- A Desperate ECB Wants To Eliminate The Eurozone's "Only Saving Grace"
A Desperate ECB Wants To Eliminate The Eurozone’s “Only Saving Grace”
Authored by Claudio Grass via The Mises Institute,
Economists, conservative investors, and market observers have been issuing stern warnings for years regarding the severe impact of the current monetary policy direction.
The ECB’s Poblems
In a recent statement, European Central Bank (ECB) Vice President Luis de Guindos warned of potential side effects and risks to the economy resulting directly from the central bank’s policies. He outlined how a decade of extremely aggressive monetary interventions have resulted in an erosion of financial stability and now pose a threat to the eurozone’s economic outlook. While he defended the bank’s negative interest rate strategy as “supportive” of the overall economy, he did admit that, because of it, “we also note an increase in risk-taking which could, in the medium term, create financial-stability challenges”.
This is a point that was also highlighted in the ECB’s latest financial stability review, which found that the ultra-low interest rates have triggered excessive risk-taking, mainly by investment funds, insurers, and in certain real estate markets, thereby creating considerable stability concerns going forward. The report identified four main threats to financial stability for the block: asset mispricing, which sets the stage for a correction, corporate overindebtedness, which raises debt sustainability concerns, dangerously weak banking sector profitability, leading to increased risk-taking, and excessive risks taken in the non-bank financial sector, which could be facing “profitability and solvency challenges.”
Although none of this is news to the responsible investor and to the reader who understands monetary history and the inevitable consequences of trying to forcibly twist basic economic laws, it still remains surprising that the ECB would publicly acknowledge it. The timing is even more striking, as the report, outlining the risks associated with the current monetary policy direction, came out very soon after the bank announced its decision to double down on it, cutting rates even lower and launching a new round of quantitative easing (QE).
Lagarde’s “Solution”
As the ECB appears to be finally acknowledging the limitations and terrible side effects of its own monetary “cures,” and as the eurozone economy continues to struggle, the central planners’ focus seems to be shifting to other measures and tools in hopes of a growth revival. Their “solution” is for governments to deploy fiscal measures and to try to stimulate the sluggish euro area economy through spending.
A great example of this “refocusing” was given by Christine Lagarde in late November. In her first major speech since becoming ECB president, she made no substantive comments on or references to the role of the central bank itself, or to an actual policy revision to help support the ailing eurozone economy. Instead, she concentrated on what member states can do and on the part that increased public investment should play going forward. She highlighted that that monetary policy “cannot and should not be the only game in town,” and she urged European governments to boost spending. She also argued what the EU needs in order to increase productivity is more integration in various areas including capital markets and the banking sector.
It can be argued that the only saving grace of the eurozone’s deeply problematic economic and monetary structure is the fact that at least some of the member states, through the budgetary leeway the system affords, did manage their finances in a comparatively responsible way. Now, it is those states that are in the crosshairs of the ECB, as President Lagarde demonstrated when she singled out “countries with chronic budget surpluses like the Netherlands and Germany” and criticized them for not spending enough. There’s a lot of support for this position, as many are eyeing those surpluses as a way out of the economic glut that the bloc is currently in. As French Minister of the Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire clearly put it in September, “What’s the point of having public accounts perfectly in order … if your European neighbors can’t benefit from your growth and economic dynamism?”
Of course, the sound investor can immediately see the many dangers that lie in this direction. On top of monetary excesses, the road is now being paved for fiscal ones too. Absurd as it might sound, the central bankers’ solution for their concerns of overindebtedness and financial instability — which they’ve admitted their own policies gave rise to — is to encourage the very few member states with stable budgets to destabilize themselves. At a time like this, when the next recession is around the corner and when the ECB has little to no ammunition left to fight it, it seems clear that the individual states that “kept their powder dry” fiscally would be better positioned to take action against the effects of the slowdown. Criticizing budget discipline and surpluses and promoting spending and further integration is a strategy that is bound to seriously backfire, and one that will only serve to exacerbate the impact of the economic slowdown.
This approach also highlights the institutional myopia at the very top of the eurozone. Having learned nothing from the mistakes of the last recession, the “cures” that are being prescribed for the next one are very likely to come with even worse side effects. It is thus clear that it is up to the individual investor and saver to prepare and to protect their wealth from the risks that lie ahead.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/20/2019 – 02:00 - "You Should Not Get Closer To Our Borders" – Russia Deploys Hypersonic Missile Fighters To Arctic
“You Should Not Get Closer To Our Borders” – Russia Deploys Hypersonic Missile Fighters To Arctic
Russia has deployed hypersonic missile fighters along the Arctic and Pacific coasts to protect its maritime borders, reported Izvestia.
Mikoyan MiG-31 supersonic interceptor jets have been outfitted with the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal (“Dagger”), a nuclear-capable air-launched ballistic missile, and deployed to the Kola Peninsula and Kamchatka regions of the country, a powerful move that will send shockwaves through Washington as Russia is now prepared to take control of the Arctic.
The air-launched hypersonic missile is one of the most advanced weapons in the world, even sophisticated air defense systems have difficulty defending against its Mach 10 to Mach 12 speed.
The range of the missile is about 1,200 miles and could extend Russia’s air defense capabilities not just throughout the Arctic region, but also could challenge the US in the Pacific.
Russian ASF MiG-31 aircraft crew conducted combat training launch of a hypersonic missile of #Kinzhal high-precision aviation missile system in the assigned area. Launch was conducted normally. The missile hit the target at a training ground. pic.twitter.com/u8jkUw27O9
— Минобороны России (@mod_russia) March 10, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
With the deployment of the hypersonic missile fighters, one fleet in the Arctic and another in the Pacific, Russia will be able to deploy a rapid response countermeasure or even defensive maneuver across the Arctic and the North Pacific.
Test pilot Colonel Igor Malikov told Izvestia that “It must be clearly stated: you should not get closer to our borders and make aggressive plans…the MiG-31 with the “Dagger” is a defensive weapon. In the event of an attack on Russia, it can hit the airbases from which enemy planes take off in the direction of our territories, as well as ships and marine infrastructure.”
As we’ve explained before, the Arctic is becoming a highly contested region for control between the US, Russia, and China. That’s because more than $35 trillion worth of natural resources could be hiding underneath the ocean floor.
“Now, there are several points of intersection of the interests of a number of powers,” Malikov told Izvestia. “There were questions – who will develop minerals on the ocean shelves. Moreover, not only the countries of the region, but also the USA participate in these discussions. And MiG regiments with Daggers are going to be placed at key points in the region.”
The battle for the Arctic has already begun — Russia could be in the lead to take control of the Arctic considering its latest deployment of military hardware to the region.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/20/2019 – 01:00 - The Final Act
The Final Act
Authored by Dmitry Orlov via ClubOrlov.com,
In processing the flow of information about the goings on in the US, it is impossible to get rid of a most unsettling sense of unreality – of a population trapped in a dark cave filled with little glowing screens, all displaying different images yet all broadcasting essentially the same message. That message is that everything is fine, same as ever, and can go on and on. But whatever it is that’s going on can’t go on forever, and therefore it won’t. More specifically, a certain coal mine canary has recently died, and I want to tell you about it.
It’s easy to see why that particular message is stuck on replay even as the situation changes irrevocably. As of 2019, 90% of the media in the United States is controlled by four media conglomerates: Comcast (via NBCUniversal), Disney, ViacomCBS (controlled by National Amusements), and AT&T (via WarnerMedia). Together they have formed a corporate media monoculture designed to most effectively maximize shareholder value.
As I wrote in Reinventing Collapse in 2008,
“…In a consumer society, anything that puts people off their shopping is dangerously disruptive, and all consumers sense this. Any expression of the truth about our lack of prospects for continued existence as a highly developed, prosperous industrial society is disruptive to the consumerist collective unconscious. There is a herd instinct to reject it, and therefore it fails, not through any overt action, but by failing to turn a profit because it is unpopular.”
Two years earlier, in a slideshow optimistically titled “Closing the Collapse Gap” (between the USSR and the USA), I wrote: “…It seems that there is a fair chance that the US economy will collapse sometime within the foreseeable future. It also would seem that we won’t be particularly well-prepared for it. As things stand, the US economy is poised to perform something like a disappearing act.” And now, 12 years later, I believe I am finally watching what amounts to preparations for that act’s final rehearsal; the ballet troupe is doing stretching exercises and the fat lady is singing arpegios to warm up…
Clearly, this final act is yet to be performed. The media replay loop continues to play, keeping the populace convinced that the future will resemble the past (except, perhaps, it will have more wind generators, solar panels and electric cars). The populace continues to be persuaded to go out and shop for (or, more frequently now, order online) things it doesn’t need, to be paid for by money it doesn’t have.
Of course, there have been changes. The populace in the US has been doing progressively worse. Drug addiction and suicide rates have skyrocketed while rates of childbirth have plummeted. The purchase of a home is now out of reach for the vast majority of young couples. Artificially rosy unemployment statistics hide the 100 million or so people who are considered “not in labor force” (because they lost their jobs some time ago and haven’t been able to find another one). Uniquely among developed nations, life expectancy among white males—historically the most economically active and prosperous part of the population—has been dropping. These are all negatives, but neither any one of them nor any combination of them adds up to anything that could cause the US economy to undergo a spontaneous existence failure.
Nevertheless, it is possible to build a convincing case that Rome is, to put it figuratively, burning. To continue with the metaphor, evidence that there is some fiddling going on is particularly compelling. Overall, there is a steady backing away from addressing the substance of any problem and a concerted effort to maintain appearances at all cost.
Take the trade war with China, which has been going on since early 2018. Trump has recently declared a major victory in it, but upon examination signs victory are impossible to discern. In 2017 the US ran a $750 billion trade deficit with China on $3.3 trillion of trade (22.7%). In 2018 it has jumped to $930 billion on $3.8 trillion of trade (24.4%). China has found ways to parry each of Trump’s thrusts by imposing countertariffs. After two years of this sort of World War I-style trench warfare, in which the US has been slowly losing ground, it became clear that the US doesn’t have any means to put pressure on China.
And so Trump suddenly declares victory; not a full victory (that will have to wait until after Trump is reelected for his second term) but a victory nonetheless, because the Chinese have supposedly agreed to buy an extra $200 billion worth of US exports, $50 billion of them of agricultural exports from states that voted for Trump in 2016. But Trump is lying to his supporters. Over the past two years the Chinese have imported roughly $24 billion of agricultural commodities from the US, and sources close to the trade talks have said that the Chinese have agreed to increase these imports by just $16 billion, putting the total $10 billion short of the $50 billion mark. Even then, the US agricultural sector would have to rapidly scale up production by a factor of 1.6—and this is not at all likely.
The farmers will discover this only after they vote to reelect Trump, but that’s not Trump’s problem. Nor was it Trump’s problem when in 2017 the Chinese promised to buy $120 billion of US liquified natural gas exports and then the US wasn’t able to provide anywhere near that volume. And now that Russia’s Power of Siberia pipeline is operational and ramping up volumes, while US fracking companies are going bankrupt left and right, the question has become largely moot. The AG promise is just a replay of the LNG promise at a smaller scale. Appearances are all that matter, and appearances are what Trump delivers every time. And if his voters want to believe—who’s to stop them? Even though it is clearly heading toward a defeat for the US as a whole, the trade war with China is definitely a huge positive for Trump: all he has to do to win personally is periodically deliver promises that others won’t keep—but that’s not his problem.
Another net benefit for Trump is the never-ending impeachment saga. It has kept him in the media limelight and has allowed him to pretend that he is prevailing heroically against great odds while making his opposition look ridiculous in the eyes of his supporters. After the “Russian meddling” fable unraveled, an even more preposterous rationale for impeachment has taken its place. An attempt to impeach Trump for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation is in the process of failing, since anyone with more intelligence than a bucket of California penis fish should know that it is up to the courts, not up to the legislature, to resolve disputes between the legislature and the executive. All that remains now is an alleged abuse of power by Trump. Apparently, it is a no-no for a US president to ask a foreign leader to investigate a US presidential candidate for a variety of crimes such as corruption, bribery and money-laundering. This may all seem quite ridiculous, but it serves a purpose: it allows Trump to clean up on free publicity and to continue fiddling (tweeting, in his case) as Rome burns.
But what has set fire under Rome is not the decrepitating state of US society, or the permanent and permanently worsening trade imbalance with China, or the never-ending impeachment farce. It is the incipient failure of the US dollar. For those who have been paying careful attention, the surreal nature of the procedings, and the fact that results no longer matter—only appearances do—have become perfectly obvious, but they are a tiny minority. What has allowed the politicians and the media to exploit the general public’s innate normalcy bias and to keep the media replay loop going without too many people catching on to what’s really happening was (note the past tense!) the ability of the US government (with the assistance of the Federal Reserve, which is a government-linked but essentially private entity) to paper over the gaping chasm in the nation’s finances by issuing debt, in the form of US Treasury paper.
The US Treasury has been able to exploit its “exorbitant privilege” to issue internationally recognized and traded debt instruments denominated in its own currency—the US dollar—which has been the world’s main reserve currency for many decades. The reserve currency status has conveyed a certain aura of security and reliability (paper money is, after all, pretty much just a confidence game) and has supported the world’s largest and most liquid financial market. Anybody anywhere could put up US Treasury paper as collateral for a loan and get a low interest rate because that paper was considered as good as “real money” (whatever that means). And then that scheme suddenly broke.
It is difficult to say what caused the confidence game to fail. It could be just the inexorable and ever-accelerating increase in US government debt. It could be the blatant decoupling between the growth rate of the US economy and the rate of increase of its indebtedness. It could also be the fact that much of the world is making a concerted effort to walk away from the US dollar as a reserve currency and as a means of exchange in international trade (Russia has sold off almost all of its US debt; China’s hoard is much larger but it is also gradually selling it off). It is unclear what was the ultimate cause, but what is clear is that in August of 2019 something finally snapped, and USTs went from “good as real money” to “stuff nobody wants to hold.”
I first wrote about this in September when it became clear that real trouble was brewing in the market for US debt. Now, three months later, the situation has gone from bad to worse, and it would appear that the market for USTs definitively broke. I will try to sketch out what that means for the US economy and society later on (spoiler alert: nothing good) but for now I just want to lay out some of what has happened. In the meantime please take your normalcy bias and put it some place safe (in case you need it later, although I have no idea what for).
Previously, when it was clear that an overburden of bad debt could trigger financial collapse at any moment, the Federal Reserve (which is in charge of printing money) engaged in something it euphemistically called “quantitative easing” (“QE”). It printed lots of US dollars in exchange for various bits of USTs, along with other financial garbage, with the goal of later selling the USTs while hiding the garbage, thereby preserving the appearance that USTs are sovereign debt supported by the full faith and credit of the US government rather than just some waste paper clogging up its vaults. But when it declared “quantitative easing” to be over and tried selling the USTs, all hell immediately broke loose and it was forced to go right back to buying them up, in a scheme that has been sarcastically referred to as “not QE.” Euphemisms aside, what is happening is properly called “debt monetization”: it’s when a government “borrows” money not by selling its debt in exchange for money that already exists but simply printing the money using paper and ink, or magic digits inside a very secure computer.
Let’s go over some of the relevant details. “Not QE” actually started well before it was announced and proceeded in stealth mode. Over six weeks starting in September 2019, the Fed monetized an average of $20.5 billion per week. This rate is compatible with the extent of its previous efforts at “quantitative easing” at their height. It was forced to do so because the REPO rate on USTs spiked to 10 times the rate set by the Fed. (REPO stands for “repurchase agreement”; it is where one party borrows short-term from another party, using USTs (and other supposedly very safe debt instruments) as collateral, much as a pawn shop will give you money for a watch and then allow you to buy it back.) The huge spike in interest rates signaled that USTs were no longer seen as particularly safe collateral and the Fed had to step in and start throwing freshly minted dollars at the problem. And it never stopped. In fact, the problem grew larger; so large, that now, at the year’s end, the Fed has committed $500 billion of printing press output to making sure that nobody runs out of cash.
It is commonly thought that the Fed’s action has to do with short-term debt, and is therefore a short-term problem, but that’s simply not the case. Since early August (the start of stealth-mode “not QE”) the Fed has vacuumed up $179 billion with of USTs, of which USTs with terms longer than a year made up $108 billion, or 60%. Compare these numbers to the total borrowing by the US government over the same period, which amounted to $659 billion, of which $368 billion was short-term debt and $291 billion long-term. Thus, over this period the Fed has monetized 29.4% of new long-term debt and 24.4% of short-term debt. This should help put your mind at ease if you suspected that this isn’t a short-term problem but weren’t sure. It’s a long-term, structural problem.
Next, let’s consider whether the problem is being solved or is getting worse. Rest assured, it is getting worse. Looking at the numbers for October and November, the Fed monetized over half (50.7%) of new US government debt. A straight-line projection is that if it took the Fed to go from 0% to 50% in four months, then it will go from 50% to 100% in another four—by April Fool’s 2020. But who’s to say that the increase will be linear rather than exponential? Whichever it is, the trend is unmistakable: the market in US government debt—once the deepest and most liquid market in the world—is dead. The only thing propping up the value of USTs is the Fed’s printing press. And the only thing propping up the value of the output of the Fed’s printing press is… what is it, exactly? Exactly!
Let’s add one more salient detail. Over the course of 2020, $4.665 trillion of USTs will mature and will need to be rolled over into new USTs. This is an all-time record, and this is on top of new debt that will have to be issued in order for the US government to be able to stay open. Over the past year the US budget deficit has amounted to $1.022 trillion, which is a 15.8% increase over the previous year. If this trend continues, the new deficit will be around $1.183 trillion. In order to keep the wheels of finance from grinding to a halt, over 2020 the Fed will have to monetize, or print, close to $6 trillion.
It appears likely that at some point over the coming months Fed chairman Jerome Powell will have to announce “not not QE,” and then “not not not QE,” and then “Milk-milk-lemonade, ’round the corner fudge is made!” and run for the unigender restroom sobbing inconsolably. And then Donald Trump will be forced to channel Boris Yeltsin, who, on August 14, 1998, summoned all the presidential gravitas he could muster and spoke the following sage words:
«Девальвации рубля не будет. Это твердо и четко. Мое утверждение — не просто моя фантазия, и не потому, что я не хотел бы девальвации. Мое утверждение базируется на том, что все просчитано. Работа по отслеживанию положения проводится каждые сутки. Положение полностью контролируется».
“There will be no ruble devaluation. This is my firm and clear position. My assertion is not just a product of my fantasy, and not because I don’t want devaluation to happen. My assertion is based on the fact that everything is taken into account. The work on reassessing the situation is being conducted daily. The situation is entirely under control.” (My translation.)
And then three days later the Russian government declared sovereign default. The ruble dropped by 2/3 against the US dollar and the Russian economy, which was at that time extremely import-dependent, crashed hard. In a similar scenario, the US economy will crash much harder. Like Russia in 1998, the US is extremely import-dependent. But here the US government is not the only large borrower: most of US corporations are zombified corpses bloated with debt. For many years they have been borrowing at artificially low interest rates in order to buy up their own shares and prop up their value in a ridiculous effort to maximize shareholder value in the face of stalling economic growth. If they become unable to roll over their debt at artificially low interest rates (which will go away once the Fed definitively loses control of the situation) then they will automatically be forced to declare bankruptcy and liquidate.
* * *
If you want to maintain an optimistic outlook in spite of all of this, here is a book you might want to read.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/20/2019 – 00:05 - Chinese Pork Billionaires Squealing All The Way To The Bank
Chinese Pork Billionaires Squealing All The Way To The Bank
With wholesale pork prices more than doubling in 2019 due to a deadly epidemic of African swine fever, a handful of Chinese pork peddlers are bringing home the bacon ham over fist, according to Bloomberg.
Qin Yinglin China’s top hog-hawker of late is Muyuan Foodstuff chairman Qin Yinglin, whose net worth has more than quadrupled this year to $8.6 billion thanks to his 60% stake in the company – making him the fastest growing individual on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Forbes has pegged Qin’s net worth at $16.6 billion. He holds the shares directly and with his wife through Muyuan Industrial Group.
After graduating from Henan Agricultural University with a degree in animal husbandry, Qin launched a hog breeding company with just 22 pigs – and now slaughters roughly 5 million per year as one of China’s premiere meat mavens.
Muyuan’s profit soard 260% in Q3 vs. the same period in 2018, due to the deaths of millions of pigs (some at the hands of criminal meat schemers) which caused the country’s pig herd to collapse 41% YoY, sending prices skyrocketing.
In order to avoid swine fever, for which there is no approved vaccine but doesn’t affect human health, Muyuan has been sterilizing animal feed with heat, filtering the air inside of their facilities, and disinfecting trucks, Qin told the South China Morning Post in March.
“Some companies are very much in difficulty because they are unable to reproduce their hog herd,” according to Fitch analyst Li Chen, “But some companies are seeing great profitability.”
Other pork profiteers include WH Group – the world’s largest pork producer, as well as pig breeder and animal-feed company New Hope Group – whose Chairman, Liu Yonghao, has seen his net worth balloon to $11 billion – nearly double what it was at the end of 2018.
“Swine fever brings both benefit and harm,” Qin told SCMP. “We need to ride this violent hurricane out and turn it into a superb opportunity for our development.”
As we noted in July, the rise in pork comes as prices for other meats – particularly chicken and duck – have risen substantially, as consumers turn to alternate proteins.
“The market prospects are very good now because of African swine fever,” said Shenghe Chairman Wang Shuhong, whose firm sells about 300,000 ducklings a day for fattening and slaughter.
Soaring duck prices, in turn, have pushed the price of chicken up more than 20% – affecting companies such as Yum China – the other of China’s dominant fast food brand KFC, according to SCMP.
“Poultry price has gone up because of African swine fever and the substitution away from pork to chicken. So the cost has gone up,” said Fred Hu, founder of Beijing-based global investment firm Primavera Capital Group, and non-executive chairman of Yum China.
The impact on the company that buys a billion chickens a year in China has been significant and “has definitely put up the pressures,” said Hu. He did not say how much the price hike had cost Yum China, which also runs China’s Pizza Hut.
In 2016, the brand spun off from global business Yum Brands and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It was backed by Hu’s Primavera Capital Group, who invested US$410 million, and fintech company Ant Financial Services Group, who put in US$50 million. –SCMP
After 32 years in China, there are more than 6,000 KFC stores across more than 1,000 cities in China, employing more than 400,000 people.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 23:45 - Dysfunction In The Olympic Movement
Dysfunction In The Olympic Movement
Authored by Michael Averko via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Alan Dershowitz, the acclaimed US legal academic, is fond of noting the proverbial if the shoe is on other foot test – to see who is and isn’t sincere in their convictions. This matter relates to the call to have Russia formally banned from the next Summer and Winter Olympics. The same is even more applicable to those who don’t favor any Russians competing under the Olympic flag as authorized neutral athletes.
The British head of World Athletics, Sebastian Coe, brazenly supports a ban on all Russian track and field athletes, until it can be firmly established (in his view) that they’re clean. Coe’s take has been widely reported in Western mass media, with little, if any second guessing of the hypocrisy he exhibits.
Despite missing three consecutive drug tests, American sprinter Christian Coleman, was allowed to compete at this past World Athletics Championships. It’s quite doubtful that any Russian would be allowed the benefit given to Coleman. As is true with a number of other sports, there’re credible reports indicating that World Athletics has an inconsistent worldwide drug testing regimen.
A few years ago, an ESPN “Outside the Lines” segment (aired at an early Sunday morning low ratings time slot), noted that some top Jamaican track and field athletes have regularly missed drug tests, as a Jamaican whistleblower on this issue has been castigated in her country. (Pardon me for not having a transcript of that show.)
Regarding non-Russian Olympians, Coleman’s situation is by no means an isolated one.
Numerous Norwegian cross country skiers, along with prominent US Olympians Serena Williams, Simone Biles and Justin Gatlin, are among a non-Russian grouping that fall in the category of either missing drug tests, failing them, or getting an exemption for using an otherwise banned substance.
The ban against Russia competing as a country at the 2018 Winter Olympics didn’t see a noticeable banning of top Russian Olympians for suspected drug use. (Under the Olympic flag and anthem, these Russians competed as the “Olympic Athletes from Russia”) Hence, that prohibition was essentially a form of collective punishment against an entire nation and its people. At the recommendation of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), Russia now faces a banning for the next Summer and Winter Olympics.
On the reportedly altered Russian database of drug test results, how many other countries have been asked to forward as complete an accounting of their respective athletes? As of now and as reported, this particular pertaining to Russia looks shady. Verifiable specifics on the database editing haven’t been released. Regardless, when it comes to drug testing over the past several years, Russia’s top Olympic caliber athletes are probably the most carefully scrutinized in the world. These individuals spend time outside Russia (training and/or competing), where they can and have been suddenly tested. Unless my information is wrong (which I doubt), they also get tested in Russia, with samples going to the WADA and/or a WADA affiliated vender.
The British WADA member Jonathan Taylor, said that a lengthy appeal process at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), could allow for Russia to formally participate at the 2020 Summer Olympics. Taylor is against this scenario – instead favoring for Russia to be excluded from the next Summer and Winter Olympics. He emphasized that a CAS ruling against Russia after the 2020 Summer Olympics, would result in that country getting banned from the 2024 Summer Olympics.
I suspect that most Russians don’t see Taylor as a fair reviewer, who is truly concerned about Russia’s best interests. If Russia can’t achieve a relatively quick CAS appeal in its favor, it’s arguably in Russia’s best interests to have a delayed decision, allowing for a formal Russian 2020 Summer Olympics representation.
As time passes, there’s a chance that a growing number will see how unfair Russia has been treated, in conjunction with organizations like World Athletics and WADA possibly getting an overhaul, to better prevent any unfair treatment against a given nation and its people.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 23:25 - Alarming NYT Op-Ed Reveals "Disturbing" Secretive Surveillance State Powered By Your Phone's Location Services
Alarming NYT Op-Ed Reveals “Disturbing” Secretive Surveillance State Powered By Your Phone’s Location Services
Millions of Americans are walking around with phones that have, unknowingly, created one of the most disturbing and unintentional “surveillance states” to ever exist.
A explosive new opinion piece in the NY Times aims to demonstrate that detailed smartphone tracking is far more ubiquitous than many think, despite the ongoing claims by companies that people’s data is “anonymous”.
Paul Ohm, a law professor and privacy researcher at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that describing location data as anonymous is “a completely false claim that has been debunked in multiple studies.”
He added: “Really precise, longitudinal geolocation information is absolutely impossible to anonymize. D.N.A. is probably the only thing that’s harder to anonymize than precise geolocation information.”
The op-ed looked at trying to identify people in positions of power. It identified and tracked “scores” of notable people, like military officials with security clearances, as they drove home at night. They also tracked law enforcement officials and high powered lawyers. Though they didn’t name any of the people, they followed them on private jets, vacations and taking their kids to school.
Despite some of the data pointing to “scandal and crime”, the purpose of tracking them was to document the risk of under-regulated surveillance.
One person identified was Mary Millben, a singer based in Virginia who has performed for three Presidents. When told her phone was putting her “on the map” for everyone to see, she said: “To know that you have a list of places I have been, and my phone is connected to that, that’s scary. What’s the business of a company benefiting off of knowing where I am? That seems a little dangerous to me.”
She couldn’t name the app that shared her location, despite saying she was “careful” about which apps she allowed to share her location.
“That makes me uncomfortable. I’m sure that makes every other person uncomfortable, to know that companies can have free rein to take your data, locations, whatever else they’re using. It is disturbing,” she continued.
On inauguration weekend, the authors were able to track “elite attendees at presidential ceremonies, religious observers at church services, supporters assembling across the National Mall”, as well as protesters. They even spotted a senior official at the DOD walking through the Women’s March, along with his wife.
Yet companies that take your location data collect “orders of magnitude” more that what the Times opinion writers had access to.
There are dozens of companies out there that profit from this data. Many use “technical and nuanced language that may be confusing to average smartphone users.” Many company names would likely be unfamiliar to most Americans.
These companies downplay the risks of collecting such revealing data at scale. Brian Czarny, chief marketing officer at Factual, one such company, said: “No, it doesn’t really keep us up at night. Factual does not resell detailed data like the information [The Times] reviewed. We don’t feel like anybody should be doing that because it’s a risk to the whole business.”
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But without federal privacy laws, the industry has largely been self-regulated. Several groups have offered ethical guidelines and groups like the Mobile Marketing Association are drafting pledges to improve this self-regulation.But states are starting to respond. For instance, the California Consumer Protection Act takes effect next year and allows residents to ask companies to delete their data or prevent its sale. But legally, the law could leave the industry free to do whatever it wants.
Calli Schroeder, a lawyer for the privacy and data protection company VeraSafe said: “If a private company is legally collecting location data, they’re free to spread it or share it however they want.”
Companies are required to disclose “very little” about data collection, but rather are only required to describe their practices in their privacy policies.
Location data, gathered by latitude and longitude, coupled with time spent in an area, feed a lucrative secondary business of analyzing, licensing and transferring that information to third parties. Here’s what that data looks like:
The data provides intelligence for big businesses, as well:
The Weather Channel app’s parent company, for example, analyzed users’ location data for hedge funds, according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles this year that was triggered by Times reporting. And Foursquare received much attention in 2016 after using its data trove to predict that after an E. coli crisis, Chipotle’s sales would drop by 30 percent in the coming months. Its same-store sales ultimately fell 29.7 percent.
Companies like Verizon and AT&T have been selling the data for years. Last year, Vice found that data being sold was being used by bounty hunters to find specific cell phones in real time. Telecom companies pledged, after the scandal, to stop selling the data. But there is still no law that prevents it.
Additionally, the piece notes “everything can be hacked”. That means that any server that houses this data is susceptible to having it wind up in the wrong hands.
Broili/NYT For most Americans, the distribution of this information could result in embarrassment or inconvenience. But for people like survivors of abuse, it could come with substantially more risks.
And the ability to identify individuals was stunning:
In one case, we observed a change in the regular movements of a Microsoft engineer. He made a visit one Tuesday afternoon to the main Seattle campus of a Microsoft competitor, Amazon. The following month, he started a new job at Amazon. It took minutes to identify him as Ben Broili, a manager now for Amazon Prime Air, a drone delivery service.
Broili commented: “I can’t say I’m surprised. But knowing that you all can get ahold of it and comb through and place me to see where I work and live — that’s weird.”
He continued: “It’s an awful lot of data. And I really still don’t understand how it’s being used. I’d have to see how the other companies were weaponizing or monetizing it to make that call.”
You can read the full long form op-ed here.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 23:05 - Earth's Magnetic North Pole Is Moving Faster Than Ever, Leaving Scientists Baffled
Earth’s Magnetic North Pole Is Moving Faster Than Ever, Leaving Scientists Baffled
Authored by Elias Marat via TheMindUnleashed.com,
Earth’s magnetic north pole is moving at unprecedented speeds and scientists are still unsure of why this is the case.
What makes these recent changes so interesting is the sheer speed at which they are occurring.
Some fear that the rapid movement of the magnetic north pole could cause problems for Global Positioning Systems (GPS), military operations, airliners, and other navigation systems that rely on pinpointing where precisely the pole is located.
Migratory animals such as birds, butterflies, and whales also use the magnetic field for directions.
The latest report from NOAA, the “World Magnetic Model” for 2020, shows the pole rapidly speeding in the direction of Siberia. However, the trajectory of the pole will likely change.
NGA in partnership with @NOAA and the @BritGeoSurvey, has released the World Magnetic Model 2020 update, providing more precise navigational data for all military and civilian planes, ships, submarines and GPS units. pic.twitter.com/VGyfui42MB
— NGA (@NGA_GEOINT) December 17, 2019
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This isn’t the first time that this has happened—polar wandering has been constant since the North Pole was first discovered, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
NOAA’s National Centres for Environmental Information explained:
“Since its first formal discovery in 1831, the north magnetic pole has travelled around 1,400 miles (2,250 km).
This wandering has been generally quite slow, allowing scientists to keep track of its position fairly easily.”
As recently as 2000, the magnetic North Pole was clocked at moving 6.2 miles per year toward Northern Russia, but data for the next two decades shows the average rate suddenly increasing to roughly 34 miles per year in the same direction, while the latest readings in 2019 show it slightly decreasing to about 31 miles per year.
The World Magnetic Model predicts the average speed will slow down to roughly 25 miles per year from 2020 to 2025.
“The WMM2020 forecasts that the northern magnetic pole will continue drifting toward Russia, although at a slowly decreasing speed—down to about 40 km per year compared to the average speed of 55 km over the past twenty years.”
For the first time in recorded history, the pole has even passed by the Greenwich meridian—the imaginary line used to indicate 0° longitude and determine time zones.
Geomagnetic specialist Ciaran Beggan from the British Geological Survey (BGS) told the Financial Times:
“The movement since the 1990s is much faster than at any time for at least four centuries.
We really don’t know much about the changes in the core that’s driving it.”
The team of researchers that maintain the World Magnetic Model has updated it and released it a year ahead of schedule. The newly updated model shows the magnetic north pole moving away from Canada and toward Siberia https://t.co/nUzvCLmwsb pic.twitter.com/wZn2YXxekt
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 18, 2019
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The new model also confirms that Earth’s magnetic field is weakening. If this continues, scientists say the field could collapse entirely and flip polarity—changing magnetic north to south and vice versa—and the consequences could be dire for the planet.
But before we begin to panic, we should remember that the Earth’s magnetic poles have already flipped up to 100 times in the past 20 million years, the last reversal occurring roughly 773,000 years ago.
Earlier this year, the rapid movement of the North Pole garnered headlines when scientists revealed that the north was moving so fast that they had to update their model of the planet’s magnetic field much earlier than expected.
At the time, the Mind Unleashed reported:
“The drift is the result of processes deep in the center of the planet, where the liquid outer core comprised of iron and nickel spins and flows like water, serving as a conductor for Earth’s magnetic field.
The recent change in the flow of the fluid is believed to be similar to the formation of a jet stream in the atmosphere, leading to changes in the planet’s magnetic field.
… these changes are all part and parcel of the natural behavior of the Earth and have not been caused by human activity. Rock samples reveal that the Earth’s magnetic field has been in perpetual motion for millions of years.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison geologist and NOAA study author Brad Singer told CNN that while the shifts in the pole could, in the long term, lead to impacts on satellites, communication, and navigation, researchers will likely have generations to deal with any major instability in the magnetic field.
“The decrease in geomagnetic field is much more important and dramatic than the reversal,” said Dr. Nicolas Thouveny from the European Centre for Research and Teaching of Environmental Geosciences (CEREGE) in Aix-en-Provence, France.
“It is very important to understand if the present field will decay to zero in the next century, because we will have to prepare.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 22:45 - Durham Reportedly Seeking Ex-CIA Director Brennan's Emails, Call Logs Over Russian Probe
Durham Reportedly Seeking Ex-CIA Director Brennan’s Emails, Call Logs Over Russian Probe
Attorney General William Barr told “The Story with Martha MacCallum” that by the time Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, it had become clear that allegations raised by the FBI against a former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos were largely baseless, and that pursuing George Papadopoulos’ “had very little probative value.”
John Durham isn’t just looking at the FBI. He’s looking at other agencies, departments, and private actors. The other agents is cooperating very well. pic.twitter.com/VyM5Wp7VqI
— The Dirty Truth “Josh“ (@AKA_RealDirty) December 20, 2019
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Additionally, Barr admitted, in a very candid (for him) moment, that federal prosecutor John Durham (who is scrutinizing the Russia investigation) “isn’t just looking at the FBI, he’s looking at other agencies, departments, and private actors,” but that “the other agencies are cooperating very well.”
Which is all the more intriguing as, at the same time as his interview aired, The New York Times dropped a bombshell, reporting that, according to three people briefed on the inquiry, Durham’s investigation has begun examining the role of the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan in how the intelligence community assessed Russia’s 2016 election interference.
Specifically, Durham has requested Brennan’s emails, call logs, and other documents from the C.I.A. (and judging by Barr’s statement that “other agencies are cooperating very well,” we suspect Durham will get what he wants.
Additionally, NYT reports that Durham is also examining whether Mr. Brennan privately contradicted his public comments, including May 2017 testimony to Congress, about both the dossier and about any debate among the intelligence agencies over their conclusions on Russia’s interference.
Of course, NYT is quick to ‘warn’ readers that Durham’s decision to probe Brennan’s actions deeper will “add to accusations that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies.” But we ask, just as with Ukraine and the Bidens, is it only ‘not allowed’ to root out corruption if the corrupt is a representative of ‘the other’?
We will let AG Barr respond to that implied problem:
“The president bore the burden of probably one of the greatest conspiracy theories – baseless conspiracy theories – in American political history.”
Noting that he has long expressed skepticism that the F.B.I. had enough information to begin its inquiry in 2016, publicly criticizing IG Horowitz’s report released last week that affirmed that the bureau did.
Finally, while Brennan, Clapper, and Comey have rushed to their friends in the liberal media (and their social media echo chambers) to frame their own narratives as to just how much blame, bias, and bad behavior they each undertook…
We suspect that if Durham cracks Brennan, he will take everyone else down with him. Maybe Nancy will hand the impeachment articles over at that moment… as a distraction from the real threat to America’s democracy, constitution, and common man.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 22:25 - "The UN's 'Woke' Climate Change Propaganda Is An Insult To Science"
“The UN’s ‘Woke’ Climate Change Propaganda Is An Insult To Science”
Authored by Sherelle Jacobs, Daily Telegraph columnist
I was always a ‘middle-grounder’, rather than a ‘denier’ – until I discovered the extent of the dishonesty
The climate change “emergency” is fake news. Many will roll their eyes in exasperation at the conspiratorial bombastry of yet another “denier”. But for years I have been a plastic recycling, polar bear cooing middle-grounder. In fact, Aristotle would probably turn in his grave at the logical fallaciousness of my long-held presumption that the truth must lie somewhere between those two mutually loathing opposites – Scepticism and Armageddon.
But as the doom-mongering acquires the rubber-stamped smell of instutionalised illness, it is impossible to ignore that the “woke” are the new “slept” – too deep in their sugar coma of confected hysteria to realise they are being duped by disinformation.
Before I explain why the climate “emergency” is the most electrifyingly effective propaganda exercise of the 21st century, two clarifications. I have no fight to pick with glaring evidential realities: surface records clearly show the planet is getting warmer. Nor do I have a culture war-bloodied axe to grind with the fundamental chemistry: carbon dioxide indisputably contributes to the greenhouse effect. But I do take issue with how the mainstream debate has become an insult to both the public’s intelligence and basic science.
This was clearer than ever two weeks ago, as bureaucratic catastrophists kicked up dystopian dust-clouds on their way into the UN Madrid climate change summit. As Greta Thunberg arrived by yacht (after her British skipper likely clocked up 3 tonnes of carbon emissions flying to the US to pick her up), UN Secretary General António Guterres rumbled that, over the horizon, he could see “the point of no return”. Delegates waved the UN’s latest Emissions Gap Report as if it were both a millenarian death oracle and a methodologically indisputable text; in it, the recommendation to cut emissions by at least 7.6 per cent per year for the next decade.
One can’t help but feel that we have heard such curiously precise warnings before. Last year the UN warned that we had just 12 years to save the planet. Scientists have since revised this to approximately 18 months. Or perhaps it is already too late. The experts don’t seem quite sure.
Indeed, the distinction between present and future seems to be fading to discardable subtlety. Take the study which has gone viral in recent days for claiming that parts of the world have either already reached – or are inching towards –“tipping point”, whereby the planet becomes caught in destructive feedback loops. Are we already doomed, or nearly doomed, or nearly already doomed? More is the mystery.
Claims such as these are projections, but they are routinely presented to the public as unquestionable facts. This effectively reduces them to fake news. Even more so, given that the accuracy of the climate modelling upon which these figures and scenarios rely is contested, and the climate does not change in a straight line.
To take one example, the UN’s international climate change body, the IPCC, said in 2007 that temperatures had risen by 0.2C per decade between 1990-2005 and used that figure for its 20-year projection. Inconveniently, warming turned out to have been just 0.05C per decade over the 15 years to 2012.
The IPCC acknowledges the uncertainty of the computations it champions; hence the disclaimer squirreled away on its website stating that it does not guarantee the accuracy of the information it contains. A caveat lost in translation at the resplendently funereal press conferences.
This post-truth scam is having a chilling effect on science. Experts are locked in a race to the bottom to make detailed and disastrous premonitions. And despite the fact that disciplined debate is the motor of scientific discovery, eco-extremists are shutting down discussions that dissent from the Apocalypse narrative. CO2 emissions may not be the only reason for warming. So sidelining studies that have, for example, found the natural climate system can suddenly shift, and ridiculing researchers who explore other possible variables – from solar changes to volcanoes – could be driving us further from the truth.
Laymen like me sense that something is amiss, because we grew up assuming science is more about possibility than limitations. But so it goes that, in this messed-up world, the optimists have become sceptics; and those unradicalised by global warming delirium, the extremists.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 22:05 - "Where's The Beef?": Missouri Church Leader Tries To Pay For Gay Sex With Arby's Gift Card
“Where’s The Beef?”: Missouri Church Leader Tries To Pay For Gay Sex With Arby’s Gift Card
And on the third day, God created fast food restaurant gift cards and gay dating apps.
That was the recent gospel according to the leader of a Missouri church, who allegedly tried to pay for sex on Grindr, a gay hookup app, using an Arby’s card, according to the New York Post.
Barry Cole Poyner attempted to “bed college age guys” by offering to pay for their gas, clothes – and roast beef sandwiches – according to local authorities. He used the online handle “DILF” while communicating.
Poyner, 57, is a Church of Christ elder and professor at nearby Truman State University. He was busted after a student reported him and a cop went undercover on the app. Poyner then sent the officer a message saying he would “love to have a sugar daddy relationship”. He offered to fill up his gas tank (honestly, no pun intended – honestly) in exchange for sexual favors on December 3.
Poyner said if the younger guy was willing he “might throw in an Arby’s card LOL.”
But the joke was on Poyner.
When he showed up as the gas station for the meetup, he was met by officers and tried to flee. He was then pulled over several blocks away. He told police he was “not doing anything with a minor” and was “only trying to help”. He was charged with patronizing prostitution and faces up to six months in jail.
He has since been suspended from Truman State, though it is unclear whether or not he is still in a leadership role at the Church of Christ.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 21:45 - "Pig Ebola" Is Now Running Wild In Indonesia, And Has Already Killed A Quarter Of The World's Swine
“Pig Ebola” Is Now Running Wild In Indonesia, And Has Already Killed A Quarter Of The World’s Swine
Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,
The global pig population is being absolutely decimated by a disease that does not have a cure. African Swine Fever, also commonly referred to as “Pig Ebola”, is raging out of control in dozens of countries all over the globe. It has a mortality rate of close to 100 percent, and once it hits an area even the pigs that are able to survive the disease are killed off in order to prevent it from spreading elsewhere. Unfortunately, African Swine Fever just continues to pop up in more locations. As you will see below, it is now sweeping through the heavily-populated nation of Indonesia.
Nearly 270 million people live in Indonesia, and they are heavily dependent on pork as a source of protein. But of course the same thing could be said about almost all of the countries where African Swine Fever is currently raging.
The mainstream media in the U.S. hasn’t been properly reporting on this crisis, and that is likely because this disease has not spread to our nation yet.
But let there be no doubt – this is truly a crisis of Biblical proportions. In fact, it has been estimated that this epidemic has already killed about one-fourth of the world’s pigs. The following comes from an Australian news source…
Experts say the disease has wiped out an estimated 25 per cent of the world’s pig population.
The fever has been reported in around 50 countries, including China, Belgium, Slovakia, Cambodia, North Korea, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines.
And this same figure is being quoted by the New York Daily News…
African swine fever has been reported in nearly 50 nations — including China, South Korea, the Philippines and Belgium — and it’s causing an incredible crisis on a global scale. Alarmingly, more than one-quarter of Earth’s pigs have been wiped out by the virulent disease.
This should be front page news all across America, but of course the big news networks really don’t want to talk about anything other than the impeachment of Donald Trump these days.
Unfortunately, everyone on the entire planet is going to feel the pain of this crisis as it continues to intensify. We are potentially facing a serious global pork shortage, and this disease continues to pop up in new areas. When it recently began spreading in Indonesia, it made headlines all over the globe. The following comes from Reuters…
Nearly 30,000 pigs have died from African swine fever (ASF) in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province as of Dec. 15, causing millions of dollars of economic losses as authorities try to quarantine the areas affected, officials said on Wednesday.
The Agriculture Ministry has declared an outbreak of the highly contagious virus in the country and said it is contained only in some parts of North Sumatra, minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo told reporters.
Asian countries rely very heavily on pork to feed their populations, and the severe losses that we are witnessing are not going to be easy to replace. At this point, Indonesia has become the 11th Asian nation where African Swine Fever is spreading…
To date, 11 Asian countries have reported outbreaks since August 2018, including Indonesia, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Timor-Leste.
The epicenter for this crisis is in China. The Chinese produce and eat more pork than anyone else in the world, and it was recently projected that their hog herd “will likely shrink by 55% by the end of the year” due to this disease…
China’s hog herd fell by half in the first eight months of 2019 due to a devastating outbreak of African swine fever and will likely shrink by 55% by the end of the year, analysts at Rabobank said on Wednesday.
As I detailed in a previous article, it has been estimated that 150 million pigs have already died in China.
To put that in perspective, there are only about 70 million pigs in the United States right now.
So you could kill every pig in the United States twice and you would still not get to the total that have already died in China because of this epidemic.
Needless to say, pork prices are absolutely soaring in China. They have more than doubled since this time last year, and in November we saw another huge jump in Chinese food inflation. The following comes from Zero Hedge…
As has been the case for the past year, the culprit behind the headline CPI surge was food inflation, which accelerated further to a record +19.1% in November from +15.5% in October, primarily on higher inflation in fresh vegetable and pork prices.
So what is the bottom line?
The bottom line is that this is an extremely serious threat to the global food supply.
Beef, chicken, fish and pork are the four main global sources of protein, and right now pork is already in very short supply in some parts of the world.
And of course this comes at a time when global weather patterns are going absolutely nuts and we have seen disastrous harvest seasons all over the planet.
We are entering the time of “the perfect storm”, and most people have absolutely no idea what is ahead of us.
Even if you don’t eat pork, this is a story that you need to keep a very close eye on, because this is going to push up food prices everywhere. Demand for beef, chicken and fish will increase as pork becomes more expensive and consumers turn to other options. And in some of the poorer places around the world, some impoverished families may have to start cutting meat out of their diets entirely.
We have never seen a crisis quite like this in any of our lifetimes. Despite all of our advanced technology, we are still dependent on farmers to produce the food that we eat, and this is truly an existential crisis for the entire global pork industry.
There is no way to spin this to make it sound nicer. Many are hoping that this outbreak will subside eventually, but right now it doesn’t look like that will happen.
And once this disease reaches the United States, we will start to experience the same panic that is already sweeping through nearly 50 other nations around the globe.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 21:25 - China Premier Warns Of Economic Turmoil In 2020, Continued Deceleration Means Global Rebound Unlikely
China Premier Warns Of Economic Turmoil In 2020, Continued Deceleration Means Global Rebound Unlikely
Chinese premier Li Keqiang was quoted on state television by Reuters on Thursday as saying the economy could face tremendous downward pressure in 2020.
Li said the downward pressures could be even greater than what was seen in 2019; he made no mention of the possible trade resolution with the US would correct economic growth.
He said the government would implement monetary and fiscal policies to keep the economic expansion within a consistent range throughout 2020. This could be the latest confirmation that China’s GDP could slip underneath 6%.
A similar warning was echoed by an advisor to the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) last week, who said China’s economy might not recover for the next five years.
Liu Shijin, a policy adviser to the PBoC, said the country’s GDP will decelerate through 2025 and could print in a range of 5 to 6%.
Shijin warned that excessive monetary policy is failing to stimulate the economy and could cause it to decelerate in the year ahead.
Last month, we noted that China’s credit growth plunged to the weakest pace since 2017 as a continued collapse in shadow banking, weak corporate demand for credit, and seasonal effects all signaled that China’s economy, nevertheless, the global economy, will continue to slow in 2020.
A further deceleration in China’s economy could ruin the party for equity bulls, who have already priced in a massive 2016-style rebound in the global economy for 1Q20. A slowing China means the world could fail to rebound, though we don’t discount the stabilization narrative.
With China’s economy unlikely to sharply rebound early next year, global investors could find themselves repricing growth in the near term as global equities are at all-time highs thanks to massive money printing by central banks.
To gain more color on China’s extended slowdown, Fathom Consulting’s China Momentum Indicator (CMI) provides a more in-depth view of China’s economic activity than the official Chinese GDP statistics.
CMI is based on ten alternative indicators for economic activity; some of those indicators include railway freight, electricity consumption, and the issuance of bank loans.
Fathom has stated that in CMI, the calculation of the index avoids measuring construction activity, and instead focuses on shadow measures of economic activity. The consulting group says this allows the index to be “less prone to manipulation than the headline GDP figures.”
“In 2014, when China’s traditional growth model was running out of steam and vulnerabilities were rising, authorities toyed with credit tightening and an enforced rebalancing. But at the end of 2015, when growth slowed too sharply, they quickly threw in the towel, resorting to the old growth model of credit-fuelled growth. With growth once again slowing, and past precedent suggesting credit has neared its limit, China finds itself at a crossroad,” Fathom recently said.
China’s failure to stimulate its economy suggests CMI will continue a downward trajectory that has been underway for the last decade.
We’ve recently outlined the bust of the global auto industry has weighed down the Chinese economy. With no signs of an upswing in the auto market, China’s economy will remain depressed in the years ahead.
As China’s economy slows, global commodity prices are stuck in a deflationary spiral.
China’s slowing economy warns that global equities have mispriced growth for early 1Q20.
Looking for signs of life in the Chinese economy — there aren’t any at the moment.
Société Générale’s latest report shows employment in China contracting across manufacturing and non-manufacturing, outlining how the slowdown is broad-based.
Bloomberg has compiled a list of long-time China watchers that are warning about an extended slowdown.
George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre and author of “Red Flags: Why Xi’s China is in Jeopardy:”
In the spirit of self-criticism, I’d say my best call on the economy was an early spot of the huge demographic shift that kicked off in earnest in 2012, an abiding assertion that China’s elevated growth rates could not be sustained, and anticipation of a financial crisis that turned up in 2015-16. Worst call was thinking that crisis might turn into a ‘Minsky Moment’ for China, as per 2007-08, and failing to integrate properly the tools the state has to prevent catastrophic failure.
I expect China to flirt with officially recorded growth of around 6%, but the reality is that the tempo of growth is ratcheting down to somewhere between 3% and 4%. In 2020, perhaps 5.8% to 6%, officially, not least because the economic news has to remain upbeat ahead of the CCP centenary in 2021. The consequences of over-indebtedness, demographic change, inadequate wealth transfer and income redistribution policies, and stagnant total factor productivity growth associated with institutional flaws are the main drags on growth. The 2020s will be a challenging time for China.
Jim O’Neill, the former Goldman Sachs Group chief economist who coined the term BRIC:
The BRICs path assumed China would grow 5% a year in the decade 2020-29 and I have no reason for changing this. If it does, and so long as the renminbi doesn’t decline a lot in value, then by the end of the decade, China will be very close to being as big in current dollar terms as the US.
As this decade nears its end, China has major problems positioning itself in the world. As evidenced by the Uighur situation, China’s approach to life now gets much more global attention than when it was smaller. In the coming decade, China has to somehow develop a more subtle and sophisticated stance on many of these issues, and I am not sure Beijing fully realizes this yet.
Edward Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research:
Demography is starting to really weigh on China’s growth. China is rapidly evolving into the world’s largest nursing home.
They are going to have to provide a social safety net for these folks who are going to get older and need health care. If they don’t do that, they are going to depress their consumers. When you want to be a superpower, there are a lot of factors that matter, and demography is certainly one of them.
The biggest takeaway is China produced 60% of the world’s debt over the last ten years and is the biggest driver in global economic growth. A slowing China means the global economy will likely remain stagnate in 2020.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 21:05 - "Their Obsession With Weapons Is Crazy" – Gorbachev Warns US Is Bent On "Absolute Military Supremacy"
“Their Obsession With Weapons Is Crazy” – Gorbachev Warns US Is Bent On “Absolute Military Supremacy”
Authored by David Brennan via Newsweek.com,
Former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev has urged President Donald Trump’s administration to re-engage with Russia on landmark arms control treaties, warning that the collapse of Cold War-era nuclear weapon limits threatens global catastrophe.
Speaking with Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, Gorbachev lamented America’s withdrawal from two key arms control treaties signed during the Cold War—the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABMT) during President Geroge W. Bush’s tenure, and the more recent withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
Russia has also since suspended participation in the INF Treaty, prompting concerns of a new arms race. The infographic below, provided by Statista, shows the estimated global nuclear weapons arsenals as of December 2017.
STATISTA
Gorbachev is a prominent advocate of nuclear disarmament. He told the Asahi he is “still praying for” the destruction of all nuclear weapons, noting that the number of warheads in Russia and the U.S. has reduced by more than 80 percent since the peak years of the Cold War.
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But he warned that this “peace dividend” is now at risk with the collapse of the ABMT and INF Treaty. It is also unclear whether New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty)—the successor to START I that Gorbachev helped craft—will be renewed when it expires in 2021.
The Trump administration said last year that it would ditch the 1987 INF Treaty, which banned ground-launched nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges from 310 miles 3,417 miles. The White House accused Russia of violating the deal by developing the SSC-8 missile.
But Gorbachev blamed Washington for the development. “The decision by the United States to withdraw from the INF threatens to unleash a sequence of events that would move to undo” the post-Cold War peace dividend, he said.
“Out of the three principal pillars of global strategic stability—the ABMT, INF and START—only one is left,” he added, noting that the future of New START is far from certain.
Russia has said it is willing to renew the agreement, but the Trump administration is yet to make a decision.
“What’s behind the United States’ decision to withdraw from the INF is their striving to free themselves of any obligations with respect to weapons and obtain absolute military supremacy,” Gorbachev said.
“That is an illusory aim, an unfulfilled hope. Hegemony by one single country is not possible in today’s world. The result would be destabilization of the global strategic situation, a new arms race and all the randomness and unpredictability of global politics. The security of every country, including the United States, will suffer as a result.”
Russia is responsible for the termination of the INF Treaty. The United States engaged Russia since 2013 to return it to compliance with the treaty but Russia chose to retain and deploy its non-compliant missile system rather than eliminate it and preserve the treaty.
A State Department spokesperson told Newsweek that the U.S. “remains committed to effective arms control that advances U.S., allied, and partner security, is verifiable and enforceable, and includes partners that comply responsibly with their obligations.”
The spokesperson explained that Trump has “directed us to think more broadly than New START and include both China and Russia in our next steps. We stand ready to engage with both Russia and China on arms control negotiations that meet our criteria.”
“The Administration is evaluating the possibility of an extension of the New START Treaty, taking into account the threats we face today, the changing security environment, and Russia’s statement that it has no preconditions to extension.”
Gorbachev said the U.S. must bear responsibility for nuclear proliferation, given it was the first nation to harness the technology.
“They told our leaders in talks that they had developed the bomb. They said this to intimidate us, so we would bow down to America,” he told the newspaper.
“Their obsession with weapons is crazy.”
Gorbachev called on both the U.S. and Russia to “restore the movement toward a world without nuclear weapons.”
Both nations have signalled additional investment in their nuclear arsenals, including a fresh focus on low-yield, tactical nuclear weapons. Such warheads have a more local impact, reducing the danger of escalation and subsequent mutually assured destruction (MAD).
Though MAD has kept nuclear states at peace for decades, Gorbachev said it offers no guarantee for the future.
“Nuclear deterrence will not protect the world from a nuclear accident or from nuclear terrorism, but would keep it under a constant threat,” he told the Asahi.
“The key to resolving security issues lies not in weapons, but in politics,” he added, bemoaning the freeze in bilateral relations between Washington and Moscow. “Despite everything, I believe that this is still within our capabilities,” he added.
As for Trump, the Cold War leader said, “I hear from the current president of the United States that they are the richest country, that they have more money than anybody else, so there is going to be a new arms race. Who is America planning to fight, however? The first country to come to mind, of course, is Russia.”
“We should never let ourselves embark on a course of developing nuclear weapons again and of a new arms race,” Gorbachev warned.
“We have to stop working on pipe dreams, and engage with realpolitik. We don’t need an apocalypse! We need peace!”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 20:45 - House-Senate Impeachment Impasse Would Mean Trump Wasn't Impeached At All: Harvard Law Prof
House-Senate Impeachment Impasse Would Mean Trump Wasn’t Impeached At All: Harvard Law Prof
While Nancy Pelosi threatens to withhold articles of impeachment passed Wednesday night by the House, Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman says that President Trump isn’t technically impeached until the House actually transmits the articles to the Senate.
Feldman, who testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment proceedings earlier this month, argues in a Bloomberg Op-Ed that the framers’ definition of impeachment “assumed that impeachment was a process, not just a House vote,” and that “Strictly speaking, “impeachment” occurred – and occurs — when the articles of impeachment are presented to the Senate for trial. And at that point, the Senate is obliged by the Constitution to hold a trial.”
If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president. If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all.
That’s because “impeachment” under the Constitution means the House sending its approved articles of to the Senate, with House managers standing up in the Senate and saying the president is impeached.
As for the headlines we saw after the House vote saying, “TRUMP IMPEACHED,” those are a media shorthand, not a technically correct legal statement. So far, the House has voted to impeach (future tense) Trump. He isn’t impeached (past tense) until the articles go to the Senate and the House members deliver the message. -Noah Feldman
Pelosi, meanwhile, won’t transmit the articles until the Senate holds what she considers a “fair” trial.
Roughly modeled after England’s impeachment procedures, the framers in Article I of the constitution gave the House “the sole power of impeachment,” while giving the Senate “the sole power to try all impeachments.”
Article II outlines says the president “shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
There’s more:
But we can say with some confidence that only the Senate is empowered to judge the fairness of its own trial – that’s what the “sole power to try all impeachments” means.
If the House votes to “impeach” but doesn’t send the articles to the Senate or send impeachment managers there to carry its message, it hasn’t directly violated the text of the Constitution. But the House would be acting against the implicit logic of the Constitution’s description of impeachment.
A president who has been genuinely impeached must constitutionally have the opportunity to defend himself before the Senate. That’s built into the constitutional logic of impeachment, which demands a trial before removal.
To be sure, if the House just never sends its articles of impeachment to the Senate, there can be no trial there. That’s what the “sole power to impeach” means.
In closing, Feldman says “if the House never sends the articles, then Trump could say with strong justification that he was never actually impeached,” adding “And that’s probably not the message Congressional Democrats are hoping to send.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 20:25 - Iran Wants To Create Muslim Crypto To Confront America's "Economic Hegemony"
Iran Wants To Create Muslim Crypto To Confront America’s “Economic Hegemony”
Authored by Helen Partz via CoinTelegraph.com,
Iran’s President has proposed to create a Muslim cryptocurrency as one of a number of means to confront the economic dominance of the United States.
image courtesy of CoinTelegraph
Speaking at an Islamic conference in Malaysia on Dec. 19, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called Muslim nations to strengthen financial and trade cooperation and to cut their reliance on U.S. dollar, according to a report by The Associated Press (AP).
New Muslim cryptocurrency to confront “U.S. economic hegemony”
As Rouhani argued that U.S. economic sanctions are the “main tools of domineering hegemony and bullying” of other nations. Rouhani put forward the establishment of a special banking and financial system among Muslim nations that use local currencies for trade. Local reports confirm that Rouhani proposed the creation of a cryptocurrency as part of the effort.
As reported by the AP, Rouhani said:
“The Muslim world should be designing measures to save themselves from the domination of the United States dollar and the American financial regime.”
Malaysia supports Iranian President’s idea to create an alternative to the U.S. dollar
The conference was also attended by leaders of major Muslim countries including Turkey, Qatar and host Malaysia, while Saudi Arabia and Pakistan withdrew from the conference.
The idea of the Iranian President has reportedly met with support from Malaysia alone to date, as the country’s Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, endorsed the initiative, as reported by local publication Free Malaysia Today. The official noted that this was the first time that Iran and Turkey are considering the opportunity of creating an alternative to the U.S. dollar. He said:
“We can use our own currencies or have a common currency.”
Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan apparently criticized the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, arguing that the platform that connects the Muslim world together demonstrated a “lack of implementation.” Erdogan also outlined that Muslim countries needed to focus on Islamic financing, suggesting the establishment of a special working group.
Other countries trying to bypass U.S. sanctions with crypto
A number of global jurisdictions have been considering the creation of a cryptocurrency to dodge sanctions by the U.S. to date. As reported by Cointelegraph in late September, authorities in North Korea announced their intention to issue a digital currency, with experts believing that the initiative aims to help the country to bypass sanctions by the U.S..
Meanwhile, Venezuela is apparently one of the most popular examples of countries trying to circumvent U.S. sanctions using their own crypto. Launched in February 2018, the Petro became the world’s first national oil-baked cryptocurrency.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 20:05 - Watch Live: The Final Democratic Debate Of 2019
Watch Live: The Final Democratic Debate Of 2019
Tonight’s Democratic debate – the final one of 2019 – features seven candidates; the four leading candidates Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders and Warren, as well as Andrew Yang, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer.
Of the remaining candidates, who won’t be there? Cory Booker, Julián Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Michael Bloomberg, Deval Patrick, Michael Benne, and Marianne Williamson.
“The pressure on the candidates to manufacture drama will be considerable,” notes Politico, which is hosting the event along with PBS NewsHour.
With less than two month until the Iowa caucuses, and some candidates having seen their polls (and odds) collapse, tonight’s anti-Trump get-together will be their last chance for redemption before the news cycle calms a little.
Source: Bloomberg
Here are the topics that The Hill thinks will come up.
Impeachment
The debate comes exactly one day after the House voted to impeach President Trump. The issue will now go to the Senate where a trial will be held. Three of the candidates on stage, Warren, Sanders, and Klobuchar, will be called back to Washington for the trial. Expect them to field questions about the topic. Biden could also face questions given Trump’s call for Ukraine to investigate him and his son, which kicked off the impeachment inquiry.
Diversity
While he did not make the debate stage, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) has led the charge in calling for more diversity on the debate stage. Booker and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro were joined by all of the candidates appearing on Thursday’s debate in requesting the Democratic National Committee lower the qualification standards for debates in January and February. The topic could come up, given the attention it’s gotten in the run-up to the forum.
Labor rights
The Democratic Party has long maintained strong connections to the labor movement in the U.S., and those ties were on display earlier this week when all of the candidates pledged not to cross the picket line if Sodexo and Unite Here Local 11 did not come to an agreement. The candidates could receive some questions on how they would work with labor groups as president.
Environment
The issue of combatting climate change could also come up, given California’s struggle this year with wildfires. Environment advocate Greta Thunberg has also been in the news recently after being named Time’s Person of the Year. President Trump attacked her on Twitter after she received the award, saying she needed to work on anger management issues. Biden jumped to Thunberg’s defense, saying “What kind of president bullies a teenager?”
Health Care
The topic has played a role in most of the primary debates, with the progressive candidates pushing for a “Medicare for All” plan, while centrist candidates have advocated for building upon the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare. Expect this topic to come up as one of the party’s currently most hotly contested issues.
* * *
Watch live (due to start at 2000ET):
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 19:55 - Farmers "Deeply Worried" As Argentina's Fernandez Aims To Hike Export Taxes Twice In Three Days
Farmers “Deeply Worried” As Argentina’s Fernandez Aims To Hike Export Taxes Twice In Three Days
Farmers in Argentina are finding out the wonderful benefits of taxation and government micromanagement first hand. Just three days after the government hiked export taxes for farmers, it is considering doing it again, causing outrage on the Pampas crop belt.
A bill sent to lawmakers proposes that taxes on soybean shipments could hike to 33%, according to Bloomberg. That compares to 30% currently and 24.7% last week. Corn and wheat would rise to 15%, from 12% currently and just 6.7% last week.
President Alberto Fernandez will need opposition votes to get the legislation through congress, despite holding a majority in the senate. Approval could come by the end of the month, should he get the votes he needs. The bill also contains a provision to reduce rates for exports with “added value”, meaning that soy meal and oil may be charged less than 33% “in a boon to crushers that have lost competitiveness and seen idle capacity rise after the differential with raw beans was scrapped last year.”
Argentina is a top exporter of soy meal, used as animal feed, and soy cooking oil. So far, it is unknown whether or not beef, the nation’s other major export, will be considered a value added product.
This move comes after Fernandez raised taxes on Saturday, which was just days after he took office. The hikes caused outrage among rural farmers and leaders who claimed they weren’t told it was coming. They also warned that output could suffer as a result.
One of Argentina’s biggest farm associations, CRA, said: “We are deeply worried about the latest measures.”
Farmers are concerned that, despite Fernandez’s intentions to revive the economy, that he’s instead creating a hostile attitude toward farmers. Profit margins will suffer as a result of corn and wheat shipments being charged 15% – this could force farmers out of crop rotation strategies that came about in recent years to plant cheaper soybeans instead.
The effects of the tax hikes will be most prevalent next year, as this season’s wheat is already being harvested. It’s also too late to change plans for soybeans and corn. According to Jacob Christy, a trader at Andersons Inc., farmer selling could slow “considerably” and there could be an impact on global markets, despite some commodity traders already anticipating the increase.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 19:45 - How The FBI (Or Congress) Can Use Warrant Surveilling One American To Spy On Many More
How The FBI (Or Congress) Can Use Warrant Surveilling One American To Spy On Many More
Authored by Sharyl Attkisson Via sharylattkisson.com
If you’ve watched the current impeachment proceedings with something beyond a passing interest, you might have heard the controversy over Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) secretly obtaining and then releasing phone records of political rival Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and journalist John Solomon.
Critics say such an alleged invasion of citizens’ privacy and rights for political purposes is beyond the pale.
But Democrats argue that Schiff didn’t really target Nunes or Solomon in his information dragnet. He says their calls were merely picked up incidentally because they spoke to two people who are targets: the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani or Lev Parnas, a figure charged with violating campaign finance violations.
However, Schiff’s controversial release of information naming Nunes and Solomon provides a window into how the FBI secretly operates to obtain information on Americans for whom they have no explicit permission to wiretap or monitor.
Believe it or now, intelligence agencies can use one legal wiretap to monitor as many as 25,000 people for which there was no wiretap justification.
The following is an excerpt from my reporting on Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson that explains this phenomenon.
Through a single warrant, government agents can capture phone calls, texts, emails and bank records from people “two hops” away. That means all of the suspected spy’s direct contacts— “one hop” —and everybody who contacts those people or even visits their Facebook pages or websites—two hops.
In this way, one analysis found intel agencies can use one legal wiretap to access to 25,000 people’s phones. Consider at least a half dozen Trump officials were caught in the FBI surveillance dragnet, according to news reports: campaign chair Manafort, multiple “transition officials” including Lt. General Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner, and adviser Carter Page— who was wiretapped over and over though never charged with anything.
Sidney Powell (former prosecutor and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s attorney): And what most people don’t understand is, they don’t just get everything they want against Carter Page, they get everything they want against every person who communicated with Carter Page, and against every person who communicated with that person. So it goes out what’s called two hops.
Sharyl: And that would allow them to find intelligence from someone nowhere near the original center that they went to the FISA Court about?
Sidney Powell: Exactly. They could have all kinds of banking records and personal information on tens of thousands of people by virtue of those FISA applications.
Sharyl: —including Trump who was known to be one or two hops away from surveilled targets.
On top of that, at least four key anti-Trump figures have admitted in testimony and interviews accessing sensitive, protected intelligence of US citizens—including Trump associates—under the Obama administration. All say they were guarding national security, had no political motives, and didn’t leak the information. As the 2016 campaign peaked, Obama official Samantha Power’s name was on hundreds of attempts to reveal the identities of Americans caught up in secretly-gathered intelligence. Obama adviser Susan Rice also took part. And Obama officials Sally Yates and James Clapper admit having reviewed intel gathered on US political figures.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) : Did either of you ever review classified documents in which Mr. Trump, his associates or members of Congress had been unmasked?
Clapper: Well, yes.
Sharyl: Do you think Democrats and Republicans alike have, in your view, abdicated responsibility when it comes to oversight of our intelligence community?
Liz Hempowicz: Yeah, yeah, I think so. I don’t think this is a problem with one party.
Liz Hempowicz is director of public policy at the watchdog Project on Government Oversight. She blames Congress for doing a poor job watching over the work of the government’s spies.
Liz Hempowicz: I think as a body, Congress has kind of been very comfortable giving the intelligence community a wide deference, and I don’t think the intelligence community has earned that.
Sharyl: In short, why do you think it is that Congress, members of both parties, wouldn’t be taking a harder look at the alleged surveillance abuses?
Liz Hempowicz: Well I think it’s a difficult issue to conduct oversight over, and I think once you get pushback from the intelligence communities and they wave around words like “national security” and “security threat,” I think it becomes a more difficult area for members of Congress to kind of use some of their political capital.
Hempowicz adds that alleged surveillance abuses aren’t new. Long before the Trump era, with special counsel Mueller heading up the FBI, US political figures were swept up in wiretaps, the contents improperly leaked to the media California Congresswoman Jane Harman in 2009and Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich in 2011.
In 2013, Director of National Intelligence Clapper denied mass spying on Americans.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon): Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Clapper: No sir.
But when NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the opposite, Clapper apologized and said he’d been confused by the question. In 2014, the CIA got caught spying on Senate staffers, though CIA Director John Brennan had explicitly denied it. He—too— then apologized.
And the government has spied on journalists: James Rosen, then of Fox News—now with Sinclair, The Associated Press, and, as I allege in a federal lawsuit, on my work as an investigative correspondent at CBS News.
Finally, in 2016, there was a striking election year uptick in government agents combing through a sensitive NSA database of intel on innocent US citizens.
In 2013, there were 9,500 searches involving 198 Americans. By 2016, that number escalated to 30,355 searches of 5,288 Americans.
Which brings us back to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or FISA admonishment in October 2016. Judge Collyer also slammed the FBI for a major violation: giving raw intelligence about Americans to unnamed third party contractors.
Sharyl: And the names of these three contractors are blacked out?
Sidney Powell: They’re blacked out. You cannot tell from the decision who they are. But the American people need to be jumping up and down, demanding to know the answers to that.
Sharyl: Because it would tell us what?
Sidney Powell: Well it’s going to tell us who was given special privileges by James Comey to go in and get all this information. It will tell us who’s behind the unmaskings.
The court said the FBI’s failures had been “the focus ofconcerns since 2014.” All of that contradicts assurances from FBI Director Comey “Nobody gets to see FISA information of any kind unless they’ve had the appropriate training and have the appropriate oversight.”
Former FBI Director Comey’s successor Christopher Wray has made similar claims.
Wray: No evidence of any kind of abuse.
In the end, Powell argues that neither the FBI nor Special Counsel Mueller— as ex-FBI Director —can fairly investigate matters that intersect with allegations about their own agencies and colleagues.
Sharyl: Assuming for the sake of argument that what you say is correct, I think people might say, “But maybe there was no premise for the Russia investigation. But so many people surrounding Trump, and so many people who’ve been looked at have either pled guilty or been found to have done something else in the past. Doesn’t that validify the investigation that was done?”
Sidney Powell: Absolutely not. Not unless we’re going to revert to the practice of Russia itself, and the KGB agent who said, “Find me the man and I’ll find the crime to pin on him.”
Hempowicz has a slightly different take— that Mueller’s probe is important and so far has proven fair. But she agrees that someone should also be unraveling any surveillance abuses.
Sharyl: How would you describe, in a nutshell, why this is important?
Liz Hempowicz: I don’t think the intelligence community has accurately shown that there are benefits of this pervasive surveillance of American citizens. I just haven’t seen them kind of show their work like a fourth grader would have to do in math to prove that they’ve gotten the right answer.
After issuing her blistering comments in 2016, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge required the Justice Department to devise new rules to better protect Americans’ privacy rights. The court approved a proposal made by the Trump Justice Department in March 2017.
Watch the full Full Measure report by clicking the link below:
http://fullmeasure.news/news/politics/russia-probe-02-11-2019
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 19:25 - Cash-Strapped Chinese Banks Are Offering Pork To Lure New Depositors
Cash-Strapped Chinese Banks Are Offering Pork To Lure New Depositors
In the peak days of the European financial crisis, when Spanish banks were on the verge of collapse and were desperate for depositor funding as the ECB scrambled to come up with a viable rescue scheme, one bank – the soon to be insolvent Bankia – had a “clever” idea: offer a Spiderman Beach Towel in exchange for a €300 deposit.
Fast forward 7 years when the cash-strapped banks of another country have come up with a similar trick to entice depositors: a growing number of small local banks across China have conceived of a “brilliant” scheme to lure new depositors: handing out servings of expensive pork as a reward for opening an account, the SCMP reports.
As we discussed in recent months, China’s smaller banks were hit by a perfect storm of falling rates and declining state support, which culminated in bank runs and the nationalization of several small and medium banks. And since there is little hope that the status quo will change any time soon, Chinese banks – which on top of everything are facing a $400 billion liquidity shortfall in January – are forced to go to greater lengths to attract new deposits, since they generally earn less money from lending and have fewer funding options than their larger peers.
Unlike Spain, Chinese banks are offering a product which is in great demand for the nation that is reeling as a result of “pig ebola”: pork. Indeed, as SCMP adds, the fact that pork could be seen as a desirable reward for opening a bank account also speaks to the country’s massive shortage of its favorite staple meat.
Who knew the intersection of the supply and demand curves would be marked by a pound of pork.
On Monday, clients who deposited 10,000 yuan (US$1,430) or more in a three-month time deposit at the Linhai Rural Commercial Bank in Duqiao in Zhejiang province were then eligible to enter a lottery to win a portion of pork ranging from 500 grams (18 ounces) to several kilograms.
“The money is still my own, and the interest is good. I’m happy to receive a piece of pork in addition,” one female client, who deposited around 20,000 yuan (US$2,900), was quoted as saying by the Metropolitan Express. Unfortunately for said client, she failed to grasp that any bank that is resorting to such ham-headed measures to boost depositor interest will likely not be around for long, and her entire deposit will likely vaporize in the coming weeks.
In any case, the gimmick is working: according to the Express, the bank distributed 1,097 deposit rewards on Monday after scores of mostly elderly clients queued up in front of the bank from early that morning.
“It was quite a good idea and very popular among locals, especially the elderly,” said a bank staff member, who did not offer his name. He also refused to comment on how much money the bank had received in new deposits due to the promotion.
In retrospect, it is a brilliant solution: instead of offering higher rates which only accelerate the banks insolvency as these require higher payouts on deposits, the bank is instead making a one-time payment, and the novelty of the “handout” is enough to get substantial new deposits.
Other rural commercial banks in northern China’s Hebei province and western China’s Guizhou province have also launched similar pork rewards programs. Dushan Rural Commercial Bank, located in the remote mountainous county in Guizhou, offered a coupon for 10 yuan (US$1.4) worth of pork for every 10,000 yuan of new deposits.
The reason behind China’s infatuation with pork is familiar: the outbreak of African swine fever, which is reported to have killed over 100 million pigs in China, has sent the price of pork skyrocketing, with November’s consumer price index rising 4.5 per cent from a year earlier, up from a 3.8 per cent gain in October, in large part due to a 110.2 per cent increase in the price of pork.
There were some signs of improvement: China’s pig population actually expanded in November for the first time in a year, while the price of pork price has fallen in recent weeks. The pig population in 400 counties monitored by China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs grew 2% in November from October, the first monthly rise since November 2018, while the number of breeding sows rose 4% from a month earlier. Wholesale pork prices last week fell back 0.8 per cent from the previous week, the fourth straight weekly decline, according to the latest data released by the Ministry of Commerce on Wednesday.
Wholesale pork prices last week fell back 0.8 per cent from the previous week, the fourth straight weekly decline China’s pig population, though, is around 40% smaller than it was a year ago, according to data from China’s agriculture ministry.
Still, despite recent signs of improvement, experts said the crisis may worsen further next year before it improves.
“It depends on what you mean on whether the worst is over because it’s already killed most of [China’s pigs]. There aren’t as many pigs to kill as there were before,” said E. Wayne Johnson, a veterinarian consultant at Enable AgTech Consulting in Beijing.
“We expect that there will be outbreaks in the wintertime because it’s very difficult to clean the trucks, particularly in the north of China, and the virus is preserved by cold weather. Plus, you have the fact that the infected pigs are continuing to go into the slaughterhouses, and everybody sends their trucks to the slaughterhouse. So the disease is being spread on the highways just as it was a year ago. There’s no reason to think that it’s over with.”
With peak seasons for pork consumption just around the corner – with celebrations for the winter solstice this week, the new year holiday on January 1 and the week-long Lunar New Year holiday starting on January 25 – the pressure on the price of pork is set to increase due to limited supplies. To alleviate the coming demand surge, on Tuesday, the government announced that it would release an additional 40,000 tonnes of frozen pork reserves on Thursday, on top of the previous round of 40,000 tonnes released a week ago.
China also announced earlier this month that it would waive import tariffs on some pork shipments from the United States. In total, China will purchase over 3 million tonnes of pork this year, more than twice as much as last year, confirmed Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng at the end of last month.
Beijing has also called for a relaxation of restrictions on pig farming on land normally reserved for forests, with the land only returning to forestry production after the pork supply crisis
has been resolved, according to a document from the National Forestry and Grassland Administration dated Monday and seen by the South China Morning Post.“These [recently announced] measures are very positive and effective moves,” said Wang Zuli, a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences. “But pork reserves have been unable to fully resolve the supply problem, so it is hard to say whether the measures are sufficient.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/19/2019 – 19:05
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