between US$11.63 billion and US$13.37 billion in Hong Kong, Alibaba said. The secondary listing in Hong Kong would swell the market value of Asia’s biggest company, and rank it the biggest offerings in Hong Kong in almost a decade. At the top end of US$15 billion, the deal would be the largest after insurance group AIA’s HK$159 billion IPO in 2010 and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s HK$124.95 billion deal in 2006.
After Hong Kong stocks rebounded their worst quarter in four years, fundraising returned to Hong Kong as dozens of companies including Budweiser Brewing Company APAC and ESR Cayman have raised a combined US$11.53 billion. Alibaba’s plan, even at the lower end of the range of US$10 billion, will catapult Hong Kong to the summit of global IPO league this year.
A Hong Kong listing may also finally give mainland China’s investors the chance to participate in the growth of one of the country’s most profitable technology giants, should China add Alibaba to its Stock Connect programme in the coming months, sources said.
“It is going to be a hot deal,” said Jojo Choy Sze-chung, vice-chairman of the Institute of Securities Dealers. “Alibaba already has several good e-commerce platforms and other profitable businesses. It should not be a problem for the company to raise up to US$15 billion.”
Alibaba’s impending offering follows the recent conclusion of its 2019 Singles’ Day online shopping gala, when a record US$43 billion of merchandise were sold in the 24-hour shopping spree. American pop diva Taylor Swift headlined this year’s shopping festival with a curtain-raiser showpiece in Shanghai.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 20:30 - Exposing John Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force
Exposing John Brennan’s CIA Trump Task Force
Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Unz Review,
Could it become Obamagate?
There is considerable evidence that the American system of government may have been victimized by an illegal covert operation organized and executed by the U.S. intelligence and national security community. Former Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director Jim Comey appear to have played critical leadership roles in carrying out this conspiracy and they may not have operated on their own. Almost certainly what they may have done would have been explicitly authorized by the former President of the United States, Barack Obama, and his national security team.
It must have seemed a simple operation for the experienced CIA covert action operatives. To prevent the unreliable and unpredictable political upstart Donald Trump from being nominated as the GOP presidential candidate or even elected it would be necessary to create suspicion that he was the tool of a resurgent Russia, acting under direct orders from Vladimir Putin to empower Trump and damage the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Even though none of the alleged Kremlin plotters would have expected Trump to actually beat Hillary, it was plausible to maintain that they would have hoped that a weakened Clinton would be less able to implement the anti-Russian agenda that she had been promoting. Many observers in both Russia and the U.S. believed that if she had been elected armed conflict with Moscow would have been inevitable, particularly if she moved to follow her husband’s example and push to have both Georgia and Ukraine join NATO, which Russia would have regarded as an existential threat.
Trump’s surprising victory forced a pivot, with Clapper, Brennan and Comey adjusting the narrative to make it appear that Trump the traitor may have captured the White House due to help from the Kremlin, making him a latter-day Manchurian Candidate. The lesser allegations of Russian meddling were quickly elevated to devastating assertions that the Republican had only won with Putin’s assistance.
No substantive evidence for the claim of serious Russian meddling has ever been produced in spite of years of investigation, but the real objective was to plant the story that would plausibly convince a majority of Americans that the election of Donald Trump was somehow illegitimate.
The national security team acted to protect their candidate Hillary Clinton, who represented America’s Deep State. In spite of considerable naysaying, the Deep State is real, not just a wild conspiracy theory. Many Americans nevertheless do not believe that the Deep State exists, that it is a politically driven media creation much like Russiagate itself was, but if one changes the wording a bit and describes the Deep State as the Establishment, with its political power focused in Washington and its financial center in New York City, the argument that there exists a cohesive group of power brokers who really run the country becomes much more plausible.
The danger posed by the Deep State, or, if you choose, the Establishment, is that it wields immense power but is unelected and unaccountable. It also operates through relationships that are not transparent and as the media is part of it, there is little chance that its activity will be exposed.
Nevertheless, some might even argue that having a Deep State is a healthy part of American democracy, that it serves as a check or corrective element on a political system that has largely been corrupted and which no longer serves national interests. But that assessment surely might have been made before it became clear that many of the leaders of the nation’s intelligence and security agencies are no longer the people’s honorable servants they pretend to be. They have been heavily politicized since at least the time of Ronald Reagan and have frequently succumbed to the lure of wealth and power while identifying with and promoting the interests of the Deep State.
Indeed, a number of former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Directors have implicitly or even directly admitted to the existence of a Deep State that has as one of its roles keeping presidents like Donald Trump in check. Most recently, John McLaughlin, responding to a question about Donald Trump’s concern over Deep State involvement in the ongoing impeachment process, said unambiguously “Well, you know, thank God for the ‘deep state’…With all of the people who knew what was going on here, it took an intelligence officer to step forward and say something about it, which was the trigger that then unleashed everything else. This is the institution within the U.S. government…is institutionally committed to objectivity and telling the truth. It is one of the few institutions in Washington that is not in a chain of command that makes or implements policy. Its whole job is to speak the truth — it’s engraved in marble in the lobby.”
Well, John’s dedication to truth is exemplary but how does he explain his own role in support of the lies being promoted by his boss George “slam dunk” Tenet that led to the war against Iraq, the greatest foreign policy disaster ever experienced by the United States? Or Tenet’s sitting in the U.N. directly behind Secretary of State Colin Powell in the debate over Iraq, providing cover and credibility for what everyone inside the system knew to be a bundle of lies? Or his close friend and colleague Michael Morell’s description of Trump as a Russian agent, a claim that was supported by zero evidence and which was given credibility only by Morell’s boast that “I ran the CIA.”
Beyond that, more details have been revealed demonstrating exactly how Deep State associates have attempted, with considerable success, to subvert the actual functioning of American democracy. Words are one thing, but acting to interfere in an electoral process or to undermine a serving president is a rather more serious matter.
It is now known that President Barack Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan created a Trump Task Force in early 2016. Rather than working against genuine foreign threats, this Task Force played a critical role in creating and feeding the meme that Donald Trump was a tool of the Russians and a puppet of President Vladimir Putin, a claim that still surfaces regularly to this day. Working with James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, Brennan fabricated the narrative that “Russia had interfered in the 2016 election.” Brennan and Clapper promoted that tale even though they knew very well that Russia and the United States have carried out a broad array of covert actions against each other, including information operations, for the past seventy years, but they pretended that what happened in 2016 was qualitatively and substantively different even though the “evidence” produced to support that claim was and still is weak to nonexistent.
The Russian “election interference” narrative went on steroids on January 6, 2017, shortly before Trump was inaugurated, when an “Intelligence Community Assessment” (ICA) orchestrated by Clapper and Brennan was published. The banner headline atop The New York Times, itself an integral part of the Deep State, on the following day set the tone for what was to follow: “Putin Led Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Says.”
With the help of the Establishment media, Clapper and Brennan were able to pretend that the ICA had been approved by “all 17 intelligence agencies” (as first claimed by Hillary Clinton). After several months, however Clapper revealed that the preparers of the ICA were “handpicked analysts” from only the FBI, CIA, and NSA. He explained rather unconvincingly during an interview on May 28, 2017, that “the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique,” adding later that “It’s in their DNA.”
Task Force Trump was kept secret within the Agency itself because the CIA is not supposed to spy on Americans. Its staff was pulled together by invitation-only. Specific case officers (i.e., men and women who recruit and handle spies overseas), analysts and administrative personnel were recruited, presumably based on their political reliability. Not everyone invited accepted the offer. But many did because it came with promises of promotion and other rewards.
And this was not a CIA-only operation. Personnel from the FBI also were assigned to the Task Force with the approval of then Director James Comey. Former MI-6 agent Christopher Steele’s FBI handler, Michael Gaeta, may have been one of those detailed to the Trump Task Force. Steele, of course, prepared the notorious dossier that was surfaced shortly before Donald Trump took office. It included considerable material intended to tie Trump to Russia, information that was in many cases fabricated or unsourced.
So, what kind of things would this Task Force do? The case officers would work with foreign intelligence services such as MI-6, the Italians, the Ukrainians and the Australians on identifying intelligence collection priorities that would implicate Trump and his associates in illegal activity. And there is evidence that John Brennan himself would contact his counterparts in allied intelligence services to obtain their discreet cooperation, something they would be inclined to do in collegial fashion, ignoring whatever reservations they might have about spying on a possible American presidential candidate.
Trump Task Force members could have also tasked the National Security Agency (NSA) to do targeted collection. They also would have the ability to engage in complicated covert actions that would further set up and entrap Trump and his staff in questionable activity, such as the targeting of associate George Papadopoulos. If he is ever properly interviewed, Maltese citizen Joseph Mifsud may be able to shed light on the CIA officers who met with him, briefed him on operational objectives regarding Papadopoulos and helped arrange monitored meetings. It is highly likely that Azra Turk, the woman who met with George Papadopoulos, was part of the CIA Trump Task Force.
The Task Force also could carry out other covert actions, sometimes using press or social media placements to disseminate fabrications about Trump and his associates. Information operations is a benign-sounding euphemism for propaganda fed through the Agency’s friends in the media, and computer network operations can be used to create false linkages and misdirect inquiries. There has been some informed speculation that Guccifer 2.0 may have been a creation of this Task Force.
In light of what has been learned about the alleged CIA whistleblower there should be a serious investigation to determine if he was a part of this Task Force or, at minimum, reporting to them secretly after he was seconded to the National Security Council. All the CIA and FBI officers involved in the Task Force had sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, but nevertheless were involved in a conspiracy to first denigrate and then possibly bring down a legally elected president. That effort continues with repeated assertions regarding Moscow’s malevolent intentions for the 2020 national elections. Some might reasonably regard the whole Brennan affair, to include its spear carriers among the current and retired national security state leadership, as a case of institutionalized treason, and it inevitably leads to the question “What did Obama know?”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 20:10 - Russia To Reduce US Dollars In National Wealth Fund As Putin's De-Dollarization Continues
Russia To Reduce US Dollars In National Wealth Fund As Putin’s De-Dollarization Continues
Russia’s de-dollarization effort is full steam ahead, in line with President Putin’s commitment to reduce the country’s vulnerability to the continuing threat of US sanctions.
Crossing the wires early Wednesday morning, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Vladimir Kolychev, was quoted by Reuters as saying the Russian sovereign wealth fund will reduce US Dollars and is considering adding Chinese yuan.
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RUSSIAN DEPUTY FINANCE MINISTER KOLYCHEV SAYS SHARE OF US DOLLARS IN NATIONAL WEALTH FUND WILL BE REDUCED
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RUSSIAN DEPUTY FINANCE MINISTER KOLYCHEV SAYS INCLUSION OF OTHER FOREIGN CURRENCIES INCLUDING YUAN IS BEING CONSIDERED
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RUSSIAN DEPUTY FINANCE MINISTER KOLYCHEV SAYS FINANCE MINISTRY PLANS TO CHANGE NATIONAL WEALTH FUND’S FX STRUCTURE IN 2020
Kolychev said the change to the foreign exchange structure of the wealth fund would occur in 2020.
Last month, Russian Economy Minister Maxim Oreshkin told the Financial Times that the country would continue down the path of de-dollarization and begin trading some oil transactions in Euros and roubles.
“We have very good currency, and it’s stable. Why not use it for global transactions?” Oreshkin said in a recent interview with the FT.
“We want (oil and gas sales) in roubles at some point,” he said.
Despite less than 5% of Russia’s $687.5 billion in annual trade being with the US, it remains that over half of that trade still relies on the dollar, according to Bloomberg figures.
US sanctions have been very selective as of recent, specifically targeting Gazprom, the country’s gas giant. Sanctions have banned any US company from supplying Gazprom with equipment.
Russia’s desire to abandon the dollar is a trend that continues to gain momentum and could be fully realized by the mid/late 2020s.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 19:50 -
- US Naval Institute Proceedings: "A Zombie Fighter's Guide To Strategy"
US Naval Institute Proceedings: “A Zombie Fighter’s Guide To Strategy”
Authored by James Holmes via US Naval Institute,
The chief takeaway from David Epstein’s book Range, which investigates Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, is this: think broadly, not narrowly. Risk being called a dilettante. Learn from many disciplines and experiences rather than burrow so deeply into one field that you can no longer see above ground to survey the wider world. And then apply insights from one field when some baffling question arises in another.
That is sage counsel for students and practitioners of strategy, who tap insights from history, political science, economics, and an array of related fields.
Maintains Epstein, specialists encounter trouble when tackling the problems characteristic of a “wicked” world. Wicked problems are intricate. They involve variables that combine and recombine in offbeat ways. They defy the boundaries of a single field and often vex specialists. By contrast, generalists hunt for “distant” analogies to challenges. Analogies seldom reveal answers, but they help inquisitors discover the right questions to ask. Asking penetrating questions constitutes the first step toward a solution, toward wisdom.
One imagines Epstein would approve of harnessing fiction and literature as a source of wisdom. Fiction supplies abundant analogies for students of politics and strategy. Some of them are remote indeed, bounded only by the author’s whimsy.
Exhibit A: stories about zombies!
Max Brooks’s World War Z is an imaginary oral history compiled a decade after a global war against the undead. Brooks has a researcher interview protagonists in the zombie war, not just to unearth facts about it but to record their feelings and impressions.
The interviews make up the book’s narrative. The relative lack of commentary gives the book a stark, spare quality—amplifying its impact. Warning: major spoilers ahead.
World War Z relates unfamiliar phenomena that illuminate something familiar, namely the profession of arms. The approach works not because warmaking against living, breathing foes is exactly like fighting ghouls, but because counter-zombie combat resembles war in the real world in some respects while differing from it strikingly in others. Juxtaposing the ordinary against the extraordinary compels military readers to examine their profession afresh.
Brooks’s fictional chronicle raises questions – and questions make us think. Four pointers from the living dead and those who battle them:
1. Know yourself.
Brooks has either read Thucydides or takes the same jaundiced view of human nature he did. The father of history showed how a plague peeled away the veneer of civilization from the most cultured society in classical Greece, the city-state of Athens. Athenians reverted to base instincts and passions almost overnight, and why not? If you may die tomorrow, you may as well live it up tonight. Debauchery ensues. Similarly, citizen took up arms against citizen on the island of Corcyra (modern-day Corfu). Civil strife shattered all bonds of family and fellowship as democrats and oligarchs fought to determine who would rule.
Pockets of Brooks’s brave new world witness similar breakdowns. Industrial civilization is not exempt from the afflictions of the ancients. Far from it.
For example, during the “Great Panic” that accompanies the rise of the living dead, the Hollywood glitterati hire private security firms to guard them from zombies within luxury residences, all while preening on camera for reality shows that showcase their supposed fortitude. Ship crews screen evacuees by race, permitting only those with the correct skin hue to board their vessels to flee the onslaught. You can only imagine what transpires in refugee camps in the far north when populations swell, food and fuel supplies dwindle, and frigid temperatures and weather descend.
And on and on. World War Z holds up a mirror, forcing us to look ourselves in the face while contemplating the impact of mass disaster and warfare on human society. This forms part of the strategic context, and the sight isn’t always pretty.
2. Know the enemy.
Strategic grandmaster Carl von Clausewitz—not among the undead legions at last report—warns commanders and their political overseers to assess the nature of the war on which they are about to embark, “neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.” But the living do not get the chance to undertake Clausewitzian analysis in Brooks’s account. War is thrust upon them. World War Z haunts precisely because the tale unfolds in everyday surroundings, against a deathless enemy that should not even exist.
Clausewitz counsels leaders to exercise foresight before going to war; zombie war is unthinkable, and who wastes time planning for the unthinkable? Horrors ensue when you neglect the nature of the war. Think about unthinkable situations before they become thinkable.
And about the nature of the foe. The walking dead are an enemy unlike any human antagonist. In fact, counter-zombie warfare resembles epidemiology more than warfare in the usual sense. Think about it. Public health seeks to eradicate disease, not contain it or strike a compromise peace with it. Victory means utterly wiping out a pestilence.
Like an infectious disease, zombies neither hate nor fear nor scheme. These are enemies incapable of malice or strategic thought. They infect. The undead reproduce themselves by biting human victims—much as a contagion spreads from host to host. In effect they are “vectors” spreading a virus that reanimates the slain. Thus even a lone zombie shambling around the earth represents a major threat to humanity. Victory over the living dead means slaughtering them to the last ghoul. Containment is a poor second best. So long as one remains at large, a devastating new outbreak is possible.
In other words, a zombie war is what strategists call an “unlimited” war, taken to its utmost extreme. Against an ordinary human adversary, unlimited war means crushing hostile forces or unseating the government they serve and imposing whatever terms you choose. Taken to extremes, unlimited war tends toward what Clausewitz terms “absolute” war—an unbounded spasm of violence with no political purpose. It is slaughter for its own sake.
Thankfully, Clausewitz concludes that absolute war does not exist outside the pages of books. War pits human foes against one another—and politics exerts a moderating influence on human struggles.
There is no such moderator in a fight against a mindless foe. The masters of strategy prescribe ways to get your way short of genocide. Yet the undead have no willpower to break and cannot be frightened into submission. They have no forces to smash, strategies to outwit, or alliances to break. They have no capital to conquer. They cannot conceive of compromise, let alone bargain. All they have is mass. Millions upon millions of bodies lurch along, uncoordinated yet driven toward the same goal by herd instinct.
Fictional strife in which strategic success equates to inflicting 100 percent casualties invites strategic thinkers to ponder the nature and ethics of unlimited war in our (purportedly) zombie-free world.
3. Fit strategy, tactics, and hardware to the fight—not the other way around.
Misfit armaments and maladroit tactics plague armed forces during the early phases of the zombie war. Armies and air forces built to fight high-tech antagonists have to reinvent themselves for infantry combat aimed at indiscriminate slaughter of the enemy. Easier said than done. Brooks’s historian interviews “Todd,” a jaded former infantryman. The ex-soldier recounts how heavy armaments and static defensive measures designed to halt “Ivan” in the Fulda Gap during the Cold War proved futile against mobs of reanimated corpses.
Determined to show the populace the domestic order remains intact, a panicky U.S. administration decides to stage a “decisive” stand in Yonkers, stemming the tide of zombies flowing out of Manhattan. (Bostonians insert favorite Yankees joke here.) Todd takes officialdom to task for folly. Precision munitions do some good against undead hordes, dispatching thousands; but there’s too little ammunition in the magazines to prevail. Defenders, that is, have too few uber-pricey gun projectiles, missiles, and bombs to mow down the millions of ghouls that come behind those brought down in the initial waves.
Guns, missile launchers, and tactical aircraft bereft of ordnance accomplish little. Todd also sees cultural travails at work. American troops, he recalls, are schooled to aim at the midsections of enemy soldiers, whereas it takes a shot to the head to fell a zombie. It is hard to remake the habits of a lifetime, on the fly, against enemies that should not exist, and that feel no pain or fear when struck in the torso. Of necessity, advanced armed forces cast aside gee-whiz implements of war in favor of weapons that strike down multitudes in bulk. The latest thingamabob may not be the best tool for the job.
More primal tactics are a must. Humanity starts to recover when military folk commence improvising warmaking methods for the strategic environment that actually confronts them. Governments temporarily abandon ground to the walking dead and turn terrain to advantage. U.S. citizens withdraw west of the Rocky Mountains to regroup and rearm, using the peaks as a sentinel line and garrisoning the narrow passages between. South Asians retreat into the Himalayas. Having established defensive lines, the living tend to the sinews of national power. Resuscitating moribund economies provides the resources needed to defend against the hordes and, ultimately, go on the strategic offensive and win.
It is a mistake to assume the enemy will conform to our preferred way of fighting. A savvy opponent tries to throw us out of our comfort zone—disorienting us for tactical and strategic gain. Living enemies mimic the living dead in that sense.
4. Adapt and overcome.
Inventive contenders command an advantage when going up against an adversary that—however remorseless or terrifying—is unable to learn or grow. The competitive impulse that pervades human struggle, prodding contestants to innovate and counter-innovate in an effort to outdo one another, is entirely absent from the zombie host. An enemy without ingenuity or passion to innovate is an inert enemy in strategic terms. And indeed, the zombie war is one-sided once humanity rides out the apocalypse, gains a respite to adapt, and comes out fighting.
Resourceful folk fashion new weapons and tactics while unimaginative foes plod along, doing the same thing time after time—which makes a hopeful note to close on. When facing new circumstances, get to know the circumstances and stay loose. Recognize that the nimbler contender is apt to be the victor—and broad-mindedness is the key to staying nimble. I daresay Epstein and Clausewitz would agree.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 19:30 - Fears Of Pneumonic Plague Outbreak After 2 Diagnosed In China – Hospital On Lockdown
Fears Of Pneumonic Plague Outbreak After 2 Diagnosed In China – Hospital On Lockdown
Chinese authorities announced Tuesday that two people have been diagnosed with pneumonic plague at a hospital in Beijing — yes, as in the ‘Black Death’ which wiped out some 50 million of the world’s population during the Middle Ages.
Alarmingly, it’s the second instance of the plague hitting the region in a matter of months, after last May a Mongolian couple died from bubonic plague after consuming the raw kidney of a marmot, based on a local folk practice.
Bubonic plague bacteria from a January 2003 case, via the CDC/FOX News. Officials say the two in this latest case also came from a remote area of Inner Mongolia in Northern China. To mitigate panic, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention has reportedly issued a public advisory to Beijing residents telling them the potential for contacting the disease is “extremely low,” according to The New York Times. Though considering this is literally the plague we doubt anyone will feel reassured by such official advisories.
The patients were quickly isolated by health officials after initial confusion over what they might be dealing with, and are reportedly being given treatment. Left untreated it will cause certain death, but some strains of the plague can be cured through careful administration of antibiotics, unavailable when it struck on a mass scale in medieval times.
The infected were initially treated at Beijing’s Chaoyang Hospital, which caused a special alert to go out to city health personnel and placed the emergency room under complete lockdown. China’s English news portal Caixin Global provided the following eyewitness details:
Chaoyang Hospital, where the two patients were treated, has replaced all the chairs at its emergency room, Caixin reporters witnessed.
The emergency room was in police blockade Monday night, people living nearby the hospital told Caixin. A resident medical school student at Chaoyang Hospital told Caixin that he received emergency notice from the school, asking them not to go to the emergency room in the following weeks.
Chaoyang Hospital told local media that the two patients have been transferred to another hospital, without disclosing the name of the hospital.
Chaoyang Hospital in Beijing’s Chaoyang district went under lockdown after two people came in with the plague. Image source: Caixin And FOX has further details as follows:
Dr. Li Jifeng at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, in the district where the patients sought treatment, said they came to the hospital on Nov. 3 but officials have not confirmed the claim, The Times reported.
Dr. Li wrote on WeChat that she treated a middle-aged man who had a persistent fever and cough, which his wife had also contracted.
“I couldn’t guess what pathogen caused this pneumonia. I only knew it was rare,” she wrote.
The pneumonic form of the plague is considered the most virulent and deadly, causing severe lung infection via bacterium, transmitted from small mammals and their fleas. The other forms are bubonic and septicemic — the former cause swollen lymph nodes and the latter infects the blood.
From 2010 to 2015, the World Health Organization reported a total of 3248 cases worldwide, including 584 deaths; however, there are concerns that not all cases have been reported, with China recently coming under fire over allegations of possibly withholding its true number of cases.
The WHO has now categorized the plague as a ‘re-emerging disease’ given that some 50,000 human cases have been recorded in the past two decades.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 19:10 - The Growing Threat Of Water Wars
The Growing Threat Of Water Wars
Authored by Jayati Ghosh via Project Syndicate,
In 2015, United Nations member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which include an imperative to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.” Yet, in the last four years, matters have deteriorated significantly.
The dangers of environmental pollution receive a lot of attention nowadays, particularly in the developing world, and with good reason. Air quality indices are dismal and worsening in many places, with India, in particular, facing an acute public-health emergency. But as serious as the pollution problem is, it must not be allowed to obscure another incipient environmental catastrophe, and potential source of future conflict: lack of access to clean water.
We may live on a “blue planet,” but less than 3% of all of our water is fresh, and much of it is inaccessible (for example, because it is locked in glaciers). Since 1960, the amount of available fresh water per capita has declined by more than half, leaving over 40% of the world’s population facing water stress. By 2030, demand for fresh water will exceed supply by an estimated 40%.
With nearly two-thirds of fresh water coming from rivers and lakes that cross national borders, intensifying water stress fuels a vicious circle, in which countries compete for supplies, leading to greater stress and more competition. Today, hundreds of international water agreements are coming under pressure.
China, India, and Bangladesh are locked in a dispute over the Brahmaputra, one of Asia’s largest rivers, with China and India actively constructing dams that have raised fears of water diversion. India’s government has used water-flow diversion to punish Pakistan for terrorist attacks. Dam-building on the Nile by Ethiopia has raised the ire of downstream Egypt.
And cross-border conflicts are just the beginning. Water-related tensions are on the rise within countries as well, between rural and urban communities, and among agricultural, industrial, and household consumers. Last year, water scarcity fueled conflicts in parts of eastern Africa, such as Kenya, which has a history of tribal clashes over access to water.
In fact, there are long histories of conflict over the waters of many major rivers, including the Nile, the Amazon, the Mekong, and the Danube. But the severity and frequency of such conflicts are set to increase, as climate change alters rainfall patterns, leading to more frequent, intense, and prolonged droughts and floods.
Making matters worse, dwindling water reserves are increasingly contaminated by industrial pollutants, plastics and other refuse, and human waste. In middle-income countries, less than one-third of wastewater is treated; in low-income countries, the share is much smaller. Roughly 1.8 billion people get their drinking water from feces-contaminated sources. The depletion of aquifers and inadequate investment in water infrastructure are exacerbating these problems.
Water stress affects everyone, but the agricultural sector – which accounts for 70% of all water consumption globally, and as much as 90% in the least-developed countries – is particularly vulnerable to constrained supplies. Lack of water makes it difficult to keep livestock, since every drop has to be preserved for crops or human consumption.
Urban areas are also headed for disaster. Last year, Cape Town, South Africa, faced such severe water shortages that it began preparations for a “day zero,” when the municipal water supply would be shut off. (Thanks to supply restrictions and other government measures, that day never came.) Similarly, Mexico City has struggled with a water crisis for years.
Indian metropolises are lurching toward even bigger catastrophes. A 2018 government report warned that 21 cities (including the capital, Delhi, and the information-technology hub Bengaluru) would reach zero groundwater levels by next year, affecting at least 100 million people.
As with climate change, the most severe consequences of water stress disproportionately affect those in the world’s poorest regions – especially Africa and South and Central Asia – who contributed least to the problem. In one part of rural Maharashtra, India, women and girls walk up to 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) per day to collect drinking water. In other villages, as local wells run dry, households have had to designate a member to be on full-time water-collection duty. Wealthier families might pay someone else to do the job, but most households do not have that luxury.
Meanwhile, the advanced economies not only avoid many of the consequences of water stress (at least for now); they also maintain the lifestyle excesses that have propelled climate change and environmental degradation, including water depletion. Rice cultivation is often cited as a major water guzzler, but a kilo (2.2 pounds) of beef requires five times more water to produce than a kilo of rice, and 130 times more than a kilo of potatoes. And since agricultural crops account for a significant share of many developing countries’ exports, these countries are, in a sense, exporting the limited supply of water they have.
Moreover, current land grabs in Africa are actually about water, with foreign investors targeting areas with big rivers, large lakes, wetlands, and groundwater, and thus with high agricultural potential and biogenetic value. (As it stands, less than 10% of Africa’s irrigation potential is being used.)
In 2015, United Nations member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which include an imperative to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.” Yet, in the last four years, matters have deteriorated significantly. The international community might be able to fool itself for a while – as it has proved so adept at doing, not least with regard to environmental destruction – but the threat of water wars is only drawing nearer. For many in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere, it has already arrived.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 18:50 - "Apocalyptic Flooding": Stunning Images As Venice Endures 2nd Highest Tide In History
“Apocalyptic Flooding”: Stunning Images As Venice Endures 2nd Highest Tide In History
Stunning images have come out of the historic city of Venice, which has been hit with catastrophic floods due to the second-highest tide recorded in the city’s history bringing water levels high over city squares and foot paths, also amid extreme winds and rain.
Mayor Brugnaro has declared a state of emergency after the Tuesday tide peaked at just over 6-feet during the evening. The only time in recorded history the waters reached that high was in 1966, when the tide reached nearly six-and-a-half feet.
St. Mark’s Square, Getty Image. Early Wednesday about 50% of the city had been reported flooded by the unusual tide, and some reports into overnight Wednesday say 85% is now under water, given it sits at sea level as it was famously built on a network of over 100 small islands in a lagoon on the Adriatic Sea, and is connected by canals. This impacts a total of 53,000 residents, at a low point in the tourism cycle.
At least two people have died, one described as an elderly man who was electrocuted when he attempted to operate electric pumps at his home, according to Italian authorities, following a mass power outage across much of the city.
More Venice flooding pic.twitter.com/AYU8Hlmuun
— Sylvia Poggioli (@spoggioli1) November 13, 2019
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Extreme winds have also knocked out some communications and have made accessible transport difficult for storm-battered residents.
Venetian authorities say high tides of 140cm (55 inches) or more, referred to in Italian as “acqua alta”, usually take place in winter months.
LOOK: A man could swim in the famous Saint Mark’s square thanks to the flood
Venice is bracing itself for another wave on Wednesday as flooding reached 85% of the city pic.twitter.com/V0PjmTPcAf
— Bloomberg TicToc (@tictoc) November 13, 2019
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Head clergyman over St Mark’s Basilica, Francesco Moraglia, told reporters: “I have never seen something like what I saw yesterday afternoon [Tuesday] at St. Mark’s square. There were waves as if we were at the beach.”
Water has entered churches and historic sites. Getty Image. Mayor Brugnaro has warned the flooding “is going to leave an indelible wound” on Venice, as efforts are underway to protect homes, property, and world heritage sites.
Image source: Beanotown Photography “We are not just talking about calculating the damages, but of the very future of the city,” Brugnaro said. “Because the population drain also is a result of this.”
The governor of the region, Luca Zaia, also described: “We faced a total and apocalyptic flood, I will not exaggerate in words, but 80% of the city is under water. Unimaginable damage has been done.”
Wading down Calle Vallaresso during last night’s #AcquaAlta in Venice pic.twitter.com/bVH0jzeXfl
— Emily Pothast (@emilypothast) November 13, 2019
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In some parts of the city residents were seen “swimming for their lives” according to eyewitness accounts.
Getty Image Plans have long been in place for a massive emergency protection project that would see a series of 78 ‘floating gates’ set up around the city to control the impact of high tides, but it’s been beset by cost-related delays.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 18:30
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