Today’s News 24th November 2019

• Ukraine, Trump, & Biden – The Real Story Behind "Ukrainegate"
  Ukraine, Trump, & Biden – The Real Story Behind “Ukrainegate”

  Authored by Eric Zuesse,

  Since this news-report is going to be especially harsh regarding today’s Democratic Party in the United States, readers should be aware that until that Party nominated Hillary Clinton in 2016, this writer was, and consistently voted as, a Democrat, and that I have never been, and never could be, a Republican. In no way does this article reflect a Republican viewpoint. It is not partisan — not favoring one person’s viewpoint over any other’s. (Though it does favor trustworthy evidence over untrustworthy hearsay and witnesses, etc.) This article is written by a consistent progressive, which means a person whose top value is truth, nothing else than 100% honesty and reflecting only personally verified sources, real facts. Intense care has therefore been taken in checking and cross-checking and validating information before accepting here anything as constituting information instead of as being disinformation (which is sadly rampant). The following article is written only because it reports what my own independent researches have found to be the actual case regarding what is now commonly called “Ukrainegate” (the focus of the impeachment-proceedings against U.S. President Donald Trump).

  PART ONE: TRUMP’S 25 JULY 2019 PHONE-CALL TO ZELENSKY

  The ‘news’-media and the Democrats have been grossly misrepresenting what the “Ukrainegate” narrative and the impeachment proceedings against the current U.S. President are all about; and, as a result of this widespread misinformation, ABC News headlined on November 18th, “70% of Americans say Trump’s actions tied to Ukraine were wrong: POLL”, and reported that “32%, say they made up their minds about impeaching the president before the news broke about Trump’s July phone-call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which Trump urged his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.” This poll found that 100% of the 506 scientifically sampled respondents had heard at least some of the impeachment hearings, and that 51% of them agreed with the statement, “President Trump’s actions were wrong and he should be impeached by the House and removed from office by the Senate,” while 6% agreed instead with “President Trump’s actions were wrong and he should be impeached by the House but NOT removed from office by the Senate.” 25% agreed instead with “President Trump’s actions were NOT wrong.”

  However, far more was actually involved in this phone-call than allegations against the Bidens; and those allegations regarding the Bidens have themselves been grossly misrepresented in the press, as this article will show, and will document in its links to the actual and most trustworthy evidence in the case. (Of course, the very best evidence is the call itself, and that will therefore be the first thing linked to and discussed here.)

  Furthermore, the American public should have been far more skeptical about the Ukrainegate narrative than they were, because, at first, Democrats were trying to use, as their ground on which to impeach Trump — and thereby to install the current Vice President Mike Pence as being America’s President — Trump’s having colluded with Russia in order to win the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, but that effort failed because it was false and was based on highly questionable evidence, supplied largely through a firm, Crowdstrike, that the Democratic National Committee had hired in order to find dirt against then-candidate and now-President Trump. Now the Democrats’ ground, for replacing President Donald Trump by his Vice President Mike Pence, is that in Trump’s 25 July 2019 phone-call to Ukraine’s new President Volodmyr Zelensky, Trump supposedly pressured Zelensky to have Joe Biden investigated.

  One of the first signs of a liar is that the person switches his story — changes to a new and different reason for ‘justifying’ his actions (in this case, impeachment) — and this clearly is being done now by the Democrats and the ‘news’-media, in order to replace President Donald Trump by his Vice President Mike Pence. Consequently: Americans are insufficiently suspicious against the present impeachment hearings. Americans need to examine carefully beyond the mere surface — much deeper. The links here are provided in order to facilitate the reader’s direct access to the highest quality (i.e., most trustworthy) evidence in the case, so that the reader may see, on one’s own, what the ‘news’-media do not report.

  25 September 2019 was when a clear and copyable version of the transcript of that complete July 25th phone conversation finally became published, online, by Rhode Island’s Providence Journal; and here is the only passage in the complete transcript where Trump mentioned Biden (three times, in fact — the only three times that the word “Biden” appears in the entire transcript):

  Rudy [Giuliani] very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him, that would be great. The former ambassador [to Ukraine] from the United States, the woman [Marie Yovanovitch], was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the [U.S.] Attorney General [William Barr] would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.

  What “prosecution,” of whom, for what, and why? The media ignore those questions. when they aren’t simply assuming an answer to them. But no such answer ought to be assumed. Nor should these important questions be ignored. Here, the answers to those questions will be documented.

  Furthermore, elsewhere in that conversation, Trump said:

  I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike. I guess you have one of your wealthy people. The server, they say Ukraine has it.

  Zelensky responded by asserting that “the next prosecutor general [in Ukraine] will be 100% my person” and that “he or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company [Crowdstrike] that you mentioned in this issue.” Nothing at all was said by Zelensky about any Biden, at any point in the entire phone-call. It wasn’t mainly about the Bidens such as the press alleges to be the case.

  In fact: the “favor” that Trump was asking about wasn’t concerning the Bidens, but it instead concerned the investigation that Trump’s Attorney General (referenced here when Trump said “whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great”) is now heading, into the question of why Obama’s FBI and entire intelligence community had proceeded with the highly suspect Christopher Steele and Crowdstrike report that the Democratic National Committee had hired under Obama in order to come up with allegations to use against Trump, and why the Obama Administration never demanded to inspect the DNC’s own server in order to examine the key physical evidence in the alleged Russiagate case against Trump — much less, what testimony and evidence Julian Assange might have in the alleged Russiagate case. What did Trump mean when he said “The server, they say Ukraine has it”? Did Trump actually think that Zelensky could supply that physical evidence? What did he mean? What was he asking of Zelensky when Trump said, “The server, they say Ukraine has it”?

  One can’t understand the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump unless one understands accurately what was happening in Ukraine and what the motivations were of the persons who were involved in U.S.-Ukraine policy, first under U.S. President Barack Obama, and then under his successor Donald Trump. Information will be presented here, about those matters, which probably won’t come up in the House impeachment hearings. These matters are likelier to be publicly discussed afterward, when the case goes to the Senate, but might be too ‘sensitive’ to be brought up even there — especially if they make both Democratic and Republican officials look bad, such as, for example, if both Democrats and Republicans had participated in a February 2014 coup against, and overthrowing, Ukraine’s democratically elected Government, and — if that happened, as we will show it did — how this fact might affect Trump’s relationship with Zelensky. So: a lot is to be shown here, and this will be information that the ‘news’-media have been hiding from the public, not reporting to the public.

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  There are many instances of U.S. coups that the Government lied about and that afterward had negative blowback. The 1953 U.S. coup against Iran’s democratically elected Government wasn’t revealed to the American public until decades after it had happened. It had long been alleged to have been a ‘democratic revolution’ in Iran. Our Government and media have been lying to us for a long time, and not only about ‘WMD in Iraq’. We shall be documenting here that that 1953 coup in Iran (and other similar instances by the U.S. Government) is being repeated (yet again) in the case of the February 2014 U.S. coup that occurred in Ukraine. The regime is very effective at lying, at deceiving, at manipulating, its public, no less now than it was then. Without understanding the reality of Obama’s coup in Ukraine, there is no way of honestly explaining Ukrainegate. The 1953 Iran coup produced, as blowback, the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. Obama’s 2014 coup in Ukraine likewise is having its blowbacks, but of different types.

  PART TWO: TRUMP’S PURPOSE IN THE 25 JULY 2019 CALL TO ZELENSKY

  The argument to be presented here is that Trump, in this phone-call, and generally, was trying not only to obtain help with evidence-gathering in the “Crowdstrike” matter (which A.G. Barr is now investigating, and which also is the reason why Trump specifically mentioned “Crowdstrike” at the only instance in the phone-call where he was requesting a “favor” from Zelensky), but to change the policy toward Ukraine that had been established by Obama (via Obama’s coup and its aftermath). This is a fact, which will be documented here. Far more than politics was involved here; ideology was actually very much involved. Trump was considering a basic change in U.S. foreign policies. He was considering to replace policies that had been established under, and personnel who had been appointed by, his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama. Democrats are extremely opposed to any such changes. This is one of the reasons for the renewed impeachment-effort by Democrats. They don’t want to let go of Obama’s worst policies. But changing U.S. foreign policy is within a President’s Constitutional authority to do.

  Trump fired the flaming neoconservative John Bolton on 10 September 2019. This culminated a growing rejection by Trump of neoconservatism — something that he had never thought much about but had largely continued from the Obama Administration, which invaded and destroyed Libya in 2011, Syria in 2012-, Yemen in 2015-, and more — possibly out-doing even George W. Bush, who likewise was a flaming neocon. Trump’s gradual turn away from neoconservatism wasn’t just political; it was instead a reflection, on his part, that maybe, just maybe, he had actually been wrong and needed to change his foreign policies, in some important ways. (He evidently still hasn’t yet figured out precisely what those changes should be.)

  For example, on 15 November 2019, the impeachment focus was on the testimony of Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump had recently (in May 2019) fired as the Ambassador to Ukraine. Democrats presented her as having been the paradigm of professionalism and nonpartisanship in America’s foreign service. She was actually a neoconservative who had been appointed as an Ambassador first by President George W. Bush on 20 November 2004, after her having received an M.S. from the National War College in 2001. Obama appointed her, on 18 May 2016, to replace Geoff Pyatt (shown and heard in this video confidentially receiving instructions from Obama’s agent controlling Ukraine-policy, Victoria Nuland) as the Ambassador to Ukraine. Obama had selected Yovanovitch because he knew that (just like Pyatt) she supported his polices regarding Ukraine and would adhere to his instructions. Yovanovitch was part of Obama’s team, just as she had previously been part of George W. Bush’s team. All three of them were staunch neoconservatives, just as Ambassador Pyatt had been, and just as Victoria Nuland had been, and just as Joe Biden had been.

  A neoconservative believes in the rightfulness of American empire over this entire planet, even over the borders of the other nuclear superpower, Russia. Obama’s standard phrase arguing for it was “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation”, meaning that all other nations are “dispensable.” This imperialistic belief was an extension of Yale’s ‘pacifist’ pro-Nazi America First movement, which was supported by Wall Street’s Dulles brothers in the early 1940s, and which pro-Nazi movement Trump himself has prominently praised. Unlike the progressive U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had planned the U.N. in order to be the anti-imperialist emerging first-ever global world government of nations, which would democratically set and ultimately enforce international laws of a new global federation of nations — a global democratic federation of sovereign republics — neoconservatives are U.S. imperialists, who want instead to destroy the U.N., and to extend American power over the entire world, make America not only the policeman to the world but the lawmaker for the world, and the judge jury and executioner of the world, the global dictator. The U.N. would be weakened to insignificance. This has gradually been occurring. It continued even after what had been thought to have been the 1991 end of the Cold War, and after Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his deceptive rhetoric. Yale’s John Bolton was the leading current proponent of the America First viewpoint, much more straightforward in his advocacy of it than the far wilier Obama was; and, until recently, Trump supported that unhedged advocacy for the neoconservative viewpoint: U.S. imperialism. Regarding the campaign to take over Russia, however, he no longer does — he has broken with Bolton on that central neoconservative goal, and he is trying to reverse that policy, which had been even more extreme than Obama’s policy towards Russia was (which policy had, in fact, produced the coup in Ukraine).

  When the Cold War had supposedly ended in 1991, it ended actually only on the Russian side, but secretly it continued and continues on as policy on the American imperialists’ side. The neoconservative side, which controlled the U.S. Government by that time (FDR’s vision having been destroyed when Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981), has no respect whatsoever for Russia’s sovereignty over its own land, and certainly not over the land of Russia’s neighbors, such as Ukraine, which has a 1,625-mile border with Russia. Neoconservatives want U.S. missiles to be pointed at Moscow all along Russia’s border. That would be as if Russia had wanted to position Russian missiles all along Canada’s and Mexico’s borders with the U.S.; it would disgust any decent person, anywhere, but neoconservatives aren’t decent people. Neoconservatives (U.S. imperialists) seek for all of Russia’s neighbors to become part of the U.S. empire, so as to isolate Russia and then become able to gobble it up. All neoconservatives want this ultimately to happen. Their grasp for power is truly limitless. Only in the tactical issues do they differ from one-another.

  In her testimony behind closed doors to Senators, on 11 October 2019, Yovanovich stated her views regarding what America’s policies toward Ukraine should be, and these were Obama’s policies, too; these views are the neoconservative outlook [and my own comments in brackets here will indicate her most egregious distortions and lies in this key passage from her]:

  Because of Ukraine’s geostrategic position bordering Russia on its east, the warm waters of the oil-rich Black Sea to its south, and four NATO allies to its west, it is critical to the security of the United States [this is like saying that Mexico and Canada are crucial to the security of Russia — it’s a lie] that Ukraine remain free and democratic [meaning, to neoconservatives, under U.S. control], and that it continue to resist Russian expansionism [like Russia cares about U.S. expansionism over all of the Western Hemisphere? Really? Is that actually what this is about? It’s about extending U.S. imperialism on and across Russia’s border into Russia itself] Russia’s purported annexation of Crimea [but, actually, “Clear and convincing evidence will be presented here that, under U.S. President Barack Obama, the U.S. Government had a detailed plan, which was already active in June 2013, to take over Russia’s main naval base, which is in Sevastopol in Crimea, and to turn it into a U.S. naval base.”], its invasion of Eastern Ukraine, and its defacto control over the Sea of Azov, make clear Russia’s malign intentions towards Ukraine [not make clear Russia’s determination not to be surrounded by enemies — by U.S.-stooge regimes. For Russia to avoid that is ‘malign’, she says]. If we allow Russia’s actions to stand, we will set a precedent that the United States will regret for decades to come. So, supporting Ukraine’s integration into Europe and combating Russia’ s efforts to destabilize Ukraine [Oh, America didn’t do that destabilization?] have anchored our policy since the Ukrainian people protested on the Maidan in 2014 and demanded to be a part of Europe and live according to the rule of law [But Ukrainians before Obama’s takeover of Ukraine in February 2014 didn’t actually want to be part of the EU nor of NATO, and they considered NATO to be a threat to Ukraine. “In 2010, Gallup found that whereas 17% of Ukrainians considered NATO to mean ‘protection of your country,’ 40% said it’s ‘a threat to your country’.”] That was U.S. policy when I became ambassador in August 2016 [after Obama’s successful coup there took over its media and turned Ukrainian opinion strongly against Russia], and it was reaffirmed as that policy as the policy of the current administration in early 2017. [Yes, that’s correct, finally a truthful assertion from her. When Trump first came into office, he was a neoconservative, too.] The Revolution of Dignity [you’ll see here the ‘dignity’ of it] and the Ukrainian people’s demand to end corruption forced the new Ukrainian Government to take measures to fight the rampant corruption that long permeated that country’s political and economic systems [and that still do, and perhaps more now than even before].

  That’s just one example —  it’s about the role of Ambassador Yovanovitch. But the focus of Ukrainegate isn’t really that. It’s not Yovanovitch. It is what Trump was trying to do, and what Joe Biden was trying to do, and what Obama had actually done. It is also about Joe Biden’s son Hunter, because this is also about contending dynasties, and not only about contending individuals. Trump isn’t certain, now, that he wants to continue being a full-fledged neoconservative, and to continue extending Obama’s neoconservative policies regarding Ukraine. So: this is largely about what those policies actually were. And here is how Joe Biden comes into the picture, because Democrats, in trying to replace President Donald Trump by a President Mike Pence, are trying to restore, actually, Barack Obama’s policy in Ukraine, a policy of which the Bidens themselves were very much Obama’s agents, and Mike Pence would be expected to continue and extend those policies. Here will be necessary to document some personal and business relationships that the U.S. news-media have consistently been hiding and even lying about, and which might not come up even in the expected subsequent Senate hearings about whether to replace Trump by Pence:

  PART THREE: THE CENTRALITY OF UKRAINIAN OLIGARCH IHOR KOLOMOYSKY

  The real person who was the benefactor to, and the boss of, Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, at the Ukrainian gas-exploration company Burisma Holdings, was not the person that the American press says was, Mykola Zlochevsky, who had been part of the Ukrainian Government until Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in February 2014, but it was instead  Ihor Kolomoysky, who was part of the newly installed Ukrainian Government, which the Obama Administration itself had actually just installed in Ukraine (and that phone-conversation appointing Ukraine’s new leader is explained here), in what the head of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor has correctly called “the most blatant coup in history.” (Here’s more explanation of that coup which was done by Obama.)

  One cannot even begin accurately to understand the impeachment proceedings against America’s current President Donald Trump (“Ukrainegate”), unless one first knows and understands accurately what the relationships were between Trump and the current Government of Ukraine, and the role that the Obama Administration had played in forming that Government (installing it), and the role that Hunter Biden had been hired to perform for his actual boss at Burisma, Kolomoysky, soon after Obama (via Obama’s agent Victoria Nuland) had installed Ukraine’s new Government.

  As I had written on 28 September 2019, “In order to understand why Ukraine’s President Voldomyr Zelensky doesn’t want the dirt about Joe Biden to become public, one needs to know that Hunter Biden’s boss and benefactor at Burisma Holdings was, at least partly, Zelensky’s boss and benefactor until Zelensky became Ukraine’s President, and that revealing this would open up a can of worms which could place that former boss and benefactor of both men into prison at lots of places.”

  That article, at the phrase “dug up in 2012,” discussed and linked to a careful 2012 study of Burisma which had actually been done in Ukraine by an investigative nonprofit  (Antac) funded by America’s billionaire George Soros (who was another major funder of the 2014 Ukrainian coup, as well as of Barack Obama’s political career itself) in order to help to bring down Yanukovych. However, what this study found was not the incriminating evidence against Zlochevsky which had been hoped. It found instead that the person who owned the controlling interest in Burisma was not really the Yanukovych-supporter Mykola Zlochevsky; it was, in fact, the Ukrainian billionaire Ihor Kolomoysky, who supported Yanukovych’s overthrow. Kolomoysky, shortly after the coup, became appointed as the governor in a region of Ukraine, by the Obama Administration’s post-coup Ukrainian Government. Obama’s financial backer Soros knew, or should have known, that Zlochevsky had sold almost all of his Burisma holdings to Kolomoysky in 2011, but Obama’s Administration was nonetheless trying to get the newly installed Ukrainian Government to prosecute Zlochevsky because Zlochevsky was associated with the Ukrainian President whom Obama had just overthrown. Hunter Biden’s function was to help to protect Mr. Kolomoysky against being targeted by the newly installed Government in the anti-corruption campaign that the Obama Administration and the EU were pressing upon that new Ukrainian Government. Hunter Biden was to serve as a U.S. fixer for his new boss Kolomoysky, to deflect the anti-corruption campaign away from Kolomoysky as a target and toward Zlochevsky as a target. And Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, followed through on that, by demanding that Ukraine prosecute Zlochevsky, not Kolomoysky.

  Soros isn’t really against corruption; he is against corruption by countries that he wants to take over, and that he uses the U.S. Government in order to take over.Neoconservatism is simply imperialism, which has always been the foreign-affairs ideology of aristocrats and of billionaires. (In America’s case, that includes both Democratic and Republican billionaires.) So, it’s just imperialism in America. All billionaires who care at all about international relations are imperialists; and, in America, that’s called “neoconservative.” The American issue regarding Ukraine was never actually Ukraine’s corruption. Corruption is standard and accepted throughout the U.S.-and-allied countries; but against countries they want to take over it becomes a PR point in order to win acceptance by the gulls, of their own country’s imperialism and its own associated corruption. “Our country’s corruption is acceptable, but yours is not,” is the view. That’s the standard imperialist view. Neoconservatism — imperialism anywhere, actually — is always based on lies. Imperialism, in fact, is part of nationalism, but it is excluded by patriotism; and no nationalist is a patriot. No patriot is a nationalist. Whereas a nationalist supports his country’s billionaires, a patriot supports his country’s residents — all of them, his countrymen, on a democratic basis, everyone having equal rights, not the richest of the residents having the majority or all of the rights. A nationalist is one-dollar-one-vote; a patriot is one resident one vote. The only people who are intelligently nationalist are billionaires and the agents they employ. All other nationalists are their gulls. Everyone else is a patriot. Ordinarily, there are far more gulls than patriots.

  Information hasn’t yet been published regarding what Trump’s agent Rudolph Giuliani has found regarding Burisma, but the links in the present article link through to the evidence that I am aware of, and it’s evidence which contradicts what the U.S.-and-allied press have been reporting about the Bidens’ involvement in Ukraine. So: this information might be what Trump’s team intend to reveal after the Democratic-Party-controlled House of Representatives indicts Trump (send to the Republican Senate a recommendation to replace him by Mike Pence as America’s President), if they will do that; but, regardless, this is what I have found, which U.S.-and-allied news-media have conspicuously been not only ignoring but blatantly contradicting — contradicting the facts that are being documented by the evidence that is presented here. Consequently, the links in this article prove the systematic lying by America’s press, regarding Ukrainegate.

  After the Soros-funded Antac had discovered in 2012 that Kolomoysky ruled Burisma, the great independent Australian investigative journalist who has lived for 30 years in and reported from Moscow, John Helmer, headlined on 19 February 2015 one of his blockbuster news-reports, “THE HUNT FOR BURISMA, PART II — WHAT ROLE FOR IGOR KOLOMOISKY, WHAT LONDON MISSED, WHAT WASHINGTON DOESN’T WANT TO SEE”, and he linked there not only to Ukrainian Government records but also to UK Government records, and also to corporate records in Cyprus, Panama, and elsewhere, to document that, indeed, Kolomoysky controlled Burisma. So, all of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-reporting, which merely assumes that Zlochevsky controlled this firm when Hunter Biden became appointed to its board, are clearly false. (See this, for example, from Britain’s Guardian, two years later, on 12 April 2017, simply ignoring both the Antac report and the even-more-detailed Helmer report, and presenting Zlochevsky — Kolomoysky’s decoy — as the appropriate target to be investigated for Burisma’s alleged corruption.) So: when Joe Biden demanded that Ukraine’s Government prosecute Zlochevsky, Biden was not, as he claims he was, demanding a foreign Government to act against corruption; he was instead demanding that foreign Government (Ukraine) to carry out his own boss, Barack Obama’s, agenda, to smear as much as he could Viktor Yanukovych — the Ukrainian President whom Obama had overthrown. This isn’t to say that Yanukovych was not corrupt; every post-Soviet Ukrainian President, and probably Prime Minister too, has been corrupt. Ukraine is famous for being corrupt. But, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Zlochevsky was corrupt. However, Kolomoysky is regarded, in Ukraine, as being perhaps the most corrupt of all Ukrainians.

  Perhaps Kolomoysky’s major competitor has been Victor Pinchuk, who has long been famous in Washington for donating heavily to Bill and Hillary Clintons’ causes. For example, on 11 March 2018, the independent investigative journalist Jeff Carlson, bannered “Victor Pinchuk, the Clintons & Endless Connections” and he reported that

  Victor Pinchuk is a Ukrainian billionaire.

  He is the founder of Interpipe, a steel pipe manufacturer. He also owns Credit Dnipro Bank, some ferroalloy plants and a media empire.

  He is married to Elena Pinchuk, the daughter of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.

  Pinchuk’s been accused of profiting immensely from the purchase of state-owned assets at severely below-market prices through political favoritism.

  Pinchuk used his media empire to deflect blame from his father-in-law, Kuchma, for the September 16, 2000 murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze. Kuchma was never charged but is widely believed to have ordered the murder. A series of recordings would seem to back up this assertion.

  On April 4 through April 12 2016, Ukrainian Parliamentarian Olga Bielkov had four meetings – with Samuel Charap (International Institute for Strategic Studies), Liz Zentos (National Security Council), Michael Kimmage (State Dept) and David Kramer (McCain Institute).

  Doug Schoen filed FARA documents showing that he was paid $40,000 a month by Victor Pinchuk (page 5) – in part to arrange these meetings.

  Schoen attempted to arrange another 72 meetings with Congressmen and media (page 10). It is unknown how many meetings took place.

  Schoen has worked for both Bill and Hillary Clinton.

  Schoen helped Pinchuk establish ties with the Clinton Foundation. The Wall Street Journal reported how Schoen connected Pinchuk with senior Clinton State Department staffers in order to pressure former Ukrainian President Yanukovych to release Yulia Tymoshenko – a political rival of Yanukovych – from jail.

  The relationship between Pinchuk and the Clintons continued.

  A large network of collaborators, all connected to NATO’s PR agency the Atlantic Council, were also discussed and linked to; and, in one of the video clips, Victoria Nuland headed a panel discussion in Munich Germany at which numerous leading Democratic Party neoconservatives, and neoconservative foreign leaders, discussed how wonderful the “Deep State” is, and praised the Republican neocon John McCain, who had helped Victoria Nuland to install the fascist Government of Ukraine.

  On 6 October 2019, Helmer headlined “UKRAINIAN OLIGARCH VICTOR PINCHUK IS PUTTING HIS MONEY ON JOE BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT AT $40,000 PER MONTH – THAT’S $3,000 MORE PER MONTH THAN BURISMA WAS PAYING HUNTER BIDEN”. He reported:

  Joe Biden’s campaign for president, as well as his defence against charges of corrupt influence peddling and political collusion in the Ukraine, are being promoted in Washington by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk through the New York lobbyist, candidate adviser and pollster, Douglas Schoen (left).

  This follows several years of attempts by Pinchuk and Schoen to buy influence with Donald Trump, first as a candidate and then as president; with Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani; and with John Bolton, Trump’s National Security Adviser in 2018 and 2019. Their attempts failed.

  Pinchuk has been paying Schoen more than $40,000 every month for eight years. The amount of money is substantially greater than Biden’s son Hunter Biden was paid by Pinchuk’s Ukrainian rival Igor Kolomoisky through the oil company Burisma and Rosemont Seneca Bohai, Biden’s New York front company.

  Pinchuk’s message for the Democratic candidates and US media, according to Schoen’s Fox News [4] broadcast in August, is: “Stop killing your own, stop beating up on your own frontrunner, Joe Biden.”

  On November 12th, the New York Times headlined “Ukraine’s President Seeks Face-to-Face Meeting With Putin” and reported that Zelensky is now sufficiently disturbed at the declining level of the EU’s and Trump Administration’s continuing support for Ukraine’s Government, so that Zelensky is desperately trying to restore friendly relations with Russia. The next day, that newspaper bannered “A Ukrainian Billionaire Fought Russia. Now He’s Ready to Embrace It.” This report said: “Mr. Kolomoisky, widely seen as Ukraine’s most powerful figure outside government, given his role as the patron of the recently elected President Volodymyr Zelensky, has experienced a remarkable change of heart: It is time, he said, for Ukraine to give up on the West and turn back toward Russia.” Kolomoysky, in other words, who had been on Obama’s team in Ukraine, no longer is on the U.S. team under Trump. A reasonable inference would be that Kolomoysky increasingly fears the possibility of being prosecuted. Continuation of the Obama plan for Ukraine seems increasingly unlikely.

  Here are some crimes for which Kolomoysky might be prosecuted:

  Allegedly, Kolomoysky, along with the newly appointed Ukrainian Interior Minister, Arsen Avakov, masterminded the 2 May 2014 extermination of perhaps hundreds of people who had been trapped inside Odessa’s Trade Unions Building after those victims had distributed anti-coup flyers.

  Allegedly, Kolomoysky, on 20 March 2015, brought to a board meeting of Ukraine’s gas-distribution company UkrTransNafta, of which Kolomoysky was a minority shareholder, his hired thugs armed with guns, in an unsuccessful attempt to intimidate the rest of the board to impose Kolomoysky’s choice to lead the company. Ukraine’s President, Petro Poroshenko, soon thereafter, yielded to the pressure from Ukraine’s bondholders to fire Kolomoysky as a regional governor, and then nationalized Ukraine’s biggest bank, PrivatBank, which had looted billions of dollars from depositors’ accounts and secreted the proceeds in untraceable offshore accounts, so that the bank had to be bailed out by Ukraine’s taxpayers. (Otherwise, there would have been huge riots against Poroshenko.)

  Zelensky is squeezed between his funder and his public, and so dithers. For example, on 10 September 2019, the Financial Times reported that “The IMF has warned Ukraine that backsliding on Privatbank’s nationalisation would jeopardise its $3.9bn standby programme and that officials expect Ukraine to push for recovery of the $5.5bn spent on rescuing the bank.” Stealing $5.5B is a big crime, and this was Obama’s Ukrainian Government. Will it also be Trump’s?

  There are others, but those could be starters.

  So, both Kolomoysky and Zelensky are evidently now considering to seek Moscow’s protection, though Kolomoysky had previously been a huge backer of, and helped to fund, killing of the Donbassers who rejected the Obama-imposed Russia-hating Ukrainian regime.

  Any such prosecutions could open up, to international scrutiny, Obama’s entire Ukrainian operation. That, in turn, would expose Obama’s command-complicity in the ethnic cleansing operation, which Kolomoysky’s co-planner of the 2 May 2014 massacre inside the Odessa Trade Unions Building, Arsen Avakov, euphemistically labelled the “Anti Terrorist Operation” or “ATO,” to eliminate as many as possible of the residents in the former Donbass region of Ukraine, where over 90% of the voters had voted for Yanukovych.

  It could also open up the enormous can of worms that is George Soros, because though Trump doesn’t at all care about corruption in Ukraine (nor should he, since that’s a Ukrainian domestic matter and therefore not appropriate and certainly not a matter of U.S. national-security interest), Soros himself was quite possibly breaking both national and international laws in his interventions in Ukraine, and possibly also in his related investments or his threats not to invest there. Not only was he deeply involved in the coup but afterward he was regularly advising Victoria Nuland. Whether even America’s laws against insider-trading were violated should also be considered.

  PART FOUR: TRUMP’S MANY POLICY-DILEMMAS REGARDING UKRAINE

  If Putin offers no helping hand to Zelensky, what will happen to Ukraine, and to Ukrainians? Might Trump finally campaign for the United States to become one of the “States Parties” to the International Criminal Court, so that Obama, Nuland, Soros, and others who had overthrown Ukraine’s democratically elected Government could be tried there? How would Trump be able to immunize himself for such crimes as his own 14 April 2018 unprovoked missile-attack against Syria? How likely is it that he would ever actually become a supporter of international law, instead of an imperialist (such as he has always been) and therefore opponent of international law? He, after all, is himself a billionaire, and no billionaire has ever fought for international law except in an instance where he benefited from it — never for international law itself. Trump isn’t likely to be the first. But here’s how it could happen:

  Donald Trump has surrounded himself with neoconservatives. There’s not much distance between his policies toward Ukraine versus Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s. However, after Trump becomes impeached in the House (if that happens) and the impeachment trial starts in the Republican U.S. Senate, there will then be a perfect opportunity for Trump to embarrass the Democratic Party profoundly by exposing not only Joe Biden but Biden’s boss Obama as having caused the war in Ukraine. In order for him to do that, however, he’d also need to expose the rot of neoconservatism. Nobody in Washington does that, except, perhaps the rebelling Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard, and she’s rejected in the national polls now by the public within her own Party. Neoconservatism is the uniform foreign-policy ideology of America’s billionaires, both Republican and Democratic, and this is why Washington is virtually 100% neocon. In America, wealth certainly doesn’t trickle down, but ideology apparently does — and that’s not merely neoliberalism but also its international-affairs extension: neoconservatism. Nonetheless, if a Trump re-election ticket were Trump for President, and Gabbard for Vice President, it might be able to beat anything that the Democrats could put up against it, because Trump would then head a ticket which would remain attractive to Republicans and yet draw many independents and even the perhaps 5% of Democrats who like her. Only Sanders, if he becomes the Democratic nominee (and who is the least-neoconservative member of the U.S. Senate), would attract some of Gabbard’s supporters, but he wouldn’t be getting any money from the 607 people who mainly fund American politics. The 2020 U.S. Presidential contest could just go hog-wild. However, America’s billionaires probably won’t let that happen. Though there are only 607 of therm, they have enormous powers over the Government, far more than do all other Americans put together. The U.S. Supreme Court made it this way, such as by the 1976 Buckley decision, and the 2010 Citizens United decision.

  So: while justice in this impeachment matter (and in the 2020 elections) is conceivable, it is extremely unlikely. The public are too deceived — by America’s Big-Money people.

  As the neoconservative Democratic Representative from Vermont, Peter Welch, said in the impeachment hearings, on November 19th:

  And you know, I’ll say this to President Trump. You want to investigate Joe Biden? You want to investigate Hunter Biden? Go at it. Do it. Do it hard. Do it dirty. Do it the way you do, do it. Just don’t do it by asking a foreign leader to help you in your campaign. That’s your job, it’s not his.

  My goal in these hearings is two things. One is to get an answer to Colonel Vindman’s question [“Is it improper for the President of the United States to demand a foreign government investigate a United States citizen and political opponent?”]. And the second coming out of this is for us as a Congress to return to the Ukraine policy that Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy both support, it’s not investigations, it’s the restoration of democracy in Ukraine and the resistance of Russian aggression.

  He wants a return to Obama’s anti-Russian Ukraine-policy. Though Zelensky had won Ukraine’s Presidency by a record-shattering 73% because he had promised to end the war (which the U.S. had started), America’s Deep State are refusing to allow that — they want to force him to accept more U.S.-made weapons and more U.S. training of Ukraine’s troops in how to use them against its next-door neighbor Russia.

  Furthermore, in some respects, Trump is even more neoconservative than Obama was. Trump single-handedly nullified Obama’s only effective and good achievement, the Iran nuclear deal. Against Iran, Trump is considerably more of a neocon than was Obama. Trump has squeezed Iranians so hard with his sanctions as to block other countries from buying from and selling to Iran; and this blockade has greatly impoverished Iranians, who now are rioting against their Government. Trump wants them to overthrow their Government. His plan might succeed. Trump’s biggest donor, Sheldon Adelson, hates Iranians, and Trump is his man. On Iran, Trump remains a super-neocon. Perhaps Adelson doesn’t require him to hate Russians too.

  Furthermore, on November 17th, the same day when riots broke out in Iran against Iran’s Government, Abdullah Muradoğlu headlined in Turkey’s newspaper Yeni Safak, “Bolivia’s Morales was overthrown by a Western coup just like Iran’s Mosaddeg”, and he presented strong circumstantial evidence that that coup, too — which had occurred on November 10th — had been a U.S. operation. How could Trump criticize Obama for the coup against Ukraine when Trump’s own coup against Bolivia is in the news? America is now a two-Party fascist dictatorship. One criminal U.S. President won’t publicly expose the crimes of another criminal U.S. President who was his predecessor.

  The next much-discussed witness that the Democrats brought forth to testify against Trump was America’s Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, on November 20th. Sondland was a hotels and real-estate tycoon like Trump. Prior to Trump’s becoming President, Sondland had had no experience in diplomacy. At the start of 2017, “four companies registered to Sondland donated $1 million to the Donald Trump inaugural committee”; and, then, a year later, Trump appointed him to this Ambassadorial post. Sondland evasively responded to the aggressive questioning by Senate Democrats trying to get him to say that Trump had been trying to “bribe” Zelensky. Then, the Lawfare Blog of the staunchly neoconservative Brookings Institution’s Benjamin Wittes headlined “Gordon Sondland Accuses the President of Bribery” and Wittes asserted that “today, Amb. Gordon Sondland, testifying before the House in the ongoing impeachment inquiry, offered a crystal clear account of how President Trump engaged in bribery.” But Sondland provided no evidence except his opinion, which can be seen online at “Opening Statement before the United States House of Representatives”, when he said:

  Fourth, as I testified previously, Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky. Mr. Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing investigations of the 2016 election/DNC server and Burisma. Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the President of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the President.

  However, in his prior (closed-door) 17 October 2019 testimony to the Senators, he had said (pp. 35-6) that on September 9th:

  I asked the President, what do you want from Ukraine? The President responded, nothing. There is no quid pro. The President repeated, no quid pro. No quid pro quo multiple times. This was a very short call. And I recall that the President was really in a bad mood. I tried hard to address Ambassador Taylor’s concerns because he is valuable and [an] effective diplomat, and I took very seriously the issues he raised. I did not want Ambassador Taylor to leave his post and generate even more turnover in the Ukraine Mission.”

  That “Ambassador Taylor” was William. B. Taylor Jr., a West Point, Army, and NATO neoconservative, whom George W. Bush had made U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine in 2006-9, and whom Trump, at the suggestion of Trump’s neoconservative Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, had appointed to succeed Ambassador Yovanovitch in May.

  The testimony of all of these people was entirely in keeping with their neoconservatism and was therefore extremely hostile toward anything but preparing Ukraine to join NATO and serve on the front line of America’s war to conquer Russia. Trump might be too stupid to understand anything about ideology or geostrategy, but only if a person accepts neoconservatism is the anger that these subordinates of his express toward him for his being viewed by them as placing other concerns (whether his own, or else America’s for withdrawing America from Obama’s war against Russia) suitable reason for Congress to force Trump out of office. Given that Trump, even in Sondland’s account, did say “The President responded, nothing. There is no quid pro. The President repeated, no quid pro. No quid pro quo multiple times,” there is nothing that’s even close to a “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard which is provided by their personal feelings that Trump had a quid-pro-quo about anything regarding Ukraine — a policy of Obama’s that Trump should instead firmly have abandoned and denounced as soon as he became President. Testimony from his own enemies, whom Trump had been stupid enough to have appointed, when he hadn’t simply extended Obama’s neoconservative policies and personnel regarding Ukraine, falls far short of impeachable. But right and wrong won’t determine the outcome here anyway, because America has become a two-party, one-ideology, dictatorship.

  This is what happens when billionaires control a country. It produces the type of foreign policies the country’s billionaires want, rather than what the public actually need. This is America’s Government, today. It’s drastically different than what America’s Founders had hoped. Instead of its representing the states equally with two Senators for each, and instead of representing the citizens equally, with proportional per-capita representation in the U.S. House, and instead of yet a third system of the Electoral College for choosing the Government’s Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief, it has become thoroughly corrupted to being, in effect, just one-dollar-one-vote — an aristocracy of wealth controlling the entire Government — exactly what the Founders had waged the Revolution in order to overthrow and prevent from ever recurring: a dictatorial aristocracy, as constituting our Government, today.

  *  *  *

  PS: Though I oppose almost everything that the hearings’ Ranking Minority Member, the neoconservative (and, of course, also neoliberal) Republican Devin Nunes, stands for, I close here with his superb summary of the hearings, on November 21st, in which he validly described the Democrats’ scandalously trashy Ukrainegate case against Trump (even though he refused to look deeper to the issues I raise in this article — he dealt here merely with how “shoddy” the case the Democrats had presented was):

  Throughout these bizarre hearings, the Democrats have struggled to make the case that President Trump committed some impeachable offense on his phone call with Ukrainian president Zelensky. The offense itself changes depending on the day ranging from quid pro quo to extortion, to bribery, to obstruction of justice, then back to quid pro quo. It’s clear why the Democrats have been forced onto this carousel of accusations. President Trump had good reason to be wary of Ukrainian election meddling against his campaign and of widespread corruption in that country. President Zelensky, who didn’t even know aid to Ukraine had been paused at the time of the call, has repeatedly said there was nothing wrong with the conversation. The aid was resumed without the Ukrainians taking the actions they were supposedly being coerced into doing.

  Aid to Ukraine under President Trump has been much more robust than it was under President Obama, thanks to the provision of Javelin anti-tank weapons. As numerous witnesses have testified, temporary holds on foreign aid occur fairly frequently for many different reasons. So how do we have an impeachable offense here when there’s no actual misdeed and no one even claiming to be a victim? The Democrats have tried to solve this dilemma with a simple slogan, “he got caught.” President Trump, we are to believe, was just about to do something wrong and getting caught was the only reason he backed down from whatever nefarious thought crime the Democrats are accusing him of almost committing.

  I once again urge Americans to continue to consider the credibility of the Democrats on this Committee, who are now hurling these charges for the last three years. It’s not president Trump who got caught, it’s the Democrats who got caught. They got caught falsely claiming they had more than circumstantial evidence that Trump colluded with Russians to hack the 2016 election. They got caught orchestrating this entire farce with the whistleblower and lying about their secret meetings with him. They got caught defending the false allegations of the Steele dossier, which was paid for by them. They got caught breaking their promise that impeachment would only go forward with bipartisan support because of how damaging it is to the American people.

  They got caught running a sham impeachment process between secret depositions, hidden transcripts, and an unending flood of Democrat leaks to the media. They got caught trying to obtain nude photos of President Trump from Russian pranksters pretending to be Ukrainians, and they got caught covering up for Alexandra Chalupa, a Democratic National Committee operative, who colluded with Ukrainian officials to smear the Trump campaign by improperly redacting her name from deposition transcripts, and refusing to let Americans hear her testimony as a witness in these proceedings. That is the Democrats pitiful legacy in recent years. They got caught.

  Meanwhile, their supposed star witness testified that he was guessing that President Trump was tying Ukrainian aid to investigations despite no one telling him that was true, and the president himself explicitly telling him the opposite, that he wanted nothing from Ukraine. Ladies and gentlemen, unless the Democrats once again scramble their kangaroo court rules, today’s hearing marks the merciful end of this spectacle in the Impeachment Committee, formerly known as the Intelligence Committee. Whether the Democrats reap the political benefit they want from this impeachment remains to be seen, but the damage they have done to this country will be long lasting. Will this wrenching attempt to overthrow the president? They have pitted Americans against one another and poison the mind of fanatics who actually believe the entire galaxy of bizarre accusations they have levelled against the president since the day the American people elected him.

  I sincerely hope the Democrats in this affair [end this] as quickly as possible so our nation can begin to heal the many wounds it has inflicted on us. The people’s faith in government and their belief that their vote counts for something has been shaken. From the Russia hoax to this shoddy Ukrainian sequel, the Democrats got caught. Let’s hope they finally learn a lesson, give their conspiracy theories a rest, and focus on governing for a change. In addition, Mr. Chairman, pursuant to House Rule XI, clause 2(j)(1), the Republican members transmit a request to convene a minority day of hearings. Today you have blocked key witnesses that we have requested from testifying in this partisan impeachment inquiry. This rule was not displaced by H.Res.660, and therefore under House Rule 11 clause 1(a), it applies to the Democrats impeachment inquiry. We look forward to the chair promptly scheduling an agreed upon time for the minority day of hearings so that we can hear from key witnesses that you have continually blocked from testifying.

  I’d also like to take a quick moment on an assertion Ms. Hill made in the statement that she submitted to this Committee, in which she claimed that some Committee members deny that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. As I noted in my opening statement on Wednesday, but in March, 2018, Intelligence Committee Republicans published the results of a year long investigation into Russian meddling. The 240 page report analyzed 2016 Russian meddling campaign, the US government reaction to it, Russian campaigns in other countries and provided specific recommendations to improve American election security. I would [have] asked my staff to hand these reports to our two witnesses today just so I can have a recollection of their memory. As America may or may not know, Democrats refused to sign on to the Republican report. Instead, they decided to adopt minority views, filled with collusion conspiracy theories. Needless to say, it is entirely possible for two separate nations to engage in election meddling at the same time, and Republicans believe we should take meddling seriously by all foreign countries regardless of which campaign is the target.

  Later that same day, the New York Times headlined “The Impeachment Hearings Revealed a Lot — None of It Great for Trump”, and CNN headlined “The public impeachment hearings were a total GOP disaster”. The non-mainstream news-medium Zero Hedge instead bannered, “Amid Impeachment Circus, Dems Sneak PATRIOT Act Renewal Past The American People”, and reported that the “bill was pushed through with not a single Republican vote.” The following day, the AP headlined “Analysis: Mountain of impeachment evidence is beyond dispute” and closed “Asked what the consequences are if Congress allows an American president to ask a foreign government to investigate a political rival, [Fiona] Hill said simply, ‘It’s a very bad precedent.’”

  The latest (2019) Reuters international survey in which over 2,000 people in each one of 38 countries were asked whether they agree that “You can trust most news most of the time” shows that the United States scores #32 out of the 38, at the very top of the bottom 16% of all of the 38 countries surveyed, regarding trust in the news-media. Reuters had previously found, in their 2018 edition, that, among Americans, “those who identify on the left (49%) have almost three times as much trust in the news as those on the right (17%). The left gave their support to newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times while the right’s alienation from mainstream media has become ever more entrenched.” In the 2019 edition, what had been 49% in America rose now to 53%, and what had been 17% sank now to 9%: the billionaires’ (i.e., mainstream) media are trusted almost only by liberals here. What the media report is considered trustworthy almost only by liberals, in today’s America. By 53% to only 9% — an almost 6 to 1 ratio — the skeptics of the billionaires’ press are Republicans. Of course, if the media are distrusted, then the nation can’t be functioning as a democracy. But the media will be distrusted if they lie as much as America’s do. Untrusted ‘news’-media are a sure indication that the nation is a dictatorship (such as it is if the billionaires control the media). In America, only liberals think that America is a democracy and therefore might possess the basic qualification (democracy) to decide what nations need to be regime-changed (such as America did to Iran, Iraq, Libya, Honduras, Bolivia, and is still trying to do to Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran again, Syria, and Yemen; but not to — for examples — Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel); and which ones don’t (such as America’s governmentally-annointed ‘allies’, including some barbaric dictatorships). Liberals trust America’s dictatorship as if it were instead a democracy. Conservatives do not; nor, of course, do progressives. FDR’s vision, of a United Nations which would set and enforce the rules for international relations (neither the U.S. nor any other country would do that), is now even more rejected by the Democratic Party than it is by the Republican Party. And the politically topsy-turvy result is Democrats trying to impeach the Republican Trump for his trying to cut back on Obama’s imperialistic (anti-FDR) agenda. Trump, after all, didn’t do the coup to Ukraine; Obama did.

  * * *

  Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 23:30

• China's Skyscraper Boom Comes Crashing Down Amid Developer Default 
  China’s Skyscraper Boom Comes Crashing Down Amid Developer Default 

  Investors typically concentrate on GDP growth, leading indicators, and other forms of macro data to determine a turning point in the economy, and or to determine when the window of vulnerability opens up that could shock the economy into the next recession.

  For years, we’ve cited some fascinating alternative forms of data, such as the Skyscraper Index, which was first elaborated by Andrew Lawrence in January 1999. The index is simple; the world’s tallest buildings are often constructed or completed at economic turning points, right before or just as the downturn gets underway.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is the world’s tallest building, was completed in 2008. Shortly after, the global financial system crashed.

  Since the crisis, most of the world’s tallest buildings have been constructed across Asia.

  The Financial Times (FT) is reporting that a subsidiary of China’s largest construction company recently halted work on the nation’s tallest skyscraper after the developer defaulted on a payment.

  The default comes at a time when China’s economy is decelerating as Beijing conducts economic reforms to transition from an export-based economy to a more domestic, consumer-driven economy. Also, trade tensions and global debt saturation have been other leading causes for China’s slowdown.

  FT obtained a copy of a letter that specified China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Co would halt construction on a 1,558 feet skyscraper in the central city of Wuhan. Details within the letter specified how Greenland Group, China’s largest developer, had failed to make a “significant” payment to fund the project.

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  “Unfinished super tall skyscrapers, which cost a huge amount of funds to build, are a typical sign of economic recession,” said Yan Yuejin, an analyst at Shanghai-based E-house China Research and Development Institution. “They are financed by credit and will run into trouble when lenders begin to scale back.”

  As China’s economic growth slumps to three-decade lows, credit for property developers has been turned off. FT also learned that construction of more than a dozen skyscrapers, some more than 900 feet tall, have been postponed or behind schedule in 2019.

  “Demand for office space has weakened considerably due to the slowing economy,” said Cherry Hu, an analyst at Cushman & Wakefield in Wuhan. “The situation is not going to improve any time soon.”

  Li Guozheng, an analyst at China Index Academy, a property consultancy, said Greenland’s business model is highly flawed because it doesn’t take into account an economic downturn.

  The developer relied on selling expensive residential apartments to support its mega building projects, but since the housing market has cooled, the developer has run into financial hardships.

  “There is a fundamental problem with Greenland’s business model,” said Li. “It doesn’t take into account an economic downturn.”

  The Skyscraper Index has been calling market tops for over 100 years. Maybe the latest news coming from China is an ominous sign for global equities.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 23:00

  Tags

  Business Finance

  

• 6 Reasons Why The 'Most-Hated Politician' In Latin America Became President Of Brazil
  6 Reasons Why The ‘Most-Hated Politician’ In Latin America Became President Of Brazil

  Authored by Jean Vilbert via The Mises Institute,

  Jair Bolsonaro is likely to be the most despised politician in Latin America.

  At least among a certain portion of the population. Some say he is the “Trump of the tropics” – in a pejorative way, of course. Nonetheless, he was elected president of Brazil.

  So how could that happen? How could a “homophobic, misogynist and racist ‘thing’” (according to a piece published in The Guardian) become Brazil’s leader?

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  There are several reasons why.

  One: He Has Good Timing

  The 14 years of Brazilian Workers’ Party’s tenure (2003–2016) ended on a sour note. This was the time of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. Rousseff was found guilty of breaking budget laws and was removed from office (impeached) in 2016. Lula was convicted of money laundering and corruption and was sentence to jail time in 2018. As both Lula and Rousseff had been elected on the promise to clean up corruption, many Brazilians felt deceived.

  To make things worse, the country plummeted into a financial crisis. The public debit reached an incredible 73.44 percent of GDP in 2016. Between 2014 and 2017, the unemployment rate rose sharply from 6.67 percent to 12.83 percent (and nearly 13 million people became unemployed). The crime rates increased to among the highest in the world — and no fewer than 63,880 Brazilians were killed in 2017.

  A significant change seemed to be on the horizon.

  Two: A Different Agenda

  Around 2015, many Brazilians started to claim that the social-market model put into play by the Workers’ Party had failed. An uneasy feeling of economic hangover was felt — a kind of public-expenditure-spree aftermath. Here and there, voices begun to question the notion that government interventionism was responsible for the prosperity Brazil had enjoyed in the early-2000s. Some timidly began to make the case for capitalism, naming markets (the commodity boom, the growth of the industry and the increase in the service sector) as the real cause of the consequent reduction of poverty. 

  Many agreed.

  As a result, many voters turned to Jair Bolsonaro, a candidate with no money (with very modest campaign expenditures), no time on TV (just a couple of seconds), and no political capital (distance from the big parties). In short, no realistic chance of winning. At least, that is what the media and its specialists said at the time.

  So, the country was eager for a swing toward the economically liberal end of the spectrum (for the motives outlined above) and Bolsonaro appeared to be the only one willing to do that. Many Brazilians decided to ignore his faults (even some serious ones) in the hopes of putting through true economic reform.

  Is Bolsonaro the ideal politician? He is far from that. This feeling appears to be almost a consensus. Indeed, he leaves much to be desired. Most Brazilians who supported him do not appear to agree with his collection of harsh and controversial statements on a variety of issues.

  But, why support him at all?

  Regardless of all the controversies surrounding him, perhaps the main factor for Bolsonaro’s victory is quite straightforward: he was the only one who promised to bring back to life long-denounced policies (still unspeakable for some), such as less government intervention in the economy, reduction in taxes, and cuts in government spending. He also supported a sizable anti-crime package.

  And the other candidates? They proposed nothing more than varying degrees of the usual welfare-state agenda.

  Three: Left-Wing Missteps

  If you want to convince someone of something, do not lambast and insult him for his existing position.

  But this is what the Left did with Bolsonaro and his supporters.

  Before his arising as the front-runner in the opinion polls, Bolsonaro was not more than a minor deputy — thought to be negligible as a president candidate. But his emergence as a potential winner engendered a strong reaction.

  Celebrities (followed by their fans) posted the hashtag #NotHim (#EleNao) in their social media accounts. Mainstream media published furious analyzes, not even trying to sound neutral. Normal people got into daily harangues, upbraiding severely anyone who dared to admit he was considering supporting Bolsonaro.

  This frenzy ended up triggering polarization. This hysterical overreaction allowed Bolsonaro to bring together several discontented heterogeneous groups (from conservatives to libertarians) and galvanized them in his favor.

  In order to undermine Bolsonaro, his antagonists could have provided a narrative which made more sense than his. Instead, they focused all their efforts on a narrative in which Bolsonaro would represent a step away from democracy and pose a serious risk to the country. Even worse, the voters were told, Bolsonaro was allegedly emboldening his supporters who were mostly fascists or simply fools. The strategy backfired.

  A lot of people understood these attacks as an attempt to impose a kind of moral and intellectual elitism. Moreover, it was feared the Left’s strategy was leading to a sort of “democratic certification” under which something (or someone) only could be said to be “democratic” if it conformed to what the cultural elite wanted. Obviously, the tactic of attacking so many Brazilians did not work well and turned out to bolster Bolsonaro’s candidacy as an outsider (anti-establishment). But according to many, that was exactly what Brazil needed.

  Four: An Expanded Ideological Spectrum

  Bolsonaro remains a pretty controversial figure, no doubt. A former Army captain, his political views were labeled as nationalist and populist, far-right and even fascist. Bolsonaro is anti-abortion, against gun control legislation, and against same-sex marriage. His motto was “Brazil above everything. God above everyone.”

  Indeed, with this mindset (alongside a gauche behavior), made him something of a heretic in the context of Brazilian politics. But his support stemmed, at least in part, from the obstinacy of the Left, which tries to label as “far-right” anything that’s right of the center-left.

  Indeed, the Brazilian political spectrum was long been constrained to only that which ranged from the far-left up to the center-left. Anything else was deemed “fascism.” By the time of the 2018 election, this limitation on allowable discussion fell apart. And here is the cause of a certain piece of drama: the stout criticism of Bolsonaro’s manners and ideas can be seen (partially) as smoke and mirrors. The real issue for the Left is this defeat of the rules governing the ideological paradigm.

  Five: Pragmatism

  Undeniably, Bolsonaro has many undesirable traits, including his stated his admiration for the military dictatorship. But the truth is that Brazilians were well aware of this and elected him anyway.

  For instance, while the other candidates were addressing abstract and fanciful ideas of perfect equality, diversity, and fraternity, Bolsonaro was talking about ordinary (pedestrian) everyday problems, such as public safety, permanent jobs, better wages, etc. While the other candidates promised social programs (more of the same), Bolsonaro announced he was taking advice from renowned market-oriented economist Paulo Guedes and appointed him finance minister. While the other candidates used a soft tone on fighting crime, Bolsonaro promised strong measures. For example, he named Judge Sérgio Moro (taken as a hero by the people fed up with crime) as justice minister soon after the election.

  Thus, Bolsonaro’s election represents, at the end of the day, a desperate effort of a country which had potential to be a great nation, but whose sustainable (long-term) development has been blocked by decades of systematic corruption, galloping crime, and an anti-capitalist mindset.

  Six: Playing the Democratic Game

  In spite of what many claim, Brazilian voters did not act irrationally by embracing Bolsonaro. They were not victims of seductive populism or mysterious ideological manipulation. They did not vote (unknowingly) against their own interests. They were quite rational. One could say they chose what they believed to be the least-bad candidate — the one they thought to be the best one for the country at the time.

  And now? Only time will tell whether Brazil did well or not when it pinned its hopes on Bolsonaro.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 22:30

  Tags

  Politics

  

• Delayed U.S. Corn Harvest Has Resulted In Chaos For Trade Routes
  Delayed U.S. Corn Harvest Has Resulted In Chaos For Trade Routes

  The most delayed U.S. corn harvest on record is resulting in chaos for traditional commodity trade routes.

  Corn usually is harvested in the midwest, before it is sent south to be exported, according to Bloomberg. But because farmers in the east, hurt by a spring-time deluge, are holding back on supplies in hope of higher prices, the commodity’s price has been pushed higher than the futures market in east – while it remains lower than the futures market in the west. It’s a phenomenon known as “basis arbitrage”. 

  The result? Corn is now starting to be shipped “over Chicago”: from the west, to supply corn processors, ethanol plants or animal-feed makers in the east. 

  Dan Basse, president of consulting firm AgResource said: “Corn from the west going to east? It should happen at some point but it’s not the way the U.S. market is set up to transport. If basis is strong enough, we will get that pull into Ohio.”

  The spread on the arbitrage isn’t yet large enough to move large amounts of grain, but “it doesn’t take much” for that to change, according to Pat Bowe, chief executive officer at U.S. crop handler Andersons Inc.

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  Bowe said: “There’s still a lot of corn out there, that’s a thing that’s amazing and people forget. The problem has been that with the low flat price, the farmer has been reluctant to sell so there’s a lot of on-farm storage and farmers have corn tucked away, they just don’t want to sell at $3.50 a bushel.”

  A $28 billion government bailout has helped growers with their falling income due to the ongoing trade war, but getting farmers to sell crops remains difficult. Corn prices have been under pressure after crops survived a record spring rain better than expected. Large corn bases for the season have also hurt export earnings, as “outstanding sales for U.S. corn exports so far in the 2019-2020 season are trailing the year earlier pace by 32%, government data show.”

  But Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. expects farmer selling to ramp up next year as growers make space for their next crop, according to Chief Financial Officer Ray Young. Pacific Ethanol Inc. CEO Neil Koehler echoed those sentiments. 

  Young concluded: “At some juncture, corn will get commercialized. There will be a break in the basis here and that will benefit the originators like us.”

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 22:00

  Tags

  Business Finance

  Environment

  

• China Would Pay A Catastrophic Price Should There Be A Hong Kong Massacre
  China Would Pay A Catastrophic Price Should There Be A Hong Kong Massacre

  Authored by Art Harman, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

  Reports of mainland Chinese students being evacuated from Hong Kong and of Chinese troops in the streets are ominous signs that the Chinese communist regime may be preparing for a Tiananmen Square-like massacre or some other military assault to crush the peaceful rallies that Hong Kong citizens have been holding to try to preserve their freedom.

  A brutal Chinese military response has been predictable since mass demonstrations began in June, particularly given the remarkable stamina of the demonstrators to date.

  However, what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may intentionally ignore or not fully comprehend is that the CCP and China’s economy would pay a terrible price for a brutal assault.

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  China has carefully invented a brand image as a business-friendly “panda,” supposedly light-years removed from its Tiananmen Square Massacre past, but the moment that troops start killing Hongkongers, that image will shatter in the world’s eyes and morph into a rabid lion.

  Avoiding a Revolution

  Beijing, of course, is terrified that Hong Kong citizens freely rallying to protect their liberty will give the Chinese people the idea that they, too, can demand their innate human rights.

  The principle of “rising expectations” helped destroy the Berlin Wall and the Soviet empire 30 years ago, but there’s a corollary principle of “crushed expectations” that is similarly powerful in sparking popular revolutions.

  A sudden loss of freedom or the expectation that things will get much worse is what sparked the current Hong Kong protests, set off the 2009 Iranian demonstrations following their stolen presidential election, and brought together millions to help end Mohammed Morsi’s Islamist regime in Egypt.

  Elements of the immediate and long-term aftermath of a Hong Kong massacre may include the following catastrophic results for the CCP:

  • The destruction of Hong Kong’s reputation as a safe and free haven for business. The “Hong Kong miracle” will become tarnished with a loss of foreign investment and tourism. Killing the golden goose that is Hong Kong would harm the entire Chinese economy.

  • Capital flight by the wealthy and middle-class, already at high levels, would go to afterburners, as they and foreigners scramble to get their assets to safety. The 2015 Shanghai stock market crash was met with bans on selling stocks and other drastic actions that would suggest the CCP may ban exporting capital in a greater crisis. Therefore, Hong Kong citizens and foreigners alike should get their assets out now. Much of that capital may end up being invested in the United States to our great benefit.

  • The United States and other countries may enact economic sanctions, and proclaim their outrage.

  • Foreign companies will accelerate their exit from the Chinese market by moving to safer manufacturing countries, including the United States and India. The benefits of operating in other countries will make abandoning China so attractive that once they leave, they won’t return. These include safeguarding their intellectual property, full ownership, avoiding sweatshop, prison and child labor, stronger labor and environmental laws, less bribery and corruption, and higher quality control.

  • China’s international and business reputations will suffer greatly.

  • Foreign investments in China will slow or cease, at least for a few years.

  • Chinese companies will lose stock market value around the world, as happened following the imposition of tariffs by President Donald Trump on Chinese products.

  • Unemployment in China would rise with the loss of manufacturing and tourism, which will further contribute to a post-massacre recession or depression. The CCP should understand that 100 million unemployed Chinese would create the conditions for a revolution.

  • Tourism to China will drop, perhaps tremendously, for a year or more. Who wouldn’t be afraid to visit a country that butchered peaceful demonstrators?

  • Countries that dispute China’s territorial claims, particularly in the “first” and “second island chains” surrounding and beyond the South China and East China seas, will dramatically increase their defenses and their activities to protect the freedom of the seas and airways in the region.

  • The Philippines may become a stronger U.S. ally against Chinese expansionism, and the United States will be better able to unite the region against China.

  • China and human rights will become 2020 campaign issues in the United States.

  • China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative could be at risk from host countries, as anti-China feelings arise worldwide.

  • Chinese citizens will see their incomes fall as the economy drifts to recession and perhaps depression.

  • Chinese products may be deemed “blood products” by some consumers, offering U.S. and other manufacturers a greater advantage, resulting in a loss of market share by Chinese companies, and furthering the manufacturing exit.

  • China’s “buying” of developing countries via extreme debt may come under greater scrutiny, and limit China’s ability to ensnare additional countries into debt traps.

  In short, the CCP loses no matter what it does. Do nothing and the symbolic umbrellas may appear on Chinese streets. A mild crackdown may only invite future uprisings. Commit a massacre and face the above punishments on a worldwide scale.

  The butchers in Beijing will mop up the bloodstains and assure investors that the “panda” image is still intact. But it’s tough to erase the memory of a massacre from even the most inhumane investors, much less socially conscious consumers.

  The Chinese people, so far silently, have been hoping and praying that Hongkongers will succeed. Perhaps they will move from silent support to follow the Hongkongers to overwhelm the CCP with millions of people holding the streets in support of freedom and democracy. After all, the Soviet empire dissolved at the height of its power. That’s the lesson of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

  President Trump can help protect the liberty and lives of the brave Hongkongers with a public message of support for the demonstrators and their universal right to enjoy liberty. The side benefits would be greater leverage against China on trade negotiations, and sufficient pressure may force the CCP to practice restraint and offer concessions to protect liberty in Hong Kong.

  *  *  *

  Art Harman is the president of the Coalition to Save Manned Space Exploration. He was the legislative director and foreign policy adviser for Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) in the 113th Congress and is a veteran policy analyst and grassroots political expert.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 21:30

• Japanese Hotel Offers $1 Stay If Guests Livestream Their Every Moment 
  Japanese Hotel Offers $1 Stay If Guests Livestream Their Every Moment 

  A hotel in Japan is making headlines for offering a $1 per night stay, but there’s a big catch that’s straight out of the 1990’s Jim Carrey film The Truman Show. Guests must agree to allow their every moment in the room to be live streamed to the world. 

  A Washington Post story this week began as follows: “The voyeurs around the world logged onto a YouTube stream Wednesday, hoping to see a random hotel guest scurry about their room. Instead, the viewers were greeted with an empty manager’s chair and a whiteboard registering mutual disappointment: The guest canceled tonight…”

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  “Guests purchase a $1 hotel stay. But there’s a catch. They have to appear on a constant live-stream from inside their room, as long as they don’t have sex,” the WaPo profile of what’s become known as ‘Room No.8’ in the Asahi Ryokan hotel in Fukuoka in western Japan details. 

  “Peeking Camera in Hotel Room: In exchange for being able to stay at a low price, guest’s room is broadcasted live on YouTube for 24 hours,” the hotel’s YouTube channel describes.

  The millennial creator and hotel operator behind the concept, 27-year-old Tetsuya Inoue, is hoping to create a buzz and to add revenue through social media streaming sites. His YouTube channel is called One Dollar Hotel and has gained about 9,000 subscribers since going live this week.

  “Young people nowadays don’t care much about the privacy,” he said in an interview. “Some of them say it’s OK to be [watched] for just one day.”

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  The stream is a mere video feed without audio, so sound is not recorded, giving patrons privacy in their phone calls and conversations — nor is there a video in or near the bathroom, and the feed is completely black in the darkness of night with the lights off. Guests are allowed to flip the lights off at any time.

  Thus far the few guest videos which are online each show some eight hours of darkness for each day recorded, with the person either sleeping or out of the room. 

  Normal rooms rates are about $27 a night, Inoue has indicated, with only Room 8 carrying the live-stream $1 deal.

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  One local Japanese news source pointed out that guests are not required to “give a performance or really do anything that makes for compelling viewing” during their stay.

  However, assuming the frenzy to stay in the “Peeking Camera” room takes off, it’s only a matter of time before some adventurous and internet fame-seeking couple breaks the ‘no sex’ rule and does the deed for all of YouTube to behold. 

  * * *

  Here’s the Asahi Ryokan hotel Room No. 8 LIVE FEED:

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 21:00

  Tags

  Hospitality Recreation

  Entertainment Culture

  

• Republicans & Democrats Agree: Give Vast Snooping Powers To The US Government
  Republicans & Democrats Agree: Give Vast Snooping Powers To The US Government

  Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

  Even in our polarized and right vs. left political paradigm, there is one thing both republicans and democrats can agree on:

  The federal government should have vast snooping powers and conduct mass surveillance on everyone.

  They simply disagree over who should be in charge of abusing those excessive powers.

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  The impeachment circus did one thing successfully. It took attention from the government’s mass surveillance programs that are constantly expanded. As Reason proposed: 

  If Democrats really feared Donald Trump’s exercise of the powers of the presidency, why would they propose extending the surveillance powers of the controversial Patriot Act?

  House Democrats have successfully slipped an unqualified renewal of the draconian PATRIOT Act into an emergency funding bill – voting near-unanimously for sweeping surveillance carte blanche that was the basis for the notorious NSA program.
  Buried on the next-to-last page of the Continuing Appropriations Act, meant to keep the government’s lights on and dated yesterday, is the following language:

  Section  102(b)(1)  of  the  USA  PATRIOT  Improvement  and  Reauthorization  Act  of  2005  (50  U.S.C.  101805  note)  is  amended  by  striking  “December  15,  2019”  and inserting “March 15, 2020”.

  This relatively innocuous language pushes back the sunset provision of the Patriot Act by three months, leaving its vast powers in the hands of a president who Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden charges with “failure to uphold basic democratic principles,” who House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accused of “alarming connections and conduct with Russia” and, joined by Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer, says is making an attempt to “shred the Constitution.” –Reason

  If democrats honestly believed that Trump was all of the things he’s being accused of, why trust him with the Patriot Act?

  The American Civil Liberties Union agrees, calling the Patriot Act “an overnight revision of the nation’s surveillance laws that vastly expanded the government’s authority to spy on its own citizens, while simultaneously reducing checks and balances on those powers like judicial oversight, public accountability, and the ability to challenge government searches in court.”

  Attempts to roll back the spying powers of the government have all failed. This power is only expanding and it’s going to get harder for people to protect themselves against the government when they abuse this power. The last time (in 2018) libertarian-leaning Republicans and a handful of Democrats wanted to strip the government of some of its mass surveillance power, it failed.

  “It became quickly apparent that leading Democrats intended to side with Trump and against those within their own party who favored imposing safeguards on the Trump administration’s ability to engage in domestic surveillance,” The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald wrote at the time. 

  “The most bizarre aspect of this spectacle was that the Democrats who most aggressively defended Trump’s version of the surveillance bill—the Democrats most eager to preserve Trump’s spying powers as virtually limitless—were the very same Democratic House members who have become media stars this year by flamboyantly denouncing Trump as a treasonous, lawless despot in front of every television camera they could find.”

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 20:30

  Tags

  Politics

  

• A Global Guide To (US-Backed) Uprisings
  A Global Guide To (US-Backed) Uprisings

  Never has the world seen so many simultaneous outbreaks of mass protests against various governments and regimes.

  Currently there is public unrest simmering in Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Hong Kong, France, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran.

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  But which ones are authentic grassroots movements, and which ones have been hijacked by outside powers or are being co-opted by the United States Department of Regime Change?

  The following segment explores some of the dynamics at play, and what signs to look out for in various global uprisings…

  h/t 21stCenturyWire.com

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 20:00

  Tags

  Politics

  Social Issues

  War Conflict

  

• Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hospitalized Again
  Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hospitalized Again

  Just a few short days  after rejoining the bench after sickness, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore Friday night after experiencing chills and a fever earlier in the day, the Supreme Court said in a statement Saturday.

  #SCOTUS Public Information Office announces that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized w/”chills and fever” but expects to be released “as early as Sunday morning.”

  — Amy Howe (@AHoweBlogger) November 23, 2019

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Ginsburg, 86, was initially evaluated at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, DC, before being transferred to Hopkins for further evaluation and treatment.

  The Supreme Court justice expects to be released from the hospital as early as Sunday morning.

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  In recent years, Ginsburg has undergone multiple cancer treatments; one of them after she fell and broke her ribs. Doctors addressing the injury detected cancer in Ginsburg’s lungs, which was then treated.

  Ginsburg was nominated by then-President Bill Clinton and has said she wants to serve until she’s at least 90.

  Ginsburg’s health is closely watched by people on both sides of the political aisle due to the possibility that President Trump could get his third Supreme Court nomination if she should leave.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 19:32

• Holiday Season In Jeopardy As Consumers Reign In Spending Amid Economic Downturn 
  Holiday Season In Jeopardy As Consumers Reign In Spending Amid Economic Downturn 

  The continuing cyclical slowdown in US economic growth has already sparked a manufacturing recession that has transmitted weakness into the consumer segment of the economy. Wall Street continues to overlook the deceleration of hard economic data, with all their bets on the consumer this holiday season. 

  Last week, ECRI’s Lakshman Achuthan showed how YoY industrial production growth in manufacturing is in a recession, already at a 3.5 year low. And real retail sales growth has been falling simultaneously. 

  “On the manufacturing side, you have IP [industrial production] at a 3½-year low. It’s deeply negative,” he said. “On the retail sales front, you have deceleration.”

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  Achuthan said the US economy is likely to continue slowing in the months ahead. There’s no indication that a turning point in economic growth will be seen in 2019, as it’s likely the consumer will continue to deteriorate. 

  “All the hopes are the consumer is somehow going to rev up, and that’s coinciding with the holiday season here,” said Achuthan. “But when we look at all of our leading indexes that anticipate turning points in the US economy, it’s not there yet. So, we have more slowdown to go.”

  Consumers are conscious of the economic slowdown. They’re boosting savings and preparing for the downturn by limiting their spending habits this holiday season, according to a new survey from TD Bank. 

  The second annual Holiday Retail Report, published by TD, says 30% of respondents are going to rein in their spending this holiday season. 

  The survey offered little insight into the abrupt change in spending. 

  Though we’ve outlined before, consumer sentiment has been plateauing for the last 12 to 16 months as economic growth slows. Employment slowdown has also been another factor, which can lead to a reversal in consumer sentiment if layoffs start. And on top of the downturn, consumers are all leveraged up with insurmountable debts, such as auto loans, student debts, and credit card loans. 

  At least 84% of the respondents will rely on credit cards this holiday season — but with credit card rates at a two-decade high — it could be hard for consumers this year to justify spending obscene amounts of money on gifts. 

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  Respondents said they would spend approximately $735 on holiday-related expenses this season. Those with credit cards are expected to spend around $840. 

  “Regardless of how much you plan to spend this holiday season, it’s important to remember that the expenses you accrue now can impact your financial situation well into the new year,” said Mike Kinane, head of US Bankcard for TD Bank.”For example, a credit card with a 22% APR will charge shoppers $15 per month on a balance of $840. If shoppers take too long to pay their balance off, they’re likely to cancel out any deals they were able to take advantage of during the holiday season.”

  And it’s important to note that the consumer is 70% of GDP. Already, GDP in Q4 is set to print at the lowest level in 4 years at around 0.35%, and would be only the fifth time in 42 quarters since the Q3 2009 exit from the recession when US growth has risen by less than 0.5% Q/Q.

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  What this all means is that preliminary data is already pointing to a weak holiday season, and with GDP already growing near zero in Q4, it’s like that the consumer could tilt the economy into below-trend growth in the months ahead. 

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 19:00

  Tags

  Business Finance

  

• The Greatest Swindle In American History… And How They'll Try It Again Soon
  The Greatest Swindle In American History… And How They’ll Try It Again Soon

  Via Doug Casey’s International Man blog,

  International Man: Before 1913 there was no income tax, and the United States was a much freer country. Initially, the government sold the federal income tax to the American people as something only the rich would have to pay.

  Jeff Thomas: Yes, exactly. It always begins this way. The average person is always happy to see the rich taken down a peg, so this makes the introduction of the concept of theft by the government more palatable. Once people have gotten used to the concept and accept it as being perfectly reasonable, then it’s time to begin to drop the bar as to who “the rich” are. Ultimately, the middle class are always the real target.

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  International Man: The top bracket in 1913 kicked in at $500,000 (equivalent to around $12 million today), and the tax rate for it was only 7%. The government taxed those making up to $20,000 (equivalent to around $475,000 today) at only 1% – that’s one percent.

  Jeff Thomas: Any good politician understands that you begin with the thin end of the wedge, then expand upon that as soon as you feel you can get away with it. The speed at which the tax rises is commensurate with the level of tolerance of the people. And in different eras, the same nation may have a different mindset. The more domination a people have come to accept from their government, the faster the pillaging can be expanded.

  As an example, the Stamp Tax that King George III placed upon the American colonies in the eighteenth century was very small indeed – less than two percent – but the colonists were very independent people, asking little from the king in the way of assistance, and instead, relying upon themselves for their well-being. Such self-reliant people tend to be very touchy as regards confiscations by governments, and even two percent was more than they would tolerate.

  By comparison, if today, say, Texas were to eliminate all state taxation and allow only two percent in federal taxation, Washington would come down on them like a ton of bricks, saying they were attempting to become a “tax haven.” They’d be accused of money laundering and aiding terrorism and might well be cut out of the SWIFT system. The federal government would shut down the state government if necessary, but diminished tax would not be tolerated.

  International Man: Of course, once the American people conceded the principle of an income tax in 1913, the politicians naturally couldn’t resist ramping it up. Just look at the monstrosity that exists today in the US tax code, which most Americans passively accept as “normal.” It’s a typical example of giving an inch and taking a mile.

  Jeff Thomas: Yes – the key to it is twofold: First, you have to be sensitive as to how quickly you can ramp up taxation, and second, that rate is directly proportional to the level that the public receive largesse from the government. They have to have become highly dependent upon a nanny state and thereby willing to take their whipping from nanny. The greater the dependency, the greater the whipping.

  International Man: Homeowners in the US – and most countries – must regularly pay property taxes, which are taxes on property that you supposedly own. Depending on where you live, they can be quite high and never seem to go down. What are your thoughts on the concept of property taxes?

  Jeff Thomas: Well, my view would be biased, as my country of citizenship has never, in its 500-year history, had any direct taxation of any kind. The entire concept of direct taxation is therefore anathema to me. It’s easy for me to see, simply by looking around me, that a society operates best when it’s free of taxation and regulation and people have the opportunity to thrive within a free market.

  Years ago, I built my first home from my savings alone, which had been sufficient, because my earnings were not purloined by my government. I never paid a penny on a mortgage and I never paid a penny on property tax. So, following the construction of my home, I was able to advance economically very quickly. And of course, I additionally had the knowledge that, unlike most people in the world, I actually owned my own home – I wasn’t in the process of buying it from my bank and/or government.

  So, not surprisingly, I regard property tax as being as immoral and as insidious as any other form of direct taxation.

  International Man: Not all countries have a property tax. How do they manage?

  Jeff Thomas: I think it’s safe to say that political leaders don’t really have any particular concern over whether a tax is applied to income, property, capital gains, inheritance, or any other trumped-up excuse. Their sole concern is to tax.

  Taxation is the lifeblood of any government. Once that’s understood, it becomes easier to understand that government is merely a parasite. It takes from the population but doesn’t give back anything that the population couldn’t have provided for itself, generally more efficiently and cheaply.

  So, as to how a government can manage without a property tax, we can go back to your comment that the US actually had no permanent income tax until 1913. That means that they accomplished the entire western expansion and the creation of the industrial revolution without such taxation.

  So, how was this possible? Well, the government was much smaller. Without major taxes, it could become only so large and dominant. The rest was left to private enterprise. And private enterprise is always more productive than any government can be.

  Smaller government is inherently better for any nation. Governments must be kept anemic.

  International Man: The Cayman Islands doesn’t have any form of direct taxation. What does that mean exactly?

  Jeff Thomas: It means that the driving force behind the country is the private sector. We tend to be very involved in government decisions and, in fact, generate many of the decisions. Laws that I’ve written privately for the Cayman Islands have been adopted by the legislature with no change whatsoever to benefit government. As regards property tax, there are only three countries in the western hemisphere that have no property tax, and not surprisingly, all of them are island nations: The Turks and Caicos Islands, Dominica and the Cayman Islands.

  I should mention that the very concept of property ownership without taxation goes beyond the concern for paying an annual fee to a government. Additionally, in times of economic crisis, governments have been known to dramatically increase property taxes. Further, they sometimes announce that your tax was not paid for the year (even if it was) and they confiscate your property as a penalty. This has been done in several countries.

  What’s important here is that, with no tax obligation, the government in question is unable to simply raise an existing tax. If you have no reporting obligation, you truly own your property. And you can’t be the victim of a “legal” land-grab.

  Instituting a new tax is more difficult than raising an existing one, and instituting any tax in a country where direct taxation has never existed is next to impossible.

  International Man: How do Cayman’s tax policies relate to its position as a business-friendly jurisdiction?

  Jeff Thomas: Well there are two answers to that.

  The first is that the Cayman Islands operates under English Common Law, as opposed to Civil Law. That means that as a non-Caymanian, you’re virtually my equal under the law. Your rights of property ownership are equal to mine. Therefore, an overseas investor, even if he never sets foot on Cayman, cannot have his property there taken from him by government, squatters, or any other entity such as can legally do so in many other countries.

  The second answer is that, since we’re a small island group, the great majority of business revenue comes from overseas investors. Therefore, our politicians, even if they’re of no better character than politicians in other countries, understand that, if they change a law or create a tax that’s detrimental to foreign investors and depositors, wealth can be removed from Cayman in a keystroke of the computer. Before the ink is dried on the new legislation, billions of dollars can exit, on the knowledge that the legislation is taking place.

  Now, our political leaders may not be any more compassionate than those of any other country. Their one concern is that their own bread gets buttered. But should they pass any legislation that’s significantly detrimental to overseas investors, their careers are over. They understand that and recognise that their future depends upon making sure that they understand and cater to investors’ needs.

  International Man: Governments everywhere are squeezing their citizens through higher taxes and new taxes. And don’t forget that printing money, which debases the currency, is also a real, but somewhat hidden, tax too.

  What do you suggest people do to protect themselves?

  Jeff Thomas: Well, the first thing to understand is that many nations of the world grabbed onto the post-war coattails of the United States. The US was going to lead the world, and Europe, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc., all got on board for the big ride to prosperity. They followed all the moves the US made over the decades.

  Unfortunately, once they were on board the train, they couldn’t get off. When the US went from being the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation, those same countries also got onto the debt heroin.

  That big party is coming to an end, and when it does, all countries that are on the train will go over the cliff. So, what that means is that you, as an individual, do not want to be on that train. If you’re a resident of an at-risk country, you want to, first and foremost, liquidate your assets in that country and get the proceeds out. You may leave behind some spending money in a bank account – so that you have the convenience of chequing, ATMs, etc. – and that money should be regarded as sacrificial.

  You then would want to move the proceeds to a jurisdiction that’s likely to not only survive the train wreck but prosper as a result of it. Once it’s there, you want to keep it outside of banks and in forms that are difficult to take from you – cash, real estate and precious metals.

  After that, if you’re able to do so, it would be wise to also get yourself out before a crash, as the day will come when migration controls will be imposed and it will no longer be legal to exit.

  It does take some doing, but if faced with a dramatic change in life, I’d want to be proactive in selecting what was best for me and my family, before the changing socio-economic landscape made that choice for me.

  *  *  *

  Governments everywhere are squeezing their citizens through increased taxation and money printing – which is a hidden tax. This trend will only gain momentum as governments go broke and need more cash. Most people have no idea what really happens when a currency collapses, let alone how to prepare. That’s precisely why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released this new video. It shows how it could all go down, and what you can do about it. Click here to watch it now.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 18:30

  Tags

  Politics

  

• Charlie McElligott: "The Bull Market In Bonds Is Back On"
  Charlie McElligott: “The Bull Market In Bonds Is Back On”

  Ever the contrarian, Nomura’s cross-asset strategist Charlie McElligott declared LAST Wednesday during an interview on the MacroVoices podcast that the bond market’s latest “correction” – the “powerful” flattening that shaved 40 bp off the 10-year yield – is over, and the multi-decade bull market in bonds is back on.

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  With Jerome Powell insisting that the Fed is done with rate cuts (for now, at least), bonds are ready to blast higher as yields sink. These moves will be abetted by what McElligott fears will be a triggered by a sharp pullback in economic data (something we hinted at last week when we said that that key catalyst for a global recovery, China, is nowhere to be seen this time around), followed by another, even more acute curve-flattening.

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  As McElligott explains (and as we have repeatedly harped on), while the flat curve is bad, it is the subsequent re-steepening that kills and is the precursor to a sharp market pullback. And at this point, trading activity starts to taper off. Typically, a flat curve is associated with slow growth, low inflation, or what McElligott describes as a “muddle-through of the last umpteen years of what it feels like in a post-crisis period, which is this 2%-ish, 1-1/2% to 2% GDP growth, sub-2% core CPI, which has grown this very crowded and of everything duration trade over the last few years.”

  Taking a few minutes to gloat, McElligott brags about a few of his calls from the past year that likely made money for Nomura’s clients.

  The thing that started happening last year was that the curve began to steepen because the market began sniffing the slowdown. And the market sniffs the slowdown, then you price in that Fed action.

  We got all that. That steepener call that we made last year, and then the catalyst for some of this momentum unwind that comes with that, and then the momentum unwind of trend trades has very much been the theme of the past year. You know, these very stark sharp kind of shock-down periods where prior carry-type trade, prior momentum trades really, really come unglued.

  Now we are at this point again where – in the last two months specifically – where I’ve been talking about the implications of the bond market rally over the course of 2019 having overshot. That people were potentially misinterpreting that absolute level in interest rates as this kind of signal of imminent recession.

  But looking forward, it appears the entire market, in McElligott’s estimation, is wrong-footed in its hope for a decline in bond-proxy value/momentum stocks and a surge in value/cyclicals, i.e. the “Great Rotation”.

  Generally speaking, you’re long the bond proxies, which is everything from typical minimum volatility defensive sectors – you know, the way that Utes and REITs and staples have really been the best-performing S&P sectors over the past year, in addition to those secular growth names like the high-flying SAT software types of names, the FAANG tech type stuff, which actually acts like a bond because of valuation – it benefits from the lower yields justify the expensive valuations.

  And they return – they grow earnings, they grow as in this world of low yield and low growth. On the flip side, people have been short cyclicals.

  Toward the end of the interview, Townsend asked McElligott about his views on gold, prompting a somewhat cryptic explanation. Gold, McElligott explained, is “the ultimate shapeshifter” when it comes to markets. Traders, especially inexperienced traders, often mistake gold for a pure risk-off play. But that’s not exactly accurate, McElligott explained.

  So the trick then, to me, is that gold began to trade off of lower real yields. It began to move higher opposite – correlated, right? So indirectly correlated to lower real yields.

  Now I think that markets have seen this dynamic where you’re instead looking at a normalization of yields over the last two months. Gold has given back. Yields – it wasn’t this end-of-days scenario. It wasn’t this imminent recession scenario. So, with that, I think that was pretty important because you ended up seeing gold get pretty hard hit.

  Gold more accurately reflects movements in short-dated bonds: When short-dated yields climb, gold falls, and vice versa. But now that real yields (nominal yields – inflation) have swung lower once again, McElligott believes the bond rally is poised to continue.

  And as yields sink, expect the price of gold to climb.

  So I think now the trick is that – my view here going forward is that the bond rally can actually continue. We’ve washed out that excess positioning. We had that big 40-plus basis point selloff in 10-years.

  I think now that, as we pivot towards the more likely deterioration in the China trade story – again, as we look past this Phase 1 and into the tougher Phase 2 – that bonds can rally again. And bonds rallying again means lower real yields means higher gold.

  Ultimately, McElligott’s medium-term market view isn’t all that different from Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio’s: As the 2020 election approaches, McElligott believes yields will sink, gold prices will climb, and stocks will slide.

  Read the transcript of McElligott’s interview below:

  Don’t have time to read the whole thing? Pop in the podcast and go for a jog. Find the link below:

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 18:00

• OK Boomer, It's Not Important To Respect (All) Your Elders
  OK Boomer, It’s Not Important To Respect (All) Your Elders

  Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  Now that I’ve reached the ripe old of age of 42, I’ve been married for twenty years, and I’ve partially raised four children.

  The older I get, the more I realize how very wrong I was to ever think that a disproportionate number of people older than me possessed some sort of special knowledge about how to properly run one’s life.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  The amount of laziness, moral degeneracy, arrogance, and general buffoonery I’ve witnessed among the older set has forever cured me of the idea that my “elders,” prima facie, are a source of wisdom.

  This doesn’t mean none of our elders provide excellent examples after which to aspire. Many do.

  But the problem lies in figuring out which ones are worthy of such consideration.

  Many parents will recognize this conundrum from problems encountered while parenting.

  After all, obedience and respect of others, practiced properly, are virtues. But who is deserving of obedience or respect?

  As a a parent, what quickly becomes apparent is that it takes very little effort to tell young people they should be obedient to people who are in positions of authority. This, apparently, is what people have done in a great many times and places. Many are told to “respect” cops, soldiers, their teachers, clergy, government officials, parents, elders, and people with impressive titles.

  But this is also a very lazy way of teaching children how to engage with their world. Any half-wit can just wave a hand and tell children to respect people in positions of authority.

  The proper — but much more difficult — way of teaching “respect” is to teach the young that only some people in positions of authority deserve respect. The hard part is figuring out who deserves it and who doesn’t. (Even more difficult is the task of earning respect from others.)

  For example, a police officer who doesn’t know the law, shirks his duty, or abuses his power does not deserve respect. A politician who is dishonest or imagines himself a hero while living off the sweat of taxpayers doesn’t deserve respect. A school teacher who is lazy, teaches her subject poorly, or treats students badly, deserves only contempt. A parent who spends the family budget on toys for himself doesn’t deserve respect. An “elder” who lives a life of dissipation ought to be treated accordingly.

  Unfortunately, all police officers wear the same uniform. All politicians wear similar “respectable” outfits. There is no easy way to just look at a teacher or college professor and know if he she is competent.

  This task is especially difficult for children who are only just beginning to learn how to differentiate between honorable people, and ignorant fools.

  But we have to start somewhere, and a good place to start is not by insisting that just because Old Man Wilson managed to avoid death for a certain number of decades, his words must be heeded.

  That many people still believe this nonsense, however, has been on display in recent years thanks to social media and and the seemingly endless number of news articles and op-eds about “Millennials.” The recent rise of the dismissive phrase “OK boomer” has elicited even more whining from some boomers about how the youngsters ought to show them more respect. Some have even attempted to claim the term is a slur like the “n-word” or a violation of federal anti-discrimination law.

  Please.

  And for what exactly is this respect so deserved?

  Admitting that boomers didn’t directly exercise much political power until the 1990s, we still ask:

  • Do they deserve respect for running up 20 trillion dollars of government debt since the 90s?

  • Do they deserve respect for inaugurating a period of endless war that began with the periodic bombing of Iraq and the Balkans, and which continues to today?

  • Do they deserve respect for ushering in a culture in decline, characterized by latchkey children, widespread divorce and out-of-wedlock children, a rising suicide rate, and the continued obliteration of civil society in general?

  • Do they deserve respect for the destruction of the Bill of Rights through “patriotic” legislation like the Patriot Act and the continued spread of our modern surveillance state?

  Too Much Aggregation

  This sort of “analysis” of course, misses most of the details, and relies on broad generalizations. It is not true that all boomers supported the sort of policies that led to endless war, out-of-control spending and the destruction of our human rights. Many boomers actively opposed this sort of thing. But many did either directly or indirectly support all these unfortunatel developments in recent decades. And they deserve the scorn they receive.

  But this very fact makes our point for us: it is never a good idea to pay respect to elders just because they are elders. They deserve no more respect than anyone else, until proven otherwise. The same ought to be applied to any group demanding respect, whether that be judges, cops, bishops, or university faculty.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 17:30

  Tags

  Social Issues

  

• Balls Of Steel: Twitter Calls B*llshit On Musk's "Video Proof" That Cybertruck Window Stunt Worked At Rehearsal
  Balls Of Steel: Twitter Calls B*llshit On Musk’s “Video Proof” That Cybertruck Window Stunt Worked At Rehearsal

  Unable to just move on with life and “take the L”, as one Twitter user suggested Musk do, Elon Musk continues to propagate the notion that the Cybertruck armored window demonstration that led to his public humiliation on Thursday night actually went fine during rehearsal.

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  Musk tweeted on Friday afternoon: “We threw the same steel ball at same window several times right before event and didn’t even scratch the glass.”

  Sure you did, Elon. 

  Musk’s Tweet elicited some skeptical responses, to put it mildly. 

  How fucking stupid do you think we are https://t.co/UPduXxFFL0

  — Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) November 22, 2019

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Then, about 6 hours later, Musk posted a video of what was supposed to be the Cybertruck’s windows withstanding the same impact during rehearsal. See? Case closed, problem solved. It was just a one-off mistake – that happened twice on two windows during the demonstration. 

  Franz throws steel ball at Cybertruck window right before launch. Guess we have some improvements to make before production haha. pic.twitter.com/eB0o4tlPoz

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2019

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Twitter immediately noticed that both the window and the door in the “rehearsal” video have tremendous amounts of give to them, moving in and out after the ball strikes the window.

  As others have noted, that window is moving. Lots of give & absorption. Much like how the glass in the ball dropping test was held tightly in place for standard auto glass but had lots of give for the Cybertruck glass. It’s all Musk BS & fraudy lies.

  — Polixenes (@Polixenes13) November 23, 2019

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  It even looks as though the door to the truck may have been left open, as it pops forward after impact.

  What kind of charade is this? 😅 pic.twitter.com/1lvXuQ2tEX

  — Filip Kovalcik (@FilipKovalcik) November 23, 2019

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Of course, the well placed blanket over the drivers side door would prevent us from being able to tell if the door was, in fact, left open. It also would hide any potential dents or dings from the demonstration during the even where Musk’s assistant hit the door with a sledge hammer. To put it simply: it’s not a coincidence that the blanket is there – so why is it there?

  Why the blanket? Thought the Mars rover was indestructible?remember he sledgehammer trick? #huckster

  — Crunchy (@CD_Payne) November 23, 2019

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  You just did this today, that’s why you have the blanket, to hide yesterday’s faux sledgehammer hits…

  — Rhino (@RhinoVesting) November 23, 2019

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Or take this very astute observation that there appears to be a wheel jack sitting next to the driver’s side rear wheel, which we pointed out late last week was sitting at an awkward angle. 

  Here’s a photo of how the wheel was sitting on stage:

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  Verses some of the observations made about the “rehearsal” video:

  Also note the car lift jack right where the whompy-looking wheel was, and said wheel possibly on the ground behind Franz. @TESLAcharts pic.twitter.com/RFXoz8sykh

  — Keubiko (@Keubiko) November 23, 2019

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  On top of these inconsistencies, there’s some additional questions we have. For instance, if Musk had this video of the rehearsal all along, why wait 6 hours after your initial explanation on Twitter about rehearsal – and only after skepticism about the rehearsal story grew – to finally post it?

  As a reminder, during the demonstration on Thursday night, Musk’s assistant gently threw a metal ball at the Cybertruck parked on stage, and the driver’s side window promptly broke.

  “Oh my fucking God,” Musk nervously said, live on Tesla’s webcast, after the front window shattered into a million pieces. 

  Tesla’s “Armored Glass” demonstration

  Spoiler alert: the glass breaks $TSLAQ pic.twitter.com/NR75gOwlxZ

  — Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) November 22, 2019

  But instead of harping on the incident and making matters worse for himself, regardless of whether or not the rehearsal video is legitimate or not, maybe Musk should just take Twitter’s free advice:

  He should just have left it alone and take it like a man. Now he made everything worse…

  — Pulser (@Pulser77) November 23, 2019

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 17:00

• Barr Ends All Conspiracy Theories: Jeffrey Epstein Killed Himself In "Perfect Storm Of Screw-Ups"
  Barr Ends All Conspiracy Theories: Jeffrey Epstein Killed Himself In “Perfect Storm Of Screw-Ups”

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

  In an interview with Associated Press, US Attorney General William Barr put all conspiracy theories to rest once and for all by assuring the world that alleged sex trafficker and alleged billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s death was simply the result of a very, very, very long series of unfortunate coincidences.

  “I can understand people who immediately, whose minds went to sort of the worst-case scenario because it was a perfect storm of screw-ups,” Barr told AP on Thursday.

  This perfect storm of unlucky oopsies include:

  • Epstein being taken off suicide watch not long after a previous suicide attempt and shortly before his successful suicide,

  • suggestions that the first attempt may have actually been an assault via attempted strangulation inflicted by someone else,

  • two security guards simultaneously falling asleep on the job when they were supposed to be checking on Epstein,

  • one of those guards not even being an actual security guard,

  • security footage of two cameras outside Epstein’s cell being unusable due to a mysterious technical glitch,

  • at least eight Bureau of Prisons officials knowing Epstein wasn’t meant to be left alone in his cell and leaving him alone in his cell anyway,

  • Epstein’s cellmate being transferred out of their shared space the day before Epstein’s death,

  • Epstein signing a will two days before his death,

  •  unexplained injuries on Epstein’s wrists and shoulder reported by his family after the autopsy,

  • and a forensic expert who examined Epstein’s body claiming that his injuries were more consistent with homicide than suicide.

  In a new interview, Attorney General William Barr said Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide resulted from “a perfect storm of screw-ups” and that evidence ultimately shows he hanged himselfhttps://t.co/lhCxD16q4Q

  — The New York Times (@nytimes) November 22, 2019

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “The attorney general also sought to dampen conspiracy theories by people who have questioned whether Epstein really took his own life, saying the evidence proves Epstein killed himself,” AP reports.

  “He added that he personally reviewed security footage that confirmed that no one entered the area where Epstein was housed on the night he died.”

  Well if reporting that he’s reviewed footage which we were previously told didn’t exist isn’t enough to dampen those kooky conspiracy theories, I don’t know what is.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  So there you have it. The US government says that an intelligence asset with damning information on many powerful individuals did in fact kill himself due to an admittedly bizarre and wildly unlikely series of strange coincidences. I for one have no more questions. Checkmate, conspiracy theorists.

  “Mr. Epstein’s death in August at a federal detention center in Manhattan set off a rash of unfounded conspiracy theories on social media that were picked up and repeated by high-profile figures, including Mayor Bill de Blasio and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. No matter their ideology, the refrain of the theories was the same: Something did not add up,” says The New York Times in its report Barr’s statements.

  Couldn’t have said it better myself. It’s a completely unfounded conspiracy theory to believe that someone with ties to powerful institutions and individuals might be murdered in a way that was made to look like a suicide. We don’t live in a world where opaque organizations do evil things in secret, we live in a world where the government is always our friend and the TV would never lie to us. I’m glad these comments made by Barr (whose father in another strange coincidence gave Epstein his first job) have at long last struck a fatal blow to anyone who would doubt the beneficent hand of our beloved institutions.

  Barr said evidence proves Epstein killed himself.

  He added that he personally reviewed security footage that confirmed that no one entered the area where Epstein was housed on the night he died. https://t.co/CTica7rhhm

  — Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) November 22, 2019

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  It’s hard to imagine what more the US government and its allied political/media class could possibly do to quell conspiracy theories that now have Hollywood celebrities clamoring for government internet censorship. I guess if they really, really wanted to dampen conspiracy theories, there are a few more extremely drastic steps that could be taken. Steps like not lying all the time. And maybe not hiding immense amounts of information about what the most powerful institutions in the world are doing behind thick walls of government opacity. And maybe cease promoting conspiracies themselves, as with Russiagate. And maybe stop secretly doing depraved things. And maybe stop engaging in conspiracies.

  Pretty sure Barr’s assurances will be enough to do the trick, though.

  *  *  *

  Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

  Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 16:30

• "A Conundrum": 2019 Equity Outflows Are The Biggest Ever, Yet Stocks Are At All Time Highs – What Happens Next?
  “A Conundrum”: 2019 Equity Outflows Are The Biggest Ever, Yet Stocks Are At All Time Highs – What Happens Next?

  At the start of June, we wrote the following:

  For much of 2019, the big conundrum facing investors has been justifying the unprecedented divergence between institutional sentiment as represented by historic outflows from equities on one hand, and the market’s honey badger-like ascent to new record highs in 2019 on the other, ignoring the continued redemptions, and propelled higher on the back of record stock buybacks, recurring waves of rolling short squeezes, and dealer gamma positioning.

  Fast forward six months and compare that to what SocGen just wrote yesterday in its 2020 year ahead outlook:

  We are currently facing a conundrum. Despite the S&P 500 rising 24% ytd to record-high levels in recent days, we have yet to see any signs of exuberance. Indeed, both the positioning and market sentiment indicators do not seem to point to excess complacency.

  And, as if on cue, at almost the same time yesterday, JPMorgan’s Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou came up with an almost verbatim statement, only instead of “conundrum“, he used “puzzle”:

  One of the major flow puzzles of this year has been the extremely cautious stance of retail investors. Despite the strength of the equity market this year, retail investors have been unwilling to participate in the equity rally. In fact, they have acted as a drag for equity markets so far this year by selling equity funds in the worst outflow for a calendar year since the financial crisis of 2008

  While we are flattered to find that SocGen (and JPMorgan) finds not only our market takes, but also specific phrasing imitatable, it is more notable that SocGen (and JPM) have stumbled on what only “tinfoil” blogs discussed half a year ago as the biggest “conundrum” (or “puzzle”) facing the market – the lack of virtually any investor enthusiasm even as the S&P hits new record highs day after day (and the subsequent question: if not investors, then who is pushing this market to record highs).

  So, as we did back in June, so SocGen now asks “how can we reconcile the fact that there are no signs of exuberance in the positioning and market sentiment indicators with the S&P 500 trading at an all-time high and up 24% ytd? And what does this mean for our 2020 outlook?”

  This conundrum gets even more bizarre when one considers that equity fund outflows in 2019, the best year for the S&P since 2013, are on pace to surpass even the financial crisis year of 2008 some $209 billion in funds was redeemed; meanwhile so far in 2019, the YTD total is a record $215 billion… and yet the S&P keeps hitting new record high after record high. What gives?

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  As SocGen writes, picking up where we left off back in June, “the answer to this conundrum can partly be found in the reduced trading volume on the US equity market and the massive wave of buybacks over the past two years in the aftermath of President Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). In recent weeks, with the de-escalation of the US/China trade war, we think market participants have started to price in a potential improvement in the soft data indicators, and this could go on for a while if the de-escalation momentum continues.”

  So what happens next? Well, if one looks at the Conference Board US Leading Economic Index, one can see that the US has undergone three mini-cycles since the 2007 Great Financial Crisis (GFC). Meanwhile, as SocGen’s Alain Bokobza writes, “the announcement of “Phase 1” agreement on the 11 October 2019 by President Trump, after 463 days of twists and turns between US/China was welcomed and came as a relief to the financial markets, lifting in a dramatic way the price of risky assets.”

  Which lays out the key question for 2020 as framed by the French bank: “market participants have started to factor-in the start of a fourth mini-cycle. Can it last?”

  To answer this question, one first has to look at how we got to where we are in 2019, and here SocGen echoes Goldman’s recent assessment, pointing out that if one looks at a breakdown of S&P 500 total returns, we can make two observations: First, since October 2018, the market’s performance has been driven entirely by earnings growth, while P/E has been a negative contributor: end-2018 recession fears and Fed tightening are factored into the numbers. Second, and more importantly, the Fed’s dovish shift in early 2019 facilitated an extraordinary P/E expansion. Indeed, as shown in the chart below, since January 2019, the biggest contributor by far to S&P returns has been PE expansion.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  As a reminder, this is what Goldman said last week in its own 2020 year ahead preview: “With S&P 500 earnings on track for  roughly zero growth from this time last year, solid returns likely would not have been possible without central bank support.” Of course, 2019 was a year in which both the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank eased monetary policy, pushing long-term real interest rates down about 100bp in the US and 50bp in the Euro area. About how much did this lift risky assets? A standard approach based on the equity risk premium concept would say that central bank intervention accounted “for almost all of the price return since the start of the year.” That’s not us, that’s Goldman.

  Why is the above important? Because to have a view on asset returns in 2020 one has to understand what caused the market’s impressive 24% increase in 2019. Here, as SocGen notes, the question to ask is “what drove this P/E expansion since the start of the year, apart from the Fed’s dovish shift? And is that sustainable? Buybacks and a lack of market liquidity played a major role.”

  The answer, for those who have been reading our weekly observations on this big “conundrum”, is well-known. For everyone else, SocGen notes that Trump’s late-2017 Tax Cuts Tax Cuts and Jobs Act marked a shift and contributed massively to the wave of share repurchases over the past two years. The amounts steadily increased to a record high in 2Q19 – equivalent to a 3.2% buyback yield, which comes on top of a 2.2% dividend yield. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 return on equity is currently at an all-time-high.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  Here, it is also worth pointing out that the vast majority of these buybacks were funded by new debt issuance, most of it in the BBB bucket. Ironically, none other than former NY Fed president Bill Dudley was lamenting last week the “BBB-Bulge”, warning that trillions in fallen angles could soon flood the junk bond market. They certainly can, and the irony is that the next bond crisis will be the result of massive issuance to fund buybacks, which in turn sent stocks to all time highs and boost management cash compensation to record levels. Needless to say, the reverse will not be pleasant for equities.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  Besides ruinous central bank policies encouraging management teams to go out and issue record amounts of debt which they can then use to repurchase stock, there is another reason behind the year’s tremendous, if euphoria-less, ascent: “the lack of market liquidity, as measured by S&P 500 turnover – the ratio of trading volume vs free float market capitalization – has exacerbated the impact of share repurchases on US equities“, according to the French bank. Indeed, trading volume has been on a downtrend since 2008, and Socgen expect this to continue.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  The implication is simple: one substantial buyback program, like say Apple’s latest $75 billion stock repurchase authorization, (after it bought back $100 billion in 2018) has an outsized impact not only on the price of AAPL stock, but the entire market too. That’s precisely what has happened in a year which started with AAPL cutting guidance, only to soar 86% since.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  Meanwhile, a third of AAPL’s stock has been repurchased ever since Tim Cook decided to engage in financial engineering instead of actual engineering, for a company whose actual engineers have failed to come up with a new, engaging, must-have product ever since the death of Steve Jobs. Is it any wonder that the only thing keeping AAPL stocks up is… itself?

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  Putting these together, SocGen concludes that “share buybacks and a lack of trading volume have supported the S&P 500 at a time when the global recoupling of growth to the downside put global equities in a tough spot. However, we believe market participants in recent weeks have started to price in an alternative scenario.”

  Which brings us to the forecast phase. Here, JPMorgan comes first with a rather simplistic assumption. The bank’s Greek quant proposes a similar deus ex explanation as the bank’s Croatian quant, and postulates that the same retail investors that pulled money out of the market for all of 2019 will make a thunderous return in 2020, and be the catalyst to push the S&P to new all time highs. This is what Nick Panigirtzoglou calls the “Great Rotation II“, modeled after a similar rotation out of bonds funds and into stocks in 2013. To wit:

  If this view proves correct and the overall cyclical picture looks better over the coming months and quarters, retail investors are more likely to shift from a risk-off mode to a risk-on mode next year, by reversing this year’s equity fund selling and by reducing drastically this year’s extreme bond fund buying. Such a dramatic flow shift would be equivalent to another Great Rotation, i.e. a repeat of the abrupt shift away from retail investors accumulating bond funds to buying equity funds seen previously in 2013. In other words, 2020 would be the year of Great Rotation II, in a repeat of 2013 the year of Great Rotation I.

  While on the surface, this thesis makes sense, Panigirtzoglou himself points out the weakest link: contrary to conventional wisdom, investors already have near record equity exposure:

  [Investors] equity fund share has exhibited some mean reversion since the mid-1990s. It had increased sharply over the five years to 2017 as a result of the equity rally, with most of the increase taking place during 2013 and during 2017. The metrics in Figure 5 declined sharply during the equity market correction of Q4 2018 but most of that decline reversed this year. This implies that retail investors are entering 2020 with only modestly lower equity position relative to the highs of Q3 of 2018 or end 2017. In addition, the current equity position is very close to the two previous equity market peaks of 2007 or 2000.

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  So for JPM’s Great Rotation II thesis to play out next year, retail investors would need to accept equity weightings that are even higher than the previous equity market peaks of 2007 or 2000.

  If they do, this would represent a structural change in retail investors’ asset allocation, perhaps justified by structurally lower cash and bond yields vs. equity yields, compared to the previous 2007 and 2000 cycles.

  Paraphrasing JPM in a slightly less politically correct way, there is an unprecedented need for institutions to dump their stock holdings on retail investors, and only a reversal in retail outflows can help push stocks to new all time highs in 2020. It would also explain why central banks have been so forceeful in stepping on the accelerator and either easing or launching “NOT QE”, as stocks threatened to anything but go straight up.

  That is JPM’s take on 2020. What about SocGen’s?

  As the French bank explains, “last month’s announcement of a “Phase 1” agreement in US/China trade talks on 11 October by President Trump, 463 days after the trade dispute began, was a welcome relief in the financial markets, significantly lifting risky assets.” Sure enough, over the past month the S&P 500 reached an all-time high of 3,125, driven mostly by cyclical sectors. This marks a real shift in sentiment, as defensive sectors had been showing higher yoy growth in sector market cap in the S&P 500 over the year. On the other hand, as we noted last week, this reversal in sentiment appears to now be over and as markets once again price in an economic slowdown, the outperformance of cyclicals has faded sharply – with value stocks down 9 out of the past 11 days – and defensives are once again leading the market’s ascent.

  Why is this important? Because as both Marko Kolanovic recently, as SocGen on Friday suggest, for the market to have material upside in 2020, it will be key for the leadership to shift from defensives to cyclicals, as the global economic outlook shifts to an optimistic one. Alas, that would also mean that bond yields would surge well above 2%, effectively planting the seeds of the market’s own destruction, because the higher yields rise, the more likely central banks will be to turn hawkish again, and so we would go back to a Q3 2018 scenario.

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  Incidentally, as we first wrote two weeks ago, and as Bloomberg finally picked up on Friday, not only is the recent bout of bond selling over, but so is the “great rotation” as we first dubbed it (well before JPMorgan).

  Rotation aside, SocGen also points out that if one looks at the Conference Board US Leading Economic Index, the US has undergone three mini-cycles since the 2007 Great Financial Crisis (GFC).

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  SocGen also points out a close link “with the yoy  performance of the S&P 500. More recently, while the US Leading Economic Index bottomed (+0.4% yoy), the S&P 500 seems to have started to factor in a fourth mini-cycle. What are the characteristics of a mini-cycle and how does this impact our view on US equities?”

  Putting all of this together, SocGen believes that we are facing two possible scenarios in 2020:

  • 1) a mild recession in 2020, which is the bank’s central scenario, with two quarters of negative GDP growth in 2Q and 3Q, at a respective -0.7% and -0.8%, with full-year GDP growth at +0.7%; or
  • 2) the start of a fourth mini-cycle. The bank considers here the latter scenario and its potential impact on the S&P 500. Given the characteristics of the previous three mini-cycles – the French bank determines the exact dates by looking at the US Leading Economic Index and the UST 10y bond yield – and finds they last 3.5 years on average. In other words, should there be a fourth mini-cycle thanks to the massive central bank liquidity injection in 2019, the current economic cycle would be extended to 2023-24.

  More importantly, SocGen focuses on the period between the start of the mini-cycle and the peak – reached previously in April 2010, August 2014 and October 2018 – which usually last 1.0-1.5 years. The bank then notes that the third mini-cycle was very likely spurred by President Trump’s late-cycle fiscal boost, and highlights the following impacts on US assets from  these mini-cycles: higher equity markets, a weaker dollar, and higher Treasury yields.

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  Next, SocGen focuses on the drivers of the S&P 500’s total return during the second and third minicycles since 2009, paying attention to the period from the bottom to the peak. P/E expansion was not exuberant, in tandem with strong earnings growth. Looking at the recent market moves, the S&P 500 is already up 6% since 7 October 2019, the start date of the fourth mini-cycle based on the US Leading Economic Index, thanks entirely to the abovementioned P/E expansion.

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  It would also put the recent S&P meltup in its proper context, because from a price perspective, SocGen believes that “the lessons of previous mini-cycles could support a melt-up in the S&P 500 to 3,400.” However, for that to be sustainable, the French bank believes there will be a need for earnings to grow next year, as the divergence between fundamentals (E) on the one hand, and market anticipations and low interest rates (P/E) on the other, cannot be that wide. For now, that appears unlikely.

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  Still, even though SocGen expects that early 2020 will see another economic recession, it concedes that another mini-cycle “is not outside the realm of possibility,” as US consumer confidence and retail sales remain healthy for now, and given the possibility that a trade deal between US and China could put a floor under the current “manufacturing recession.”

  Unless of course, China decides to open a trapdoor in the floor should it decide that it no longer wants to deal with President Trump, and crushes hope of a trade deal in 2020, in which case the likelihood of a full-blown recession soars.

  But even then the story does not end, because in a worst case scenario, one has to consider that the Fed still can cut rates another 6 times before its hits 0%. What then? Well, the central bank will likely be compelled to first buy even more assets, potentially including ETFS and single stocks, while it will likely also cut rates to negative.

  The bottom line is simple: as Saxo Bank earlier noted, “so much liquidity has been injected in the stock market over the past years, it is now almost impossible to withdraw it.” It also means that the Fed can no longer afford even a modest drop in the market (as we saw in Q4 2018) because as Saxo Said, “as it would lead to contagion effect to the real economy” and would cultminate with a full-blown economic depression, one with catastrophic consequences for the status quo, and the Fed itself.

  It’s also why virtually every bank, analyst and strategist now has no choice but to be bullish for 2020 and onward: central banks are henceforth perpetually trapped into injecting liquidity at even the slightest sign of trouble, as the alternative – after 10 years of constantly bailing out the market – is unthinkable. The alternative? A recession, or a bear market, would likely be the trigger event that ends the fiat system as we know it, one intermediated by central banks.

  Which is why BTFD – if you can find one – and pray that central banks keep it all under control without i) sparking hyperinflation or ii) resulting in too much social conflict and unrest over the wealth inequality they create, as such an outcome would promptly result in a substantial amount of guillotines appearing on town squares, and even more promptly ending any hopes for a fourth, or any for that matter, mini bull cycle.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 16:15

  Tags

  Business Finance

  

• Paul Krugman Is More Than One Toke Over The Line
  Paul Krugman Is More Than One Toke Over The Line

  Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

  Paul Krugman’s latest op-Ed is laughable, as usual. It’s his own reply to a reader question that’s worthy of discussion.

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  No Smoking Gun

  In his Op-Ed rant, Trump and His Corrupt Old Party Paul Krugman goes on his typical party rant.

  He asks “How much corruption, how much collusion with foreign powers and betrayal of the national interest will that party’s elected representatives stand for?“

  Moment of Temporary Sanity

  For a second, I thought Krugman had a moment of “temporary sanity”.

  Krugman accurately stated “The inquiry hasn’t found a smoking gun;”

  Alas, that snip is out of context.

  Here is Krugman’s complete thought:

  “The inquiry hasn’t found a smoking gun; it has found what amounts to a smoking battery of artillery. Yet almost no partisan Republicans have turned on Trump and his high-crimes-and-misdemeanors collaborators.”

  Convictable Proof

  I ask where’s the convictable proof?

  I can easily see why people believe Trump is guilty. But Democrats have made a mockery of the process.

  Their witnesses look like fools under Republican questioning. I wrote about it the other day in Democrat Impeachment Star Witnesses Useful as Dust.

  And we have seen more of these exchanges all end the same way.

  The fact remains that believing someone is guilty, and actually having convictable evidence are two different things.

  So far, this is just the typical nonsense that one would expect from Krugman.

  It’s hardly worth the time to comment. A reply to his own post is what caught my attention.

  If the Republic Survives

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  Can the US Survive Trump?

  Krugman actually questions whether or not the republic can survive Trump.

  Then he proposes that “if” the US survives, Schiff will be viewed as “one of our great political heros“.

  Mercy!

  Yet, I have a friend who believes a similar thing, that Trump will not stand down if he loses the next election and the US will morph into some sort of dictatorship.

  Krugman’s comments will no doubt play on such fears.

  But the idea is absurd. Trump would not do that, and he would not get away with it if he tried.

  Why Read Krugman?

  People ask why I read Krugman. Actually, on occasion, Krugman is right about something.

  For example, Krugman wrote a post mocking hyperinflationists. I took his side to the great consternation of “inflationistas” who thought I too was wrong.

  Well here we are with interest rates at near record lows.

  Also, you learn more from those you disagree with than those who agree.

  Finally, you get pure nonsense like this that is worthy of serious rebuttal.

  Good Presidents and Bad Presidents

  The US has had good presidents and bad presidents.We survived them all.

  We survived a civil war and unconstitutional theft of gold and burning of crops by president Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

  Roosevelt belonged in prison. Instead, he is revered.

  The US survived LBJ and his asinine war in Vietnam. It survived George Bush and his asinine war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  One Toke Over the Line

  It is beyond idiotic to propose the US may not survive Trump.

  I offer this musical tribute.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 15:30

  Tags

  Politics

  

• Fixed Income Fund Flows Dominant Over Equities Amid Recession Threat
  Fixed Income Fund Flows Dominant Over Equities Amid Recession Threat

  Fund flows into taxable bond funds and ETFs continue to trump equity funds and ETFs into the late year, reported Lipper Alpha Insight. 

  Investors are preparing for a further deceleration in the US economy by plowing more than $262.1 billion into taxable bond funds (including ETFs) year to date, versus $150.3 billion into equity funds during the same period. 

  “Fund investors have been in a risk-off mode for most of 2019 despite stellar stock market returns, injecting $430.8 billion into money market funds year to date. However, for the Lipper fund-flows week ended November 20, 2019, investors were net redeemers of money market funds—withdrawing $25.3 billion (their largest weekly net outflows since April 17, 2019).

  The conservative nature of mutual fund investors continued. For the fortieth consecutive week, conventional fund (ex-ETF) investors were net redeemers of equity funds, withdrawing $3.7 billion during the most recent fund-flows week. In contrast, ETF investors continued to be a little more aggressive, injecting net new money for the sixth consecutive week into equity ETFs (+$898 million this past fund-flows week). Combined with the $898 million inflow for equity ETFs, this left investors as net redeemers of equity funds (-$2.8 billion).

  Year to date, the difference between conventional equity fund investors and equity ETF investors is quite striking, with the former withdrawing a net $210.9 billion, while the latter injected a net $60.6 billion. That said, both investor types have gravitated towards fixed income, with conventional fund investors and ETF investors injecting $157.2 billion and $104.9 billion, respectively, year to date. For the most recent fund-flows week, fund investors (including ETFs) were net purchasers of taxable fixed income funds (+$12.4 billion, their largest weekly net inflows since February 4, 2015) and municipal bond funds (+$2.0 billion).

  With the Federal Reserve cutting its key lending rate for the third time this year in October, investors continued their search for yield and appeared to be willing to put a little more risk on. Core Bond Funds (+$92.4 billion, including ETFs) have attracted the lion’s share of net new money year to date, followed by Core Plus Bond Funds (+$26.9 billion), Multi-Sector Income Funds (+$26.0 billion), and Corporate Debt BBB-Rated Funds (+$21.5 billion).

  Investors looking for bond funds that have a liberal investment mandate with a go-anywhere feel to them have been looking at flexible income and flexible portfolio funds, which have taken in a net $21.9 billion combined. For the most recent fund-flows week, flexible funds attracted the largest draw of net new money of any taxable fixed income macro-groups, attracting $5.7 billion (its largest weekly draw since Lipper began providing weekly flows back in 1992),” Lipper Alpha Insight wrote. 

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  Investors have been defensive since late 2018 when the US economy entered its fourth deceleration in growth since 2009. 

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  Though equities have hit new highs on “trade optimism” and soaring central bank money printing, a large divergence has appeared where equities have already priced in a strong recovery for early 2020. 

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  The risk today, and that’s why smart money continues piling into bonds, is that the US economy continues to decelerate into early 2020, as it could appear the equity market has priced in a recovery that may not pan out, which could lead to another repricing event for stocks, in the coming months. 

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 15:00

  Tags

  Business Finance

  

• Not The Onion – Ivy League Students Push To Abolish Prisons
  Not The Onion – Ivy League Students Push To Abolish Prisons

  Authored by Celine Ryan via Campus Reform,

  Students at Brown University gathered in November to teach their peers about the merits of doing away with the U.S. prison system.

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  A student group by the name of RailRoad held the event titled “Prison Abolition 101” on Nov. 8. The group seeks to ensure that the American prison system is “destroyed” and believes that incarceration is inherently unjust and unproductive.

  RailRoad member Grace Austin stated during the event that “the end goal is to not have prisons as any form of incarceration,” and that “punishment at any stage doesn’t guarantee any kind of growth,” according to a report by The Brown Daily Herald.

  The student group’s stated mission is to create a “world where the Prison Industrial Complex in all of its forms has been destroyed and built in its place are systems of accountability that allow for healing and growth.”

  “Prisons were founded in the ideas of punishing the poor, punishing people of color,” presenter Aida Sherif said, adding “I don’t see it as an institution that can ever fully break away from those foundations.”

  “Our society is constructed in a way that would have us believe prisons are absolutely necessary,” Sherif said.

  “People perceive it as crazy, unreasonable, dangerous, too radical. Abolition is not anarchy.”

  The event reportedly did not present concrete plans or a timeline to achieve this “abolition,” but rather emphasized that the complete dismantling of the U.S. prison system was a realistic long term goal.

  In October, Railroad presented a proposal calling upon the university to cease the consideration of criminal aspects such as conviction history in its hiring processes, and even to implement a quota of “formerly incarcerated community members.”

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 11/23/2019 – 14:30

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