- Former NSA Tech Chief Says Mueller Report Was Based On CIA-Fabricated "Evidence"
Former NSA Tech Chief Says Mueller Report Was Based On CIA-Fabricated "Evidence"
Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Duran,
On December 12th, the retired NSA whistleblower and former Technical Director of the NSA, Bill Binney asserted, at 39:00-44:00 in this audio interview of him:
BILL BINNEY: I basically have always been saying that all of this Russian hack never happened, but we have some more evidence coming out recently.
We haven’t published it yet, but what we have seen is that there are at least five items that we’ve found that were produced by Guccifer 2.0 back on June 15th, where they had the Russian fingerprints in them, suggesting the Russians made the hack. Well, we found the same five items published by Wikileaks in the Podesta emails. Those items do not have the Russian fingerprints, which directly implies that Guccifer 2.0 was inserting these into the files to make it look like the Russians did this hack.
Taking that into account with all the other evidence we have; like the download speeds from Guccifer 2.0 were too fast, and they couldn’t be managed by the web; and that the files he was putting together and saying that he actually hacked, the two files he said he had were really one file, and he was playing with the data; moving it to two different files to claim two hacks. Taking that into account with the fabrication of the Russian fingerprints, it leads us back to inferring that in fact the marble framework out of the Vault 7 compromise of CIA hacking routines was a possible user in this case.
In other words, it looked like the CIA did this, and that it was a matter of the CIA making it look like the Russians were doing the hack. So, when you look at that and also look at the DNC emails that were published by Wikileaks that have this FAT-file format in them, all 35,813 of these emails have rounded off times to the nearest even second. That’s a FAT-file format property; that argues that those files were, in fact, downloaded to a thumb drive or CD-rom and physically transported before Wikileaks posted them.
Which again argues that it wasn’t a hack.
So, all of the evidence we’re finding is clearly evidence that the Russians were not in fact hacking; it was probably our own people.
It’s very hard for us to get this kind of information out. The mainstream media won’t cover it; none of them will. It’s very hard. We get some bloggers to do that and some radio shows.
Also, I put all of this into a sworn affidavit in the Roger Stone case.
I did that because all of the attack on him was predicated on him being connected with this Russian hack which was false to being with. All the evidence we’re accumulating clearly says and implies, the US government — namely the FBI, CIA, the DOJ, and of course State Department — all these people involved in this hack, bought a dossier and all of the information going forward to the FISA court.
All of them knew that this was a fake from the very beginning, because this Guccifer 2.0 character was fabricating it. They were using him plus the Internet Research Agency [IRA] as “supposed trolls of the Russian government”. Well, when they sent their lawyers over to challenge that in a court of law, the government failed to prove they had any connection with the Russian government. They basically were chastised by the judge for fabricating a charge against this company. So, if you take the IRA and the trolls away from that argument, and Guccifer 2.0, then the entire Mueller report is a provable fabrication; because it’s based on Guccifer 2.0 and the IRA. Then the entire Rosenstein indictment is also a fabrication and a fake and a fraud for the same reasons. The judges seem to be involved in trying to keep this information out of the public domain.
So, we have a really extensive shadow government here at work, trying to keep the understanding and knowledge of what’s really happening away from the public of the United States. That’s the really bad part. And the mainstream media is a participant in this; they’re culpable.
* * *
The CIA-edited and written Wikipedia, in its article about Binney, accuses him by saying — while providing no footnote or linked-to source for their allegation against him — “His dissent from the consensus view that Russia interfered with the 2016 US election appears to be based on Russian disinformation.” Ever since Binney went public criticizing U.S. intelligence agencies, they have been trying to discredit him. Thus far, however, their efforts have been nothing more than insinuations against his person, without any specific allegation of counter-evidence that discredits any of his actual assertions.
* * *
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 00:05 - After Five Years, Sweden Is About To Wave Goodbye To Negative Rates
After Five Years, Sweden Is About To Wave Goodbye To Negative Rates
In a few hours, at 10am GMT, Sweden is about to wave goodbye to the land of negative rates, if only for a little while.
After the Swedish Riksbank cut rates as low as -0.5%, where it kept them for nearly three years, from 2016 until the start of 2019, when it hiked by 25bps on January, the Swedish Central bank is almost unanimously expected to hike rates by 25bps to 0.0% according almost all analysts polled by Reuters, putting its experiment with NIRP in the rearview mirror, at least until the next cut by the ECB drags it right back under.
As RanSquawk previews, if the Riksbank does hike as expected, focus will turn to if this is as their October repo path indicates a one-and-done increase to move out of negative rates, as well as the magnitude of opposition to the hike. This meeting includes a press conference which will begin at 10:00GMT.
Previous Meeting
In October, the Riksbank left rates unchanged at -0.25% but clearly signaled that the rate would ‘most probably’ be hiked to 0.0% in December’s meeting. Additionally, their forecast for the repo rate was downgraded, and now indicates that the rate will ‘be unchanged for a prolonged period after the expected rise in December’. In the post-meeting press conference, Governor Ingves said that negative rates were an exceptional measure and it is appropriate to gradually exit from negative rates.
Minutes & Rhetoric
While the October meeting and conference illustrated a desire to hike, the minutes were less in-fitting with this and highlighted a split amongst the board. Most notably, Skingsley said it is justifiable to ask whether it is appropriate to increase rates at all and one member expressed hesitance at hiking around year-end; instead, argued for such a move to be further down the forecast period.
Aside from the minutes, remarks out of the Riksbank has been fairly light; the most pertinent of comments, which question the December move, arising from Jansson stating that if the rate was to increase around year-end it may be perceived as the Bank deviating from its mandate. While not rhetoric in the traditional sense, the Central Bank Financial Market Survey indicated that several participants believe a less expansionary policy would improve the function of FX and Fixed income markets. Overall, while the pushback from the more Dovish members of the Riksbank is unlikely to be sufficient to alter the flagged hike it does open-up the potential for dissenters.
Data
The most pertinent release has been November’s CPIF which beat market expectation printing at 1.7% which is crucially in-line with the Riksbanks November forecast (1.71%); which according to Nordea emphasizes the likelihood of a December hike. Other metrics have been more downbeat, and do not support the planned hike, such as PMIs, Q3 GDP and November’s unemployment rate which rose from 6.0% to 6.8%. That said, Swedish labor market data has been affected by errors recently which ING suggests may lead to the Riksbank treating this with some skepticism. Overall, the domestic data front is not conducive to an interest rate increase, as such consensus is for any hike to be a one-off move, as the October forecast path suggested.
Deputy Governor Breman
Since the previous meeting Anna Breman has been appointed as Deputy Governor to replace af Jochnick, Breman will be partaking in the December policy meeting. Breman has previously expressed concern regarding a weak SEK and believes the Riksbank, with negative rate policy, has a limited tool-kit in the scenario of an economic downturn. For reference, Nordea highlight that her monetary policy stance is difficult to categorise and she is likely to follow the majority initially which, overall, makes the board more hawkish.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 23:45 - "We Can't Wait To See This Bird Fly!": NASA's X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Jet Cleared For Final Assembly
"We Can't Wait To See This Bird Fly!": NASA's X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Jet Cleared For Final Assembly
NASA’s X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) plane has been cleared for large scale assembly, said a NASA press release, dated Dec. 12.
NASA will build the X-59 in partnership with Lockheed Martin and start test flights in 2021. The goal of the flights is to reduce the noise a sonic boom makes to a sonic thump, or basically as loud as a car door.
Tests are expected to occur over major US metro areas as the X-59 cruises at 940 mph at 55,000 feet.
The X-59’s long, slender design will allow it to reduce the loudness of a sonic boom to that of a gentle thump.
“This aircraft has the potential to transform aviation in the United States and around the world by making faster-than-sound air travel overland possible for everyone,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine recently said.
“We can’t wait to see this bird fly!”
The X-59 will cost about $250 million to construct, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works factory in Palmdale, California, will be responsible for the build.
Skunk Works has also been responsible for developing some of the most secretive aircraft in the world, including the Lockheed U-2, Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, and Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.
NASA’s decision to approve the X-59 for assembly is the first experimental plane to be cleared in more than three decades.
The Key Decision Point-D (KDP-D) was the last obstacle for the X-59 before officials reconvene in 4Q20 before the plane’s flight in 2021.
“With the completion of KDP-D we’ve shown the project is on schedule, it’s well planned and on track. We have everything in place to continue this historic research mission for the nation’s air-traveling public,” said Bob Pearce, NASA’s associate administrator for Aeronautics.
Our @NASAAero X-59 ✈️ was cleared for final assembly & integration of its systems. The X-59 is designed to fly faster than sound without loud sonic booms. Data from the flights will help establish new rules for commercial supersonic air travel over land. https://t.co/NdLZau5ffC pic.twitter.com/MJZWKcEsBx
— NASA (@NASA) December 17, 2019
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With the construction of the X-59 already underway at Skunk Works, by late 2021, the world will know if the technology can actually reduce the noise of a sonic boom. If so, then this could pave the way for the reintroduction of supersonic flight for commercial airliners by 2030.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 23:25 - Camera Footage Of Epstein's First Suicide Attempt Has Disappeared, And Nobody Knows Why
Camera Footage Of Epstein's First Suicide Attempt Has Disappeared, And Nobody Knows Why
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
Surveillance footage showing Jeffrey Epstein’s first alleged suicide attempt has “gone missing.”
On July 23, Epstein was sharing a cell with Nick Tartaglione when the disgraced sex trafficker apparently tried to hang himself. Epstein subsequently claimed that Tartaglione, a former cop accused of killing four people in a botched drug deal, had tried to kill him.
However, when Bruce Barket, Tartaglione’s lawyer, requested surveillance footage from the cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (which he had formally requested be preserved two days after the suicide attempt), he was told it had disappeared…
“We asked for all the video and photographic evidence to be preserved, specifically this surveillance video. Now it’s gone,” said Attorney Bruce Barket.
“I don’t know the details of how it was lost or destroyed or why it wasn’t retained when it should have been.”
The video footage was relevant to Tartaglione’s defense because it is potentially evidence of the ex-cop’s good character.
“It is on the surface troubling,” Barket added.
“I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve found out more details.”
According to TMZ, the feds had no explanation for why the footage has gone missing, they said they simply can’t find it.
More “mistakes”?
The judge, helpfully, told prosecutors to look further into what happened to it.
Finally, remember: There are no conspiracies and you can trust the authorities and the mainstream media… and, also, Epstein didn’t kill himself.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 23:05 - Australian Government Created Bizarre Horoscope To Scare Illegal Aliens
Australian Government Created Bizarre Horoscope To Scare Illegal Aliens
The Australian government has created a bizarre horoscope to spook illegal immigrants from Sri Lanka – threatening bad omens if they make an unauthorized trek in to the land down under, according to BuzzFeed News.
Sagittarius? “If you illegally travel to Australia by boat you will be returned. Everything you risked to get there will be in vain and you will end up owing everyone,” reads the horoscope.
Gemini? “You will lose your wife’s jewellery…“
Taurus? “If you illegally travel to Australia by boat, expect to be returned home where you will face the humiliation of failure in your community.“
The horoscope poster was released under a freedom of information application for copies of printed advertising material in English to dissuade people smugglers and asylum seekers trying to reach Australia between 2013 and 2019.
The Department of Home Affairs did not respond to questions about when and where the horoscope poster was displayed.
However, the poster itself gives a few clues, suggesting it was distributed in Sri Lanka within the last few years.
“It is almost four years since any Sri Lankan person reached Australia on an illegal boat voyage,” the poster says. “During this period, Australian authorities have stopped and returned more than 160 Sri Lankans who tried to go to Australia illegally by boat.”
As part of the Operation Sovereign Borders policy, Australian immigration officers turn back any boats with asylum seekers on board to its country of origin without hearing their refugee claims. –BuzzFeed
Here are the horoscopes in full (via BuzzFeed).
ARIES: Criminals will rip you off
If you attempt to illegally travel to Australia by boat, expect people smugglers to take advantage of you. These criminals will take your money and you will be returned to Sri Lanka with nothing.
AQUARIUS: You and your family will lose everything
If you risk everything you and your family have built together to pay for an illegal boat voyage to Australia, you will be stopped and returned to Sri Lanka. You will suffer hardship and have nothing but bad luck.
SAGITTARIUS: You will be in debt forever
If you illegally travel to Australia by boat you will be returned. Everything you risked to get there will be in vain and you will end up owing everyone.
TAURUS: You will be ashamed of your actions
If you illegally travel to Australia by boat, expect to be returned home where you will face the humiliation of failure in your community. Bad luck will strike you if you try to perform this illegal deed.
VIRGO: You will have legal problems
If you illegally travel to Australia by boat you will be stopped and returned to face the legal consequences. Going through with this illegal act will bring you nothing but bad luck and regret for your actions.
CAPRICORN: You will put your life at risk
Deciding to risk your life on dangerous seas and unpredictable weather will be in vain. If you travel illegally to Australia, you will be returned to Sri Lanka and encounter a storm of bad luck.
GEMINI: You will lose your wife’s jewellery
Bad luck will come your way if you travel illegally to Australia by boat. Expect to lose everything you’ve pawned to pay for this pointless enterprise.
LIBRA: You will flush your money down the drain
Your luck is bad. You cannot illegally travel to Australia by boat as you will be stopped and returned, and all the money you spent getting there will be wasted.
CANCER: Family problems will occur
Luck is not in the cards for you. Do not try to travel illegally to Australia by boat, as you will be stopped and returned. You will lose everything your family owes to debt, and face family problems.
SCORPIO: You will waste your money
If you naively trust people smugglers’ lies and attempt illegal travel to Australia by boat, you will be returned to Sri Lanka and lose everything you put on the line to get there.
LEO: You will be filled with regret
If you attempt illegal travel to Australia by boat, you will be returned to face legal consequences for your illegal travel. Commit such a crime and expect nothing but bad luck.
PISCES: You will lose your family’s land
If you travel illegally to Australia by boat you will be returned. The money you got from mortgaging your family’s land will be wasted right before your eyes.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 22:45 - Russian Uran-9 Combat Robot Deployment In Syria: Results, Issues And Prospects
Russian Uran-9 Combat Robot Deployment In Syria: Results, Issues And Prospects
In late 2019, photos and footage showing Russia’s Uran-9 combat robot deployed in Syria appeared online. They became a rare visual evidence of the Uran-9 combat deployment in the war-torn country, which, according to official sources, took place in 2018.
The Uran-9 multipurpose unmanned ground combat vehicle was officially unveiled by Russian military equipment manufacturer JSC 766 UPTK during the Army-2016 International Military-Technical Forum in Russia in September 2016. The vehicle is designed to provide remote reconnaissance and fire support to a variety of tasks conducted by the counter-terrorism, reconnaissance and military units in urban environments.
The Uran-9 can be used fully autonomously on a predefined road or manually operated by one man from a truck control station or via a small backpack control station.
Back in 2016, the Uran-9 was armed with a 30mm Shipunov 2A72 automatic cannon, four ready-to-launch 9M120-1 Ataka (NATO reporting name: Spiral-2) anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM), six ready-to-launch Shmel-M reactive flamethrowers. and a 7.62mm Kalashnikov PKT/PKTM coaxial machine gun mounted to the left side of the main armament. The Uran-9 can be also armed with four Igla surface-to-air missiles.
There are two Ataka missile launchers and three Shmel-M on each side of the turret. The Ataka missile has an operational range from 400 m to 6 km, and is capable of penetrating armour to a depth of 800mm behind explosive reactive armour (ERA).
The Uran-9 unmanned ground combat vehicle has the ability to resist firing of small arms ammunition and shell splinters. The steel armour plates of the hull offer protection for the vehicle suspension.
The robotic system is equipped with various remote-controlled sensor modules such as laser warning system, and electro-optic and thermal imaging cameras. It has an onboard fire control system, comprised of automatic target detection, identification and tracking devices, as well as a ballistic computer. The systems are able to detect and track targets at a distance of up to 6 km during the day and 3 km during the night.
The Uran-9 has two operation modes – autonomous and manual. In autonomous it can automatically identify, detect, track and defeat enemy targets based on the pre-programmed path set by the operator. The Uran-9 robot is manually controlled by a single operator from a mobile command and control station mounted on a 6×6 tactical truck from a safe distance of 3km.
The Uran-9 is powered by a diesel-electric power source, which provides a maximum speed of 35 km/h on a highway, and a max speed of 25 km/h cross-country. In off-road conditions it moves slow, at only 10 km/h. The robot’s tracked chassis offers increased cross-country mobility. The average specific ground pressure is 0.6kg/sq.
The Uran-9 was commissioned in the Russian Armed Forces in January 2019, whereas it was tested in Syria in 2018. It furthermore was used during the Vostok-2018 military exercise.
In June 2018, RIA Novosti reported that some shortcomings in the combat capability of the Uran-9 were established, while it was being used in Syria.
Military experts discovered flaws in the control, mobility, firepower, intelligence and surveillance functions of the robot. In addition, with the independent movement of Uran-9, a low reliability of the running gear – track rollers and guide rollers, as well as suspension springs were discovered.
The robot also showed the unstable operation of a 30-mm automatic gun, untimely triggering of the start circuits, and the failure of the thermal imaging channel of the optical sighting station.
In April 2019, Interfax cited the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces, Chairman of the Military Scientific Committee of the Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Igor Makushev who said that the deficiencies in the robot were all removed by the development team.
In 2019, there were more issues with the Uran-9, it allegedly had problems with losing connection to the command post. Unlike flying drones, the control signal of a radio-controlled machine can be lost when passing through mountains, buildings and other objects. During tests in Syria, this led to a loss of the signal approximately 17 times for 1 minute, and twice the connection with the combat robot was lost for an hour and a half.
Reportedly, problems with rollers and suspension springs may occur in the Uran-9’s undercarriage, which is why the robot needs frequent repairs and cannot be used for a long time. But the biggest problem remains that the remote-control system reportedly works at a distance of no more than 300-400 meters instead of the promised 3 kilometers.
Upwards of 20 units of the Uran-9 have been constructed as of December 2019, and the deployment in Syria was generally regarded as positive and successful. Even if the reports of the issues were true, they could be rectified in short-term development.
There is no breakthrough in the development and deployment of unmanned systems. Nonetheless, the approach demonstrated by the Russian Armed Forces is interesting because the Russian side works on the development and deployment of not separate robotic systems, but rather groups of robotic systems controlled by a unified control system within a single intelligent network. The composition of these groups can be adapted depending on tasks that they had to achieve on the battlefield. Furthermore, significant efforts were and some successes was already achieved in the task of allowing these robotic systems to operate autonomously within the group to fulfill the assigned task. This is the first step on a long road of creating a swarm of fully autonomous robotic systems that can perform assigned tasks without a direct involvement of operators. The Kungas robotic complex and the Okhotnik heavy unmanned aerial vehicle are the most vocal examples of this approach.
Another point is the functionalism of the Russian projects. Instead of pushing ahead military robot dogs or tiny combat drones (all these directions have apparent issues taking into account the current technological progress), the Russian military chose straightforward and effective decisions employing relatively large tracked platforms that do not require non-existing engineering solutions. This allowed Moscow to focus on what really matters: the employment of robotic systems in combat conditions and the development of their fully autonomous solutions.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 22:25 - Trump Called Boeing CEO To Discuss 737 Max Production Halt
Trump Called Boeing CEO To Discuss 737 Max Production Halt
Until know, we knew there were White House
whistleblowersleakers when Trump spoke to world leaders. It now appears there are also leakers – at least three of them – when the president speaks to CEO of US companies.According to the NYT, on Sunday the US president called Boeing’s embattled CEO “to discuss the company’s plans to halt production of the 737 Max” according to “three people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about a private call”, which it appears would not remain private for too long.
Trump told the executive, Dennis Muilenburg, that he had heard that Boeing was planning to permanently shut down the Max production line, to which the Boeing CEO assured the president that any pause to production would be temporary, and that there would be no layoffs as a result of the move. On the roughly 10 minute call, Trump also expressed concern about the health of the company more broadly, and asked whether Muilenburg was doing O.K.
Trump reportedly also asked about the status of the fix for software that Boeing developed for the Max and which was found to have played a role in both crashes. Muilenburg said that the company had a fix ready, but that American and international regulators still had to test it and approve it.
Ironically, just one day later Boeing announced it was “temporarily” halting production of the 737 Max, which had been grounded for nine months after two crashes that killed 346 people, sending its stock sliding.
While it is unclear just how long the production halt will last, certainly until Boeing gets FAA clearance to fly the 737 MAX again, we reported last night that even a brief production halt will shave off about 0.5% from Q1 GDP as a result of a $20BN decline in the pace of inventory accumulation, which would push it to approximately 1%, which would result in the worst quarter for US GDP in years, and would leave the US economy precariously close to a recession.
The risk that the 737 MAX closure would potentially impair the US economy may explain Trump’s concern; sure enough, the decision to temporarily shut down the Max factory in Renton has already sent shockwaves across the economy and the aviation industry, and underscored just how deeply the Max crisis has rattled one of America’s most influential companies.
Separately, the NYT also reports that Boeing’s board gathered in Chicago for a scheduled meeting and, with company executives, deliberated either further reducing production of the Max or temporarily shutting the factory down. The company decided to halt production of the plane, a drastic move that signals just how uncertain the return of the plane remains. Ironically, Boeing’s decision to shut down production came just a month after Boeing reports dismal earnings but sent the stock soaring when the company said it expected the FAA to allow the plane to return to services as soon as December.
In response to the Boeing announcement, on Tuesday, Southwest Airlines, the biggest Max customer, said it would further postpone Max flights until April, while suppliers around the world are bracing for a prolonged disruption as a result of the shutdown.
The NYT also pointed out that the call on Sunday was not his first conversation with the president.
Before the Max was grounded, Mr. Muilenburg and Mr. Trump negotiated about Boeing’s contract to build Air Force One planes at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Mr. Trump joined Mr. Muilenburg for a tour of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner factory in North Charleston, S.C.
Then, two days after the second accident, in Ethiopia on March 10, Mr. Muilenburg called Mr. Trump and insisted the Max was safe. The United States grounded the plane the next day, however, after most other regulators around the world had already done so.
To be sure, Trump has been following the 737 MAX crisis closely from the start. In April, Trump tweeted: “If I were Boeing, I would FIX the Boeing 737 MAX, add some additional great features, & REBRAND the plane with a new name,” he wrote on Twitter in April. “No product has suffered like this one. But again, what the hell do I know?”
What do I know about branding, maybe nothing (but I did become President!), but if I were Boeing, I would FIX the Boeing 737 MAX, add some additional great features, & REBRAND the plane with a new name.
No product has suffered like this one. But again, what the hell do I know?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2019
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Considering the devastating hit to Boeing’s reputation, and the fact that two thirds of Americans have responded they would not feel comfortable flying on a 737 MAX, it appears that Trump was right again.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 22:05 - Ron Paul – Afghanistan War Is "Crime Of The Century"
Ron Paul – Afghanistan War Is "Crime Of The Century"
Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,
“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan. We didn’t know what we were doing.”
So said Gen. Douglas Lute, who oversaw the US war on Afghanistan under Presidents Bush and Obama. Eighteen years into the longest war in US history, we are finally finding out, thanks to thousands of pages of classified interviews on the war published by the Washington Post last week, that General Lute’s cluelessness was shared by virtually everyone involved in the war.
What we learned in what is rightly being called the “Pentagon Papers” of our time, is that hundreds of US Administration officials – including three US Presidents – knowingly lied to the American people about the Afghanistan war for years. This wasn’t just a matter of omitting some unflattering facts. This was about bald-faced lying about a war they knew was a disaster from almost day one.
Remember President Bush’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld? Remember how supremely confident he was at those press conferences, acting like the master of the universe? Here’s what he told the Pentagon’s special inspector general who compiled these thousands of interviews on Afghanistan: “I have no visibility into who the bad guys are.”
It is not only members of the Bush, Obama, and Trump Administrations who are guilty of this massive fraud. Falsely selling the Afghanistan war as a great success was a bipartisan activity on Capitol Hill. In the dozens of hearings I attended in the House International Relations Committee, I do not recall a single “expert” witness called who told us the truth. Instead, both Republican and Democrat-controlled Congresses called a steady stream of neocon war cheerleaders to lie to us about how wonderfully the war was going. Victory was just around the corner, they all promised. Just a few more massive appropriations and we’d be celebrating the end of the war.
Congress and especially Congressional leadership of both parties are all as guilty as the three lying Administrations. They were part of the big lie, falsely presenting to the American people as “expert” witnesses only those bought-and-paid-for Beltway neocon think tankers.
What is even more shocking than the release of this “smoking gun” evidence that the US government wasted two trillion dollars and killed more than three thousand Americans and more than 150,000 Afghans while lying through its teeth about the war is that you could hear a pin drop in the mainstream media about it. Aside from the initial publication in the Washington Post, which has itself been a major cheerleader for the war in Afghanistan, the mainstream media has shown literally no interest in what should be the story of the century.
We’ve wasted at least half a year on the Donald Trump impeachment charade – a conviction desperately in search of a crime. Meanwhile one of the greatest crimes in US history will go unpunished. Not one of the liars in the “Afghanistan Papers” will ever be brought to justice for their crimes. None of the three presidents involved will be brought to trial for these actual high crimes. Rumsfeld and Lute and the others will never have to fear justice. Because both parties are in on it. There is no justice.
Just days after the “Afghanistan Papers” were published, only 48 Members of Congress voted against the massive military spending of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. They continue as if nothing happened. They will continue lying to us and ripping us off if we let them.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 21:45 - Even Goldman Bristles As Junk Bond Rally Smashes All Records
Even Goldman Bristles As Junk Bond Rally Smashes All Records
Something remarkable has happened in the bond market over the past 12 months: investment grade and junk bonds yields have tumbled, spreads have collapsed, the differential between junk and IG bonds have vaporized and the spread per turn of net bond leverage is the lowest on record.
In short: despite corporate gross and net leverage hitting all time highs as profitability declined, the investing public has unleashed an unprecedented buying spree across the US corporate bond sector, in the process smashing virtually all records.
Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than the case study of AA and BB rated bonds. As Bloomberg first pointed out, earlier this week the average BB rated bond yielded just 3.51%, an all time low, sporting a spread of just 164bps to Treasurys. Now go back just 12 months ago to last December when the average AA rated corporate bond, such as those issued by Berkshire, Apple and Exxon, was yielding 3.58%, more than the yield one now gets for bonds whose rating is some 9 notches lower, in deep junk territory.
There’s more: as shown in the chart below, the scramble for anything with a yield, which these days tends to mean junk bonds, has meant that the spread between BBB and BB credits has collapsed to just shy of all time lows, as shown in the chart below.
And speaking of junk bonds, the YTW on the Bloomberg Barclays sector is now down to the lowest level since 2014.
There are many factors behind this renewed euphoria for everything junk, including declining tail risks, supportive new issue technicals and improving funding conditions following the Fed’s sizable temporary open market operations. But most of all, it is the dramatic reversal by the world’s central banks who have sent global yields tumbling – just a few months ago, there was no less than $17 trillion in negative yielding debt – as a result of some 51 rate cuts in 2019: the most since the 2008 financial crisis, in fact as BofA said tongue-in-cheek, “central banks cutting like it’s a crisis.”
There are several remarkable observations about all of this. The first is that as we showed about a year ago, a majority, or 55% of BBB-rated investment grade bonds, would have a junk rating based on leverage alone.
Second, with such a tiny difference in spread between the lowest IG rating and the highest junk bond (and recall that junk bonds are that for a very fundamental reason: based on their financials, they are more likely to default in the next 10 years than to remain viable), is virtually non-existant. According to Bloomberg, investors now have a “golden opportunity” to upgrade double-B bonds to triple-B for the record-low trade-off of just 38 basis points. To upgrade to single-A, it’s just 91 basis points, and to double-A, it’s 113 basis points, both near the all-time lows set in June 2007.
But what is perhaps most remarkable about this literally flood to junk, is that none other than Goldman Sachs is warning it is unsustainable. In a report from Goldman’s chief credit strategist, Lotfi Karoui, he writes that since the local wides reached in early October, USD IG and HY spreads have tightened by over 21bp and 70bp to 99bp and 338bp, respectively, moving well below their first quartiles when benchmarked to the history of the past two decades.
As such, Karoui reiterates his bearish spread forecasts, which now imply 16bp and 82bp of widening in IG and HY spreads through the end of the first half of next year, respectively. As he explains, “the scope for additional spread tightening is quite limited, going forward. In addition to eroded valuations, fading support from monetary policy and potential resurfacing of policy uncertainty skew risks to the wider side from current levels.”
But the biggest challenge the ongoing rush into junk faces, according to Goldman, is the bank’s expectation of rising idiosyncratic risk in 2020, given the disappointing trajectory of balance sheet fundamentals in 2019 and the increased challenges faced by over-leveraged companies in their debt reduction plans. As Exhibit 1 shows, data through the end of
the third quarter suggest that net leverage ratios for the median IG and HY non-financial issuer have resumed their upward trajectories, making new highs in HY and approaching the peak reached in the late 1990s in IG. This meaningful uptick in net leverage ratios coupled with the significant spread compression in 4Q has pushed the level of spread per turn of leverage, a popular valuation metric among credit investors, to two-decade lows, in both the IG and HY markets.Said otherwise, the collapse in yields (and spreads) has emboldened management teams (especially of financial companies) to lever further into record territory, with much of the debt issuance proceeds used to repurchase record amounts of stock…
… which threatens the viability of corporations should a secular move higher in yields emerge, while a recession could be absolutely devastating as it would result in far lower cash flows, which would immediately threaten the ability of corporations to service their debt, especially those zombie companies which can barely cover their interest expense currently.
Even Goldman admits that this is a particularly ominous challenge. As Karoui warns, this year’s balance sheet re-leveraging has been largely driven by weak profitability across most sectors, and “has also occurred against a backdrop of a rather conservative mindset among managements. As we discussed recently, many acquisitive and over-leveraged BBB-rated non-financial firms continue to highlight progress on gross debt pay-down, mostly via asset sales and leverage-neutral liability management exercises (i.e., replacement of short-term with new longer-dated and cheaper debt), as a top priority.” But, as we showed before, this (alleged) continued focus on gross debt reduction among lower-rated IG-rated issuers has not translated into concrete balance sheet deleveraging, in fact quite the opposite.
As shown above, a review of 48 of the largest BBB-rated non-financial firms, which have a combined amount of index-eligible bonds outstanding of over $900 billion, suggests the average net debt to EBITDA ratio in the most recent 12-month period (2019) is actually 0.53x higher relative to year-end 2017, when the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) passed. Further, only two issuers deleveraged by more than 1.0x turn, and only seven reduced leverage by more than 0.50x turn, since year-end 2017.
Here, the silver lining is that analysts are generally optimistic on both the economy, and corporate profitability into 2020. But here too Goldman has a caveat: “the forward earnings growth trajectory will be much flatter by post-crisis norms as profits adjust to a new reality where growth in unit labor costs outpaces price inflation”, in other words, rising wages will further erode corporate profitability and debt service capabilities. As such “for credit investors, this will likely mean more challenges in the debt reduction plans, particularly for issuers with weak pricing power, and thus more dispersion in returns.”
One final risk is political. As Goldman cautions, a potential headwind for sentiment is the narrative around a potential rollback of the Trump tax cuts. The main Democratic front-runners have proposed at least a partial repeal of the TCJA. Barring a unified government led by Democrats, US tax policy would likely remain unchanged at least through 2023. But if Democrats gain even a slim majority in the Senate, Goldman’s economists would expect an increase in the corporate tax rate, not to mention a collapse in the S&P to 2,600 as discussed previously.
On Goldman’s estimates, the median effective tax rate for US-domiciled issuers in the iBoxx IG bond index fell from 23.4% in 2017 to 18.7% in 2018. In addition to weighing on sentiment, if this legislation were reversed and marginal tax rates increased, the potential negative earnings shock would likely make debt reduction plans even more difficult to achieve.
Whether Goldman’s gloomy forecast materializes, remains to be seen, but as even Bloomberg admits, few Wall Street professionals believe this junk-bond bonanza can last. Bloomberg News’s Gowri Gurumurthy reported that Wall Street analysts are forecasting gains of between 1% and 7.5% for U.S. high-yield bonds, down from the 13.5% gain so far this year. Others, like Mohamed El-Erian, are advocating that investors get out of riskier securities while the market is strong.
“What I fear is that this is the prelude to something which is not going to be very comfortable for those investing in the lowest-quality segments of the credit market,” El-Erian said in a Bloomberg TV interview.Joe Davis, head of the investment strategy group at Vanguard Group Inc., put it like this: “For savvy investors, the tighter credit spreads become, the more guarded they have to be in their strategy,” he said. “When the next recession hits, the downturn in the financial markets could be worse than the economic effects.”
In other words, the cascade of catastrophic consequences when the next recession hits, will once again be all the central banks’ doing – after all it is their monetary policies that pushed rates to such low levels, that the only place investors can find even remotely attractive yields, is junk bonds which offer a 3.5% yield, making a total joke of what was once called “high” yield.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 21:25 - Banning Guns Will Not Make Schools Safe
Banning Guns Will Not Make Schools Safe
Authored by James Bovard via The Future of Freedom Foundation,
School shootings have become the latest pretext for politicians to destroy the Second Amendment.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, declared in a Democratic presidential candidates’ debate,
“I was part of the first generation that saw routine school shootings. We have now produced the second school-shooting generation in this country. We dare not allow there to be a third.”
Another Democratic presidential candidate, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Cal.), invoked school shootings to justify confiscating millions of firearms across the nation:
“It’s not just the violence that they’ve caused; it’s the fear, the immeasurable fear that our children live in because they are still on our streets. I want to get rid of that fear.”
In reality, despite a tidal wave of misleading propaganda, the number of school shootings has fallen sharply over the past 30 years.
But anti-gun activists in government and the media have done their best to persuade people otherwise.
Last year, the federal Education Department reported that “nearly 240 schools … reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting” in the 2015-16 school year. National Public Radio investigated and found that the feds had exaggerated school shootings by twentyfold; NPR could confirm only 11 incidents. Cleveland was credited with 37 shooting incidents, when in reality it was simply a report of 37 schools that noted “possession of a knife or a firearm.” In DeKalb County, Georgia, “a toy cap gun fired on a school bus” counted as a school shooting. One school system was listed as a shooting locale for an incident involving a pair of scissors. NPR noted,
Most of the school leaders NPR reached had little idea of how shootings got recorded for their schools. For example, the [federal Civil Rights Data Collection] reports 26 shootings within the Ventura Unified School District in Southern California. “I think someone pushed the wrong button,” said Jeff Davis, an assistant superintendent there. The outgoing superintendent, Joe Richards, “has been here for almost 30 years and he doesn’t remember any shooting,” Davis added.
Even the leftist news site Vox noted, “The risk of a child getting killed by someone else at school in 2011, the last year for which there’s final data, was about 1 in 5 million.” Vox again: The rate of “serious violent victimization” among students — rape, sexual assault, robbery, or aggravated assault — was about 1 in 1,000 in 2011, down from 1 in 100 in 1995. In 1995, 10 percent of students were victims of some kind of crime at school; in 2011, just 4 percent were.” Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox observed, “We over-obsess about school shootings. Surveys show the majority of students are afraid there will be a mass shooting at their school. These are rare events — scary though they may be, tragic though they may — and we shouldn’t over-respond.”
Imitation shootings
But hard facts have proven no match for sustained hype for antigun activists.
Police and schools have responded to the new paranoia with an array of drills that have been lame-brained even by government standards.
Last January, numerous Indiana elementary school teachers were shot as part of a “safe schools” training program. According to the Indiana State Teachers Association, sheriffs’ deputies ordered teachers “into a room four at a time, told them to crouch down and then shot them execution-style with pellets in rapid succession,” leaving several of them bloodied and many of them screaming. The union complained, “The teachers were terrified, but were told not to tell anyone what happened. Teachers waiting outside that heard the screaming were brought into the room four at a time and the shooting process was repeated.” The union is “is lobbying lawmakers to add [legislative] language prohibiting teachers from being shot with any sort of ammunition” during school-safety drills, according to the Indianapolis News.
Schools are “increasingly turning their hallways into an imitation of a real mass shooting, complete with police officers firing BB guns and drama students enlisted to play victims, made up with fake blood and bullet holes. Occasionally, the drills are sprung on teachers and students without warning,” as a student newspaper in Great Neck, New York, observed. A Pennsylvania teacher commented that she was “more traumatized than trained” after teachers were shot with airsoft guns by a fake active shooter. “We had colleagues shooting colleagues, we had people getting hit with [plastic] pellets.… People were screaming, trying to run. People were tripping over each other. It was just horrendous,” Elizabeth Yanelli recalled.
One of the primary beneficiaries of such nonsense is pharmaceutical companies that hustle anti-anxiety drugs to children. Former policeman Raeford Davis commented on lockdown/active shooter drills, “These simulated execution rituals are conducted for fear-based mass social control purposes to traumatize, instill fear, hopelessness, personal dis-empowerment, reliance on authority figures to save and protect you.” A 2018 Pew Research Center survey found that most “American teen-agers worry about a shooting at their school. This comes at a time when children are already suffering from sharply rising rates of anxiety, self-mutilation, and suicide. According to a landmark study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, 32 percent of 13-to-18-year-olds have anxiety disorders, and 22 percent suffer from mental disorders that cause severe impairment or distress. Among those suffering from anxiety, the median age of onset is 6,” the Atlantic reported last year.
Exploiting dead children
School-shooting paranoia first became widespread after the Columbine High School killings in 1999. Twelve students and one teacher died in a shooting spree by two students that helped inspire other subsequent school shootings, especially a Newtown, Connecticut, attack in 2012.
The Columbine killings set the precedent of maximum political exploitation of dead children. Attorney General Janet Reno praised the local police response as “extraordinary” and “a textbook” example of “how to do it the right way.” Bill Clinton declared that “we look with admiration at the … police officers who rushed to the scene to save lives.” Clinton invoked the Columbine killings almost every day from April 20 through mid June 1999, when the House of Representatives narrowly defeated Clinton-championed gun-control legislation.
In reality, “No efforts were made to stop the assault,” concluded William Erickson, a former Colorado Supreme Court justice who headed a commission that issued a damning 2001 report on the Columbine killings. Instead, hundreds of police waited outside until long after the two perpetrators had committed suicide. Instead of going after the two killers, law enforcement set up a perimeter outside the school and waited “for the assault to end,” the report concluded.
Appalling police failures turned a multiple homicide into a historic massacre. A SWAT team had entered the building early on but Jefferson County Sheriff John Stone ordered it to withdraw. Police spokesmen said most of the SWAT teams were not sent in, “for fear that they might set off a new gunfight,” the New York Times reported. SWAT teams did not enter the room where the killers lay until hours after the shooting stopped. A badly wounded schoolteacher, Dave Sanders, bled to death because the SWAT team took four hours to reach the room he was in — even though students placed a large sign announcing “1 Bleeding to Death” in the window.
Fears for “officer safety” paralyzed the Colorado response. Steve Davis, spokesman for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, said, “We had no idea who was a victim and who was a suspect. And a dead police officer would not be able to help anyone.” Evan Todd, a Columbine student who was wounded in the initial attack, escaped outside and then explained to a dozen policemen exactly what was happening inside: “They told me to calm down and take my frustrations elsewhere.”
Unfortunately, law enforcement learned little or nothing from the Columbine killings. At the Parkland high school in Florida in 2018, eight sheriff’s deputies lingered cowered outside while the shooting rampage by one ex-student continued, leaving 17 dead. A local cop who arrived during the shooting was urged not to enter the building: “Hey, be careful. The guy’s got a rifle,” a deputy told him. After the killings, the local sheriff’s department put out a deluge of false exculpatory claims that were shot to pieces by later revelations.
The killer, Nikolas Cruz, should have been arrested numerous times because of violence and threats at school and elsewhere. But school authorities avoided charging him, in part because of an Obama administration school-grant program that sought to curb the “school-to-prison” pipeline for minority students such as Cruz. Paul Sperry of RealClearInvestigations reported that the Parkland school was “in the vanguard of a strategy, adopted by more than 50 other major school districts nationwide, allowing thousands of troubled, often violent, students to commit crimes without legal consequence.” Thanks to such policies, as the Federalist noted, “Students charged with various misdemeanors, including assault, would now be disciplined through participation in ‘healing circles,’ obstacle courses and other ‘self-esteem building’ exercises.” But if schools expelled too many students, they would forfeit federal grants.
But the astounding failures of the schools and the police are irrelevant to activists determined to invoke the Parkland killings to forcibly disarm the American people. In August, March for Our Lives — an anti-gun group created after the Parkland shootings — issued “A Peace Plan for a Safer America.” Rather than focusing on the failures of officialdom, the activists called for forcibly reducing the number of firearms owned by Americans by a third — which could require government seizures of a hundred million guns. The group also proposed to put any would-be gun buyer through bureaucratic hell, including a “multi-step approval process, overseen by a law enforcement agency, that requires background checks, in-person interviews, personal references, rigorous gun safety training, and a waiting period of 10 days for each gun purchase.” Any permit to possess a firearm would have to be renewed annually — involving running another bureaucratic gauntlet. The group also called for the appointment of a federal anti-gun czar. The “National Director of Gun Violence Prevention” would also be responsible for propagandizing about the grave dangers of possessing a firearm in one’s home.
And then we would all be safe, right? March for Our Lives did not propose any solutions to the lack of police spines or the automatic coverups and lies that follow shooting debacles. New gun-control laws will do nothing to boost either the competence or courage of the police when every second counts. Unfortunately, there also appears to be no cure for the political exploitation of tragedies spurred or worsened by government debacles.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 21:05 - Is Xi About To Make Macau The Next Financial Powerhouse?
Is Xi About To Make Macau The Next Financial Powerhouse?
China’s President Xi Jinping arrived in Macau, an autonomous region on the south coast of China, on Wednesday amid socio-economic turmoil in Hong Kong. Xi is expected to announce new economic packages for the area as a reward for its stability and support of the communist party, reported Bloomberg.
#Xi arrives in #Macau. Local residents it’s a reward for protest-free city. https://t.co/UntZI08ND9 pic.twitter.com/NxD3FX4eWK
— Qingqing_Chen (@qingqingparis) December 18, 2019
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Xi will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Macau’s handover to China and had a straightforward message to the 670,000 people of the region, roughly half the size of Manhattan: obey our laws, and we’ll make you wealthy.
Xi spoke at Macau International Airport on Wednesday afternoon and applauded Macau’s “earnest implementation” of the “one country, two systems” framework — the same structure that governs Hong Kong.
“The achievements and progress Macau has made in the past two decades since its return to the motherland are a source of pride,” Xi said. “The beautiful blueprint for Macau’s future development needs our joint efforts.”
JUST IN: China’s president Xi Jinping arrives in Macau to mark the 20th anniversary of its handover to China https://t.co/u0JJheI8MG pic.twitter.com/5oh7dyBRIc
— Bloomberg Next China (@next_china) December 18, 2019
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Bloomberg notes that Xi could unveil several economic policies that could transform Macau into a financial powerhouse. One of those policies could be the establishment of a yuan-denominated financial market.
In the last six months, Macau has experienced little unrest, while Hong Kong, 30 miles away, has seen violent protests that have shocked the economy into a recession.
“While Hong Kong people can be mobilized by fighting for abstract value as democracy and freedom, Macau is ‘interest-oriented,'” said Ieong Meng U, an assistant professor at the University of Macau’s Department of Government and Public Administration. “Only very few government policies can trigger widespread social grievances.”
Macau’s stability is derived from its monopoly over the casino industry in China and close ties with the communist regime.
Even though Macau’s charter closely resembles Hong Kong’s, residents in the city cannot choose their leader. The new Macau Chief Executive Ho Iat-Seng will be sworn in on Friday by Xi. A 400-member election committee recently chose Iat-Seng.
Steve Tsang, director of the University of London’s SOAS China, told Bloomberg that “the messaging is clear to Hong Kong and the rest of the world, but primarily to Hong Kong — there is a way out, there is an easy and good way out, and it’s called Macau…But what they completely and utterly fail to see, is that if Macau is the future, most people in Hong Kong will say, thank you very much, you can keep it for yourself.”
Macau has tightened up immigration checks and beefed up security forces to thwart any spillovers from Hong Kong.
China’s next move could transform Macau into a financial mecca that could put Hong Kong out of business.
Macau is the new #HongKong and Xi will move Chinese financial power out of Hong Kong. This will be good for $MGM $LVS $wynn – #china https://t.co/AzEPAuVR97
— Ross Gerber (@GerberKawasaki) December 18, 2019
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 20:45 - Elderly In Japan Are Wearing Exoskeletons To Continue Working Into Old Age
Elderly In Japan Are Wearing Exoskeletons To Continue Working Into Old Age
Authored by Elias Marat via TheMindUnleashed.com,
While powered exoskeletons may seem like something out of the movies – think Alien, Avatar, Elysium, and how could we forget Iron Man – the concept has increasingly found favor in various applications, ranging from the battlefield to the assembly line and even to restore function to paralyzed people’s body.
But now, elderly citizens in Japan are preparing to potentially step into powered exoskeletons so that they can continue laboring into their old age and stall retirement for as long as possible, New Scientist reports.
To put into perspective how dystopian that prospect is, just consider that Japan has one of the largest populations over the age of 65 out of any country, comprising about 26 percent of the total population, per 2015 census data. Japan has both the world’s highest life expectancy and the lowest birthrate.
And as Japan’s workforce continues to decline, the right-wing government of Shinzo Abe has sought to grapple with labor shortages and increased public spending on the senior citizen population by raising the retirement age from 60 to anywhere between 65 and 71.
But now, Japanese tech companies hope to use these exoskeleton suits to allow them to continue their labor well into their advanced age, with some suits costing only $1,300 and allowing people to lift up to 55 pounds. The suit can be charged through a hand pump that fills the “muscles” with pressurized air.
Innophys spokesperson Daigo Orihara said:
One client is a family-owned company which makes and sells pickled radish and uses heavy weights in the process of production.
The father is in his 70s and was supposed to retire but is still working with our muscle suit.
Automotive giant Toyota has also poured funds into its motorized exoskeleton research division, in part out of hopes to support the aging workforce. Panasonic, too, has created the popular Atoun Model Y, a $5,500 suit that adds 22 pounds of lifting force to wearers.
No doubt, many senior citizens with their faltering and fragile bodies would prefer a bit of mechanical assistance to allow them to lift heavy loads and physically function as they did when they were younger.
However, Japan also has a horrible reputation for working its people to the point of utter exhaustion, if not a total mental breakdown. With a shrinking population that only continues to rapidly age, powered exoskeletons may be the only means by which industry can continue squeezing the last bit of labor from the Japanese people.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 20:25 - House Impeaches Trump For Abuse Of Power & Obstruction Of Congress
House Impeaches Trump For Abuse Of Power & Obstruction Of Congress
As was 100% expected, the House has voted to impeach President Trump (for abuse of power), who joins Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton as the only presidents to be impeached since the adoption of the Constitution in 1788.
It all began just after midday with the following…
“Today, as speaker of the House, I solemnly and sadly open the debate on the impeachment of the president of the United States,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said from the House floor shortly after noon.
“It is tragic that the president’s reckless actions make impeachment necessary. He gave us no choice.”
And ended just over eight hours later
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy closes: “He is president today, he’ll be president tomorrow and he will be president when this impeachment over.”
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) closes: “All of us feel a sense of loyalty to party. It’s what makes our two-party system function. But party loyalty must have its limits…it has become increasingly clear that the limits of partisanship have been reached and passed.”
And the result after 219 speakers from both sides of the aisle today, as most expected, all Republicans voted against impeachment, all Democrats except three voted for the first article of impeachment…
Article 1 – Abuse Of Power – vote 230 in favor, 197 opposed, 1 present:
All Republicans voted against impeachment, all Democrats except four voted for the second article of impeachment…
Article 2 – Obstruction – vote:
Tulsi Gabbard voted “present” while New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who’s in the process of becoming a Republican; and Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, who represents what’s considered the country’s most conservative Democratic district, both broke ranks and voted against impeachment.
…and Michigan Rep. Justin Amash (the sole Independent member of the House) voted for impeachment.
The question now is simple – will Pelosi keep the articles to herself (to avoid the spectacle of utter defeat in the Senate)? Or pass them on for what McConnell has called a quick decision.
What the Constitution says about what happens next
A president who has been impeached by the House can still serve as president. It’s up to the Senate to hold a trial to decide whether to remove him from office. The two other presidents impeached by the House, Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson, were both acquitted by the Senate.
The Constitution only says that the Senate has to hold a trial, with the senators sitting as jurors, House lawmakers serving as prosecutors known as managers and the chief justice of the United States presiding over it. They must take a public vote, and two-thirds of senators present must agree on whether to convict the president and thus remove him from office. But the Constitution doesn’t lay out exactly how to hold a trial.
But, as WaPo reports, a group of House Democrats is pushing Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leaders to withhold the articles of impeachment against President Trump that are expected to emerge on Wednesday, potentially delaying a Senate trial for months.
The notion of impeaching Trump but holding the articles in the House has gained traction among some on the political left as a way of potentially forcing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to conduct a trial on more favorable terms for Democrats.
And if no agreement is reached, some have argued, the trial could be delayed indefinitely, denying Trump an expected acquittal.
But, remember, the public is now against impeachment broadly…
Some high/lowlights from the multi-hour debacle include:
Here is what the Democrats believed…Cicilline said if they do not hold Trump accountable, then “we will live in a dictatorship.”
Democrats were, in their own words, “sad” to impeach the president… “I’m saddened, but I’m not shocked,” Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California said.
Serial impeacher Rep. Al Green decided to use a fake, debunked photo of an immigrant child crying as an example of why Trump should be impeached… “In the name of democracy, on behalf of the republic, and for the sake of many who are suffering,” Green said as he pointed directly of the photo, “I will vote to impeach and I encourage my colleagues to do so as well. No one is beyond justice in this country.”
Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert passionately warned that the end of America was in sight… “This is a travesty and we’re in big trouble because Schumer was right… This country’s end is now in sight… I hope I don’t live to see it. This is an outrage.”
And finally, Louisiana Republican Rep. Clay Higgins delivered the darkest, most ominous speech of the day.
“I have descended into the belly of the beast. I have witnessed the terror within, and I rise committed to oppose the insidious forces which threaten our Republic,” Higgins opened.
“America’s being severely injured by this betrayal, by this unjust and weaponized impeachment, brought upon us by the same socialists who threaten unborn life in the womb, who threaten First Amendment rights of Conservatives, who threaten Second Amendment protections of every American patriot, and who have long ago determined that they would organize and conspire to overthrow President Trump.”
“We don’t face this horror because the Democrats have all of a sudden become constitutionalists. We are not being devoured from within because of some surreal assertion of the socialists’ newfound love for the very flag that they trod upon.”
“They are deep established D.C.,” he continued.
“They call this Republican map flyover country. They call us deplorables. They fear our faith. They fear our strength. They fear our unity. They fear our vote, and they fear our president.”
“We will never surrender our nation to career establishment D.C. politicians and bureaucrats,” Higgins closed. “Our republic shall survive this threat from within. American patriots shall prevail.”
Meanwhile, in Michigan…
THANK YOU! #KAG https://t.co/CltmJQdm1t
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 18, 2019
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Update 4: Just as we expected, President Trump has taken to Twitter to bash the Democrats as the House passed a critical procedural vote for the articles of impeachment.
“The evidence has to be overwhelming, and it is not. It’s not even close.” Ken Starr, Former Independent Counsel
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 18, 2019
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In the end here, nothing happened. We don’t approach anything like the egregious conduct that should be necessary before a President should be removed from office. I believe that a President can’t be removed from office if there is no reasonable possibility that the Senate..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 18, 2019
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….won’t convict and remove the President – Then the House should not be Impeaching the President in the first place. If this is the new standard, every President from here on out is impeachable.” Andy McCarthy @FoxNews So well stated. Thank you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 18, 2019
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It looks like he’s just getting started.
Meanwhile, the House Dems are getting pumped up for their big day.
The Impeachment debate is underway.
Heading to the House Floor to deliver remarks.
We will IMPEACH this President.
The Constitution is sacredly obligatory upon all.
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) December 18, 2019
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Finally, right around noon on Wednesday, the House voted to begin debate on the articles of impeachment, clearing a key procedural vote that paved the way for six hours of debate, according to the New York Times.
Pelosi kicked off the debate by urging lawmakers to honor their oaths to protect the Constitution while criticizing the president’s supposedly reckless actions that brought them to this point.
“Our founder’s vision of a republic is under threat from actions from the White House,” she said somberly, adding, “If we do not act now, we would be derelict in our duty. It is tragic that the president’s reckless actions make impeachment necessary. He gave us no choice.”
When she finished, her fellow Dems rose from their seats for a standing ovation.
On the Republican side, Rep. Doug Collins, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, was the first Republican to respond, accusing the Dems of running an unfair and deeply partisan impeachment inquiry…
“This is an impeachment based on presumption,” Mr. Collins said. “This is a poll-tested impeachment about what actually sells to the American people. Today is going to be a lot of things. What it is not is fair. What it is not is about the truth.”
…While failing to prove their case against Trump.
* * *
Update 3: And so it begins…
The House is first expected to pass a resolution to kick off six hours of floor debate on the articles. The time will be split equally between Republicans and Democrats.
The chamber’s 197 Republicans are expected to vote against impeachment, along with two Democrats: Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who has said he plans to switch parties.
Almost all of the remaining 231 Democrats have said they will vote for impeachment, along with Michigan Independent Justin Amash, who quit the GOP over his opposition to Trump.
* * *
Update 2: As we expected, the tweet below has been reissued, with a few edits. It’s classic Trump, as the president exhorts his followers to “SAY A PRAYER” on impeachment day, while raging at “Do Nothing Democrats” and the “Radical Left.”
Can you believe that I will be impeached today by the Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats, AND I DID NOTHING WRONG! A terrible Thing. Read the Transcripts. This should never happen to another President again. Say a PRAYER!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 18, 2019
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* * *
Update: We 100% President Trump to go on a full-fledged Twitter rampage lasting until the last impeachment vote is cast on Wednesday, and so far, the president hasn’t disappointed…although his first impeachment-focused tweet of the day has already been deleted for what we imagine are copy-editing-related reasons.
* * *
The rules have been established, objections have been lodged and today, Wednesday, Dec. 18, with most of the US preparing for next week’s holiday break, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is angling to finish the job, and finally impeach President Trump.
Though it means nothing to most of his supporters, as well as many Americans who simply haven’t been convinced by The Democrats’ arguments about how Trump supposedly violated the constitution, President Trump will almost certainly become the third American president to be impeached (and first since Bill Clinton) when lawmakers gather in the Well of the House for Wednesday’s historic proceedings, according to Bloomberg.
Here’s what to expect: After the House is gaveled in at about 9 am, lawmakers will debate for six hours before two votes are held: One on each article of impeachment. Trump is facing two charges: one is abuse of power, stemming from President Trump’s alleged attempted “quid pro quo” with Ukraine involving the Bidens.
The other is obstruction of Congress, based on the administration’s policy of advising White House employees and members of Trump’s circle to ignore Congressional subpoenas by invoking executive privilege.
According to the Associated Press, Pelosi has the votes to impeach Trump on a purely party line basis. Many centrist Democrats, including several lawmakers from districts that supported Trump in 2016, have come out publicly in support of impeachment. However, neither the AP or the NYT were able to publish affirmative totals, suggesting that the numbers are still being firmed up, and that there might still be room for Republicans to fight back.
In a last-ditch effort to peel off as many Democratic votes as possible, Republicans are encouraging voters in districts that flipped to Democratic control in 2018 but voted for Trump in 2016 to flood their representatives’ offices with calls demanding that they take a stand against impeachment.
Source: Bloomberg
As NBC News claims, it’s these swing-district Democrats who made this whole thing possible.
And they might have a shot: As Congressional Republicans have repeatedly pointed out in recent weeks, the public is evenly split on whether Trump deserves to be impeached.
That means fully one half of Americans believe the president is innocent, and that the impeachment push is merely a politically calculated smear job.
Let’s take a look at the latest polls, courtesy of aggregator RealClearPolitics…
Those numbers are even worse for Republicans: Roughly nine in ten believe the president shouldn’t be impeached. Once it’s been made official, Trump is expected to deliver a public rebuttal during a campaign rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, a formerly Democratic stronghold in a critical swing state that helped deliver Trump to the White House in 2016.
If we know Trump, we suspect that this rebuttal will be full of fire and brimstone – that is, if Trump’s letter to Pelosi & Co. is any guide.
Interestingly enough, the last US president to be impeached, Bill Clinton, was formally accused of perjury by the House on Dec. 19, 1998, almost exactly 21 years earlier to the day.
After Wednesday’s votes, a Democratic delegation will formally deliver the articles of impeachment to the secretary of the Senate, the first step toward a trial in that chamber to determine whether Trump will be removed from office.
Then early in the new year, a trial will begin in the Senate, at which Trump is almost guaranteed to be acquitted, thanks to the Republicans’ control of the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he hopes to carry out a swift trial in the Senate, limiting the number of witnesses.
As we mentioned earlier, the vote may not take place until late Wednesday – 6:30pm or 7:30pm – or even early Thursday.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 20:24 - Bank Of England "Hijacked" Audio Feed Was Used To Secretly Leak Confidential Information To Hedge Funds
Bank Of England "Hijacked" Audio Feed Was Used To Secretly Leak Confidential Information To Hedge Funds
Over the past few years there had been numerous allegations in both the trading community and among the media that critical UK data releases were being mysteriously leaked ahead of time. Back in 2017, Reuters reported that “unusual sterling moves often precede UK data releases“, explaining that “on eight occasions over the past 12 months, the pound has moved against the dollar in the minutes before the release of the retail sales numbers, correctly anticipating the direction the currency took once the figures were published” adding that “this has been true even when the retail sales data have gone against the Reuters poll market consensus, leading to speculation among traders about the possibility of leaks of the information before its official publication.”
One such example took place on Feb. 17, 2017 when sterling fell by around 20 ticks to $1.2440 in the space of around 15 seconds, around three minutes before the release of the numbers for January. When the figures were published by the ONS, they showed sales had been much weaker than economists had expected, sending sterling down further.
A similar pattern was found to have occurred in seven of the other 12 months for which Reuters analyzed trading data. The moves in sterling were most notable in January, November, October, July and April as well as in February. In five of those months, the official figures were significantly weaker or stronger than forecasts by economists.
Foreign exchange traders posted messages on Twitter saying they believed that the data had been leaked ahead of time, a regular refrain after the monthly retail sales figures.
David Woolcock, chair of the committee of professionalism at the Association Cambiste Internationale Financial Markets Association, a body representing foreign exchange dealers, said his review of the analysis suggested either that some investors were very good at predicting what the data would show, or that it was being leaked.
“Looking at the charts shown to me by Thomson Reuters it seems evident that either a very close correlation in private/public data has been discovered that is allowing traders to pre-position ahead of publication or a leak of the numbers is occurring,” he said.
A separate analysis by the Wall Street Journal of 207 releases of British inflation, industrial production and labor market data, showed that on 59.5% of occasions British government bond futures moved ahead of the data in what proved to be the right direction, confirming that someone was indeed leaking – and trading on – market-moving information ahead of its scheduled release time. Alexander Kurov, an associate professor of finance at West Virginia University who conducted the analysis for the Wall Street Journal, told the newspaper it was “very unlikely that we are looking at a random pattern.”
But where was the leak taking place? As the WSJ noted, the ONS provides a preview of the retail sales figures before their publication to 41 people at the Bank of England, the business ministry, Cabinet Office, Downing Street and the Treasury. Those people had access to the data 24 hours ahead of publication.
Meanwhile, as part of the now infamous reporter “lock up”, around a dozen journalists from news agencies including Reuters have access to the data around 40 minutes ahead of publication to help them prepare articles ready to go when the data hits the feed. However, they are only given the information in a locked room without Internet or phone access and under the supervision of ONS staff.
It now appears that we know who the culprit was.
In a press release issued late on Wednesday, the Bank of England said that following concerns raised with the Bank, “we have recently identified that an audio feed of certain of the Bank press conferences – installed only to act as a back-up in case the video feed failed – has been misused by a third party supplier to the Bank since earlier this year to supply services to other external clients.”
“This wholly unacceptable use of the audio feed was without the Bank’s knowledge or consent, and is being investigated further”, the central bank said.
The BOE’s shocking admission was in response to a report earlier in the day by the Times, according to which hedge funds had been eavesdropping on the Bank of England’s press conferences before they are officially broadcast after its internal systems were “hijacked.”
As the BOE has since confirmed, the Times report alleged that the central bank has discovered that one of its suppliers has been sending “an audio feed of its press conferences to high-speed traders who hope to profit by acting on the governor’s comments before the rest of the world.“
While the company that was behind the audio feed hijacking was not named, “the third-party supplier is understood to be connected to a market news service that promises clients will gain an edge over rival traders in a field where getting information microseconds before others can generate huge profits.” While the Bank’s official video feed of press conferences is managed by Bloomberg, the Bank employed contractors to install a separate back-up audio feed several years ago in case the video feed went down. It was never intended to be used by an outsider unless the video failed, and yet for an unknown number of HFTs, it became the primary source of information, and countless profits.
While the BoE said that the gross insider trading started “earlier this year”, according to the Times, the supplier hacked into the audio feed since “at least the start of this year”, which means the leaks could have been going on for years, and was meant to provide the service to one of its other companies. That service is then sold on to high-speed companies, giving client traders an invaluable edge over everyone when it comes to the most market-moving of events.
According to the Times, since audio is easier to compress than video, hijacking the backup feed gave paying clients a five to eight-second head start on the rest of the market; in other words, a license to print money in violation of every known insider trading rule known to man.
The Bank said that it had “disabled the third-party supplier’s access”. A spokesman added: “This wholly unacceptable use of the audio feed was without the Bank’s knowledge or consent, and is being investigated further”.
Since UK data leaks had been known for almost three years, it’s about time the BOE finally realized that it itself was the source of the leaks. As for the company intermediating all of this, we are confident that they already have moved their money to a non-extradition jurisdiction. The unnamed market news service was selling these feeds charges between £2,500 and £5,000 a press conference for each client in addition to a subscription fee.
The revelation that the Bank of England’s systems were abused to give HFT traders an advantage over everyone else will be a huge embarrassment because one of the bank’s roles is to support fair and efficient markets. BOE head Mark Carney is due to leave the Bank on January 31 and will become the United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance on a token $1 a year for the part-time role. His successor could be announced as soon as tomorrow.
While the news may explain why there was no allegations of any information leaks ahead of the latest BOE report, it also explains why there have been recurring instances of clients trading on what appears to be inside information, and it now appears the BOE itself was the culprit.
And while the BOE may finally be cracking down on insider trading, after an unknown set of clients has already made millions if not billions in illicit profits, consider that high-speed audio services are also offered for press conferences at the ECB, the Fed and the Bank of Canada. Just how much money was made by hedge funds who had found a way to hijack backup feeds at all these central banks. We doubt we will ever find out, especially if the central bankers in question plan on ending up as employees of said hedge funds after their tenure is completed. It almost makes one wonder what “quid pro quo” helped propel former Fed chair Ben Bernanke to the role of senior advisor at the world’s foremost HFT operation, Ken Griffin’s Citadel.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 20:05 - Females & Births, As Rudimentary As We Can Get
Females & Births, As Rudimentary As We Can Get
Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,
First, chart of the century…literally. For those engrossed in the current and engulfing repo fiasco, QE, and monetization…it is helpful to pull back and clarify what it is that is causing the existing economic and financial system to fail?
It was, is, and will be a Ponzi to its last day and Ponzi’s fail for lack of new suckers. In this case, those willing and able to undertake new credit (debt) that enlarges the money supply in our fractional reserve system. The chart below shows the global annual growth of the 20 to 65 year-olds versus 65+ year-olds (both excluding Africa). 20 to 65 year-olds world over utilize credit (debt) while 65+ year-olds extinguish debt (deleverage).
So long as the growth of those levering up outstripped those deleveraging, the system could continue. But as you’ll note, in 2008, the entire global system shuddered as accelerating growth of potential workers ceased and began decelerating…while the growth of non-workers accelerated.
By about 2024, the annual growth of non-workers (deleveragers) will overtake annual growth of potential workers (debtors). Those rapidly extinguishing debt in old age will outnumber those undertaking the new debt. Those in retirement or in death offloading assets will outnumber those buying those assets.
The non-technical name for this is a “shit-show” and this is why central banks, federal governments, and ultra wealthy are aligning ever tighter to save themselves.
This was never going to work…but that doesn’t mean everybody has to lose. And the ever tightening circle of winners are attempting to lock in their gains at the expense of the vast majorities losses. QE is the salve for inadequate credit and money growth due to decelerating population growth among young versus accelerating population growth among elderly. The forces of elderly deflation are outstripping the inflationary forces of growth among the young.
Whether you agree, disagree, or are still pondering…the charts below show the global population of 15 to 24 year-old and 25 to 34 year-old potential childbearing females (excluding Africa) and total annual births (excluding Africa), dashed lines. Why exclude Africa? As a continent, Africa consumes just 3% of global energy, imports about the same in finished goods, and generally consume so little as to be a rounding error…but they are the bulk of population growth. However, Africa provides a very low level of emigration compared to Mexico, India, and the rest of the world. The geographic barriers from sub-Saharan Africa (where the vast majority of high fertility nations exist) and extreme levels of poverty have constrained emigration thus far.
So, when the global population growth among 15 to 24 year-old females (x-Africa, blue line) simply stalled from 1989 through 1995 and annual births declined by 20 million (black dashed lines), there may have been good reason to pay a little closer attention. When the final impetus of 15 to 24 population growth concluded in 2008 and the echo rise in births likewise concluded, even closer attention should have been warranted. Since 2008, the final piece of demographic energy came through the 25 to 34 year-old population (brown line) and peaked in 2018. Now, from a childbearing standpoint, it is all downhill indefinitely. By 2050, the 15 to 24 female population will decline by another 32 million while the 25 to 34 female population will fall by 39 million. The UN projects births (x-Africa) will slowly and steadily decline as the childbearing population is in decline. Something far more dramatic is more likely.
The chart below flips the births (black line) from total annual to year over year change, against total female 15-24 (blue) and 25-34 (brown) female populations. The 18% deceleration in births from ’89 to ’95 coincided with low childbearing growth after decades of high growth. What comes now as the entire female childbearing population begins declining is likely an asymmetrical decline. The lack of growth coupled with the accessibility of birth control is likely to lead to a birth dearth unlike anything the world has previously seen. A species choosing not to reproduce for a myriad of reasons.
Next, the global (x-Africa) year over year changes in both the childbearing populations and the year over year change in births. The decelerating growth of females of childbearing age is plain enough and the large gyrations in births a confluence of population change, war, economic policies, birth control, etc.
And just in case the shape of the annual change in the global childbearing population (x-Africa) looks familiar (as it is the foundation of demand growth and inflation), I add the Federal Funds rate (yellow line)…plus the impact upon annual births. As an aside, strangely, from 1950 to 1981 as global demand growth was accelerating, the Federal Reserve chose to restrict the availability of money by raising rates thus choking the creation of new capacity to meet the rising demand?!? This was highly inflationary. And then, on decelerating demand growth from 1981 to 2019, the Federal Reserve has made money more available, creating over-capacity and deflation!?! Now as demand begins to outright decline, the return of ZIRP and likely NIRP inflating asset prices and costs of living far faster than incomes, further reducing demand and births. Honest mistake or has the Fed long held yet another unstated mandate?
Year over year change in childbearing and births in Africa. Is the strong deceleration in the growth of births in Africa from 2010 through 2018 an aberration or has something more significant begun? Getting accurate and real time data from Africa can’t be easy so I won’t overreact or suggest a major change is underway. I can only surmise it is possible that slowing first world activity is potentially trickling down upon African’s determination to have more children and if this data is correct and sustained…the last bastion of population growth would go poof!?!
Viewing historical and projected year over year changes in births of the world (excluding Africa, black line) versus Africa (yellow line). The declining births and resultant declining demand represented by the world will surely impact Africa and result in a far lower growth path (or no growth?) than presently projected by the UN. So many of the global economic and environmental models presuming ten or eleven billion persons on earth with far more consuming at “middle class” levels are garbage. An entirely alternate reality of massive over-supply and over-capacity against fast falling demand is so much more realistic.
A quick look at the change per period of 15 to 35 year old females (x-Africa) versus the change in annual births (x-Africa). From 1950 through 1989, the childbearing female population rose by 111% and annual births by 61%…from 1989 through 2018, the childbearing female population rose by 21% but annual births fell 15%. The UN projection from 2018 through 2050 is an 8% decline in females of childbearing age while births implausibly “only” fall 15%. Magnitudes greater decline is far more realistic.
Next, same as above in terms of change in millions. A projected decline of 71 million females of childbearing age is likely to result in a far greater decline than presently suggested.
As a point of reference, I am using data from the UN World Population Prospects 2019, released in June of 2019. This is important because it means that 2018 is the last year of actual observed inputs versus projections and assumptions thereafter. For the 15 to 34 year old female population, the UN has a long runway to simply advance an existing population forward. But projecting births forward is trickier. Large global fluctuations have been more the norm than the exception.
For the truly curious, I chart out the childbearing female populations and births, by region, from 1950 through 2050. Like real estate, while the global trends are clear, they vary widely by region. The first chart for each region is total 15 to 24 year-old and 25 to 34 year-old females versus total annual births. Second chart is the year over year change in both childbearing females and births. Knowledge is power.
Western Asia (Middle East)
Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Georgia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, UAE, Yemen. Although presently in a decade long lull in growth among the childbearing, there is still some demographic energy yet to come. Still, UN projects no further growth in births.
Year over year changes. Again, like Africa, hard to know if the declines seen since 2008 are real and sustained…but highly noteworthy as nothing like this has been seen since WWII. Of course, the UN projections assume this is an aberration and return their projections back to “normal”.
Stans
(Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan). Rising childbearing populations and declining births in the short term, flat to slightly up through the mid century.
The Stans are in the midst of declining childbearing and declining births last seen around the break-up of the Soviet Union. Still, some demographic juice yet to come through that may temper the declining births.
South Asia
(Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Nepal/Bhutan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka). The most populous region of the world has rolled over and a far more significant decline in births than the UN projects is likely over the upcoming decades.On a year over year basis, India (et al) are witnessing the decelerating growth among females of childbearing age and the impact of little growth among the childbearing and ongoing declining fertility rates is likely to see a far faster decline in births than the UN suggests through 2050.
East Asia
(China, Japan, S/N Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia).
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China’s female childbearing population has fallen 25 million since 1989 and births down over 50% (-16 million) and yet far larger declines in those capable of childbirth are still upcoming and ongoing. Those willing to engage in childbirth seems to be falling even faster, as the aftermath of the 2016 “two-child” fiasco highlights. The female childbearing population will decline by another 50 million by 2050 and fertility rates are likely to go even lower. Unlike the UN projection below, annual births below 10 million are likely in the near term…and how much further it goes from there is the question. What will a country with 50 million unoccupied units of housing do as their population continues collapsing from the bottom-up (rhetorical question, Chinese government will be the buyer of everything eventually).
With Chinese childbearing population and fertility rates tanking, significantly greater declines in births are nearly a sure thing than projected by the UN.
- Japan, patient zero in depopulation, has been watching their annual births collapse since 1950, down over 60% from peak births, and resultant childbearing population decline for fifty years now, down almost 40%. There really is nothing to stop or even slow the decline as this daisy-chain continues. An honest question to pose at this point is, when do we start to consider the likelihood that Japan as a state and society is in true peril of going into terminal decline or are we already passed that point?
Looking at Japan on a year over year basis, it is easy to see there is only further declines among the childbearing and the UN projected mild declines in birth through 2050 aren’t credible. A far more realistic viewpoint would be births tumbling below a half million within the next decade…and a more pessimistic viewpoint puts Japan’s future as a functioning nation entirely in question.
- South Korea, like Japan…but much worse. South Korea is in population freefall with births down almost 70% since the 1960 peak and the childbearing population down almost 30% from the late 1980’s peak. But the declines are just getting warmed up and the UN projection of flattish births against collapsing females of childbearing age is just silly. An unbelievable but more realistic scenario will put births down half again from here over the next decade and children in South Korea will be nearing endangered species status?!?
Below, South Korea on a year over year basis, and the upcoming large declines in females of childbearing age are hard to miss, but strangely, the resultant decline in births through the mid-century aren’t depicted by the UN. Perhaps the economic, national, and societal implications are too serious to depict?
South East Asia
(Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam). Annual births peaked here in 1985 and have flatlined for three decades, but now the flatline is coming through the childbearing population and resultant declining births are projected…the only question will be how large the declines will be?
S.E. Asia year over year, below. Why this time is different isn’t hard to see as the demographic momentum flips from growth to decline.
Central AmericaLike South and South East Asia, Central America’s births have long been flat…so long that now the childbearing population is likewise flat. How steep the resultant decline in births will be is the trillion dollar question.
Year over year change in Central America, below. The historic deceleration and projected declines are very clear.
South America
South America’s population is more mature and the declines are already well underway.
Year over year changes in S. America below…the demographic deceleration is over and now come the outright declines.
Western Europe
(Europe minus East Europe). Births peaked five and half decades ago and have fallen by 1/3 since. The childbearing population peaked in the mid ’80’s and has fallen by a quarter. There is nothing but more of the same in the future.
Western Europe year over year, below. Despite all the immigration, really no demographic light out there. Persistent declines in the childbearing population and likely even greater declining births than projected by the UN below.
East Europe
(Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine). The impact of the Soviet Union break-up is still pre-eminent in this part of the world but the in the aftermath of the GFC coupled with a significant decline in the childbearing, a similar decline in births is likely beyond the rather minor decline projected by the UN.
The year over year view of Eastern Europe, below. The major impact of the declining childbearing population through the next decade is evident.
Canada / Australia / New Zealand
The combined Canadian, Australian, New Zealand childbearing and births are among the more demographically positive. Some further growth is likely despite negative fertility rates, based on growing childbearing populations thanks to ongoing immigration.
The days of heady growth are gone, but some demographic growth likely remains.
United States
As for the US, the days of a growing childbearing population are done and thanks to ongoing immigration, a flat childbearing population is likely to persist. However, with ongoing declining fertility rates, declining births are far more likely than the strange UN projection of an imminent birth burst. This is the same burst that the Census and UN have been projecting since 2008 while births continue moving in exactly the opposite direction. My best guess for births is the continued path of decline, in dashed yellow below.
Year over year, two different views…one based on observation and one based on theory.
Finally, a close up of annual change in US childbearing and births from 2000 through 2040…and the difference between the UN and my projection from 2020 through 2040, about 12 million fewer births. But in truth, my best guestimate could be far too optimistic as 2019 is likely to see a new record low in births, according to CDC data through 2019 Q2.
Knowledge is power.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 19:45 -
- Bolivia Issues Arrest Warrant For Exiled President Morales On "Sedition & Terrorism"
Bolivia Issues Arrest Warrant For Exiled President Morales On "Sedition & Terrorism"
Turmoil intensified inside Bolivia on Wednesday as the country’s top prosecutor issued an arrested warrant on “terrorism” charges for former President Evo Morales, also accusing the recently ousted leader of encouraging sedition from abroad.
First given political asylum in Mexico, but now in Argentina, Morales has claimed he was target of a military coup with the orchestration of Washington and regional enemies of Bolivia.
Interior Minister Arturo Murillo first brought the charges following fierce clashes in the capital and other cities between police and his supporters. Ratcheting violence in the wake of his ouster early last month has left at least 35 dead, according to prosecutors. They blame the deaths and continuing violence on Morales’ continued “seditious” speeches and messages from abroad.
This also after interim president Áñez said he must “answer to justice” over alleged election fraud and government corruption, following the mayhem of his last reelection, where an independent body charged him and his administration with being behind mass irregularities.
Morales is being blamed for stoking the mayhem, which allegedly involved him giving orders from exile to blockade cities to force to removal of interim President Jeanine Áñez. Evo supporters say she had illegally seized power in a unilateral power move to control the Senate and secure her leadership over the country.
The former president has since been blocked from running for office again, though Áñez’s administration has voiced concern that he plans to use Buenos Aires as a political headquarters to eventually bring himself back into power.
Sr. @evoespueblo para su conocimiento pic.twitter.com/1KrAFcevjQ
— Arturo Murillo (@ArturoMurilloS) December 18, 2019
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Interior Minister Arturo Murillo shared a photo of the arrest warrant on social media and has in prior statements personally vowed to put him behind bars “for the rest of his life”. He’s further called the former leader a “terrorist” for actions before and after leaving office.
At the start of the counter-protests led by Evo backers the US embassy was forced to evacuate all non-essential personnel after the socialist demonstrators vowed to reject the “right-wing coup”. Washington immediately voiced support for Evo’s ouster, calling it a major advancement of Democracy in Latin America.
From Buenos Aires, the left-wing populist leader Morales who has been praised by Venezuela’s Maduro, vowed to “continue fighting for the poor” as leader of the Movement for Socialism (MAS) party inside Bolivia.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 19:25 - Spongebob, Tom Brady, & Cow-'Rape': The 5 Most Insane Academic Works Of 2019
Spongebob, Tom Brady, & Cow-'Rape': The 5 Most Insane Academic Works Of 2019
Authored by Faith Allen via Campus Reform,
Academic publications have historically been revered as bastions of intellectual rigor, and “peer-reviewed” analysis, but are increasingly becoming home to what would have once been considered fringe or radical ideological viewpoints, arguably fueled by political persuasions.
Campus Reform reported on a number of these instances in 2019. Here are just a few of the most outrageous.
1. Prof: Spongebob perpetuates ‘violent, racist’ acts against indigenous people
University of Washington professor Holly Barker published an article titled “Unsettling Spongebob and the Legacies of Violence on Bikini Bottom” to express her distaste for the yellow sponge character and his sea-faring friends. Her chief complaint was that the series bases its fictional setting on the nonfictional location of Bikini Atoll, a coral reef in the Marshall Islands used by the U.S. military for nuclear testing during the Cold War. She says Spongebob, as an “American” seems to have no regard for the usage of nuclear warfare and occupying land that does not belong to him. Barker stresses that the fictional lagoon is representative of violence against indigenous people, driven out by colonial powers.
2. Prof: ‘Welfare of atheists/agnostics is reduced’ by prayers of others
Economics professor Linda Thunstrom led a study at the University of Wyoming to place a monetary value on “thoughts and prayers.” She used victims from Hurricane Florence, as well as other individuals who experienced hardship in North Carolina to answer the question of how much Christians, agnostics, and atheist victims would be willing to pay for thoughts and prayers from various sources. Thunstrom’s observation of the perceived values led her to the conclusion that “the welfare of atheists and agnostics is reduced by such gestures as sending thoughts and prayers.” Thunstrom told Campus Reform that considering offering thoughts and prayers to a victim of a crisis, “you may want to adjust your response to people’s hardships depending on their religious affiliation.”
3. Prof: Tom Brady’s ‘white male omnipotence’ buttresses American white supremacy’
English professor Kyle Kusz at the University of Rhode Island published a chapter this September about the supposed propagation of white supremacy by the New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Kusz said that Brady gained his popularity during the “latest wave of white rage and white supremacy.” The professor reasons that Brady often supports brands that would be considered “upscale” and the commercials he appears in make him appear superior to the viewer. Kusz relates an appearance of Brady in a 2015 commercial to something that would be seen in a Leni Reifenstahl’s Nazi Film, “Triumph des Willens.” He also notes the fact that Brady takes “boys only trips” to the Kentucky Derby with a group of mostly white men, claiming that this shows that he advances white supremacy within his personal life.
4. NY univ. Promotes paper comparing cow insemination to ‘rape,’ milking cows to ‘sexual abuse’
An academic paper promoted at the College at Brockport State University of New York by the Women’s and Gender Studies program calls on society to reflect on the rampant “sexual exploitation” of dairy cows by the milk industry in order to “fully fight gendered oppression.” Titled “Readying the Rape Rack, Feminism and the Exploitation of Non-Human Reproductive Systems,” the author questions whether milk is even beneficial to humans. The author encourages the reader to “place the importance of animals’ lives as equal to your own,” and address the plight of dairy cows similarly to women’s rights issues. The piece is aimed at discussing how the bodies of cows, specifically their reproductive system, have been poked and prodded at in “the same way women’s health has been at stake for years.”
5. Prof says border enforcement harms environment
A study performed by New Mexico Tech professor Haoying Wang set out to analyze the environmental concerns of increasing border enforcement. The professor says that changes in vegetation near the border could contribute to climate change, and suggested that the heavy machinery used by Border Patrol and the length of time it would take to effect change near the border will also be detrimental to the environment. He argues that the actual act of illegal immigration has a less harmful impact on the environment than border enforcement.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 19:05 - "Very Serious" – 30,000 Pigs Dead As Pig Ebola Spreads In Indonesia's North Sumatra
"Very Serious" – 30,000 Pigs Dead As Pig Ebola Spreads In Indonesia's North Sumatra
Last month more than 4,000 pigs died from African swine fever (ASF) in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province. The outbreak appears to be worsening in December with as many as 30,000 pigs dead, according to the province’s food security and livestock agency, reported Reuters.
The @OIEAnimalHealth has also confirmed the outbreaks of African #Swine Fever in North Sumatra province, Indonesia 🇮🇩. In total 392 villages got infected with #ASF, and over 28,000 #pigs were killed. Read more on @PigProgress and see the updated map ⏩ https://t.co/5TCSqAijRc pic.twitter.com/aBHupicESe
— Vincent ter Beek (@vincenttb) December 18, 2019
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The Agriculture Ministry has just declared an outbreak of ASF in the North Sumatra province of the country: “Very serious handling is being carried out, including isolating those areas,” the North Sumatra Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo told reporters on Wednesday.
For several months, carcasses have been found on roadways and rivers as farmers quickly discarded pigs out of fear of contagion would decimate their herds.
Indonesian authority burrying pigs in Danau Siombak village, in Medan -AFP ASF was first detected in September in the province’s Dairi district. Government officials have deployed monitors to the 38 districts in the region to make sure the outbreak is contained.
Fadjar Sumping Tjatur Rassa, director of animal health at the Agriculture Ministry, said ASF had been found in 16 areas in North Sumatra, including Medan, the capital of Indonesia’s North Sumatra province.
In the 16 contaminated zones, the government has frozen all the transport of meat and meat products. Anyone who is in constant contact with infected herds must go trough bio-security screening, Rassa said.
Rassa said, “road traffic (for pork and its products) are temporarily closed for the infected areas,” adding that the province has a pig population of 1.2 million.
Reuters estimates that Indonesia produced 327,215 tons of pork last year. North Sumatra produces about 13% of the country’s pork, coming in at around 43,308 tons last year.
As seen in many ASF outbreaks in China, spot prices for pork could surge in Indonesia as a result of the recent pig deaths.
China’s pig herd was thinned out by more than half this year thanks to ASF, pushing spot prices of pork in the region to record levels.
There’s no word if ASF is contained in North Sumatra, nor if there were any transmission to wild boar – if there were, then this would mean ASF could spread to other provinces.
There was also no word if the ASF outbreak in the country is connected with China.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 18:45 - Will Modern Monetary Theory Blow Up The Dollar?
Will Modern Monetary Theory Blow Up The Dollar?
Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,
“As long as the government can print money, we’ll never be broke.”
That’s the idea behind modern monetary theory (MMT) in a nutshell. Naturally, many of the nuts in Washington are starting to get behind this unhinged notion. That includes members of Congress such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
An Economic Absurdity
Sure, a cluster of economists in and around Wall Street and Washington, D.C. are pushing this very dangerous set of policies that are dressed up in academic terminology such as “neo-Keynesianism” so that they sound almost sane. But MMT is as far from economic sanity as one can get. But let’s face it, Wall Street loves any idea that puts money into the market.
In essence, the main idea behind MMT is that any government spending can be paid for but with printed money. An in depth look into history—or even a brief one—shows that the absurd idea of printing unlimited amounts of money leads a nation into hyperinflation and economic ruin.
No Good Examples
A recent example would be Zimbabwe. Unjust land seizures leading to food shortages, price controls, and corruption led to massive deficit spending fueled by printing press money. A inflation rate of 98 percent every day destroyed the economy and the government’s credibility in running it.
A more distant example is Germany under the Weimar Republic of the mid-1920s. Under duress to pay reparations for World War I, the German government financed domestic spending exclusively via the printing of money. Hyperinflation soon followed, destroying confidence in the German government and the economy, and even led to starvation and mass disorder. We all know what came to Germany after that.
But surely the United States is different than Zimbabwe 10 years ago and Germany of nearly 100 years ago? Yes, it is. But some economic laws don’t change.
The Myth of ‘Endogenous Money’
There are various takes on MMT, so we’ll look at the central idea and see why it’s a really bad one. MMT economists such as Stephanie Kelton (ex-adviser to Bernie Sanders), Bill Mitchell, who coined the term, and others are fans of the “endogenous money” theory. That’s the notion that private and public sectors battle over access to capital is unnecessary and wrong. Rather, their view is that banks create money in response to market demand in the form of loans to both the government and private businesses.
Taken further, no loans are needed. Just print money.
In that mythical universe, there’s little or no linkage to the “cost” of money in the form of interest rates as demand for money rises. There’s also, apparently, no “crowding out” effect where government demand for money crowds out private demand, which drives companies out of business (not realistic). Furthermore, it means that the government would never have to default on a loan payment because it can just print more money to pay off the debt.
It certainly sounds like a wonderful idea. Who needs to create value when you can just print your debt and then print more to pay it off?
It might work, at least for a while, as long as the creditors—such as the Federal Reserve, which loans the U.S. government money by indirectly buying up its debt—accepts dollars for payment. That’s called “monetizing debt,” by the way, and is essentially what the Fed’s quantitative easing (QE) programs have been doing since 2009. And yet, creditors, both foreign and domestic, still accept dollars as payment.
So far, so good, right?
Not so much. Sure, an MMT enthusiast would tell you that QE has, in fact, worked out quite well (it has really helped the stock market the past decade). There will come a day when a more beneficial currency will replace the dollar. But by the MMT logic, there are truly no limits to government spending. That would makes replacing the dollar much easier.
Admittedly, there are more factors to consider in MMT, but for the sake of space, let’s cut to the chase.
China’s Economy Built on MMT
To see how well MMT works in practice today, we need only look at China, which has built its internal economy on fundamental points of MMT. The Chinese state, the central bank, and both public and private industry are all linked together in a recurring cycle of growth paid for by printing money.
The key point is that even though the money is in the form of loans, it is still capital in the system. Furthermore, that capital is the currency. And, whether printed or lent, the value of the nation’s currency is perceived by the rest of the world as being backed by economic productivity, or devalued by the lack thereof. Confidence in the issuing government and the integrity of the legal system are also related factors. (See the Zimbabwe and Germany examples above.)
The end results of China’s massive money printing are staggering. From 2013 to 2017, China added $25 in assets (debt) for every $1 dollar of GDP—more than 400 percent of its annual GDP. This is a historical first. What’s more, almost 80 percent of it was in shadow banking, unregulated lending with high default rates.
And yet, China’s economy has been slowing for the past decade. Its GDP is at its lowest in almost 30 years. Granted, a fraction of that is due to the trade war over the past 18 months, but where’s the $50 trillion worth of growth that should have come from it?
Today, China’s financial infrastructure is on the brink of collapse. It’s not that there’s a shortage of money in the country, either. China has injected over $126 billion in 2019 alone. At the same time, it’s controlling the quantity by very strict, government-imposed capital controls. That not only conveys its currency’s weakness to the rest of the world but also that even the average Chinese may not believe in the value of their currency.
As a result, Chinese investors themselves prefer to hold gold or real estate rather than their own currency, because they don’t have confidence in its value or the government. They also suspect that asset valuations denominated in Renminbi are unreliable and prone to collapsing bubbles. The lesson for MMT advocates is that spending money alone does not create demand nor does it fuel long-term growth.
A Risk to the U.S. Dollar
Money is a store of value. In the absence of tangible backing such as gold, the issuing country and the strength of its economy are the main drivers of acceptance of a currency, both domestically and internationally.
Moreover, perception is reality. In the case of the United States, MMT spending doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Other nations have to adjust their currency levels to ours. That means the United States would be exporting inflation. What nation will accept U.S. dollars—the world’s reserve currency—if it’s saddled with an infinite level of debt and the very real prospect of hyperinflation at any time?
The answer is very few, if any. What’s more, competitor nations such as Russia and China would be tempted to help break the dollar by backing or partially backing their currency—or a basket of currencies—with gold.
That would be the end of the dollar and the U.S. economy as we know it.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/18/2019 – 18:25
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