- Mozambique Mute Over $2 Billion "Tuna Boat" Bribery Scandal
Mozambique’s ruling party has kept radiosilence since officials in the United States indicted the nation’s former finance minister and former Credit Suisse bankers in a $2 billion hidden loan and bribery scandal. Since Manuel Chang was detained and sought for US extradition, the Frelimo party under President Filipe Nyusi has “closed ranks”, according to a new FT article.
In an US indictment released this month, Chang was accused of approving a scheme for Mozambique government officials to siphon at least $200 million from a series of loans by shell companies, including one tuna fishing company.
It seems unlikely that Mozambique will try to clawback any of the money from the scandal, as countries like Malaysia and Angola have done with similar scandals. Adriano Nuvunga, head of ADS, a Mozambican civil society group stated: “I don’t see him cleaning the system like the Malaysians or the Angolans, but rather a survival strategy. Here we are discussing the survival of Frelimo as a political party and as a government. You have to take that into account.”
Manuel Chang/FT The Frelimo party has been in power in Mozambique since 1975 and sees the scandal as crucial to its survival, while the names of those who are to be investigated over the loans include some “powerbrokers” that could “overshadow” the President himself. The list includes “a former central bank governor, intelligence chiefs and civil servants who served under Armando Guebuza, president when the hidden debts were issued”.
Criminal charges are not being sought and Mozambique is opposing the extradition of Chang, arguing that trying him at home may be a better option.
The corruption scandal started when Mozambique discovered gas in 2009. About two years later, one of the world’s largest ship builders, Privinvest, pitched government officials on a project to secure the country’s shores. It included things like coastal radar, patrol vessels and tuna boats. Mozambique has one of the continent’s longest coastlines.
Tuna boats in Mozambique/FT As for the bribery, it appears to have been caught on tape, clear as day: the US indictment indictment quotes a government official telling Jean Boustani of Privinvest:
“There will be other players whose interest will have to be looked after eg ministry of defence, ministry of interior, air force, etc . . . In democratic countries like ours people come and go, and everyone will want to have his/her share of the deal while in office, because once out of the office it will be difficult.”
Boustani then arranged brides worth $50 million for officials, according to the indictment. Boustani apparently didn’t do a great job of concealing the bribes, either: they were referred to in code as “$50 million chickens”. This sum was only part of the bribes that were eventually laundered with the help of Credit Suisse bankers, according to the indictment.
Further, the $200 million total is also probably an understatement. Independent analysis performed by Kroll in 2017 was unable to account for $500 million of loans. Meanwhile, tuna boats have sat idle in the country‘s capital while at the same time Privinvest has denied overpaying. Boustani also denies wrongdoing.
The speculation in Mozambique is that Nyusi, at the time a defense minister, must have known of the looting taking place.
The IMF, a major funder of some of the hidden loans, cut ties with the country when the full extent of the country’s debt – and corruption – was uncovered in 2016. That set off a financial crisis and the debts went into default. As of now, the government has made some progress on a restructuring program, helped along by players like Exxon and Anadarko, who are targeting -what else – gas development in the country, and so we begin one again from square one.
- "Financial Nuclear Warheads" – The Yellow Vests Get It Right
Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic blog,
The mainstream media has degenerated irreparably. Here’s a reliable rule of thumb: if it’s important it’s not covered; if it’s covered it’s not important. Stories in the American mainstream press about Yellow Vest protests have been few. One aspect of the protests, transcendently important, has received scant coverage.
The Yellow Vest protestors have called for a coordinated run on French banks. Whether they realize it or not, they’re playing with nuclear warheads that could annihilate not just the French, but Europe’s and the entire world’s financial system. Because inextricably linked to the ends of contemporary governments―how much they can screw up the lives of those who must live under them—is the question of means―how do they fund their misrule? The short answer is taxes and debt.
Since 1971, when President Nixon “temporarily” suspended international convertibility of dollars for gold (it’s never been reinstated), the monetary basis of the global economy has been fiat debt. Neither government or central bank debt nor currencies are tethered to any real constraint, like precious metals (see “Real Money,” SLL). Thus, politicians and monetary officials can create as much debt as they want: debt by fiat.
Government and central bank debt is at the apex of the global debt pyramid. The next tier is commercial banks that have accounts at central banks. Those accounts are bank assets and central bank liabilities, or debts. Central banks expand their fiat liabilities to banks in exchange for banks’ fiat government debt, an exchange called debt monetization, which is a bit of a misnomer since no “Real Money” is involved. The “monetization” is the central bank’s fiat expansion of banks’ accounts with the central bank in exchange for fiat government debt, which expands banks’ assets available for loans to governments, businesses, and individuals.
In “Real Money,” money was defined, in part, as that which has intrinsic value and is not a liability of an individual or entity. This part of the definition is controversial; it invalidates everything we currently think of as money. Popularly accepted definitions are essentially: money is as money does, anything that serves as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account (the other parts of the SLL definition) is money.
However, just because something has monetary functions doesn’t mean it’s money, anymore than using a hairbrush to brush your teeth makes it a toothbrush. While there are some metaphysical questions about the notion of intrinsic value (that term was chosen because it’s shorter and more convenient than saying, “Something to which most people would assign a value apart from its potential value as money,” every time) the important point is that by SLL’s definition, using debt as money, including the debt in your wallet known as Federal Reserve Notes, doesn’t make it money.
Except for the relatively few instances when gold, silver, or other tangible value is used as a medium of exchange in private transactions, everything that is currently used is debt, including currencies. When individuals and businesses make deposits in a bank, they are exchanging one form of debt, usually currency or endorsed checks, for another—the bank’s promise, under a specified set of conditions, to return either currency or a check drawn on the bank.
The depositor is a creditor and the bank is free to loan out the funds deposited. This is the basis of fractional reserve banking, the banking system’s ability to create debt in multiples of amounts deposited. For every $10 deposited, a bank will loan out perhaps $9 and keep $1 in reserve to meet withdrawal requests. The fraction that can be lent out and the fraction that must be kept in reserve are generally specified by government or central bank regulations.
The amount lent out usually finds its way back to the banking system, where it serves as the basis for further lending. For analytical simplicity, introductory economics classes say that within the banking system, any autonomous increase in bank deposits will expand the total loans by the reciprocal of the reserve requirement. If the reserve requirement is 5 percent of bank deposits, an increase in bank deposits will lead to a 20 times expansion of bank loans. Real life is not quite that simple, but it’s a decent approximation.
An important implication is that within the banking system, most of the deposits have been lent out, they’re not in the system. Thus, if all depositors want to exercise their claims against the system at the same time, it cannot meet those requests. The same is true for individual banks.
How does a run on an individual bank turn into a loose yarn that once pulled, unravels the whole sweater? The bank tries to increase its liquid funds, drawing on whatever lines of emergency credit it may have, and to convert it’s illiquid assets into liquid assets, calling in loans. This pressures other banks and financial institutions, who draw on their lines of credit and call their loans and so on until the system collapses.
Central banks are supposed to prevent runs from becoming systemic crises by providing an emergency backstop of fiat debt secured by banks‘ “high quality” but illiquid collateral. A further backstop is deposit insurance, a New Deal innovation that is now common across developed countries. In the US, the deposit insurance fund would cover only a small percentage of deposits in the event of a system-wide run.
The more indebted the system, the more vulnerable it is to such crises. We saw that in the 2008-2009, when problems in one segment of one credit market―US subprime mortgage lending―led to a global financial crisis that was only stanched by massive injections of government and central bank fiat debt. Since that crisis, government, central bank, corporate, and individual debts have all increased, leaving the global financial system and economy more vulnerable now than it was then.
The stated nominal global debt is around $250 trillion, or over three times world GDP. Add in unfunded pension and medical care promises by governments and corporations and a huge pile of derivatives, the amount of which can only be guessed (ranging from $250 to $750 trillion), and total claims on present assets and future production are probably well in excess of $1 quadrillion, a thousand trillions, over twelve times world GDP. Fiat debt has enabled to world to become more indebted than it has ever been, with the temporary increase in “wealth” that comes with any borrowing binge, but with the inevitable bankruptcy pending.
Bankruptcy is a when, not an if. One question is whether it starts in a random corner of the world’s financial system, or at the behest of its putative victims. Which gets us back to the Yellow Vests’ attempted bank run. In the present overly indebted age, any financial crisis worth its salt will result in bank runs, with depositors losing most or all of their deposits. Debt is the Achilles heel of the world’s governments. A widespread run on financial institutions will dramatically reduce credit availability and raise interest rates, and it will shut off credit entirely for some of them. Under those circumstances, tax revenues will shrink as well.
As argued in “Revolution in America,” (SLL) anyone truly interested in upending those systems should try, like the Yellow Vests, to initiate the mass withdrawal of funds from the tottering financial system. It’s effective, nonviolent, currently legal, gets those funds out before they’re frozen and then confiscated by rapacious governments, and initiates the inevitable crisis to the advantage of those who initiate it. For more particulars and supporting arguments see “Revolution.”
As noted in that article, the probability of mass recognition of the inevitable and coordinated action against it is small. Instead, we’ll have the crisis. Governments will freeze accounts and then confiscate what’s left in them. With central banks they’ll drive the value of their own fiat debts to zero. We’ll see further moves towards global governance and centralization of economic activity and finance, supposedly to address the crises created by past and present governance and centralization. Anyone advocating for individual rights and against government will be demonized, ostracized, and probably criminalized. Fiat electronic debt will replace paper fiat notes to lock the increasingly worthless fiat medium of exchange within the insolvent financial system. “Legitimate” economic activity will grind to a halt and black markets will flourish. The private ownership of precious metals and perhaps barter will be outlawed. There will be insufficient real resources for governments to pay and equip their praetorians, who will reject fiat scrip. Unprotected, the vestiges of the old order will crumble. Battle-hardened survivors will emerge and begin building decentralized enclaves. Those will have to rest on a more enduring set of principles if they are to survive.
…On present course the government will go bankrupt. The one option for those of us who have provided so much of its ill-gotten and ill-spent loot—and received so little in return—is to seize the initiative, strike at its weakest point, extract a small percentage of what has been taken, hasten the inevitable crash, and then rebuild America into the great nation it once was…
the only defense against what is surely to come is a strong offense, before our capacity to launch an offensive is stolen from us.
“Revolution in America, SLL.
The Yellow Vests are to be commended for seizing the initiative and launching the offensive.
- Mass Fentanyl Overdose In California Kills 1 Person, Leaves 12 More Hospitalized
One person is dead and a dozen others hospitalized after a mass fentanyl overdose in Chico, California, over the weekend.
The overdose was reported to law enforcement at 9:12 am Saturday morning, CBS/CW+-affiliate KHSL-TV (Action News Now) reported.
Chico Fire Department Division Chief Jesse Alexander told Action News Now on Facebook Live that it was the most significant mass casualty incident he had ever seen.
Alexander described the horrifying scene with as many as six people undergoing CPR at the same time.
Four of those rushed to the hospital are still in critical condition. Police called the 13 people “friends and acquaintances,” but did provide further details on who owned the home. The victims were mostly millennials, aged 19 to about 30.
Police did not provide any details of the deceased individual but said he was an adult male who overdosed and died inside the home.
Two officers who arrived at the scene first were taken to the hospital after reporting symptoms of possible fentanyl exposure. They were treated and released from the hospital, police said.
Chico Police Chief Mike O’Brien gave an update to reporters about the mass causality incident on Saturday afternoon.
O’Brien said the overdoses were caused by ingestion of some fentanyl analog and another substance that has not yet been identified.
“As tragic as this event is, and certainly there is potential for additional fatalities — I want to emphasize that — it certainly would have been far worse without the response and dispensing of Naloxone by Chico police officers, the life-saving efforts of Chico firefighters and Butte EMS and the emergency care of course received by Enloe Hospital staff,” O’Brien told reporters.
The site of the overdose was in a residential home about 2 hours north of Sacramento.
The opioid epidemic has violently spread across the country in the last several years.
A new report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were 70,237 drug overdose deaths in 2017. Opioids were involved in 67.8%, or 47,600 of those deaths. Of those opioid-related overdose deaths, 59.8% of them, or 28,466, were due to synthetic opioids.
“We were waiting and have been waiting, unfortunately, for this to happen in the sense that we knew fentanyl had been moving west and in other parts of the country they’re really seeing the greatest impact of this drug,” O’Brien said. “That is changing, unfortunately, and now we’ve had this mass casualty incident. … That should concern us all.”
As we have warned before, “the third wave of the opioid epidemic is here,” which is driven by new opioid synthetics that are 10,000 times as potent as morphine and used to tranquilize elephants are attributing to the latest surge in deaths. Expect more mass casualty events, like the one in California, as the opioid crisis continues to accelerate.
- Entering A Major Regional Reset: The Syria Outcome Will Haunt Those Who Started This War
Authored by Alastair Crooked via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The Middle East is metamorphosing. New fault-lines are emerging, yet Trump’s foreign policy ‘hawks’ still try to stage ‘old movies’ in a new ‘theatre’.
The ‘old movie’ is for the US to ‘stand up’ Sunni, Arab states, and lead them towards confronting ‘bad actor’ Iran. ‘Team Bolton’ is reverting back to the old 1996 Clean Break script – as if nothing has changed. State Department officials have been briefing that Secretary Pompeo’s address in Cairo on Thursday was “slated to tell his audience (although he may not name the former president), that Obama misled the people of the Middle East about the true source of terrorism, including what contributed to the rise of the Islamic State. Pompeo will insist that Iran, a country Obama tried to engage, is the real terrorist culprit. The speech’s drafts also have Pompeo suggesting that Iran could learn from the Saudis about human rights, and the rule of law.”
Well, at least that speech should raise a chuckle around the region. In practice however, the regional fault-line has moved on: It is no longer so much Iran. GCC States have a new agenda, and are now far more concerned to contain Turkey, and to put a halt to Turkish influence spreading throughout the Levant. GCC states fear that President Erdogan, given the emotional and psychological wave of antipathy unleashed by the Khashoggi murder, may be mobilising newly re-energised Muslim Brotherhood, Gulf networks. The aim being to leverage present Gulf economic woes, and the general hollowing out of any broader GCC ‘vision’, in order to undercut the rigid Gulf ‘Arab system’ (tribal monarchy). The Brotherhood favours a soft Islamist reform of the Gulf monarchies – along lines, such as that once advocated by Jamal Khashoggi .
Turkey’s leadership in any case is convinced that it was the UAE (MbZ specifically) that was the author behind the Kurdish buffer being constructed, and mini-state ‘plot’ against Turkey – in conjunction with Israel and the US. Understandably, Gulf states now fear possible Turkish retribution for their weaponising of Kurdish aspirations in this way.
And Turkey is seen (by GCC States) as already working in close co-ordination with fellow Muslim Brotherhood patron and GCC member, Qatar, to divide the collapsing Council. This prefigures a new round to the MB versus Saudi Wahhabism spat for the soul of Sunni Islam.
GGC states therefore, are hoping to stand-up a ‘front’ to balance Turkey in the Levant. And to this end, they are trying to recruit President Assad back into the Arab fold (which is to say, into the Arab League), and to have him act, jointly with them, as an Arab counter to Turkey.
The point here is obvious: President Assad is closely allied to Iran – and so is Moscow and Turkey. To be fashionably Iranophobic – as Pompeo might wish the GCC to be – simply would spoil the GCC’s anti-Turkey ‘play’. Syria indeed may be (justly) skeptical of Turkey’s actions and intent in Syria, but from President Assad’s perspective, Iran and Russia are absolutely crucial to the managing of an erratic Turkey. Turkey does represent an existential Syrian concern. And trying to lever President Assad – or Lebanon or Turkey – away from Iran, would be absurd. It won’t happen. And the GCC states have enough nous to understand this now (after their stinging defeat in Syria). The Gulf anti-Iranian stance has had ‘the burner’ turned sharply down, (except when their need is to stroke US feathers).
They can see clearly that the Master of Ceremonies in the Levant – putting together the new regional ‘order’ – is not Mr Bolton, but Moscow, with Tehran (and occasionally Ankara), playing their equal part ‘from behind the curtain’.
Presumably, America’s intelligence services know, (and Gulf states certainly are aware), that in any case, Iranian forces are almost all gone from Syria (though of course Syria’s ‘Iranian connection’ remains as firm, as ever) – even as Pompeo and Israel say the precisely the opposite: that they are pushing-back hard at the ‘threatening’ Iranian military ‘footprint’ in Syria. Few in the region will believe it.
The second notable emerging regional fault line then, evidently is the one that is opening between Turkey and the US and Israel. Turkey ‘gets it’: Erdogan ‘gets it’ very clearly: that Washington now deeply distrusts him, suspects that Turkey is accelerating into Moscow and Beijing’s orbit, and that DC would be happy to see him gone – and a more NATO-friendly leader installed in his stead.
And it must be clear to Washington too ‘why’ Turkey would be heading ‘East’. Erdogan precisely needs Russia and Iran to act as MCs to moderate his difficult relations with Damascus for the future. Erdogan needs Russia and Iran even more, to broker a suitable political solution to the Kurds in Syria. He needs China too, to support his economy.
And Erdogan is fully aware that Israel (more than Gulf States) still hankers after the old Ben Gurion ideal of an ethnic Kurdish state – allied with Israel, and sitting atop major oil resources – to be inserted at the very pivot to south-west and central Asia: And at Turkey’s vulnerable underbelly.
The Israeli’s articulated their support for a Kurdish state quite plainly at the time of Barzani’s failed independence initiative in Iraq. But Erdogan simply, unmistakably, has said to this ‘never’ (to Bolton, this week). Nonetheless, Ankara still needs Russian and Iranian collaboration to allow Bolton to ‘climb down his tree’ of a Kurdish mini-state in Syria. He needs Russia to broker a Syrian-led buffer, vice an American-Kurdish tourniquet, strapped around his southern border.
It is unlikely however, that despite the real threat that America’s arming of the Kurds poses to Turkey, that Erdogan really wants to invade Syria – though he threatens it – and though John Bolton’s ‘conditions’ may end by leaving Turkey no option, but to do it. Since, for sure, Erdogan understands that a messy Turkish invasion of Syria would send the delicately balanced Turkish Lire into free-fall.
Still … Turkey, Syria, Iran and Russia now all want America gone from Syria. And for a moment, it seemed it might proceed smoothly after Trump had acquiesced to Erdogan’s arguments, during their celebrated telephone call. But then – Senator Lindsay Graham demurred (against the backdrop of massed howls of anguish issuing from the Beltway foreign policy think-tanks). Bolton did the walk-back, by making US withdrawal from Syria contingent on conditions (ones seemingly designed not to be met) and not tied any specific timeline. President Erdogan was not amused.
It should be obvious now that we are entering a major regional re-set: The US is leaving Syria. Bolton’s attempted withdrawal-reversal has been rebuffed. And the US, in any event, forfeited the confidence of the Kurds in consequence to the original Trump statement. The Kurds now are orientated toward Damascus and Russia is mediating a settlement.
It may take a while, but the US is going. Kurdish forces (other than those linked with the PKK) are likely to be assimilated into the Syrian army, and the ‘buffer’ will not be directed against Turkey, but will be a mix of Syrian army and Kurdish elements – under Syrian command – but whose overall conduct towards Turkey will be invigilated by Russia. And the Syrian army will, in due time, clear Idlib from a resurgent al-Qaida (HTS).
The Arab states are returning to their embassies in Damascus – partly out of fear that the whipsaw of American policy, its radical polarisation, and its proclivity to be wholly or partially ‘walked-back’ by the Deep State – might leave the Gulf unexpectedly ‘orphaned’ at any time. In effect, the GCC states are ‘hedging’ against this risk by trying to reconnect a bifurcated Arab sphere, and to give it a new ‘purpose’ and credibility – as a balance against Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood (Syria’s old nemesis).
And yet – there remains still another layer to this calculus, as described by veteran Middle East journalist, Elijah Magnier:
“Indeed the Levant is returning to the centre of Middle East and world attention in a stronger position than in 2011. Syria has advanced precision missiles that can hit any building in Israel. Assad also has an air defence system he would have never dreamed of before 2011 – thanks to Israel’s continuous violation of its airspace, and its defiance of Russian authority. Hezbollah has constructed bases for its long and medium range precision missiles in the mountains and has created a bond with Syria that it could never have established – if not for the war. Iran has established a strategic brotherhood with Syria, thanks to its role in defeating the regime change plan.
NATO’s support for the growth of ISIS has created a bond between Syria and Iraq that no Muslim or Baathist link could ever have created: Iraq has a “carte blanche” to bomb ISIS locations in Syria without the consent of the Syrian leadership, and the Iraqi security forces can walk into Syria anytime they see fit to fight ISIS. The anti-Israel axis has never been stronger than it is today. That is the result of 2011-2018 war imposed on Syria”.
Yes. This is the third of the newly emergent fault-lines: that of Israel on the one hand, and the emerging reality in the Syrian north, on the other – a shadow that has returned to haunt the original instigators of the ‘war’ to undermine Syria. PM Netanyahu since has put all the Israeli eggs into the Trump family ‘basket’. It was Netanyahu’s relationship with Trump which was presented in Israel as being the true ‘Deal of the Century’ (and not the Palestinian one). Yet when Bibi complained forcefully about US withdrawal from Syria (leaving Syria vulnerable, Netanyahu asserts, to an Iranian insertion of smart missiles), Trump nonchalantly replied that the US gives Israel $ 4.5 billion per year – “You’ll be all right”, Trump riposted.
It was seen in Israel as an extraordinary slap to the PM’s face. But Israelis cannot avoid, but to acknowledge, some responsibility for creating precisely the circumstances of which they now loudly complain.
Bottom line: Things have not gone according to plan: America is not shaping the new Levantine ‘order’ – Moscow is. And Israel’s continual, blatant disregard of Russia’s own interests in the Levant, firstly infuriated, and finally has provoked the Russian high command into declaring the northern Middle East a putative no-fly zone for Israel. This represents a major strategic reversal for Netanyahu (and the US).
And finally, it is this repeating pattern of statements being made by the US President on foreign policy that are then almost casually contradicted, or ‘conditioned’, by some or other part of the US bureaucracy, that poses to the region (and beyond) the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. The pattern clearly is one of an isolated President, with officials emptying his statements of executive authority (until subsequently endorsed, or denied, by the US bureaucracy). It is making Trump almost irrelevant (in terms of the setting of foreign policy).
Is this then a stealth process – knowingly contrived – incrementally to remove Trump from power? A hollowing out of his Presidential prerogatives (leaving him only as a disruptive Twitterer) – achieved, without all the disruption and mess, of formally removing him from office? We shall see.
And what next? Well, as Simon Henderson observes, no one is sure – everyone is left wondering:
“What’s up with Secretary Pompeo’s extended tour of the Middle East? The short answer is that he is trying to sell/explain President Trump’s “we are leaving Syria” policy to America’s friends … Amman, Jordan; Cairo, Egypt; Manama, Bahrain; Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE); Doha, Qatar; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Muscat, Oman; Kuwait City, Kuwait. Wow, even with his own jet and no immigration hassles, that’s an exhausting itinerary … The fact that there now are eight stops in eight days, probably reflects the amount of explaining that needs to be done.”
- Check Out Jerry Jones’ New, $250 Million Luxury Mega Yacht
Jerry Jones, the Dallas Cowboys’ billionaire owner, purchased a 109m/357ft superyacht, named after his wife, called the Bravo Eugenia, sources confirmed to NBC 5 Sports Director Newy Scruggs.
The $250 million vessel, built last year by Netherlands-based Oceanco, can sleep 14 people and is managed by a crew of about two dozen, according to SuperYacht Times.
Operating under the American flag, the vessel has a single-tier engine room is designed to cruise through the water with less resistance. “Coupled with her hybrid propulsion system,” explained Lateral Managing Director, James Roy, “Bravo delivers exceptional performance and is configured to offer multiple operational modes, each matched to the variable operating profile of a yacht designed to adventure autonomously across the world’s oceans.”
The vessel has two helicopter landing pads (one on the bow and another on the stern), a large tender garage underneath the foredeck, a fitness center with sauna, steam rooms, hot tubs, and a pool. The ship’s design is of Nuvolari Lenard while Burgess operated as the owner’s representatives during the construction build.
Reymond Langton Design, a design studio specializing in superyachts builds, designed the interior which has elegant style with light woods and lacquered surfaces.”We worked very closely with the owner to find the perfect artisans and craftsmen in creating bespoke artworks, fabrics and signature furniture pieces that reflect the owner’s style and essence and combine to create a warm, inviting environment for all on board, “ said says Pascale Reymond, a partner at Reymond Langton Design.
Jones, 76, has a net worth of about $7 billion, according to Forbes. The Cowboys are considered one of the most valuable sports franchise in the world at $4.8 billion. Jones purchased the team in 1989 for $150 million, a 46x on the initial investment.
- Escobar: All Under Heaven, China's Challenge To The Westphalian System
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
Beijing is tweaking the rules of the Western order to reflect its revitalized geopolitical and economic power, but some Americans see this as a threat to their way of life…
Embedded in the now dominant US narrative of “Chinese aggression”, Sinophobes claim that China is not only a threat to the American way of life, but also an existential threat to the American republic.
It’s worth noting, of course, that the American way of life has long ceased to be a model to be emulated all across the Global South and that the US walks and talks increasingly like an oligarchy.
Underneath it all is a huge divide, in outlook and cultural beliefs, between the two great powers, as some leaders and writers have attempted to explain.
President Xi Jinping’s speech last week does make it clear that Beijing is engaged in tweaking the rules of the current Westphalian system to truly reflect its reconquered geopolitical and economic power.
Yet it’s hardly a matter of “overthrowing” the system established by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. As much as trade blocks are ruling the new geoeconomic game, nation-states are bound to remain the backbone of the international system.
One of Beijing’s key foreign policies is no interference in other nations’ internal affairs. In parallel, the historical record since the end of WWII shows that the US has never refrained from interfering in other nations’ internal affairs.
What Beijing is really aiming at is what Professor Xiang Lanxin, director of the Centre of One Belt and One Road Studies at the China National Institute for SCO International Exchange and Judicial Cooperation, referred to at a crucial intervention during the June 2016 Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore.
Lanxin defined the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as being an avenue to a ‘post-Westphalian world’, in a sense of a true 21st century geoeconomic integration of Eurasia acted out by Asian nations. That’s the key reason why Washington, which set the current international rules in 1945, fears BRI and now demonizes it 24/7.
Understanding Tianxia
The notion that imperial China, over the centuries, obtained a Mandate of Heaven over Tianxia, or “All under Heaven”, and that Tianxia is a “dictatorial system” is absolute nonsense. Once again that reflects the profound ignorance by professional Sinophobes about the deepest strands of classical Chinese culture.
They could do worse than learn about Tianxia from someone like Zhao Tingyang, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and author of an essential book first published by China CITIC Press in 2016, then translated into French last year under the title Tianxia: Tous sous un meme ciel.
Tingyang teaches us that the Tianxia system of the Zhou dynasty (1046-256 BC) is essentially a theory – a concept born in Ancient China but not specific to China that goes way beyond the country to tackle universal problems in a “process of dynamic formation that refers to globalization.”
This introduces us to a fascinating conceptual bridge linking ancient China to 21st-century globalization, arguing that political concepts defined by nation-states, imperialisms and rivalries for hegemony are losing meaning when faced with globalization. The future is symbolized by the new power of all-inclusive global networks – which is at the center of the BRI concept.
Tingyang shows that the Tianxia concept refers to a world system where the true political subject is the world. Under the Western imperialist vision, the world was always an object of conquest, domination and exploitation, and never a political subject per se.
So we need a higher and more comprehensive unifying vision than that of the nation-state – under a Lao Tzu framework: “To see the world from the point of view of the world”.
You are not my enemy
Plunging into the deepest roots of Chinese culture, Tingyang shows the idea that there’s nothing beyond Tianxia is, in fact, a metaphysical principle, because Tian (heaven) exists globally. So, Tianxia (all under Heaven), as Confucius said, must be the same, in order to be in accordance with heaven.
Thus the Tianxia system is inclusive and not exclusive; it suppresses the idea of enemy and foreigner; no country or culture would be designated as an enemy, and be non-incorporable to the system.
Tingyang’s sharpest deconstruction of the Western system is when he shows how the theory of progress, as we know it, clings to the narrative logic of Christianity; then “that becomes a modern superstition. The mélange is neither scientific or theological – it’s an ideological superstition.”
From the point of view of Chinese intellectual and cultural traditions, Tingyang shows that since Christianity won over pagan Greek civilization, the West has been driven by a logic of combat. The world appears as a bellicose entity, with groups or tribes opposing one another. The (Western) “mission of conquering the world destroyed the a priori integrity of the concept of ‘world’. The world lost its sacred character to become a battlefield devoted to the universal accomplishment of Christianity. The word became an object.”
So we came to a point where a hegemonic system of knowledge, via its mode of diffusion and monopoly of the rules of language, propagates a “monotheist narrative on everything, societies, history, life, values”.
This system “interrupted knowledge and the historical thread of other cultures.” It dissolved other spiritual worlds into debris without meaning, so they would lose their integrity and sacredness. It debased “the historicity of all other histories in the name of faith in progressivism (a secular version of monotheism).” And it divided the world into center and periphery; an “evolved” world which has a history contraposed to a stagnated world deprived of history.
This hardly differs from other major strands of criticism of Western colonialism to be found all across the Global South.
Yin and yang
Tingyang finally reverts to a Lao Tzu formula. “According to the Way of Heaven, excess is diminished and insufficiencies compensated”. And that ties in with Yin and Yang, as referred to in the Book of Mutations of Zhou; “Yin and Yang is a functional metaphor of equilibrium, meaning that the vitality of every existence resides in dynamic equilibrium.”
What irks the Sinophobes is that Tianxia, as explained by Tingyang and adopted by the current Beijing leadership, striving towards a real “dynamic equilibrium” in international relations, poses a serious challenge to American leadership in both hard power and soft power.
It’s under this framework that Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s crucial, wide-ranging commentary on Xi Jinping’s diplomatic strategy must be interpreted. Wang stressed how Xi “has made innovations on and transcended the traditional Western theories of international relations for the past 300 years.”
The Chinese challenge is unprecedented – and no wonder Washington, in tandem with other Western elites, is stunned. In the end, it’s a matter of positioning Tianxia as a superior promoter of “dynamic equilibrium” in international relations in comparison with the Westphalian system.
As a result, immense political and cultural repercussions may be lost in translation, and China needs some serious soft power to get its point across.
Yet instead of producing reductionist diatribes, this process should galvanize a serious global debate in the years to come.
- An Unexpected Development Could Crush The Leveraged Loan Market
When it comes to the loan market, two things are undisputed.
The first is that ever since a US court vacated long-standing Dodd-Frank risk-retention rules last April, which forced managers to hold part of the securities they sell to investors, a flood of new loan issuance was unleashed to meet unprecedented CLO demand for leveraged loans. The result was a record year for CLO issuance…
… even when accounting for the December freeze when loan market entered hibernation as prices fell and CLO activity ground to a halt.
As such, marginal CLO demand is understandably perceived by the market as a critical spoke for all future primary market demand, and is therefore a critical component of the overall loan market.
The second undisputed aspect of the loan and CLO market, is that Japanese banks have become some of the most aggressive buyers of CLOs, with UBS and the Bank of England estimating that these bank have been buying between 50-75% of AAA-rated CLO tranches and a third of the total market.
Japanese banks have been buying the top-rated AAA pieces of CLOs because they have higher yields than like-rated sovereign debt, according to UBS, with the lenders making up about 33% of total inflows into the asset class in the past several years. Additionally, as noted above, Japanese banks may be buying between half and three-quarters of AAA rated CLO tranches, UBS said, citing evidence from clients and analysis of the market for cross currency basis swaps. Without the Japanese bid for AAA rated CLO paper, top-rated CLO spreads would likely widen back to at least 2014 levels, or 50 basis points wider, the bank estimated.
“The Japanese bid for U.S. loans will not be easily broken,” analysts led by Stephen Caprio wrote in research published last December and first noted by Bloomberg. “Most Japanese banks are buy-and-hold investors; outright selling will be fairly limited unless the prospect of outright credit losses becomes likely, necessitating much higher recession risk than today.”
Furthermore, despite recent record outflows, Japanese banks should in theory continue to anchor the market as long as government yields stay low and the Bank of Japan clings to its ultra-easy monetary policies, UBS said quoted by Bloomberg.
And while Japanese demand is vulnerable to a pullback, it should help provide stability to the market in the face of a recent sell-off, UBS said. Unless of course, an unexpected regulatory intervention emerges making it far more cumbersome and complicated for Japanese banks to invest in US CLOs.
And yet, that’s precisely what may soon happen because as Bloomberg reported, citing law firms, a proposal is being floated by a Japanese regulator which could bait some U.S. CLO managers to readopt risk retention.
Specifically, the proposal floated by the Japanese Financial Services Agency (JFSA) would allow certain types of Japanese investors to buy only securitizations where the originator retains a 5% piece, according to a client note sent by legal practices Anderson Mori & Tomotsune and Milbank Tweed. The Japanese Financial Services Agency (JFSA) recently proposed the risk retention rule, which appears to be a carbon copy of the Frank-Dodd rule that was scrapped last year in the US, and which had held back demand from local buyers of CLOs.
Investors governed by the rule would include banks such as Norinchukin Bank, credit unions, and credit cooperatives, among other entities. If investors don’t adhere to new rule, they would be subject to a much higher capital charge, with a maximum weighting of up to 1,250%, the law firms said.
Commenting on potential impact of this proposal, should it be implemented, the law firms said that “any regulatory change that impacts investment in CLOs could have a dramatic effect on the market,” and added that “the imposition of the Japanese Retention Requirement may therefore see a return to retention-compliant U.S. CLO structures to the extent that such transactions are to be marketed in Japan.”
That said, this arguably huge development for one of the biggest sources of demand in the CLO, and thus loan market, is still one “potentially big news” because as Bloomberg’s Sebastian Boyd notes, we don’t know whether this is going to happen or whether it will include an exemption for “open market” CLOs. Only “open-market” CLOs, those in which loans are bought on the open market, are free from risk retention. The April ruling didn’t apply to private credit funds that set up CLOs.
Commenting on the “open market” CLO exemption, the law firms notes that this “has been raised as a possibility and is under consideration by the JFSA.” In February 2018, a U.S. appeals court decided that risk retention rules don’t apply to U.S. “open market” CLOs, and by April U.S. CLO managers were officially released from risk-retention rules.
Still, in a world where volatility has risen sharply recently, and where macroprudential policies are encouraging regulators to become far more critical of bank balance sheets especially after the worst year for global capital market since the financial crisis, it is a distinct possibility that Japan’s regulator will implement such a buffer. After all, European CLOs are already structured to include risk retention and disclosure obligations which are more far-reaching than the Japanese proposal, so European CLOs should generally meet the Japanese retention requirement.
While it is impossible to handicap the odds of a regulatory intervention, if law firms have already been engaged to lobby against the passage of this proposal, they are certainly non-trivial. Yet one thing is certain: should the proposal be enacted, and Japanese buying collapse due to risk-retention demands, then up to a third of demand for CLOs could be eliminated overnight. In that case watch out below as loan yields soars, price tumble, and the leverage loan market is rocked to its core with the potential aftershocks stretching first to junk, then to investment grade, and ultimately the entire credit space.
Certainly, it would be ironic if in their attempt to make the overall loan market safer, Japanese regulators end up triggering the avalanche that finally bursts the credit market bubble, potentially concluding in the next financial crisis.
- Here's What An American Economic Collapse Could Look Like
Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,
When we think of “economic collapse” our imaginations usually lead us immediately to the desperation we’ve witnessed in places like Venezuela or Greece. We think of starvation, a complete lack of medical care, and waves of suicide by people who simply can’t survive. We imagine an apocalyptic societal breakdown that is immediately visible.
Here in America, I suspect the collapse is going to look a lot different than it has in these other countries… at least, at first. And in my description, it’s entirely likely you’ll see that many of these signs have been happening all around us for years.
It will be gradual.
The thing with collapses that we see in the media is that we are seeing the end results of events that have been slowly declining for years. Venezuela was one of the wealthiest countries in the world back until the mid-1980s, due to their rich oil reserves. Then oil prices collapsed and their fall began. It was actually several decades though before it was truly evident that the country was in trouble.
Preparedness bloggers here have been sounding the warning bell since 2008 (at least) when our economy went into a recession. While the US managed to dig its way out of that to at least an illusion of renewed prosperity, it’s questionable how much of that return was real and how much of it was propaganda.
It’s unlikely that we’ll see just one event that says clearly to everyone, “Hey, our economy has collapsed. The Great Depression 2.0 has arrived, today, January 14, 2019, due to X event.”
Instead, we’ll continue to see signs like a lack of full-time jobs with benefits, growing student and consumer debt, more people who can’t afford rent and food, and more stores closing their doors forever in an ongoing retail apocalypse.
Because of the ready availability of credit cards and loans, things don’t seem that bad. People are still shopping for frivolous things. They’re still spending billions on Christmas. They’re still eating out at restaurants.
But just because that “money” is being spent does not mean that people are okay financially.
It will seem like it’s just individual families having a hard time.
The way things are going down in America, it doesn’t seem like we’re facing a national crisis. Consumers are consuming. People are working – just look at those “jobs” numbers. Folks are still having barbecues with the neighbors, hosting extravagant holiday get-togethers, and avidly following the football season.
But the American dream isn’t actually that dreamy. Because beneath all the trappings of our pleasant lives, people are right on the verge of a crisis.
40% of Americans could not handle an unexpected expense of only $400 without having to sell something they own. 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. That means that only one missed paycheck will be a financial disaster for the majority of Americans.
And when that missed paycheck or unexpected expense comes, people will completely blame themselves. They’ll silently feel like failures and not realize that the entire system is crumbling all around them. They will believe it is only their family, due to their own bad decisions, that is suffering.
Sure, we could all make better choices from time to time. We could skip those vacations or spend less on the kids at Christmas or go on the beans-and-rice-and-apples diet. We could eschew credit cards, live beneath our means, and go full-Spartan with our lifestyles.
Sometimes the money problems are out of our hands.
But even with the very best personal economic decisions, a lot of things are out of our hands. What if a family member becomes seriously ill, with heaven forbid, a heart attack or cancer? Even with health insurance (which a growing number of middle-class families, mine included, cannot afford), the out of pocket costs will be astronomical. And that’s not even factoring in the long-term loss of the sick person’s income. Total financial disaster and it’s not something that can be avoided.
Or what if your vehicle is totaled by an uninsured driver? Even when your own insurance covers what you’ve paid off on your vehicle, what if you just break even and then can’t afford another vehicle? Then you can’t get to work…then you can’t pay your bills…then, again, a disaster not of your own making has struck.
Any time you see a family suffering financially, you must understand that very few of us are immune to money problems. We all handle these financial catastrophes differently and we all use the skills and talents we have to deal with them. Some of us are more fortunate than others – we’re able to pick up second and third jobs. We’re able to slash our expenses more relentlessly. Maybe we live in areas that are ripe with employment opportunities, instead of economically depressed small towns. We may not have poor health or sick children who require 24-hour care and supervision.
Heck – once you add in children at all, you’re paying for daycare every time you go to work. I know that when my kids were little and I was a single mom, I had to take a second job just to cover my daycare costs, which, in the summer, were as much as my rent. I worked seven days a week for years and lost so much time with my children that it broke my heart.
It’s really easy to look down on others who are having a hard time with money but always remember that just one crisis could put each of us in that place. We’re living in a system that is designed to put us in that place.
The divide will get bigger.
In the United States, we’re watching a disappearing act that unfortunately is no illusion. We’re watching the middle class vanish. Remember when it was common for just about everyone to have trappings like houses, two cars in the driveway, and kids who play baseball in the summer and take gymnastics lessons in the winter? Lifestyles that used to put us firmly right in the middle class are harder and harder to achieve. And it isn’t just that Americans are lazy and addicted to spending money they don’t have.
The biggest blow I can think of to the middle class was the inappropriately named Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). While that helped a lot of people who couldn’t afford any healthcare at all, with subsidies and low-to-no deductibles, for the rest of us who had a reasonable plan before, it was financially apocalyptic. There was story after story of families paying thousands of dollars per month for shoddy care that didn’t kick in until $10,000 had been spent out of pocket. This took formerly middle-class families and pushed them into the poverty level. But because their ridiculous monthly insurance payments weren’t write-offs, they couldn’t get subsidized. Talk about irony – the ACA impoverished people and then wouldn’t cover their healthcare.
When I talk about the divide, I’m not referring to so-called “income inequality.” That will always exist because we all have different skills, and different skills are worth differing amounts of money.
I’m talking about a divide in lifestyle. I’m talking about how people who work often two and three jobs can barely manage to survive. It’s a real problem when all we do is work and we can’t spend time raising our children to be good and productive members of society.
Don’t get me wrong – rich folks can spend their money however they want. But at some point, their glaring frivolity is going to paint a Marie-Antoinette-style target on their backs. Regular people who could pay for a year of living comfortably with one of the Birkin bags in their collections of $20,000 purses are getting increasingly ticked off of the way things are going in this country.
Eventually, things that are normal will become luxuries.
While things are tough, even some of our poorest citizens still have it better than 2/3 of the world’s population. Most of us have roofs over our heads, heat in the winter, running water, food, and electricity to run our refrigerators.
But that could change.
As our economy plummets and our national debt soars, we could see the things that we all take for granted today could become luxuries tomorrow. Imagine if the ordinary trappings that we’ve always had became as out of reach for most of us as a Lamborghini in the driveway.
What if only rich people could afford electricity? What about heat? What about running water? What if that divide between the rich and the poor could be delineated by who had the ability to turn on a light at the flick of a switch and who did not?
Many people worry about an event like a solar flare that would wipe out electrical power, casting us back about 200 years. We’d have no refrigeration, no transportation, no climate control, and no lights. But in that situation, we’d all be in the same boat. No matter how wealthy you are, any unprotected electrical items would still be useless.
What if that’s what the economic collapse looks like?
What if the real threat was simply that no one could afford to pay the electric bill? What if prices escalated to the point that it was a choice between food and electricity? What if, home by home, the lights went out across America?
And what about running water? A few years back, in Jefferson County, Alabama, the price of water quadrupled, making monthly water bills over $300.
Jefferson County in Alabama is the state’s most populous county and also its poorest. One of the poorest of those poor areas is Birmingham, Jefferson County’s largest city. Here water and sewerage bills have quadrupled in the last 15 years and with combined sewerage and water bills coming in at around $300 a month, this leaves the same amount out of the average social security cheque of $600 a month to cover everything else, food, clothing, and all other utilities. Low paid workers, of which there are many fare no better.
Many people have opted to buy drums of water from petrol stations rather than pay their ever increasing bills. They use these drums of water for drinking, washing and in their portable toilets which can be seen dotting back yards across the area, the modern version of the outhouse. They pay a fee to a sanitation company to remove the waste. It’s cheaper than letting the city take care of it. (source)
So imagine if this kind of thing became even more widespread. What if you had to be rich to have electricity and running water?
This is how it could happen.
What if it’s just an incremental crumbling of our way of life, one household at a time?
No bank runs. No government confiscation of resources. No dramatic event that we can all point to and say, “This is how the American economy was destroyed on (pick a date).”
Instead, it becomes harder and harder to pay your necessary bills. You go deeper and deeper into debt trying to pay for things like medical bills and food. Your job, if you keep it, doesn’t provide increases in pay to match the increases in the costs of living because the person running the business is just trying to survive too.
Then you re-evaluate what necessities are. You think about what you can work around. Which is more important? Medicine or childcare? Running water or electricity? Rent or food?
This is the future for which we should be preparing.
Stop expecting some huge event and look at the decline that’s already happening all around you. Think about your options in a world where only rich people can afford electricity and running water and food all at the same time.
-
Perhaps you can plan for an increasingly low-tech world.
-
Maybe you can figure out ways to acquire and harvest food.
-
Now is the time to build a stockpile of food to get you through some rough spots.
-
You can start living beneath your means
-
You can learn to make things from scratch instead of buying them
Maybe the epic disaster everyone has been preparing for is slowing happening right now. It isn’t really that farfetched, is it?
Maybe the disaster is the crumbling of our First World lifestyle due to unsustainable debt and consumerism. Maybe it’s how they roll out the socialist utopia that control freaks all seem to desire. If everyone is desperate to survive or to regain their former luxuries, how hard would it be to manipulate them into a comfortable control grid?
If you want to maintain your independence, then self-reliance is survival.
-
- Brazil's Bolsonaro Blasts Left's "Marxist Indoctrination… Enslaving Kids To Welfare Dependence"
Less than two weeks after he was sworn into office, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro is making good on his commitments to dismantle the Marxist indoctrination underpinning Brazil’s culture.
To explain his perspective on how Brazil’s left has indoctrinated the children in Brazil to enslave society, Bolsonaro took to Twitter…
By way of background, as The Brazilian Report explained last year, the “Schools without Political Parties” initiative – which imposes several limitations on teachers in the classroom against the perceived “leftist indoctrination” in Brazilian education – is a pillar of Brazil’s Jair Bolsanaro’s agenda and promotes forbidding teachers from mentioning “gender ideology” and stating that they can’t go against the moral and religious convictions of students’ parents.
Critics say it would bring censorship and intimidation to schools, but Mr. Bolsonaro’s choice of Mr. Ricardo Velez-Rodriguez as Brazil’s Minister of Education – a self-declared “anti-Marxist,” makes it clear that the “re-foundation” of the nation’s education system intends to end a structure which “dismantles traditional values of our society […] of family, religion, and patriotism.”
In a November 7 blog post, he wrote that Brazilians have become “hostages of an education system that indoctrinates students into scientism and Marxism.”
In another post, he said Brazil “should resist politically correct globalism, which has adopted the crazy notion of ‘gender education.”
He continues: “This nonsense must end.”
Additionally, Damares Alves, an evangelical pastor who has been appointed Brazil’s the new Human Rights Minister, said, according to the Associated Press,
“Girls will be princesses and boys will be princes…There will be no more ideological indoctrination of children and teenagers in Brazil.”
And this is what Bolsonaro focused on in his brief speech yesterday…
Full Transcript:
What is their [the left’s] objective in doing this [exposing kids to early sexual discussions]?
Their goal is that your children that study in public schools – sorry to say this because when I was young, public schools used to be decent… now only the poor put their kids there because they don’t have any other choice – learn about nothing so that in the future they are entirely dependent on the government for everything.
Now, I say to you [beneficiaries of social welfare], what’s more important to you? I know social welfare is important to many of you, but is social welfare more important than your kids’ dignity? Your kids’ honor?
And I’ll say more, The Workers’ Party, through their website (Humaniza Redes), they say clearly that Pedophilia is not a crime, and that the pedophile can only be judged after an export does a “detailed report,” because if the pedophile has some kind of “mental disorder,” according to Rousseff’s website which is linked to the human rights secretary, that had Mrs. Maria de Rosario as its Chief, he’s only considered a pedophile if he doesn’t suffer from any mental disorder… or if the pedophilia was practiced for no commercial purposes.
This is what they [The Workers’ Party] want for kids since the age of six.
What are they doing all throughout Brazil?
Approximately 100,000 public schools are being used for political propaganda for The Workers’ Party.
Like Professor [Marco Antonio] Villa has been saying: “The Department of Education (MEC) cannot be used as Propaganda for a political party.”
Besides defending the dignity of our children, we are taking care of our own future… no wonder I’m wearing this short of Japan.
In Japan, kids of 6/7 years can solve math problems our college students can’t, because here in Brazil, it’s more important to teach a boy that he’s not a boy and a girl that she’s not a girl (like they did in the National High School Exam) than to teach them something that will allow them to free themselves from social welfare, poverty, and misery.
Is it any wonder the globalists are terrified of this truth-speaking leader?
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...