- Hundreds Of "Bleed Control Kits" Issued To Bars Across London
Hundreds Of “Bleed Control Kits” Issued To Bars Across London
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
320 ‘bleed control kits’ are to be given to bars in the City of London as the UK capital’s knife crime epidemic continues to soar.
The kits will be handed out by City of London police across the 1.12 square mile center of the city at a cost of £25,000.
Authorities said they were “proud” to launch the initiative, with David Lawes, Chief Superintendent of the City of London Police, telling Sky News that the decision was a “no brainer.”
“This is a really, really simply piece of kit which can make a big difference. Particularly with the most catastrophic bleeds, if you don’t get help in the first few minutes the person will almost certainly die,” said Lawes.
“The kits contain tourniquets, trauma bandages, adhesive chest seals and foil blankets, and can help treat both knife and gunshot wounds. Bar staff will be trained in their use, so that victims of violent crime will not bleed out before an ambulance can reach them,” writes Jack Hadfield.
Knife crime in the City of London jumped by 43% over the last year while in that same time period England saw a record high of 43,000 knife crimes across the country.
Violent crime levels show little sign of coming down as authorities refuse to tackle some of the core reasons for the bloodshed, which include broken families, weakened police powers and mass migration.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 02:00 - US-S.Korea Talks Abruptly Halted Over Trump's $4.7BN Price Tag For Basing Troops
US-S.Korea Talks Abruptly Halted Over Trump’s $4.7BN Price Tag For Basing Troops
The Trump administration’s new $4.7 billion price tag suggested to South Korea two weeks ago to cover its share of the costs of housing American troops, which have been stationed on the peninsula as a deterrent against the north via US Indo-Pacific Command forces since 1957, has angered Seoul to the point that negotiations were abruptly cut off Tuesday.
Though South Korea had successfully negotiated cost sharing agreements for decades, the current timing to the crisis couldn’t be worse, given stalled US-DPRK talks and threats of new missile tests, not to mention the looming US presidential elections next year. CNN reports of the crisis:
The sudden end to the talks, which were in their third round, comes amid renewed tensions between the allies after President Donald Trump hiked the price tag for US forces roughly 400% for 2020, a move that frustrated Pentagon officials and deeply concerned Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
Osan Air Base, South Korea, via US Army/Stripes. Prior to the massive nearly $5BN price hike, South Korea already agreed to pay $920 million annually to maintain the roughly 29,000 US troops in the country.
Negotiations on Monday reportedly began with both sides optimistic, but Seoul said the US side walked out after the South Koreans balked at the Americans’ new whopping sum, and even a “new category” added to the obligations.
South Korea’s chief negotiator Jeong Eun-bo had described of the quickly failed meeting: “We couldn’t conduct the talk as plans as the US team left the venue.”
He said further, “We maintain our current stance that the cost division (between the US and South Korea) needs to be decided based on the Special Measures Agreement frame in which we have agreed for the past 28 years.”
The US side said it is giving their counterparts time to “reconsider” the demands, but no doubt trust has been severely eroded.
Late last week US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told reporters at a briefing in Seoul that South Korea is “a wealthy country and could and should pay more” for the deployment of US forces on its soil.
But there’s also be possibility that the US side is bluffing in order to squeeze more money, given that so far Washington hasn’t suggested that it’s willing to reduce troops levels, and certainly won’t abandon its bases altogether.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 01:00 - The Elite Controllers Fear The Individual And Individual Intelligence
The Elite Controllers Fear The Individual And Individual Intelligence
Authored by Gary Barnett via LewRockwell.com,
This once great country of America has gone through many changes, and these changes, while implemented by the design of its true rulers, are not understood by the huddled masses that have been taught to accept mediocrity as desired normalcy.
The ruling class fully understands that the only way to control people, and to finally control the world, is to stifle individual excellence by creating a society that refuses to think. This has been accomplished through planned conflict, the instilling of fear, the total control of education by the puppet state, by building dependence through public welfare, and by dominating most all positions of power in a myriad of state, corporate, and important intellectual appointments.
“At its root, the logic is that of the Grand Inquisitor, who bitterly assailed Christ for offering people freedom and thus condemning them to misery. The Church must correct the evil work of Christ by offering the miserable mass of humanity the gift they most desire and need: absolute submission. It must “vanquish freedom” so as “to make men happy” and provide the total “community of worship” that they avidly seek. In the modern secular age, this means worship of the state religion, which in the Western democracies incorporates the doctrine of submission to the masters of the system of public subsidy, private profit, called free enterprise. The people must be kept in ignorance, reduced to jingoist incantations, for their own good. And like the Grand Inquisitor, who employs the forces of miracle, mystery, and authority “to conquer and hold captive for ever the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness” and to deny them the freedom of choice they so fear and despise, so the “cool observers” must create the “necessary illusions” and “emotionally potent oversimplifications” that keep the ignorant and stupid masses disciplined and content.”
~ Noam Chomsky,This quote by Chomsky is correct in that it describes the current condition of the general populace, but is incorrect in that it claims free enterprise is the problem. There is no free market in this country, and there has not been a free market for many years. We live in what is best described as a fascist oligarchy, one that relies on the premise of state and corporate partnership. Without that dynamic in place, the situation would not be as dire as it is today.
It is important to state that I believe the common people are not incapable of intelligent thought, but have given in to the pressure from their self-appointed overseers, and accepted a subordinate position in society. They have been programmed to suppress their curiosity, and therefore have chosen to hide from responsibility. I refer to this attitude as a fear of freedom, as freedom requires much work, a strong moral base, an active intellect, and constant defense of self-rule. It is difficult to achieve and even more difficult to keep, so most are willing to take the easy way. By doing so, tyranny of the masses is always the resulting societal structure.
In any society such as this, what the common people perceive as freedom is in realty a type of controlled servitude. While this should be easily recognized by most, it is not, and this is mainly due to a fear of the truth. So pretending that the threat does not exist allows the underclass to avoid conflict, but only temporarily. This avoidance is a natural protection measure, but in the case of a slave society, this hiding from responsibility by the people will eventually become deadly.
The monopoly of power that is held by the few over the rest of society is all consuming, and the ultimate control sought by these elites is getting ever closer to fruition. It has been affected over long periods of time through incremental measures. It did not happen overnight, but over centuries, and at this point, the final objectives desired are within sight.
This is the most dangerous time for man as I see it, as the elite design for future economic decision-making for all is to be placed in the hands of so-called chosen experts, with power over the entire world economy. All economic decisions are to be based on a controlled allocation for society, which is simply centrally planned socialism, with a top-down hierarchy of control by the few. This ruling system is known as Technocracy, and when implemented, it will be the end of liberty.
I do not make these assertions lightly, and this is not theory, it is the current state of affairs. Consider the division among the general population, and the hatred amongst the masses. This is not natural, but has been put in place purposely to achieve a particular outcome by those controlling the now ignorant and indoctrinated general population.
The new world order that is desired by the ruling class is getting ever closer to becoming reality. This is not conjecture or some wildly fantastic science fiction, but is a plan that is gaining momentum due to a society consumed by blind indifference.
In past history when a ruling class went too far, and exceeded all the bounds of accepted power, the people arose, and a new system emerged. But can that happen in this country in this time of extreme political change and concentrated power? The creation of conflict that is evident today is a driving force in bringing about a world run by the few. And the common people are already relegated to a position of cogs in the wheel of society, as opposed to thinking for themselves and taking control of their own lives. This phenomenon must change in order for freedom to survive, and a reversal of the power structure must be forthcoming, if Americans are once again to control their own destiny.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 23:45 - Suicide Rates Are Surging Around The World
Suicide Rates Are Surging Around The World
Yesterday, November 19, was International Men’s Day and in 2019, the theme is “Making a Difference for Men and Boys”.
The focus of the day is to “promote the need to value men and boys and help people make practical improvements in men and boy’s health and well-being,” Sadly, as Statista’s Martin Armstrong details in the chart below, suicide rates among men are significantly higher in most countries around the world.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Of the 25 looked at here, the World Health Organization estimates Russia to have by far the highest rate among men, at 48.3 cases per 100,000 population in 2016. For women, India has the highest rate, with 14.5 cases.
There are some exceptions however.
In China, the rate for women is 8.3 while for men it is 7.9.
While the US ranks 7th overall in the world, suicide rates are at their highest since World War II, according to federal data and the opioid crisis, widespread social media use and high rates of stress may be among the myriad contributing factors.
In 2017, 14 out of every 100,000 Americans died by suicide, according to a new analysis released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. That’s a 33% increase since 1999, and the highest age-adjusted suicide rate recorded in the U.S. since 1942.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 23:25 - Escobar: Iran's "Only Crime Is We Decided Not To Fold"
Escobar: Iran’s “Only Crime Is We Decided Not To Fold”
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
Just in time to shine a light on what’s behind the latest sanctions from Washington, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a speech at the annual Astana Club meeting in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan delivered a searing account of Iran-US relations to a select audience of high-ranking diplomats, former Presidents and analysts.
Zarif was the main speaker in a panel titled “The New Concept of Nuclear Disarmament.” Keeping to a frantic schedule, he rushed in and out of the round table to squeeze in a private conversation with Kazakh First President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
During the panel, moderator Jonathan Granoff, President of the Global Security Institute, managed to keep a Pentagon analyst’s questioning of Zafir from turning into a shouting match.
Previously, I had extensively discussed with Syed Rasoul Mousavi, minister for West Asia at the Iran Foreign Ministry, myriad details on Iran’s stance everywhere from the Persian Gulf to Afghanistan. I was at the James Bond-ish round table of the Astana Club, as I moderated two other panels, one on multipolar Eurasia and the post-INF environment and another on Central Asia (the subject of further columns).
Zarif’s intervention was extremely forceful. He stressed how Iran “complied with every agreement and it got nothing;” how “our people believe we have not gained from being part of” the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action; how inflation is out of control; how the value of the rial dropped 70% “because of ‘coercive measures’ – not sanctions because they are illegal.”
He spoke without notes, exhibiting absolute mastery of the inextricable swamp that is US-Iran relations. It turned out, in the end, to be a bombshell. Here are highlights.
Zarif’s story began back during 1968 negotiations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, with the stance of the “Non-Aligned Movement to accept its provisions only if at a later date” – which happened to be 2020 – “there would be nuclear disarmament.” Out of 180 non-aligned countries, “90 countries co-sponsored the indefinite extension of the NPT.”
Moving to the state of play now, he mentioned how the United States and France are “relying on nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence, which is disastrous for the entire world.” Iran on the other hand “is a country that believes nuclear weapons should never be owned by any country,” due to “strategic calculations based on our religious beliefs.”
Zarif stressed how “from 2003 to 2012 Iran was under the most severe UN sanctions that have ever be imposed on any country that did not have nuclear weapons. The sanctions that were imposed on Iran from 2009 to 2012 were greater than the sanctions that were imposed on North Korea, which had nuclear weapons.”
Discussing the negotiations for the JCPOA that started in 2012, Zarif noted that Iran had started from the premise that “we should be able to develop as much nuclear energy as we wanted” while the US had started under the premise that Iran should never have any centrifuges.” That was the “zero-enrichment” option.
Zarif, in public, always comes back to the point that “in every zero-sum game everybody loses.” He admits the JCPOA is “a difficult agreement. It’s not a perfect agreement. It has elements I don’t like and it has elements the United Stares does not like.” In the end, “we reached the semblance of a balance.”
Zarif offered a quite enlightening parallel between the NPT and the JCPOA:
“The NPT was based on three pillars: non-proliferation, disarmament and access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Basically the disarmament part of NPT is all but dead, non-proliferation is barely surviving and peaceful use of nuclear energy is under serious threat,” he observed.
Meanwhile, “JCPOA was based on two pillars: economic normalization of Iran, which is reflected in Security Council resolution 2231, and – at the same time – Iran observing certain limits on nuclear development.”
Crucially, Zarif stressed there is nothing “sunset” about these limits, as Washington argues: “We will be committed to not producing nuclear weapons forever.”
All about distrust
Then came Trump’s fateful May 2018 decision:
“When President Trump decided to withdraw from the JCPOA, we triggered the dispute resolution mechanism.”
Referring to a common narrative that describes him and John Kerry as obsessed with sacrificing everything to get a deal, Zarif said:
“We negotiated this deal based on distrust. That’s why you have a mechanism for disputes.”
Still, “the commitments of the EU and the commitments of the United States are independent. Unfortunately the EU believed they could procrastinate. Now we are at a situation where Iran is receiving no benefit, nobody is implementing their part of the bargain, only Russia and China are fulfilling partially their commitments, because the United States even prevents them from fully fulfilling their commitments. France proposed last year to provide $15 billion to Iran for the oil we could sell from August to December. The United States prevented the European Union even from addressing this.”
The bottom line, then, is that “other members of the JCPOA are in fact not implementing their commitments.” The solution “is very easy. Go back to the non-zero sum. Go back to implementing your commitments. Iran agreed that it would negotiate from Day One.”
Zarif made the prediction that “if the Europeans still believe that they can take us to the Security Council and snap back resolutions they’re dead wrong. Because that is a remedy if there was a violation of the JCPOA. There was no violation of the JCPOA. We took these actions in response to European and American non-compliance. This is one of the few diplomatic achievements of the last many decades. We simply need to make sure that the two pillars exist: that there is a semblance of balance.”
This led him to a possible ray of light among so much doom and gloom:
“If what was promised to Iran in terms of economic normalization is delivered, even partially, we are prepared to show good faith and come back to the implementation of the JCPOA. If it’s not, then unfortunately we will continue this path, which is a path of zero-sum, a path leading to a loss for everybody, but a path that we have no other choice but to follow.”
Time for HOPE
Zarif identifies three major problems in our current geopolitical madness:
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a “zero-sum mentality on international relations that doesn’t work anymore;”
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winning by excluding others (“We need to establish dialogue, we need to establish cooperation”);
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and “the belief that the more arms we purchase, the more security we can bring to our people.”
He was adamant that there’s a possibility of implementing “a new paradigm of cooperation in our region,” referring to Nazarbayev’s efforts: a real Eurasian model of security. But that, Zarif explained, “requires a neighborhood policy. We need to look at our neighbors as our friends, as our partners, as people without whom we cannot have security. We cannot have security in Iran if Afghanistan is in turmoil. We cannot have security in Iran if Iraq is in turmoil. We cannot have security in Iran if Syria is in turmoil. You cannot have security in Kazakhstan if the Persian Gulf region is in turmoil.”
He noted that, based on just such thinking, “President Rouhani this year, in the UN General Assembly, offered a new approach to security in the Persian Gulf region, called HOPE, which is the acronym for Hormuz Peace Initiative – or Hormuz Peace Endeavor so we can have the HOPE abbreviation.”
HOPE, explained Zarif, “is based on international law, respect of territorial integrity; based on accepting a series of principles and a series of confidence building measures; and we can build on it as you [addressing Nazarbayev] built on it in Eurasia and Central Asia. We are proud to be a part of the Eurasia Economic Union, we are neighbors in the Caspian, we have concluded last year, with your leadership, the legal convention of the Caspian Sea, these are important development that happened on the northern part of Iran. We need to repeat them in the southern part of Iran, with the same mentality that we can’t exclude our neighbors. We are either doomed or privileged to live together for the rest of our lives. We are bound by geography. We are bound by tradition, culture, religion and history.” To succeed, “we need to change our mindset.”
Age of hegemony gone
It all comes down to the main reason US foreign policy just can’t get enough of Iran demonization. Zarif has no doubts:
“There is still an arms embargo against Iran on the way. But we are capable of shooting down a US drone spying in our territory. We are trying simply to be independent. We never said we will annihilate Israel. Somebody said Israel will be annihilated. We never said we will do it.”
It was, Zarif said, Benjamin Netanyahu who took ownership of that threat, saying, “I was the only one against the JCPOA.” Netanyahu “managed to destroy the JCPOA. What is the problem? The problem is we decided not to fold. That is our only crime. We had a revolution against a government that was supported by the United States, imposed on our country by the United States, [that] tortured our people with the help of the United States, and never received a single human rights condemnation, and now people are worried why they say ‘Death to America’? We say death to these policies, because they have brought nothing but this farce. What did they bring to us? If somebody came to the United States, removed your president, imposed a dictator who killed your people, wouldn’t you say death to that country?”
Zarif inevitably had to evoke Mike Pompeo:
“Today the Secretary of State of the United States says publicly: ‘If Iran wants to eat, it has to obey the United States.’ This is a war crime. Starvation is a crime against humanity. It’s a newspeak headline. If Iran wants its people to eat, it has to follow what he said. He says, ‘Death to the entire Iranian people.’”
By then the atmosphere across the huge round table was electric. One could hear a pin drop – or, rather, the mini sonic booms coming from high up in the shallow dome via the system devised by star architect Norman Foster, heating the high-performance glass to melt the snow.
Zarif went all in:
“What did we do the United States? What did we do to Israel? Did we make their people starve? Who is making our people starve? Just tell me. Who is violating the nuclear agreement? Because they did not like Obama? Is that a reason to destroy the world, just because you don’t like a president?”
Iran’s only crime, he said, “is that we decided to be our own boss. And that crime – we are proud of it. And we will continue to be. Because we have seven millennia of civilization. We had an empire that ruled the world, and the life of that empire was probably seven times the entire life of the United States. So – with all due respect to the United States empire; I owe my education to the United States – we don’t believe that the United States is an empire that will last. The age of empires is long gone. The age of hegemony is long gone. We now have to live in a world without hegemony. – regional hegemony or global hegemony.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 23:05 -
- US-China Exposure Index Signals Next Market Downturn Imminent
US-China Exposure Index Signals Next Market Downturn Imminent
With ‘Not QE’ inflating risk assets and President Trump promoting a non-existent trade deal, something we outlined last week, new evidence is being communicated by various Chinese sources in the previous 24 hours that suggests a deal is unlikely in the coming weeks, and it now might be time for investors to readjust risk-taking behavior.
On Monday morning, CNBC’s Eunice Yoon tweeted, “Mood in Beijing about #trade deal is pessimistic, government source tells me. #China troubled after Trump said no tariff rollback. (China thought both had agreed in principle.) Strategy now to talk but wait due to impeachment, US election. Also prioritize China economic support.”
Then on Tuesday morning, Global Times Editor In Chief tweeted, “If President Trump believes China’s economy is crumbling and Beijing will eventually make decisive concessions, he has to wait until Ivanka becomes the president to sign trade deal with China.”
The message being broadcasted from China is the polar opposite from President Trump, who recently tweeted, “The deal I just made with China is, by far, the greatest and biggest deal ever made for our Great Patriot Farmers in the history of our Country. In fact, there is a question as to whether or not this much product can be produced? Our farmers will figure it out. Thank you, China!”
The deal I just made with China is, by far, the greatest and biggest deal ever made for our Great Patriot Farmers in the history of our Country. In fact, there is a question as to whether or not this much product can be produced? Our farmers will figure it out. Thank you China!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2019
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It appears there’s still a significant gap in US-China trade talks, though Western media, influenced by the White House, has already taken a victory lap of President Trump’s “greatest and biggest deal ever made for our Great Patriot Farmers in the history of our Country.”
So this distortion of reality via Trump admin propaganda has been used to pump the stock market to record highs and lift animal spirits of consumers ahead of a possible recession.
Even if there’s a ‘phase 1 trade deal’, it’ll likely to disappoint investors because President Trump publicly overpromised on many fronts. He said in October that the deal would cover 60% of the “total trade deal,” but that amount remains uncertain.
So investors could be staring at a disappointment phase, one where President Trump, again, like every other time, overpromised and underdelivered for the sole purpose of pumping stocks.
Fathom’s China Exposure Index (CEI), which monitors the relative stock market performance of US-listed firms with significant revenue exposure to China, has been seen as a lead ahead of a stock market sell-off triggered by trade pessimism.
As shown in the chart below, lower CEI is due to investors selling US firms that do the most business in China, and CEI moves higher as trade optimism appears.
And with that being said, the CEI has likely peaked in November as trade talks stall. If the CEI starts to move lower, this means investors are de-risking US companies with high exposure to China first, which implies sentiment in the broader stock market averages will likely peak next.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 22:45 - Medicare For All Study: 2/3 Of Households Would Be Worse Off
Medicare For All Study: 2/3 Of Households Would Be Worse Off
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
If Democrats get their way and jack up taxes to attempt to cover a “Medicare for All” plan, not only would jobs be lost, but 2/3 of American households would be worse off. A majority of households would end up worse off financially with less disposable income.
That’s bad news for an economy that’s holding on by the thin thread of consumer spending. The study is an interesting exercise, but it’s not hard to anticipate the response from the Left.
Liberals’ preferred Medicare for All estimates tend to assume that a single-payer system could pay doctors and hospitals a lot less than private insurers do and that you could get a long way toward funding Medicare for All by socking it to the rich. Heritage made some key assumptions cutting in the opposite direction, though Heritage’s assumptions are a good bit more plausible than the lefties’ are.
The study assumes no payment cuts for medical providers at all.
The study was conducted by the Heritage Foundation and the results could impoverish the majority of Americans and widen the “wealth gap” liberals constantly complain about (while pushing policies that only make it worse).
In general, the study mainly drives home that the expected results of Medicare for All depend mainly on one’s subjective assumptions about how payments would work out and which taxes could plausibly raise that much money. It’s an enormous change from the status quo, and its effects are difficult to predict in an empirical, non-ideological manner. No matter how it worked out, it would require someone to pay a boatload in new taxes, though, which would leave a majority of households worse off than they were before.
Those increases in taxes too will, in turn, reek havoc on the overall economy. Even a hike in the corporate tax rate will have the net result of lost jobs and not just a few – 413,000 of them. Studies also show that Joe Biden’s plan would decrease the United States’ GDP by one percent. For a country barely hanging on economically, this could prove disastrous.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 22:25 - Saks Manhattan Flagship Store Crashes 60% In Value
Saks Manhattan Flagship Store Crashes 60% In Value
The value of Hudson’s Bay’s Saks Fifth Avenue flagship store in Midtown Manhattan has more than halved in five years, that is according to a new Bloomberg report.
Filings show the building at 611 Fifth Ave. was assessed for $1.6 billion in 2H19, has plunged by 60% in value since it was last appraised at $3.7 billion in 2013.
A Hudson’s Bay spokesperson told Bloomberg that the decline in valuation is mostly due to “the performance of the store relative to expectations in 2014, changes in market rents on New York’s Fifth Avenue, and the changes in the retail landscape.”
Ahead of the holiday season, consumers are pulling back, and this is most evident in Manhattan’s retail industry.
Average asking rents for retail space across Upper Fifth Avenue, between 42nd and 49th streets, saw one of the steepest drops in retail rents in Q3, dropping 25% YoY.
Lower Fifth, Broadway, Madison Avenue, SoHo, and Herald Square retail rents over the same period were in free fall. This is a reflection of the weakening consumer base. There were several outliers, Upper Fifth and Times Square retail rents over the same period marginally declined. Meanwhile, the Meatpacking district saw rents jump 7.3% in Q3 YoY.
Patrick Smith, vice chairman at JLL’s retail brokerage, said plunging rents in some of NYC’s most popular shopping districts is a bad omen.
A random walk down Manhattan these days and you’ll find vacant retail shops, as landlords begging for tenants slam rents lower.
The Real Deal has said Manhattan’s Upper East Side is “facing a retail vacancy epidemic.”
Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer has said more than 188 vacant shops can be found along Broadway.
Douglas Elliman, a real estate brokerage, has said 20% of Manhattan retail is likely vacant, up 7% since 2016
Manhattan’s retail rents and retail vacancy problems are a result of weakening consumer trends.
Hudson’s Bay Saks Fifth Avenue flagship store will likely take another sharp drop in value during the next recession.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 22:05 - Futures Spike After China's Top Trade Negotiator Says "Cautiously Optimistic" About Phase 1
Futures Spike After China’s Top Trade Negotiator Says “Cautiously Optimistic” About Phase 1
Futures slumped for just over three hours amid fears that the US-China trade deal was hopelessly lost and in anticipation of Chinese retaliation for Congress voting unanimously to support Hong Kong protesters, before a burst of optimism was injected. Only there was a surprise twist: instead of the optimism coming from Kudlow, or Ross, or even a Trump tweet, this time it was China that did what it could to push up US equity futures.
As Bloomberg reported, China’s chief negotiator and vice premier Lie He, said Wednesday night that he was “cautiously optimistic” about reaching a phase one trade deal with the U.S., even as tensions over Hong Kong soar while trade talks continue to stretch out without even a meeting date still agreed upon.
How do we know this? Because as Bloomberg reports, “Liu He made the comments in a speech in Beijing” although not in public, but rather to an Impeachment-style whistleblower, i.e., “according to people who attended the dinner and asked not to be identified.”
It was unclear why, if Liu He was truly “cautiously optimistic“, officials wouldn’t say so in public, and instead we would have to rely on a deep throat Bloomberg source, who refused give his name. This unnamed source said that He also explained China’s plans “for reforming state enterprises, opening up the financial sector, and enforcing intellectual property rights — issues which are at the core of U.S. demands for change in China’s economic system.”
And while algos focused exclusively on the flashing red Bloomberg headline, reading a bit further into the article reveals that Blomberg’s unnamed “source” Lie He told one of the attendees that he was “confused” about the U.S. demands... but was confident the first phase of an agreement could be completed nevertheless.
Credible or not, the Bloomberg report was enough to send S&P futs spiking back over 3,100 now that if not order, then at least trade optimism has been (somewhat) restored…
… with the Chinese Yuan jumping as much as 100 pips before cutting gains in half.
The bigger question: now that both the US and China are trying to jawbone US equity futures higher, just how much higher can they go, and a corollary – how much lower is fair value if now one needs both the US and China to spark the occasional trade pessimist short squeeze.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 21:45 - Media Manipulation: Story About Immigrant 'Kids In Cages' Scrubbed After UN Said It Happened On Obama's Watch
Media Manipulation: Story About Immigrant ‘Kids In Cages’ Scrubbed After UN Said It Happened On Obama’s Watch
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
A story with the wrong “official narrative” was scrubbed by mainstream media outlets. After reporting on detained migrant children, AFP and Reuters scrubbed the story when the United Nations revealed it happened on Barack Obama’s watch.
Why The “Abject Silence” From The Left About Child Migrant Detentions Under Obama?
The media is now self-censoring when the numbers don’t align with their narrative. The thought manipulation of the public is on full display. Rather than issue a correction, several news agencies have instead opted to delete a story stating that 100,000 migrant children were detained in US border facilities. This decision to delete comes after the United Nations clarified that the number is years old, predating the age of Trump, according to RT.
AFP is withdrawing this story.
The author of the report has clarified that his figures do not represent the number of children currently in migration-related US detention, but the total number of children in migration-related US detention in 2015.
We will delete the story. https://t.co/p30UjEWl7u
— AFP news agency (@AFP) November 19, 2019
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Many Twitter users noticed that the story was scrubbed because the numbers reflect poorly on Obama, not their nemesis, Donald Trump.
2015, the year I blew the whistle on the release of the children to criminal sponsors, including sex offenders… pic.twitter.com/69Mnjl1pk3
— Jason Piccolo (@DRJasonPiccolo) November 20, 2019
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“We’re pulling the story because it makes Obama look bad and our whole purpose was to make Trump look bad.”. There…corrected it for you!
— DaveL (@DaveL324) November 20, 2019
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Once responsibility for the vast number of detentions was passed from Trump to Obama, however, the author of the story decided to clarify further that the 100,000 figure referred to the “cumulative number of migrant children detained at any point in 2015”, rather than all at one time, another caveat he conveniently forgot to explain previously.
Despite frequent and vocal criticisms of President Trump’s border policies, his predecessor’s approach to immigration was not entirely different, even earning Obama the moniker of “Deporter in Chief.” During his first term, President Obama deported some 400,000 migrants each year, setting a record for himself in 2012 at over 409,000. President Trump, meanwhile, has deported fewer than 300,000 each year since taking office in 2017. –RT
But the story didn’t fit the narrative that the mainstream media is attempting to shove down the throats of Americans, so it was scrubbed – not edited to reflect Obama as the bad guy.
I mean Obama Put Over One Hundred Thousand Children Into Detention Camps, Cages, And Dog Kennels seems a newsworthy headline, since the press still hasn’t meaningfully addressed the fact that @BarackObama actually did that, but sure, delete the article as if it was never written.
— Chelsea Belle (@verycosmic) November 20, 2019
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So much for an unbiased and factual press.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 21:45 - Rail Recession: U.S. Carloads Continue Collapse As Manufacturing Slows
Rail Recession: U.S. Carloads Continue Collapse As Manufacturing Slows
Nowhere is the slowdown in the U.S. economy more obvious than in places like Class 8 Heavy Duty Truck orders and rail traffic. We already wrote about how Class 8 orders continued to fall in October and new data the American Association of Railroads (AAR) now shows that last week’s rail traffic and intermodal container usage both plunged.
The AAR reported total carloads for the week ended Nov. 9 came in at 248,905, down 5.1% compared with the same week in 2018. U.S. weekly intermodal volume was 266,364 containers and trailers, down 6.7% compared to 2018, according to Railway Age.
One of the 10 carload segments that posted an increase YOY was grain, which was barely up 342 carloads to 21,855. Coal was down 9,577 carloads, to 75,180; miscellaneous carloads were down 843 carloads, to 10,944; and petroleum and petroleum products were down 741 carloads, to 12,617.
So far in 2019, railroads have reported total volume of 11,337,628 carloads, which is down 4.3% from the year prior. The year’s 11,988,234 intermodal units are down 4.6% for the year and total combined traffic was down 4.4% to 23,325,862 carloads.
The numbers for North America in total were also lower.
North American rail volume for the week ending November 9, 2019, on 12 reporting U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads totaled 352,176 carloads, down 4.8% compared with the same week last year, and 352,712 intermodal units, down 6.5% compared with last year. Total combined weekly rail traffic in North America was 704,888 carloads and intermodal units, down 5.6%. North American rail volume for the first 45 weeks of 2019 was 31,852,518 carloads and intermodal units, down 3.4% compared with 2018.
Canadian rail traffic also crashed, down 5.5% with intermodal units down 5.9%. For the year, however, Canada has been the one North American country to edge out a gain on the year, with its cumulative traffic coming in at 6,824,664 carloads, up 0.4% on the year.
Mexican railroads were able to buck the broader trend, posting a slight increase in carloads for the week.
Mexican railroads saw a slight uptick, as it reported 20,097 carloads for the week, up 2.8% compared with the same week last year, and 17,987 intermodal units, down 5.5%. Cumulative volume on Mexican railroads for the first 45 weeks of 2019 was 1,701,992 carloads and intermodal containers and trailers, down 2.7% from the same point last year.
We noted this rail recession in the U.S. in early October, citing the manufacturing collapse in the U.S., much of which is being blamed on the trade war, as the main culprit.
What’s quite clear is that we’re not yet at a trough. Trains have not yet bottomed,” said Ben Hartford, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. “We need to have some clarity in trade policy.”
We noted in October that the manufacturing recession is more widespread than the mid-cycle slowdowns in 2012 and 2015/16. The slowdown has been concentrated in manufacturing for well over a year, driven by a downturn in business investments in 2019.
We noted last month that there is an indication that the downturn has spilled over into service sector output and employment.
Now, “there are no pockets of growth,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Lee Klaskow, who said a “railroad recession” could be imminent in a recent report. “There’s really nothing that’s tapping me on the shoulder saying, ‘Hey look at me. I’m going to be your next growth engine.'”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 21:25 - A Huge Red Flag? India Shutters Power Plants Citing Lack Of Demand
A Huge Red Flag? India Shutters Power Plants Citing Lack Of Demand
Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,
Half of India’s power generation capacity using coal and nuclear power is being shut down because of lackluster demand, the Indian Express reports, adding that some of the shutdowns have been temporary, lasting just a few days, but other power plants have been closed for months.
Some 65.13 GW in generation capacity has been shut down at one point or another, with the earlier shutdown made in July. There seems to be simply not enough demand for electricity, which is worrying as a lot of this demand comes from the industrial and commercial sectors.
This is a marked departure from 2012, when the worst blackout in years hit 20 of India’s 28 states, plunging 700 million people into darkness. The blackout was caused by a surge in demand that the local utilities found themselves unable to meet.
Now, demand is on the decline for India’s coal-powered generation plants as renewables encroach on their territory: coal-fired plants currently account for 63 percent of the country’s energy mix, down from 73 percent three years ago. The country has one of the most ambitious renewables programs in the world, which should result in India deriving 55 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.
To date, the country has 83 GW in renewable generation capacity, with another 31 GW under construction, and a further 35 GW awaiting bidders. All this taken together and with hydropower capacity added, India could cross the 200-GW threshold by 2022, according to the government.
Yet there are also seasonal factors at play. A longer monsoon season and an early arrival of winter have served to dampen electricity demand faster than usual. The longer monsoon period affected activity in India’s industrial centers, with some of them registering declines in demand for electricity rather than the usual increase for that time of the year.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 21:05 - Goldman Banker On Trial Had $24,000 Hidden In His Sunglasses Case
Goldman Banker On Trial Had $24,000 Hidden In His Sunglasses Case
Every good criminal has their secret stash of cash that they are either hiding from the government or using for illicit “working capital” purposes. Usually, this cash is held in safes, briefcases or good old fashioned sacks with dollar signs on them.
Which is why it has piqued the interest of many that a Goldman Sachs banker on trial for insider trading somehow was able to stuff his secret stash of $24,000 into a peculiar place: his sunglasses case.
Prosecutors pointed out on Tuesday that the stash was indicative that the banker, Bryan Cohen, could be a flight risk before his trial, according to Bloomberg.
The $24,000 was hidden in a case, which was hidden in a dresser drawer in his closet, prosecutors said. Cohen, who is a French citizen, also has an overseas bank account with more than $533,000 in it and owns four properties in France that are worth over $500,000.
Bail was set by U.S. District Judge William Pauley at $750,000 and Cohen has since been ordered to remain under house arrest with a GPS bracelet until his trial. Cohen is seeking to be removed from house arrest.
Cohen’s lawyer – and former Martin Shkreli lawyer – Benjamin Brafman argued on Monday that his client’s confinement to his one bedroom apartment that he is sharing with his girlfriend and mother was “detrimental to his physical and mental health”.
Locked in a room with your girlfriend and your mother? We can totally understand that argument.
Brafman also argued that it’s not unusual in other cultures to have large amounts of cash at home, including in France.
Cohen was arrested in October and charged with two counts of conspiracy for his role in an insider trading ring. Prosecutors say he passed information about pending mergers to another member of the ring using burner phones and speaking in code. He has been placed on leave by Goldman Sachs in the interim. Cohen had fired his first lawyer last month after a judge ordered him under house arrest and tripled his bond, which was originally set at $250,000.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 20:45 - Google Follows Twitter, Will Restrict Political Ad Targeting, Ban Misleading Info
Google Follows Twitter, Will Restrict Political Ad Targeting, Ban Misleading Info
Three weeks after Twitter announced it would ban political advertising, with mixed results so far…
Promoted (political) cc: @jack pic.twitter.com/1VMRzJ7nfI
— LST (@LongShortTrader) November 20, 2019
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… Google said late on Wednesday it too will limit political advertising as it plans to stop allowing highly targeted political ads on its platform, a move that comes in a time when tech giants are already drawing scrutiny for their rules on political advertising. The company will also restrict misinformation and ban doctored media known as deepfakes in ads following criticism that Google and rival Facebook ran ads from U.S. President Donald Trump that were intentionally misleading.
Google will first roll out the ban next week in the UK, ahead of the Dec. 12 general election. Then, by the end of 2019, the ban will take effect across the European Union by the end of the year and in the rest of the world on Jan. 6, the company said in a blog post.
The Google policy changes follow calls for regulation of political advertising online, including from Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub.
Under the new policy, political ads will only target a users’ age, gender and location at the postal code-level, while more granular aspects of the target audience will no longer be exposed. That said, political advertisers will still be allowed to use contextual targeting, such as serving ads to users reading about a particular topic.
This is what the company said in the blog post:
While we’ve never offered granular microtargeting of election ads, we believe there’s more we can do to further promote increased visibility of election ads. That’s why we’re limiting election ads audience targeting to the following general categories: age, gender, and general location (postal code level). Political advertisers can, of course, continue to do contextual targeting, such as serving ads to people reading or watching a story about, say, the economy. This will align our approach to election ads with long-established practices in media such as TV, radio, and print, and result in election ads being more widely seen and available for public discussion. (Of course, some media, like direct mail, continues to be targeted more granularly.) It will take some time to implement these changes, and we will begin enforcing the new approach in the U.K. within a week (ahead of the General Election), in the EU by the end of the year, and in the rest of the world starting on January 6, 2020
And since political advertisers will henceforth pinpoint accuracy, Google’s political ads will become an even greater nuisance to everyone else too, as advertisers will now have to “shotgun” their target audience, and be forced to buy even more ads to make sure they reach the intended eyeballs… which is precisely what Google’s motive may well be here, because at the end of the day, if Google sells more ads, it means more sales, and a higher stock price.
Google said it’s updating its overall ads policy to prohibit “misleading claims about the census process, and ads or destinations making demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process”, because of course saying it hopes to boost revenue by “doing no evil” seems just a tad gauche.
Google previously imposed certain regulations on political advertising for U.S. federal races last year, and it said it would expand those existing regulations to cover U.S. state-level candidates and officeholders, ballot measures and ads that mention federal or state political parties. Google reported $127 million in revenue from U.S. political ads since June 2018, a small amount of the company’s overall sales.
The new targeting policy will apply to ads on Google Search, YouTube and ads purchased on sites across the web through Google’s ad-buying software.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 20:25 - Greta Thunberg Meltdown Imminent? China To Unleash Tsunami Of Mega-Polluting Coal-Fired Power Plants
Greta Thunberg Meltdown Imminent? China To Unleash Tsunami Of Mega-Polluting Coal-Fired Power Plants
In recent months, emotional eco-activist Greta Thunberg who has become synonymous with the global anti-
global warmingclimate change movement has made consistent appeals at the developed world, demanding an end to its evil, polluting ways. She even went so far as to sue some of the bigger carbon polluters in the world — Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, and Turkey — for violating her rights as a child by failing to adequately reduce emissions.And yet one nation has consistently escaped her steely gaze: China.
Which is unfortunate, because whereas many of the nations that have provoked Greta’s ire in the past have made concerted efforts to reduce their emissions, it is the world’s biggest polluter, China, that has curiously evaded her anger.
Hopefully that is about to change because as the FT reports, China is set to add an army of new coal-fired power plants equivalent to the EU’s entire capacity, as the world’s biggest energy consumer ignores global pressure to rein in carbon emissions in its bid to boost a slowing economy.
Across China, a whopping 148GW of heavily-polluting, coal-fired plants are either being built or are about to begin construction, according to a report from Global Energy Monitor, a non-profit group that monitors coal stations. Putting that number in context, the current capacity of the entire EU coal fleet is 149GW, or the same as what China is about to add.
What’s worse, and what has paradoxically not been noted by Greta yet in her global crusade against pollution so far, is that while the rest of the world has been largely reducing coal-powered capacity over the past two years, China is building so much coal power that it more than offsets the decline elsewhere. Ted Nace, head of Global Energy Monitor, said the new coal plants would have a significant impact on China’s already-increasing carbon emissions.
“What is being built in China is single-handedly turning what would be the beginning of the decline of coal, into the continued growth of coal,” he said, adding that China was “swamping” global progress in bringing down emissions.
Back in 2016, concerns over air pollution and over-investment in coal prompted China to suspend construction of hundreds of coal stations. But since then, much of the construction has restarted, as Beijing seeks to stimulate an economy growing at its slowest pace since the early 1990s.
And even as pressure has been growing on China, the world’s largest emitter, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which have been creeping up since 2016, and hit a record high last year, not only is Beijing oblivious to the protests of global environmentalists, it is about to unleash a tidal wave of global pollution the likes of which have never been seen before.
Ironically, while Trump has gotten much criticism in recent years for exiting the Paris climate accord, China has pledged to peak its carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 as part of the Paris climate agreement. And yet, with a decade left until this deadline, China is doing just the opposite, preparing to add “another Europe” in total emissions.
And while the report showed that the pace of new construction starts of Chinese coal stations rose 5% in the first half of 2019 compared to a year ago, it is what is coming down the pipeline that is remarkable: about 121GW of coal power is actively under construction in China. This figure still dwarfs the pace of new construction elsewhere.
Last year China’s net additions to its coal fleet were 25.5GW, while the rest of the world saw a net decline of 2.8GW as more plants were closed than were built.
The renewed push into coal has been driven by Chinese energy companies desperate to gain market share and by local governments who view coal plants as a source of jobs and investment. While electricity demand in China rose 8.5% last year, the current grid is already oversupplied and coal stations are utilised only about half the time.
In other words, instead of building ghost cities which it did for much of the early years of the decade, China has since moved on to building “ghost coal power plants.”
“The utilisation of coal-fired power plants will reach a record low this year, so there is no justification to build these coal plants,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a think-tank. “But that is not the logic that investment follows in China . . . There is little regard for the long-term economics of the investments that are being made.”
Lauri is correct, which is why we are certain that it is only a matter of time before the patron saint of virtue signaling environmentalists everywhere will have some very harsh words about China in the next few hours. Right Greta?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 20:05 - Get Woke Go Broke – Charlie's Angels Fall To Earth
Get Woke Go Broke – Charlie’s Angels Fall To Earth
Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,
Normally I wouldn’t give a cynical piece of schlock like the latest Hollywood reboot like Charlie’s Angels a second thought. In fact, I hadn’t given it any thought whatsoever until I saw it flop completely at the box office to my complete lack of surprise.
But it was the inane and insipid comments from the “film’s” writer and director, Elizabeth Banks, that really caught my attention.
Michael McCaffrey writing for RT.com pulled them all together in one really good article which goes over the string of ‘Woke Flops’ at the box office of the past few years. But this one is the choice one, highlighting how complete Ms. Banks’ solipsism is.
“Look, people have to buy tickets to this movie, too. This movie has to make money. If this movie doesn’t make money it reinforces a stereotype in Hollywood that men don’t go see women do action movies.”
It didn’t.
And it isn’t because men don’t go see women in action movies. Lest we forget that the first Charlie’s Angels foray on film (not a uniquely terrible experience, unlike its sequel) was a surprise hit in 2000 making more than $264 million worldwide.
McCaffrey points out recent successes like Wonder Woman ($821 million) and the inexplicable response to Captain Marvel ($1.128 billion). In fact, I would say that of all these films that explicitly pander to feminism and are more woke than stroke, Captain Marvel is the only real success.
And I would chalk that up to the timing of the juggernaut that was Marvel Studious than it was the strength of the movie itself.
Which leads me to Ms. Banks’ second honker of a comment.
“They (men) will go and see a comic book movie with Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel because that’s a male genre.”
Nope. Sorry. I’m one of the world’s biggest DC comics nerds going. I suffered through seasons 4 through 6 of Arrow for pity’s sake. I’ve earned my stripes. And under no circumstances could you have dragged me into a theater to see Halle Berry stink up the screen as Catwoman ($82 million).
A movie so terrible it is forever linked in my mind with one of the greatest lines in film criticism’s history, from Walter Chaw at Filmfreakcentral.net:
A scene where she rubs catnip rapturously over her face is destined to become as legendary as a one-on-one basketball courtship sequence between she {Berry} and {Benjamin} Bratt that’s shot with such blazing, incandescent incompetence that dogs will try to roll in it.
He may have been wrong about the scene in question, but his line about it, for me, is near perfection. Mr. Chaw himself is so woke that I’m sure he would be horrified to find his work being quoted by a deplorable sub-human like me. But, what can I say, the guy has a way with words.
All of this must seem churlish of me at this point to point these things out to someone with such obvious first-world problems like Elizabeth Banks.
But, trust me, there’s a larger point to be made here.
The truth is that people don’t go to the movies to be talked down to. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, selling free-range eggs at a farmer’s market or a $90 million movie, your customer doesn’t like being being treated with condescension. Worse, they don’t like being treated with derision.
And Ms. Banks’ comments about her movie and what it says are both of those things writ large.
At the end of the day it is your job to figure out who your audience is and tailor your product to hit that audience. And what Ms. Banks just found out is that the audience for her brand of bad-ass women who need a man like a fish needs a bicycle is pretty friggin’ small.
You can’t build your Story based on your political propaganda, in this case, feminism, and expect people to respond to it. And the reason is that it simply isn’t true at the symbolic level. And people don’t watch movies at the conscious level. It’s all sub-conscious.
Even the Communist writers in the 1950’s (brilliantly lampooned in the Coen Brothers’ Hail Caesar!) knew that they had to embed their message as sub-text, as setting, rather than as the foundations of Story otherwise it wouldn’t get past the executives, who understood their audiences very very well.
The audience always knows when they are being talked down to.
And even though Captain Marvel made more than a billion dollars, I’m hard-pressed among my geek-heavy group of friends to find anyone who actually liked it. They went because it was the next Marvel movie and they were invested in them.
Let’s see if Captain Wokeness can lead where Tony Stark did. My guess, not happening.
There was string of these films that were put on the schedule in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal in 2017. And they are a clear example of Hollywood trying to regain some trust with its audience, saying, “See! We don’t all treat women like shit! Believe us!”
But that’s even worse than just making honest movies with women leads. It’s pandering and pathetic. It’s the response of beta-male accountants and scared executives. Many of these movies came out this year and last and they have all flopped.
No one wants what they’re selling.
Because no one believes Hollywood is sincere.
Trust is a fickle thing in the marketplace. The Free Market is a cruel place. All it takes is one mistake, one real breach of trust and your audience will abandon you.
And this over-the-top push to marginalize men by modern feminists is resulting in a very strong backlash, not just from incels eating Fritos in their mom’s basement. It’s coming from women as well who don’t want to see their mates and their sons treated with such obvious disdain.
It’s coming from women who don’t want to be pandered to.
This is the thing feminists like Ms. Banks will never understand. Feminism is not sexy. In fact it’s really a turn-off. It isn’t cool and it certainly isn’t life-affirming. Being a bad-ass woman isn’t enough.
There is a world of difference between Ellen Ripley from Aliens and any of the chicks from Charlie’s Angels.
Being pro-female doesn’t mean being anti-male but that’s where we are in 2019. And it is destroying our ability as a society to even discuss these issues rationally.
Do you realize how hard it was to get through to people just how wonderful last year’s Mary Poppins Returns ($349 million) was? The expectation that it would betray the original was so high and that Disney would ‘turn her into a tranny’ or whatever that people just stayed home.
And this was one of the single best movies I’ve seen in years, hands down.
Being male isn’t inherently toxic. Yes, there are toxic males. But what’s equally true is that there are toxic females. No, not all females are toxic.
Toxic, destructive female archetypes are just as prevalent and prominent in our mythologies as the destructive male archetypes.
Push the envelope too far, break the fundamental trust between audience and producer and the backlash will be severe. That was Paul Feig’s problem with his all-female Ghostbusters.
He’s still making excuses for it.
Make an irrelevant piece of fluff like Charlie’s Angels into a third-wave feminist manifesto and you shouldn’t be surprised when its met with crickets.
People are so fed up with this stuff, rightly or wrongly, that they aren’t giving anyone a pass anymore. They will simply stay away and spend that money on something, anything else.
Hollywood, like the rest of corporate America, is going to learn really quick that pandering to a very select group of people living on borrowed money in California and New York isn’t a long-term growth strategy.
Moments like these tell me that we’re getting pretty close to Peak Woke because there’s not even any outrage about this. They can’t turn this failure into an indictment of horrid men.
Though cheerless harpies like Ms. Banks will certainly try.
See you at the auto show, Lizzie.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 19:45 - Futures Slide After House Joins Senate In Landslide Vote Backing Hong Kong Protesters; Trump Expected To Sign Bill
Futures Slide After House Joins Senate In Landslide Vote Backing Hong Kong Protesters; Trump Expected To Sign Bill
Update: the trade deal with China, not that it ever existed, is now dead and buried if Bloomberg’s update that Trump is expected to sign the Hong Kong bill, is accurate.
According to the BBG report, Trump is expected to sign legislation passed by Congress supporting Hong Kong protesters, “
“setting up a confrontation with China that could imperil a long-awaited trade deal between the world’s two largest economies.”As discussed earlier (see below), Trump’s position is now acutely precarious because Congress would easily be able to override any veto. If Trump signs the bill, he could torpedo the trade talks, while refusing to sign it would give his political opponents a chance to attack him for being weak on China, while at the same time facing an ongoing impeachment process.
In response, futures slide below 3,100, as not even the massive “gamma gravity” at 3,100 can hold the market any more.
And now we go straight to LeBron James for his hot take on recent developments.
* * *
One day after the Senate unanimously passed a Bill backing Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters, and spawning a wave of complaints and threats from China which warned it would retaliate, moments ago the U.S. House of Representatives followed in the footsteps of the Senate, and in a nearly unanimous vote cleared legislation supporting pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong by requiring an annual review of whether the city is sufficiently autonomous from Beijing to justify its special trading status, defying objections from China.
The bill, S. 1838, which would require annual reviews of Hong Kong’s special status under U.S. law and sanction officials deemed responsible for human rights abuses and undermining the city’s autonomy, passed the House 417-1 late on Wednesday afternoon setting up a confrontation with Beijing that could imperil a long-awaited trade deal between the world’s two largest economies.
The bill now goes to Trump as soon as Thursday to be vetoed or signed into law, according to a congressional aide.
While the White House declined to comment on whether Trump will sign the legislation, Trump’s position is now acutely precarious because Congress would easily be able to override any veto. If Trump signs the bill, he could torpedo the trade talks, while refusing to sign it would give his political opponents a chance to attack him for being weak on China, while at the same time facing an ongoing impeachment process.
“The Congress is sending an unmistakable message to the world that the United States stands in solidarity with freedom-loving people of Hong Kong and that we fully support their fight for freedom,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on the House floor. “This has been a very unifying issue for us.”
Trump has been silent as the Hong Kong protests escalated into violence in recent weeks, even as lawmakers of both parties demanded action on the measure. Chinese officials quickly responded to the bill’s Senate passage Tuesday, saying Beijing “firmly” opposes the congressional action, which it considers a grave violation of international law.
“We stand in solidarity with the people of Hong Kong,” said Republican Representative Chris Smith, who has been pushing the legislation since Hong Kong protests in 2014. “There will be strong sanctions, other ramifications for this crackdown.”
After dropping 24 hours ago when the Senate first passed the bill, US equity futures dipped modestly following news of the bill’s passage in the House.
Meanwhile, as markets keep an eye on what Trump will do now, they will also be looking at China’s response. As we reported earlier, the Global Times editor in chief Hu Xijin tweeted early on Wednesday that “China wants a deal but is prepared for the worst-case scenario, a prolonged trade war.”
Few Chinese believe that China and the US can reach a deal soon. Given current poor China policy of the US, people tend to believe the significance of a trade deal, if reached, will be limited. China wants a deal but is prepared for the worst-case scenario, a prolonged trade war. https://t.co/7KPp5cUOIQ
— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) November 20, 2019
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To be sure, any aggressive response by China to the bill’s passage will not only make the passage of any trade deal in 2019 impossible, but will likely lead to even more antagonism and escalation in the coming months, something which Trump has been eager to avoid with the presidential elections less than a year ago.
On the other hand, even though China’s Xi Jinping doesn’t have to worry about electoral pressure – as he recently crowned himself ruler for life – he also wants to stop the bleeding and avoid more tariff increases, including one still due to take place in December. And Xi may be under pressure within the Communist Party: A rare leak to the New York Times this week of internal documents showing human-rights abuses in Xinjiang signaled some dissent in China’s opaque political system.
Beijing has other options too: beyond merely delaying trade talks, it could hit out at U.S. companies (most notably Apple), halt cooperation on enforcing sanctions related to North Korea and Iran, recall the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. or downgrade diplomatic relations. It could also further tighten rare earth metal exports.
Yet according to many, the most likely outcome is that for all its huffing and puffing, China will do, well, nothing. After all, when it comes to Hong Kong, Trump already has enormous leverage, and as Bloomberg notes, under the Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992, the U.S. president can issue an order removing the special trading status that underpins its economy, potentially with devastating consequences.
And since Beijing realizes will only do that if extremely provoked, it is likely to limit itself to “very high-sounding, rhetorical responses” rather than concrete actions hitting American economic interests, according to Willy Lam, an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Centre for China Studies, who has authored numerous books on Chinese politics.
“The Chinese will, of course, cry foul, but the real reaction may not be that severe,” Lam said. “They will watch the situation and make a judgment later.”
We’ll find out in the next several days if this take was correct.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 19:28 - Boeing's 737 Officially Loses Title Of World's Most Popular Jet To Airbus A320
Boeing’s 737 Officially Loses Title Of World’s Most Popular Jet To Airbus A320
The competition with Airbus that led to Boeing cutting corners on the 737 Max to begin has now cost the jet its title as the world’s most popular plane.
The Airbus A320 has now officially seized the title of the world’s best selling narrow-body airliner, overtaking Boeing’s 737 and 737 Max models, according to RT. Boeing’s 737 was once the best selling commercial aircraft of all time, but that domination is now slipping away.
The Airbus A320 had attracted a total of 15,193 orders while the similar class 737 has 15,136 orders on its books as of October.
Boeing is still ahead when it comes to deliveries, but that gap is closing quickly also. In October, Airbus shipped 77 aircraft to customers, 59 of which were A320s, while Boeing had only delivered 20 planes.
Airbus is slowly fulfilling the mission put forth for the A320 project when it was developed nearly 3 decades ago: challenge the 737 in the narrow-body jet market and become the aircraft of choice for many airlines in Europe and beyond. Airbus now says that one A320 family jet takes off or lands somewhere in the world every 1.6 seconds.
Both jets are similar in nature, despite the Boeing plane being slightly more spacious:
“Both A320 and 737 feature the six-abreast seating, but from a passenger’s point of view, the American jet is slightly more spacious as its cabin is 15cm wider. Airbus catches up by increasing the jet’s fuel-efficiency, reducing the noise footprint or cutting operational costs.”
And things look like they could still be getting worse, before they get better, for Boeing.
Boeing’s newest jet, the 737 Max has been grounded across the world after two fatal crashes that killed 346 people. The crashes have been blamed on carelessness and overlooking features of the plane’s MCAS systems.
Additionally, yesterday, the NTSB recommended additional retrofits and changes to the 737 as the result of its investigation into last year’s deadly engine blast on a Southwest flight.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 19:25 - Governor Of Illinois, Home Of Nation's Worst Fiscal Crisis, Slams Door On Pension Reform
Governor Of Illinois, Home Of Nation’s Worst Fiscal Crisis, Slams Door On Pension Reform
Submitted by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner of WirePoints
The argument that “nothing is going to happen in Illinois until things blow up” got a major boost this week when the governor of the nation’s most fiscally upside down state said no to pension reform. Gov. J.B. Pritzker once again rejected calls to put a pension amendment on the ballot in 2020. Illinois’ constitution currently prohibits any reforms that “diminish or impair” pensions.
Never mind that Illinois has been in a credit rating free fall for more than a decade and is now just one notch from a junk rating. Or that Illinois is the nation’s extreme outlier when it comes to public sector retirement debts. Or that Chicago, Illinois’ economic heart, is in even worse shape.
A rejection of pension reform by Pritzker means Illinois will continue its slide toward insolvency.
Illinois’ retirement debts are already one-third of the state’s annual economy – the worst in the nation.
Ditto retirement costs as a percentage of budget. No state consumes more of its budget for pensions like Illinois does. At 26 percent of budget, Illinois’ pension burden dwarfs those of its neighboring states. Pension costs are crowding out everything in its way.
And Chicagoans are already drowning in pension debts – more so than residents in any other major city. According to Moody’s, each Chicago household is on the hook for nearly $140,000 in overlapping state and local pension debts.
Expect more Chicagoans to flee as tax rates jump to help pay for those debts.
Pritzker’s alternative to real reform is to simply pretend that tiny changes will somehow help the crisis. “There are a lot of other ways to address pensions, and we’re going to go after each and every one of them,” he said.
But Pritzker’s “lots of other ways” – which include buyouts and pension consolidation – will do little to nothing.
For example, Illinois’ pension buyout scheme, where workers give up future pension benefits in exchange for immediate payouts, has been an absolute failure. Illinois politicians originally projected buyouts would save the state save over $400 million in 2019. Actual results showed savings of just $13 million.
And while Pritzker calls his recent pension consolidation bill “momentous” – it’s anything but. The consolidation of assets for Illinois’ 650 downstate and suburban public safety pension funds only impacts $12 billion of Illinois’ $280 billion in official pension debts. That’s less than 5 percent of the total official retirement shortfall Illinoisans are on the hook for.
Pritzker says there is “no silver bullet” to fix the pension crisis, though he’s touted his progressive tax proposal as the solution for all the state’s problems.
If you were hoping for some sort of sense from the governor in light of recent events – Lightfoot’s request for a state takeover of city pensions and his own consolidation commission’s warning about Tier 2 – any chance of that is clearly dashed.
Illinois path toward insolvency just got steeper.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/20/2019 – 19:05
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