- 51% Of U.S. Muslims Want Sharia
Submitted by Richard Spencer via JihadWatch.org,
Really, what did you expect?
A considerable portion of U.S. domestic and foreign policy is based on the assumption that Islam in the U.S. will be different: that Muslims here believe differently from those elsewhere, and do not accept the doctrines of violence against and subjugation of unbelievers that have characterized Islam throughout its history. But on what is that assumption based?
Nothing but wishful thinking. And future generations of non-Muslims will pay the price.
“Meanwhile, An Islamic Fifth Column Builds Inside America,” by Paul Sperry, IBD, October 1, 2015 (thanks to Pamela Geller)
In berating GOP presidential hopeful Ben Carson for suggesting a loyalty test for Muslims seeking high office, CNN host Jake Tapper maintained that he doesn’t know a single observant Muslim-American who wants to Islamize America.
“I just don’t know any Muslim-Americans — and I know plenty — who feel that way, even if they are observant Muslims,” he scowled.
Tapper doesn’t get out much. If he did, chances are he’d run into some of the 51% of Muslims living in the U.S. who just this June told Polling Co. they preferred having “the choice of being governed according to Shariah,” or Islamic law. Or the 60% of Muslim-Americans under 30 who told Pew Research they’re more loyal to Islam than America.
Maybe they’re all heretics, so let’s see what the enlightened Muslims think.
If Tapper did a little independent research he’d quickly find that America’s most respected Islamic leaders and scholars also want theocracy, not democracy, and even advocate trading the Constitution for the Quran.
These aren’t fringe players. These are the top officials representing the Muslim establishment in America today.
Hopefully none of them ever runs for president, because here’s what he’d have to say about the U.S. system of government:
- Muzammil Siddiqi, chairman of both the Fiqh Council of North America, which dispenses Islamic rulings, and the North American Islamic Trust, which owns most of the mosques in the U.S.: “As Muslims, we should participate in the system to safeguard our interests and try to bring gradual change, (but) we must not forget that Allah’s rules have to be established in all lands, and all our efforts should lead to that direction.”
- Omar Ahmad, co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the top Muslim lobby group in Washington: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Quran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”
- CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper: “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.”
- Imam Siraj Wahhaj, director of the Muslim Alliance in North America: “In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing. And the only thing that will remain will be Islam.”
- Imam Zaid Shakir, co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, Calif.: “If we put a nationwide infrastructure in place and marshaled our resources, we’d take over this country in a very short time… What a great victory it will be for Islam to have this country in the fold and ranks of the Muslims.”…
These Islamic luminaries, who arguably spend more time with Muslims than Tapper, say the American Muslim community would rather live under a theocracy.
- The State Department's Collective Madness
Submitted by Robert Parry via ConsortiumNews.com,
Over the past several decades, the U.S. State Department has deteriorated from a reasonably professional home for diplomacy and realism into a den of armchair warriors possessed of imperial delusions, a dangerous phenomenon underscored by the recent mass “dissent” in favor of blowing up more people in Syria.
Some 51 State Department “diplomats” signed a memo distributed through the official “dissent channel,” seeking military strikes against the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad whose forces have been leading the pushback against Islamist extremists who are seeking control of this important Mideast nation.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before Congress on Jan. 23, 2013, about the fatal attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11. 2012. (Photo from C-SPAN coverage)
The fact that such a large contingent of State Department officials would openly advocate for an expanded aggressive war in line with the neoconservative agenda, which put Syria on a hit list some two decades ago, reveals how crazy the State Department has become.
The State Department now seems to be a combination of true-believing neocons along with their liberal-interventionist followers and some careerists who realize that the smart play is to behave toward the world as global proconsuls dictating solutions or seeking “regime change” rather than as diplomats engaging foreigners respectfully and seeking genuine compromise.
Even some State Department officials, whom I personally know and who are not neocons/liberal-hawks per se, act as if they have fully swallowed the Kool-Aid. They talk tough and behave arrogantly toward inhabitants of countries under their supervision. Foreigners are treated as mindless objects to be coerced or bribed.
So, it’s not entirely surprising that several dozen U.S. “diplomats” would attack President Barack Obama’s more temperate position on Syria while positioning themselves favorably in anticipation of a Hillary Clinton administration, which is expected to authorize an illegal invasion of Syria — under the guise of establishing “no-fly zones” and “safe zones” — which will mean the slaughter of young Syrian soldiers. The “diplomats” urge the use of “stand-off and air weapons.”
These hawks are so eager for more war that they don’t mind risking a direct conflict with Russia, breezily dismissing the possibility of a clash with the nuclear power by saying they are not “advocating for a slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russia.” That’s reassuring to hear.
Risking a Jihadist Victory
There’s also the danger that a direct U.S. military intervention could collapse the Syrian army and clear the way for victory by Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front or the Islamic State. The memo did not make clear how the delicate calibration of doing just enough damage to Syria’s military while avoiding an outright jihadist victory and averting a clash with Russia would be accomplished.
Video of the Russian SU-24 exploding in flames inside Syrian territory after it was shot down by Turkish air-to-air missiles on Nov. 24, 2015.
Presumably, whatever messes are created, the U.S. military would be left to clean up, assuming that shooting down some Russian warplanes and killing Russian military personnel wouldn’t escalate into a full-scale thermonuclear conflagration.
In short, it appears that the State Department has become a collective insane asylum where the inmates are in control. But this madness isn’t some short-term aberration that can be easily reversed. It has been a long time coming and would require a root-to-branch ripping out of today’s “diplomatic” corps to restore the State Department to its traditional role of avoiding wars rather than demanding them.
Though there have always been crazies in the State Department – usually found in the senior political ranks – the phenomenon of an institutional insanity has only evolved over the past several decades. And I have seen the change.
I have covered U.S. foreign policy since the late 1970s when there was appreciably more sanity in the diplomatic corps. There were people like Robert White and Patricia Derian (both now deceased) who stood up for justice and human rights, representing the best of America.
But the descent of the U.S. State Department into little more than well-dressed, well-spoken but thuggish enforcers of U.S. hegemony began with the Reagan administration. President Ronald Reagan and his team possessed a pathological hatred of Central American social movements seeking freedom from oppressive oligarchies and their brutal security forces.
During the 1980s, American diplomats with integrity were systematically marginalized, hounded or removed. (Human rights coordinator Derian left at the end of the Carter administration and was replaced by neocon Elliott Abrams; White was fired as U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, explaining: “I refused a demand by the secretary of state, Alexander M. Haig Jr., that I use official channels to cover up the Salvadoran military’s responsibility for the murders of four American churchwomen.”)
The Neocons Rise
As the old-guard professionals left, a new breed of aggressive neoconservatives was brought in, the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Robert McFarlane, Robert Kagan and Abrams. After eight years of Reagan and four years of George H.W. Bush, the State Department was reshaped into a home for neocons, but some pockets of professionalism survived the onslaughts.
Former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, a leading neocon.
While one might have expected the Democrats of the Clinton administration to reverse those trends, they didn’t. Instead, Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” applied to U.S. foreign policy as much as to domestic programs. He was always searching for that politically safe “middle.”
As the 1990s wore on, the decimation of foreign policy experts in the mold of White and Derian left few on the Democratic side who had the courage or skills to challenge the deeply entrenched neocons. Many Clinton-era Democrats accommodated to the neocon dominance by reinventing themselves as “liberal interventionists,” sharing the neocons’ love for military force but justifying the killing on “humanitarian” grounds.
This approach was a way for “liberals” to protect themselves against right-wing charges that they were “weak,” a charge that had scarred Democrats deeply during the Reagan/Bush-41 years, but this Democratic “tough-guy/gal-ism” further sidelined serious diplomats favoring traditional give-and-take with foreign leaders and their people.
So, you had Democrats like then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (and later Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright justifying Bill Clinton’s brutal sanctions policies toward Iraq, which the U.N. blamed for killing 500,000 Iraqi children, as “a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”
Bill Clinton’s eight years of “triangulation,” which included the brutal air war against Serbia, was followed by eight years of George W. Bush, which further ensconced the neocons as the U.S. foreign policy establishment.
By then, what was left of the old Republican “realists,” the likes of Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, was aging out or had been so thoroughly compromised that the neocons faced no significant opposition within Republican circles. And, Official Washington’s foreign-policy Democrats had become almost indistinguishable from the neocons, except for their use of “humanitarian” arguments to justify aggressive wars.
Media Capitulation
Before George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, much of the “liberal” media establishment – from The New York Times to The New Yorker – fell in line behind the war, asking few tough questions and presenting almost no obstacles. Favoring war had become the “safe” career play.
At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.”
But a nascent anti-war movement among rank-and-file Democrats did emerge, propelling Barack Obama, an anti-Iraq War Democrat, to the 2008 presidential nomination over Iraq War supporter Hillary Clinton. But those peaceful sentiments among the Democratic “base” did not reach very deeply into the ranks of Democratic foreign policy mavens.
So, when Obama entered the White House, he faced a difficult challenge. The State Department needed a thorough purging of the neocons and the liberal hawks, but there were few Democratic foreign policy experts who hadn’t sold out to the neocons. An entire generation of Democratic policy-makers had been raised in the world of neocon-dominated conferences, meetings, op-eds and think tanks, where tough talk made you sound good while talk of traditional diplomacy made you sound soft.
By contrast, more of the U.S. military and even the CIA favored less belligerent approaches to the world, in part, because they had actually fought Bush’s hopeless “global war on terror.” But Bush’s hand-picked, neocon-oriented high command – the likes of General David Petraeus – remained in place and favored expanded wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama then made one of the most fateful decisions of his presidency. Instead of cleaning house at State and at the Pentagon, he listened to some advisers who came up with the clever P.R. theme “Team of Rivals” – a reference to Abraham Lincoln’s first Civil War cabinet – and Obama kept in place Bush’s military leadership, including Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, and reached out to hawkish Sen. Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State.
In other words, Obama not only didn’t take control of the foreign-policy apparatus, he strengthened the power of the neocons and liberal hawks. He then let this powerful bloc of Clinton-Gates-Petraeus steer him into a foolhardy counterinsurgency “surge” in Afghanistan that did little more than get 1,000 more U.S. soldiers killed along with many more Afghans.
Obama also let Clinton sabotage his attempted outreach to Iran in 2010 seeking constraints on its nuclear program and he succumbed to her pressure in 2011 to invade Libya under the false pretense of establishing a “no-fly zone” to protect civilians, what became a “regime change” disaster that Obama has ranked as his biggest foreign policy mistake.
The Syrian Conflict
Obama did resist Secretary Clinton’s calls for another military intervention in Syria although he authorized some limited military support to the allegedly “moderate” rebels and allowed Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to do much more in supporting jihadists connected to Al Qaeda and even the Islamic State.
Syrian women and children refugees at Budapest railway station. (Photo from Wikipedia)
Under Secretary Clinton, the neocon/liberal-hawk bloc consolidated its control of the State Department diplomatic corps. Under neocon domination, the State Department moved from one “group think” to the next. Having learned nothing from the Iraq War, the conformity continued to apply toward Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Russia, China, Venezuela, etc.
Everywhere the goal was same: to impose U.S. hegemony, to force the locals to bow to American dictates, to steer them into neo-liberal “free market” solutions which were often equated with “democracy” even if most of the people of the affected countries disagreed.
Double-talk and double-think replaced reality-driven policies. “Strategic communications,” i.e., the aggressive use of propaganda to advance U.S. interests, was one watchword. “Smart power,” i.e., the application of financial sanctions, threats of arrests, limited military strikes and other forms of intimidation, was another.
Every propaganda opportunity, such as the Syrian sarin attack in 2013 or the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down over eastern Ukraine, was exploited to the hilt to throw adversaries on the defensive even if U.S. intelligence analysts doubted that evidence supported the accusations.
Lying at the highest levels of the U.S. government – but especially among the State Department’s senior officials – became epidemic. Perhaps even worse, U.S. “diplomats” seemed to believe their own propaganda.
Meanwhile, the mainstream U.S. news media experienced a similar drift into the gravity pull of neocon dominance and professional careerism, eliminating major news outlets as any kind of check on official falsehoods.
The Up-and-Comers
The new State Department star – expected to receive a high-level appointment from President Clinton-45 – is neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who orchestrated the 2014 putsch in Ukraine, toppling an elected, Russia-friendly president and replacing him with a hard-line Ukrainian nationalist regime that then launched violent military attacks against ethnic Russians in the east who resisted the coup leadership.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.
When Russia came to the assistance of these embattled Ukrainian citizens, including agreeing to Crimea’s request to rejoin Russia, the State Department and U.S. mass media spoke as one in decrying a “Russian invasion” and supporting NATO military maneuvers on Russia’s borders to deter “Russian aggression.”
Anyone who dares question this latest “group think” – as it plunges the world into a dangerous new Cold War – is dismissed as a “Kremlin apologist” or “Moscow stooge” just as skeptics about the Iraq War were derided as “Saddam apologists.” Virtually everyone important in Official Washington marches in lock step toward war and more war. (Victoria Nuland is married to Robert Kagan, making them one of Washington’s supreme power couples.)
So, that is the context of the latest State Department rebellion against Obama’s more tempered policies on Syria. Looking forward to a likely Hillary Clinton administration, these 51 “diplomats” have signed their name to a “dissent” that advocates bombing the Syrian military to protect Syria’s “moderate” rebels who – to the degree they even exist – fight mostly under the umbrella of Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and its close ally, Ahrar al Sham.
The muddled thinking in this “dissent” is that by bombing the Syrian military, the U.S. government can enhance the power of the rebels and supposedly force Assad to negotiate his own removal. But there is no reason to think that this plan would work.
In early 2014, when the rebels held a relatively strong position, U.S.-arranged peace talks amounted to a rebel-dominated conference that made Assad’s departure a pre-condition and excluded Syria’s Iranian allies from attending. Not surprisingly, Assad’s representative went home and the talks collapsed.
Now, with Assad holding a relatively strong hand, backed by Russian air power and Iranian ground forces, the “dissenting” U.S. diplomats say peace is impossible because the rebels are in no position to compel Assad’s departure. Thus, the “dissenters” recommend that the U.S. expand its role in the war to again lift the rebels, but that would only mean more maximalist demands from the rebels.
Serious Risks
This proposed wider war, however, would carry some very serious risks, including the possibility that the Syrian army could collapse, opening the gates of Damascus to Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front (and its allies) or the Islamic State – a scenario that, as The New York Times noted, the “memo doesn’t address.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin greets Secretary of State John Kerry before meetings at the Kremlin on Dec. 15, 2015. (State Department photo)
Currently, the Islamic State and – to a lesser degree – the Nusra Front are in retreat, chased by the Syrian army with Russian air support and by some Kurdish forces with U.S. backing. But those gains could easily be reversed. There is also the risk of sparking a wider war with Iran and/or Russia.
But such cavalier waving aside of grave dangers is nothing new for the neocons and liberal hawks. They have consistently dreamt up schemes that may sound good at a think-tank conference or read well in an op-ed article, but fail in the face of ground truth where usually U.S. soldiers are expected to fix the mess.
We have seen this wishful thinking go awry in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine and even Syria, where Obama’s acquiescence to provide arms and training for the so-called “unicorns” – the hard-to-detect “moderate” rebels – saw those combatants and their weapons absorbed into Al Qaeda’s or Islamic State’s ranks.
Yet, the neocons and liberal hawks who control the State Department – and are eagerly looking forward to a Hillary Clinton presidency – will never stop coming up with these crazy notions until a concerted effort is made to assess accountability for all the failures that that they have inflicted on U.S. foreign policy.
As long as there is no accountability – as long as the U.S. president won’t rein in these warmongers – the madness will continue and only grow more dangerous.
- Caught On Tape: What Happens In China When You Don't "Exceed Expectations"
In exceptional America’s new normal, there is no consequence for under-performance. In China, however, as this shocking clip shows, for Rural Commercial Bank employees that do not “exceed themselves” there is one punishment… Public Spanking!
As China People’s Daily reports, a bank manager spanks employees at a Rural Commercial Bank for not “exceeding themselves” in Changzhi, Northern China…
Shocking: Manager spanks employees at a Rural Commercial Bank for not “exceeding themselves” in Changzhi, N #China.https://t.co/x0wlx7fJOK
— People’s Daily,China (@PDChina) June 19, 2016
- Canadian Troops Have Been Issued "Inappropriate Sexual Behaviors" Cards
It's one thing for Germany to create a leaflet in order to help refugees understand proper sex etiquette, however it seems the Canadian Armed Forces needs a bit of a reminder as well.
In response to a scathing report on sexual misconduct in the Canadian Forces prepared last year by former Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps, which found a "hostile sexualized environment" existed in the military (including everything from swearing and sexual innuendo, to rape), more than 120,000 wallet-size cards have been distributed to military personnel to remind them that, among other things, sexual assault is an inappropriate behavior.
So, without further ado, courtesy of the National Post, here is the card that will keep everyone from acting inappropriately within the Canadian Forces.
Your inappropriate sexual behaviors card… don't leave home without it!
- The Mysterious Case Of Buildings Being Scrubbed From China's Street View
In September of 2014, Jonathan Browning came across something quite stunning. As a freelance photographer living in China, he was searching for locations on Shanghai's Huangpu River using Baidu Total View (the Chinese version of Google Street View). While examining one picture closely, he noticed that part of a cooling chimney next to a suspension bridge had been crudely erased.
As Browning investigated further, more instances were found, so as Wired reports, Browning hired an SUV and asked a friend to drive him around as he took photographs so he could see the buildings for himself. "You don't want to be seen. Two foreigners driving a car is always weird, especially in an industrial area, and then taking photos, it can cause problems" Browning said, adding that he had encountered problems in the past working on stories about pollution.
Browning's isn't sure why this strange scrubbing of photos takes place; "At first I thought it could just be for weird aesthetic reasons. I guess it's security. But it's a bit random." He wondered about the process behind censorship: "I don't know who does it, if it's an algorithm that gets GPS co-ordinates for each place and then somehow wipes it, or if an actual person goes to each one and cleans it up with Photoshop", "It would be great to meet these people and see what they think about it. If they wanted to do it, why didn't they do it properly?"
Johan Lagerkvist, a professor of Chinese language and culture at Stockholm University said "It's a bit peculiar. It's like shouting, 'hey, we've got something secret over here!'", although he didn't think it was the government "It doesn't look like the government, although that cannot be ruled out."
Here is what Browning found as he took pictures of his own and compared them to Baidu.
Browning has since moved back to the UK with his wife, and said that China's government is always a mystery: "China's a great country. But it's two different things. You've got the government and what they say and do, and then you've got the people. The government is always the mystery."
* * *
Whether it's a government mandated scrubbing of industrial parks, or just a bored employee at Baidu who felt like messing with some pictures we'll never really know. What Browning found however, is certainly fascinating.
- "The US Is Sleepwalking Towards A Nuclear Confrontation"
Submitted by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,
Following his cautionary analysis on the increasing tension between the US/NATO and Russia, Chris interview sDmitry Orlov this week about the potential likelihood for actual direct conflict to break out between the world powers.
Orlov was born and raised in Leningrad in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to the United States in the mid 70s, He has spent the past several decades traveling back and forth between the two countries, writing about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the many similarities he sees between that and the secular decline happening in the West. Orlov recently co-authored a stark warning with a number of other experts on Russia, concerned that the US is recklessly provoking a military confrontation it cannot win:
The United States is sleepwalking towards a nuclear confrontation with Russia. It is astounding in its stupidity this approach. What's going on is an effort by the US military and by NATO officials to extract as much money as possible out of Eastern Europe, to continue financing weapons and generally extract military spending out of Europe.
The neocons have a very stiff ideology of world domination. Basically they took over the US government because it's the largest and most vulnerable democracy in order to realize their insane dreams of world domination.
It hasn’t gone that well. But there's no convincing them. There isn’t a feedback loop from experience to what they do next. One defeat causes them to organize for the next defeat without realizing it. So they don’t realize that what they have done in the Middle East has been completely counter-productive. They don’t realize, for instance, that trying to promote democracy and secular regimes in Islamic countries doesn’t produce democracy or secular regimes – what it produces is jihadism and radicalization and things like ISIS. They can’t process that thought because their ideology says "democracy is the weapon we use". We used it successfully against the United States. Look what wonderful shape the US democracy is. It is bought and sold on the open market and we are going to do that to every country in the world.
There is no stopping them. They are like zombies. Until somebody shoots them in the head they are going to keep moving.
Now in Russia a military drill can be called without warning at any time, and everything better work. Basically the entire military is at a high state of readiness. The US media has missed the fact that what the Russians did in Syria with a really, really small contingent is something that the US couldn’t possibly have done and NATO couldn’t possibly have done. If you look at the number of sorties and the number of strikes per unit time — which is basically ground crews working seamlessly with pilots on rotation, jets landing, getting refueled, getting reloaded taking off continuously — that is not something that the US is capable of at this point. This is a different military. This is not the US military. This is something completely different. And then there hasn't been much reporting about the new weapons that Russia has — the S300, the S400 now they are rolling out the S500 which will be able to hit targets in near space and that will basically be like a giant impenetrable shield over most of Russia including all of the ballistic weapons that the US has. They also haven’t really reported on the super sonic torpedoes and cruise missiles that Russia has developed, or mention the fact that Russian nuclear subs lurking along the American western and eastern seaboards all the time on patrol armed with these caliber supersonic cruise missiles that the US has absolutely nothing to detect them with or to shoot them down — and they can be nuclear tipped.
Russia is ready. What is even more scary is that the Russian people are ready. There are all these groups all over Russia that do stunts like they run marathons off road. The marathons sometimes include some tactical objectives too. So this is like paramilitary training for lots and lots of young people in the country. Some of them don’t even like the government that much but that doesn’t mean that they won’t take orders if orders are given. Even if there isn’t a nuclear confrontation and NATO rolls into Russian territory they will bleed and they will bleed to death just like it has always happened with people who invaded Russia. There isn’t a happy outcome, there isn’t a face saving outcome for the United States or for NATO. There is just basically the choice between death and humiliation.
Click the play button below to listen to Chris' interview with Dmitry (51m:18s)
- Sterling Soars Above 1.46 As Stops Triggered, Momentum Algos Ignited
Just four hours ago, when the first Asian bourses opened for FX trading, we reported that sterling had soared by 75 pips in early trading, rising to its highest level in 10 days.
Fast forward to the moment Japan opened for trading, when the momentum algos finally kicked in, and in an attempt to cover up another month of disastrous economic news for Japan (which reported a 11.3% collapse in exports, together with a 13.8% plunge in imports), cable exploded suddenly and violently higher on high volume as a major stop level was triggered at 1.454, which in turn launched FX momentum algos, and promptly took GBPUSD above 1.46 nearly 600 pips higher than the Thursday lows, and less than 200 pips away from Citigroup’s “extreme” print forecast of 1.4799 in the event of a Remain vote.
Of course, Remain hasn’t even voted yet, and instead the entire euphoria is based on one poll supposedly taken in the aftermath of Jo Cox’ murder, which has given Remain a fractional lead.
What is perhaps just as curious is that using Citi’s GBPUSD “extreme print” range for Exit and Remain outcomes of 1.2777 and 1.4799, respectively, with Cable trading at 1.45570, this means that as of this moment, the FX market is pricing in an 88% probability of a Remain victory.
Finally, the reason for the massive buying spree and the surge in speculation that the UK will remain in the EU, it is highlighted appropriately in red in the chart below.
- Japanese Finance Minister Reminds Elderly "Hurry Up & Die"
Everyone knows that Japan, whose population is now declining for the first time in its history…
…sold more adult than baby diapers for the first time in 2012, and is "older" than any nation in the world, has a "demographic problem."
What few may know, however, is that it also has a secret plan to fix said "demographic problem" – a solution that would make Hitler, Goebbels and Stalin proud.
In 2013, then Deputy PM Taro Aso, 72 years young at the time, suggested that the elderly in Japan should just "hurry up and die" because "You cannot sleep well when you think it's all paid by the government."
Well, the now death-defying 75-year-old finance minister took another swing at the elderly… saying last week that he wondered how much longer a 90-year-old person intends to live.
The outspoken Aso, who is also deputy prime minister, made the comment at a Liberal Democratic Party rally in Otaru, Hokkaido, on Friday, where he said: “I recently saw someone as old as 90 on television, saying how the person was worried about the future. I wondered ‘How much longer do you intend to keep living?’ “
His comments, part of a speech urging wealthy elderly citizens to spend more to spur the economy, drew immediate fire from Democratic Party President Katsuya Okada.
“This is an insult to the nation’s elderly,” Okada told reporters in Yufu, Oita Prefecture, on Saturday. “It’s extremely disheartening that someone who cannot understand the public’s concerns about nursing care is serving as finance minister.”
During the Otaru rally, Aso pointed to the more than ¥1.7 quadrillion of personal assets held nationwide, saying the money needs to be spent.
“The biggest problem at the present is how everyone is staying put,” he said. “If you don’t spend the money you have, that money will mean nothing. What’s the point of accumulating more wealth? Just looking at the money you have?”
So hurry up and die already…
As we remarked previously, remember that this is the nation that the US is set to imitate at all costs: in everything from the rising debt/GDP, to the interest as a % of revenue, to the demographic distribution of the population, to, well, everything. And, perhaps, one day to the treatment of the elderly. Because unlike the US, Japan does not have an insolvent Social Security Fund and underfunded liabilities that amount to about 10 times its GDP. Ironically, in the perspective of benefits promised to its society, Japan is in a better place than even the US.
- The Problem With Corporate Debt
Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man.com,
Taking Off Like a Rocket
There are actually two problems with corporate debt. One is that there is too much of it… the other is that a lot of it appears to be going sour.
Harvey had a good time in recent years…well, not so much between mid 2014 and early 2016, but happy days are here again!
As a brief report at Marketwatch last week (widely ignored as far as we are aware) informs us:
“Businesses racked up debt in the January-to-March period at the fastest pace in three quarters, according to data released Thursday.
Business debt grew at a blistering 7.9% annual rate in the first quarter, the Federal Reserve said. Business debt has expanded by around 8% in three of the last five quarters. Companies still have substantial cash on the sidelines, as their stockpiles edged down to $1.89 trillion from $1.9 trillion.”
(emphasis added)
While Marketwatch told us how much cash companies are holding, for some reason it didn’t deign to tell us how much corporate debt there actually is, in dollars and cents. It would be nice to be able to compare these figures, wouldn’t it?
Here is a chart that shows the sum of commercial loans held by US banks and outstanding US non-financial corporate bonds:
US non-financial corporate debt… can’t have too much of a good thing! – click to enlarge.
Now, as we all know, this debt as been incurred in order to engage in wise capital investment, so it will be very easy to pay it back with future profits…. well, not really, actually. A lot of it appears to have been wasted in decidedly unprofitable investments. This should be no surprise with administered interest rates at zilch for many years.
The rest has been judiciously deployed for financial engineering purposes, such as stock buybacks, m&a activity and even dividend payments. This, we hear, has been quite good for the stock options of many a corporate executive. Who would want to begrudge them that?
Charge-Offs and Delinquencies Soar
We are just guessing here….but we believe there must be a few irate bank managers somewhere. Quite possibly they are irate with themselves, for having lent too much money to too many deadbeats. Here is a chart we have frequently shown before: the annual rate of change of the sum of charge-offs and delinquencies in commercial loans (we thank our late friend BC for the inspiration – may he RIP).
Believe it or not, this number is growing at a record fast pace as of Q1 2016 – at 122% y/y it is surpassing even the rate of change peak seen near the trough of the “Great Recession” of 2007 – 2009. And this is happening with the Federal Funds rate target at a measly 0.25-0-50% corridor and the broad money supply (TMS-2) still growing at more than 8% y/y!
The annual rate of change of the sum of delinquencies and charge-offs of commercial loans (black line, lhs), vs. the FF rate (red line, rhs) reaches a new record high. Good thing that corporate debt is “growing at a blistering pace” as well of late, otherwise this might get noticed – click to enlarge.
Well, who knows, but maybe buying junk bonds here isn’t the best idea ever. Just a hunch, mind.
Conclusion
Corporate debt remains a major Achilles heel of the echo bubble. Color us slightly astonished that so little attention is seemingly paid to it (with the notable exception of Stanley Druckenmiller, who made mention of it at a recent hedge fund conference). In our experience, the things that attract little attention are often worth watching very closely.
All aboard the Junk Express! There is no alternative for the discerning fixed income investor!
Addendum: Fitch Blurb
We just noticed this small blurb from Fitch in our mail, summarizing the latest developments in junk land:
U.S. HY Energy Defaults Tally $13 Billion in May; June TTM Default Rate Approaching 5%
The June trailing 12-month (TTM) U.S. high yield bond default rate is closing inon 5%, reaching 4.7% after another $3 billion of defaults thus far this month, The $46.4 billion of recorded defaults this year is just $2 billion less than the total for the entire 2015.
Through mid-June, energy and metals/mining accounted for 84% of defaults ($38.9 billion). The May energy TTM rate stood at 14.6% following $12.7 billion of sector defaults last month while the E&P rate is at 28.6%. The average high yield bid levels are at 92.9, up from 91.1 last month and from 83.7 in February when crude oil prices were at their low point
(emphasis added)
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...