- What Rich Used To Be
From the Slope of Hope: I’ve had a lifelong fascination with wealth and, more recently, wealth disparity (for proof, look no further than the SocialTrade stack on this very topic). I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in a happy, financially-secure, but very much middle-class family. We lived in this house:
Everyone I knew had the same situation. We all had pretty much the same kind of house, the same quantity of toys, the same simple vacations………everything was so equal, you’d think we were living in some kind of socialist paradise.
We weren’t, of course, and there was, naturally, one “rich kid” in the neighborhood. Everything about his life was just a little bit nicer, starting with the house he lived in:
Doesn’t look too much different, does it? Well, that’s kind of the point of this post.
As a youngster, I was acutely aware of many differences between the life I had and the one my friend Steven (AKA the rich kid) had. Although many decades have passed since then, I don’t have to even try hard to remember some of those contrasts:
The White Carpet
One of my most vivid memories was walking into Steven’s house and seeing stark-white wall-to-wall carpeting. In my house, we had four kids, and white carpet would have been just nuts to have. But in Steven’s, there it was, white and looking good as new. It helped, I suppose, that there was plastic runners, so you had to walk on them, as if it was a plastic sidewalk in the middle of the house. Even as a child, I thought it was kind of silly to carpet a house and then lay down a strip of plastic to protect it, but who was I to say?The Treehouse
In Steven’s back yard, there was the most gorgeous treehouse. His dad ran a Ford dealership, so I guess he could pretty easily afford a carpenter to come out and construct it for him. Now, when I say “gorgeous”, all I mean was that it looked good to my ten-year-old eyes. It was just a simple cube – – but it was made of high-quality wood, was obviously professionally-constructed, and conjured up much envy within me. I asked my dad every summer if I could have a treehouse, and the response was always the same: “I’ll think about it.” It never came.The Thunderbird
As I mentioned, Steven’s dad had a dealership (well, at least he was the general manager there), and their family had a nice, new “luxury” car. It was certainly fancier than our station wagon, and I was amazed that it had this thing called “Cruise Control”, which to my young mind meant the car would actually drive itself. Steven and I were in the back seat, and he told me that the little windows were called “opera windows”, which likewise sounded like something far more elegant and expensive than I’d ever own personally.Dad Salaries
I distinctly remember one conversation my friend and I had in which our father’s salaries came up. Now, I actually had no earthly clue what my father made, but for some reason I was feeling competitive and insecure that day, so I told Steven my father made $35,000 a year, which sounded tremendous to me. He countered that if MY dad made $35,000 a year, then HIS dad must make $50,000 a year. I shut up at that point, because I figured it must be true, given their apparently luxurious lifestyle.The Boom Boom Cannon
This one seemed to sting the most of all: one Christmas, my “big gift” was a plastic UFO that could fly by way of a motorized propeller. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the damn thing to fly, in spite of my father’s best efforts. So it was pretty disappointing. I visited Steven to see what he got for Christmas, and he was the proud owner of a tiny working cannon called the Boom Boom (yeah, safety concerns weren’t as prevalent those days……….this was actually a working cannon, with gunpowder, albeit very small). It was made of nice, heavy metal, and I’d never seen one before. It seemed like just about the best toy imaginable.Looking back, it was as if my dad was 6 feet tall, just like everyone’s else’s dad, and here was my friend who had a dad that was 6 feet and 1 inch tall. Steven’s toys were just a LITTLE bit nicer. His house was a LITTLE bit cleaner. His vacations were a LITTLE bit fancier. But, in truth, the difference between his life and everyone else’s was really, really small. Back then, though, I always felt poor when I was with Steven.
These days, the difference isn’t between a 6 foot guy and someone 6’1″. It’s more like suddenly there are some people who are 900 feet tall – – 1500 feet tall – – 5000 feet tall. Their wealth is just as absurdly large as such heights would be, while at the same time the mass of humanity seems to be getting shorter by the week.
For decades – – mainly the 40s, 50s, and 60s – – wealth distribution in America was incredibly even. Someone very middle-of-the-road could still aspire to be “the rich guy” in town. If my father, for instance, got it in his head that he wanted to win the rat race in our neighborhood, it wouldn’t have been that difficult. It was totally feasible. That extra inch wasn’t unattainable.
Starting in the 70s, thought, and picking up speed in the 1980s, things started to change. Over the past third of a century, policy has clearly handed the wealth of the country over to the rich kids.
Notice the change that took place in 1982. Interestingly, that was exactly the same year that the original Forbes 400 list came out. Their timing couldn’t have been better, because the very existence of such a “rich list” was the equivalent of ringing in an era of plutocracy. But read what the list was like in the inaugural issue………
In the first Forbes 400 list, there were only 13 billionaires, and a net worth of 75 Million USD secured a spot on the list. The 1982 list represented 2.8% of the Gross Domestic Product of the United States. The 1982 Forbes 400 had 22.8% of the list composed of oil fortunes, with 15.3% from manufacturing, 9% from finance and only 3% from technology driven fortunes.
Being a billionaire was a big, big deal. Only 13 entries! These days, just to on the list at ALL, you need a net worth of at least $1.7 billion, 23 times higher than the original list. Amazingly, there are nearly 200 people who are billionaires that don’t even make it on the list at all, because they don’t have enough! So the 1982 list seems absolutely quaint in the modern era.
Life tends to move in cycles, and I doubt the scenario in which this massive disparity exists is a permanent feature of life. However, it will take many decades – – and probably more than a little social pain – – to share the wealth again.
All I can say to my younger self regarding my rich friend……….it really wasn’t so bad, and Boom Boom Cannon notwithstanding, financial life was a lot more evenly-balanced back then than it is now. And I still don’t have a treehouse.
- "It's The 'Russia', Stupid!"
Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
It’s another week in Washington and another horror show. This time it was Attorney General Jeff Sessions being grilled by Senators on whether, when, and how he might have met with certain Russians, or any Russian, or someone who might actually know a Russian. In addition to fishing for any inconsistency that could be used to support an accusation of obstruction of justice or perjury – the usual sleazy methodology of politically motivated investigations here – the transparent aim was to further poison the well on any possible initiative to improve ties with Moscow.
The strategy appears to be working. The Russian Embassy in Washington confirms that for the first time since the Russian Federation’s founding the State Department did not send pro forma national day greetings. Perhaps the bureaucrats were afraid they would be tainted and themselves become targets of multiple investigations into «collusion» with the Kremlin. (Luckily, this intrepid Washington analyst has no qualms about such associations.)
Or more likely, they themselves are part of the Russophobic mob undermining the White House. It has been reported that soon after the inauguration Trump sought to open dialogue with the Kremlin and set an early summit with President Vladimir Putin. This produced a hysterical counteraction from the Deep State. As reported by conservative columnist and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan:
«The State Department was tasked with working out the details.
«Instead, says Daniel Fried, the coordinator for sanctions policy, he received ‘panicky’ calls of ‘Please, my God, can you stop this?’.
«Operatives at State, disloyal to the president and hostile to the Russia policy on which he had been elected, collaborated with elements in Congress to sabotage any detente. They succeeded.
«‘It would have been a win-win for Moscow,’ said Tom Malinowski of State, who boasted last week of his role in blocking a rapprochement with Russia. State employees sabotaged one of the principal policies for which Americans had voted, and they substituted their own».
So much for constitutional government and the rule of law…
But now it gets even worse. This week Congress moved legislation designed to codify in statute sanctions imposed on Russia by Barack Obama over Ukraine and evidence-free charges of Russian election interference. Provisions for a presidential waiver, which are standard in any sanctions legislation, are unusually narrow. Congressional proponents are clear that their aim is to take the matter out of the president’s hands. Democrats, seemingly devoid of any other policy agenda or ideas, vow to keep banging the Russia drum through the 2018 Congressional elections.
When all is said and done, there are lots of reasons the political class hates Trump. His heresies on immigration and trade are near the top of the list. But make no mistake: for the Deep State and its mainstream media arm, demonizing Russia and Vladimir Putin personally is a dangerous obsession. (There is reason to suspect «Russian collusion» figured in the thinking of a fanatical Leftist’s shooting attack on Republican Congressmen: «The shooter also signed a petition calling for an investigation into Trump-Russia ties, confirming he was radicalized by the mainstream media’s obsession with conspiracy theories about Russia interfering with the election».)
It remains to be seen whether Oliver Stone’s extended interview with Putin on the Showtime network will have any impact. So far the commentary seems to be divided between descriptions of the substance of the discussion and attacks on Stone for talking with such a bad, bad man: «Speaking after the interview, Stone refuted allegations that he became an unwitting messenger of pro-Putin propaganda or of dishonest information given by the president».
With regard to substance, relatively little attention has been accorded in American media to Putin’s flat accusation that U.S. «special services» have supported terrorists, including in Chechnya. Of course anyone paying attention would know that arming jihadists is a standard part of U.S. policy, going back at least to Afghanistan in the 1980s and repeated in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, and today in Syria. Indeed, as early as the 1950s the U.S. had established a very close relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist elements as a weapon against Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Baathists in Syria and Iraq, who Washington thought were a little too cozy with the Soviet Union and far too socialist and secular for the taste of our pals in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.
There is a real symbiosis between the anti-Russian imperative in American foreign policy and support for radical Islamic elements. It did not end when the Soviet Union and communism collapsed but rather was intensified. This is why Moscow’s constant calls for a common front against terrorism are always rebuffed. Such cooperation doesn’t make any sense for anomenklatura whose number one goal is hostility to Moscow and for whom jihadists are at worst «frienemies» – people who may be troublesome but useful.
We can only imagine how completely different the world would be if the U.S. were to recognize that Russia is a country that in many respects is not that different from the United States or Europe and that we had common interests. But for the U.S. Deep State, that would amount to switching sides in a global conflict, where we see jihadists essentially as «freedom fighters» against a geopolitical adversary. These same clueless «elites» are then puzzled when their carefully nurtured, cuddly, «moderate» jihad terrorists attack us back here at home.
This irrational pattern is at the root of the hostility of American policymakers toward Russia and any prospect of normalizing bilateral ties. In large part, it’s what underlies the «soft coup» being directed against Trump, of which the Sessions pillorying was an episode. (A late report based on unreliable, unverified sources suggests that Special Counsel on the Russia probe, Robert Mueller, is expanding his investigation to include potential obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump. Mueller, a close personal friend of ousted FBI Director James Comey, has already packed his team with partisan Democrats.)
Those behind this attempted coup think we can continue to treat Russia as though it were a minor power of the magnitude of Serbia, Iraq, Libya, or Syria, or even Iran. They think if we just keep pushing, pushing, pushing, either the Russians will collapse or back down. They will do everything possible to box Trump in and prevent him from pursuing any path other than the disastrous course laid out by Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama. They can see no other outcome than removing Putin and returning Russia to the condition of a Yeltsin-era vassal state – a term Putin used in the Stone interview – or, better yet, its territorial breakup along the lines suggested by the late Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Will the Oliver Stone interview change any minds? It’s too soon to tell. But if the soft coup against Trump succeeds, it might not matter, since then America could not be considered a self-governing constitutional republic even in a residual sense. We may have already passed our own Rubicon and just don’t know it yet.
- Richest Americans Will Control 70% Of Country's Wealth By 2021, BCG Says
Being rich is great. But being rich in America? That’s even better.
With US stock benchmarks trading just below record highs, and Treasury yields not too far from the all-time lows reached last summer, the gulf between the world’s wealthy elite – those 18 million households worldwide with more than $1 million in assets – and everybody else is rapidly widening.
According to a new study by Boston Consulting Group via Bloomberg, these households – with a total head count of roughly 70 million people, or about 1% of the world’s population – control 45 percent of the $166.5 trillion in wealth. By 2021, they will control more than half, suggesting that, while wealth inequality in the rest of the world is simply accelerating, in America, it’s gone into overdrive. Right now, 63 percent of America’s private wealth in the hands of U.S. millionaires and billionaires, BCG said. By 2021, their share of the nation’s wealth will rise to an estimated 70 percent.
“The share of income going to the top 1 percent in the U.S. has more than doubled in the last 35 years, after dropping in the decades after World War II (when the rich were taxed at high double-digit rates). The tide shifted in the 1980s under Republican President Ronald Reagan, a decade when “trickle-down economics” saw tax rates for the rich fall, union membership shrink, and stock markets spike.”
In its report, BCG puts the global rate of wealth creation in 2015 and 2016 at 5.3 percent, though the consulting firm expects it to accelerate to about 6 percent annually for the next five years. Those gains will accrue almost exclusively to the wealthiest Americans, while wealth held by everyone else is just barely growing.
Of course, there’s a caveat: In America, most of these gains exist only on paper. More than 70% of new wealth creation is derived from the rising value of rich investors’ portfolios. The rest is what BGC describes as “new wealth creation” aka real money earned by workers and entrepreneurs. Globally, the share derived from asset valuations falls to about 50%.
“In the U.S., the creation of “new” wealth is a minor factor, making up just 28 percent of the nation’s wealth increase last year. It’s even lower in Japan, at 21 percent. In the rest of the Asia Pacific region, meanwhile, two-thirds of the rise is driven by new wealth creation.”
The richest Americans could receive an additional bump if/when President Donald Trump pushes the fiscal agenda on which he campaigned through Congress – an agenda that includes tax cuts, deregulation and trillions of dollars’ worth of new infrastructure projects. However, since the exact details of these policies are not yet widely known, it’s difficult to predict their specific impact, BCG says.
“’No one knows’ what kind of tax changes will become law, said BCG senior partner Bruce Holley. However, “this could buoy the [growth in U.S. wealth] that we are predicting.”
America remains home to the highest concentration of millionaires and billionaires in the world, and their ranks are growing fast: Today, about 7 million Americans are worth more than $1 million. BCG expects that number to balloon to 10.4 million by 2021 – an annual growth rate of 8 percent, or about 670,000 new millionaires each year.
China has the second most millionaires and billionaires, at 2.1 million, though its population is four times the size of the US.
Within the US, glaring disparities exist from region to region. As Fortune reported back in 2015, roughly two-thirds of America’s millionaires and billionaires live in 12 metro areas, mostly wealthy enclaves along the coasts.
Meanwhile, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest survey of household economics and decisionmaking, a quarter of American adults can’t pay all their monthly bills, and 44% have less than $400 cash on hand in case of an emergency.
- Scientists Warn Current Yellowstone Quake-Swarm "Could Rip The Guts Out Of America"
Authored by Shepard Ambellas via Intellihub.com,
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) seismology reports conclude that a massive swarm of earthquakes swept through the park on Friday triggering more than 60 separate events in which seismographs spiked to magnitudes of up to 5.0.
Experts fear that the supervolcano is long overdue for an eruption capable of wiping out a vast amount of human, animal, and plant life in the Continental United States.
Scientists currently believe that there’s a 10% chance that a “supervolcanic Category 7 eruption” could take place this century, as pointed out by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku who appeared on a segment for Fox News.
The grey haired physicist told Shepard Smith that the “danger” we are now facing with the caldera is that it’s long overdue for an eruption which Kaku said could “rip the guts out of the USA.”
Kaku said that a “pocket of lava” located under the park has turned out to be twice as big as scientists originally thought.
Scientist concur that the last eruption of the caldera took place some 640,000 years ago.
The U.S. is currently under contract with at least 4 countries all of which have agreed to house displaced U.S. citizens in the unfortunate event the Yellowstone supervolcano were to erupt. Hundreds of billions of dollars were paid to foreign governments to facilitate the agreement which spans a ten year period from its signing, ending in 2024.
An excerpt from an article I authored in April of 2014 titled: “Report: Brazil, Argentina and Australia sign contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars to house displaced U.S. populace when Yellowstone supervolcano erupts” reads:
The U.S. plan for relocation was formulated after a recent scientific analysis of the park revealed that Yellowstone’s supervolcano has the potential to violently erupt within the next 10-years as noted by others including the famous astrophysicist Michio Kaku.
In fact, Praag, a Pakistani publication, recently reported:
It may take up to ten years for pressure in the magma chamber of the super volcano to build. According to Dr. Jean-Philippe Perrillat of the National Centre for Scientific Research in Grenoble, France, “it is the difference in density between the molten magma in the caldera and the surrounding rock big enough for the magma from the chamber to the surface to increase “.
“The effect is the same as the extra buoyancy of a soccer ball under water fill with air, after which it rises to the surface because the surrounding water poet,” said dr. Perrillat. “If the magma volume is large enough, it should go to the surface to rise and explode like a champagne bottle that ontkurk be.”
According to Dr. Sipho Mathetwe, the South African government “sympathy for the American challenge (challenge) to Yellowstone, but we have our own challenges in South Africa. There are 200 million white people in America, and if too many of them to South Africa flights, it is a big problem, even though there is enough housing and infrastructure available. It will destabilize the country and may even bring back apartheid. South Africa is not for sale.”
However, according to the report, “Brazil, Argentina and Australia” jumped on the bandwagon, accepting the request from Washington.
The calm before the storm started a few weeks back when researchers noticed a downtick in seismic activity before Friday’s swarm struck.
Earthquake expert “dutchsense” chimed on Yellowstone in a video posted to YouTube on June 15, one day before the swarm occurred, to warn of future activity in the region…
- Venezuela's 'Goldman Bounce' In Reserves Is Gone
The boost in foreign reserves Venezuela enjoyed after Goldman Sachs investment arm picked up $2.8 billion of bonds from the state oil company is almost gone.
"We're gonna need another boost…" – time for some more Goldman 'swaps'?
As Bloomberg notes, the country’s cash hoard has fallen $326 million this week to $10.2 billion, near the 15-year low reached last month before the windfall.
Investors follow the level intently, trying to gauge how much time Venezuela has left before its dollar shortage results in a default.
- Welcome To The Valium Era
Authored by Bonner & Partners' Bill Bonner, annotated by Acting-Man's Pater Tenebrarum,
Don’t Be Fooled by These Calm Markets
What is happening in the world of money? Well – the most striking thing is: nothing.
It doesn’t seem to matter what happens. Dysfunction in Washington. Meltdown of the techs. No matter how rough the seas get, the markets glide along… scarcely noticing the storm-tossed waves below.
Thankfully the world’s central planners are so well-versed in egging on the creation of an ever greater mountain of debt and seemingly limitless asset price inflation with their “scientific” monetary policy that a complete blow-up of the the financial system only threatens now and then… most of the time we are in “moderation” mode. Nowadays we are in something that feels like a Valium-induced waking dream. It couldn’t be better… volatility has just served up its greatest disappearance act since the end of the last “moderation”. What could possibly go wrong? – click to enlarge.
Remember “The Great Moderation”? That was the title of a speech then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke gave in 2004. Thanks to such able guidance by the Fed, he implied, the world’s financial system was calm, stable, and safe:
“One of the most striking features of the economic landscape over the past 20 years or so has been a substantial decline in macroeconomic volatility…
Several writers on the topic have dubbed this remarkable decline in the variability of both output and inflation “the Great Moderation.” Similar declines in the volatility of output and inflation occurred at about the same time in other major industrial countries, with the recent exception of Japan, a country that has faced a distinctive set of economic problems in the past decade.
Reduced macroeconomic volatility has numerous benefits.”
(emphasis added)
The courageous mastermind of the Valium Era explains the secret sauce behind his success.
Well, yes. Bernanke was talking about the economy. But investors got the message. The Fed chairman was not merely describing “moderation.” He was promising it.
And so, for the next three years, it was up, up, and up for the stock market. And then, it was down. The Great Moderation set up investors for the crisis of 2008.
When market volatility – a.k.a. price swings – seems to vanish, people feel no need to protect themselves. They buy without doing research. Or if they are traders, they sell “vol” – confident that whatever heebie-jeebies markets may have suffered in the past, they’ve got nothing to worry about now.
No need to put on hedges. No need to hold some cash just in case. And no need to watch your back. The Fed will watch it for you!
Foolish Courage
The Great Moderation continued… until it was history. In 2008, stocks were cut in half and the entire world’s finances were on the verge of a complete meltdown.
This overdue correction was snuffed by the Fed – led by Mr. Moderation himself, Ben Bernanke, who mounted the most immodest rescue effort ever attempted.
The Fed increased its balance sheet eightfold. The world – suckered by lower borrowing rates – added another $80 trillion of new debt. Mr. Bernanke, with conceit bordering on insanity, lauded this act of bumbling vandalism in his book, calling it The Courage to Act.
An illustration of what happens when Fed chairmen are overwhelmed by courage – click to enlarge.
And now, thanks to continued reckless courage on the part of the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan – which are both still pumping more cash into the system – we enjoy another period of “moderation.”
Volatility is back down to brain-dead levels. The news hath no sting. Bloomberg:
“U.S. stocks snapped a two-day slide to close at fresh records as technology shares rebounded from the worst drop of the year… Treasuries were steady as the Federal Reserve policy meeting kicked off.”
Nothing shocks this market. Nothing rocks it. Nothing socks it to it.
Nothing does – that is, until something does.
- WTF Chart Of The Day – Mapping Jihadi Arrests Across Europe
According to a new report from Europol, the EU saw a total of 1,002 arrests for terrorism offences in 2016. The number of people arrested on suspicion of Islamist terrorism offences rose for the third year in a row.
There were 395 such arrests in 2014, 687 in 2015 and 718 last year.
You will find more statistics at Statista
As the chart above, via Statista's Nial McCarthy exposes, France had 429 jihadist arrests last year, far ahead of second placed Spain's 69.
Belgium, well known as a source of ISIS foreign fighters in Syria, came third with 62 arrests.
- Mark Levin: Mueller Investigation Is Pretext To Impeachment
Content originally published at iBankCoin.com
Mark Levin – Radio host and Editor-in-Chief at Conservative Review, elegantly laid out how the Democrats have orchestrated a kangaroo court to go after the Trump adminstration with the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel in the FBI investigation Russia and the Trump campaign – referred to by many including Trump as a “witch hunt.”
You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history – led by some very bad and conflicted people! #MAGA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017
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For starters, Comey and Mueller personal friends…
John Legato is a former deep cover FBI special agent – and he writes that Comey and Mueller – their families have vacationed together, have had picnics together, hours spent at the office together, had a few cocktails after work. So Mueller can’t possibly be impartial here. Not when he’s very close friends with a key witness.
The point is this – he’s not independent.
Levin then brought up the four democrat-supporting attorneys Mueller has hired for the investigation – which Newt Gingrich tweeted about last week:
Republicans are delusional if they think the special counsel is going to be fair. Look who he is hiring.check fec reports. Time to rethink.
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) June 12, 2017
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Michael Dreeben – donated to Obama and Clinton
Jeannie Rhee – deputy assist AG, Wilmer Hale, Donated to DNC, Obama, Clinton
James Quarles – asst. special prosecutor, Wilmer Hale, long history of Dem donations, Clinton
Andrew Weissman – oversees fraud at Justice. Donated six times to Obama PACs as well as DNC in 2006.
Noting the hypocrisy of it all…
I can assure you if the shoe were on the other foot, if Hillary Clinton was being investigated like she should have been and there was a special counsel, and that special counsel had a close relationship with a key witness against Hillary Clinton, a personal relationship – a professional realationship, and if that special counsel had hired four republicans who were prosecutors that donated heavily to a Trump PAC or Trump campaign or Bush campaign, you would never hear the end of this. Never.
The hypocrisy, the contradictions smack you in the face.
Mechanics of the setup
James Comey’s leaked memo resulted in the Special Counsel, which has morphed in scope from Russian interference to obstruction and collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow – as well as the finances of members of Trump’s team such as Jared Kushner.
And so now, because Mr. Comey leaked the memo information and Mr. Rosenstein buckled under the slightest Democrat pressure, the Russia investigation has moved from a counter intelligence investigation to a criminal investigation, and now Mr. Mueller is claiming authority over all the Russia investigation, the Flynn investigation, now he’s looking into financial relationship.
And MORE Hypocrisy!
He’s [Mueller] not looking into any of the financial relationships between the Clinton Foundation and Russia. Any of the violations of the espionage act by Hillary Clinton and if the Russians got a hold of any of those emails. Mr. Comey nicely and neatly closed that investigation.
So what do we have now?
What have the democrats and Mr. Comey succeeded in doing? Completely gumming up the works at the Justice dept. Gumming up the works at the WH, and trying to create a pretext for impeachment.
Clip below. Well worth 16 minutes and 32 seconds of your life, and for more of Levin’s show from Friday, click here.
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- Conservatives Prepare "Secret Plot" To Oust UK's May If She Backs Off "Hard Brexit"
The walls are closing in on UK’s embattled prime minister Theresa May, who after the disastrous outcome in the general election, and following a torrid week in which she faced fierce criticism for her handling of the Grenfell Tower catastrophe, in which 58 people are now presumed dead, is reportedly facing what the Telegraph calls a “secret plot” – well, not so secret any more – involving a “stalking horse” challenge to remove her as prime minister if she caves to Labour demands, and waters down the “Hard Brexit.”
With the NYT reporting that “‘Soft Brexit’ Forces Rise in Britain on the Eve of Talks” scheduled for Monday, (despite 70% of Britons still supporting Brexit according to a Thursday YouGov poll), the Telegraph reports that according to leading Eurosceptic MPs they are prepared to mount an immediate leadership challenge if Mrs May deviates from her original plan. The British publication adds that “conservative MPs – including Cabinet ministers – have concluded that Mrs May cannot lead them into the next election and they are now discussing when she could go.
Fearing that the chorus of “soft Brexit” demands rising across the UK following May’s sudden weakness, while Germany’s economy minister Brigitte Zypries going so far as telling Reuters that an outright “reversal of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union would be great,” Eurosceptic MPs have warned that any attempt to keep Britain in the customs union and single market or any leeway for the European Court of Justice to retain an oversight function will trigger an “overnight” coup.
The plot has been likened to Sir Anthony Meyer’s 1989 challenge against Margaret Thatcher. One influential former minister said: “If we had a strong signal that she were backsliding I think she would be in major difficulty.
The point is she is not a unifying figure any more. She has really hacked off the parliamentary party for obvious reasons. So I’m afraid to say there is no goodwill towards her.”
They added: “What we would do is to put up a candidate to run against her, a stalking horse. You can imagine who would do it. It would be a rerun of the Margaret Thatcher scenario, with Anthony Meyer.
Another former minister told the Telegraph that “if she weakened on Brexit, the world would fall in… all hell would break loose.” Additionally, many other Eurosceptics have effectively made their support for May conditional on her fulfilling the terms set out in her Lancaster House speech, delivered in January, which was also reflected in the Tory manifesto.
To be sure, even if May relented to demands for a “Soft Brexit”, it is unclear just how the UK could afford the €100 billion soft Brexit bill demanded by Brussels to arrange an amicable divorce; and as a reminder, in October, EU summit chair Donald Tusk said:
“The only real alternative to a ‘hard Brexit’ is ‘no Brexit’.” Pushing soft Brexit over hard is seen increasing the risk of replacing a smooth Brexit with rough.
But even if mutiny is averted this time, May’s days could be numbered for a different reason altogether: her response to this week’s tragic conflagration at the Grenfell Tower, where critics questioned why May failed to meet victims and relatives on her first visit to the Grenfell Tower – in contrast to Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader. As the Telegraph notes, “Damian Green, the First Secretary of State, defended Mrs May on Saturday, saying she was “distraught” about the blaze and said the criticism was “terribly unfair”.”
But some Tories have admitted they are concerned about a “very serious” backlash and fear Mrs May’s image may have been damaged irrevocably.
Meanwhile, May has been scrambling to contain as much damage as possible:
Mrs May last night attempted to stabilize her new Government – still less than a fortnight old – by announcing there would be no Queen’s Speech in 2018. The move, which will mean Parliament sitting for a two-year session rather than one, was framed as a way of ensuring Brexit-related laws are passed in time.
However, it also removes a critical vote that could have toppled the Government and comes as a crucial support deal with the Democratic Unionist Party has yet to be finalized.
All this is taking place as Brexit enters the spotlight when UK’s David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, goes to Brussels for the formal start of talks tomorrow.
A Cabinet row that has played out all week goes public on Sunday as Liam Fox and Boris Johnson issue a thinly veiled rebuttal of Philip Hammond’s views. Dr Fox, the International Trade Secretary, writes in The Telegraph that Britain must be able to sign free trade deals after Brexit – which means leaving the customs union.
“We want Britain to be able to negotiate its own trade agreements, and as we leave the European Union that is what we will do,” he writes. Mr Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, is expected to make public similar comments.
However, Mr Hammond, the Chancellor, will appear on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday to argue for a softer Brexit with an emphasis on maintaining free trade links with the EU.
The biggest irony of all, perhaps, is that the UK political crisis is blowing up just as France is set to elect a government led by Emanuel Macron’s party in a landslide in tomorrow‘s parliamentary elections, making France – the country which everyone was so worried about at the start of the year – the rock of establishment stability, even as the UK teeters on the edge.
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