- UK Retail Employment Plunges Most Since 2008 As Retail Sales Crash
Yesterday we noted the surge in cable following the stronger-than-expected Q3 GDP print of 0.4% Q/Q, above the 0.3% estimate. Afterwards, the market was calculating an 87% chance that the BoE would hike next week. Brown Brothers commented that:
The case against a hike is that inflation appears poised to peak shortly, the economy is softening, and real wages are falling. This may already be squeezing households, where an increase in the base rate is quickly passed through to households.
However, two reports from the UK retail sector might encourage some nervous MPC members to stand pat.
Bloomberg reports, U.K. retail sales are falling at the fastest pace since the depths of the recession in 2009 and worries about the housing market could exacerbate the weakness in consumer spending seen this year. The Confederation of British Industry said its measure of sales plunged to minus 36 in October – the lowest since March 2009 — from a positive 42 in September. Sales for the time of the year were slightly below the usual seasonal rates, it said.
Rain Newton-Smith, CBI Chief Economist, blamed the weakness on higher inflation.
“It’s clear retailers are beginning to really feel the pinch from higher inflation. While retail sales can be volatile from month to month, the steep drop in sales in October echoes other recent data pointing to a marked softening in consumer demand.”
According to Bloomberg, faster inflation has put the squeeze on shoppers this year, and a separate report on Thursday suggests a cooling housing market could further dampen consumers’ enthusiasm for spending.
YouGov and the Centre for Economics and Business Research said while their headline sentiment measure rose this month, confidence in the housing market weakened. For Bank of England policy makers, all this may play into their thinking as they prepare for a crucial meeting next week.
While they’ve signalled that an interest-rate increase may be needed soon, a rate hike – even a small one – could also have an impact on spending habits, particularly for those concerned about the cost of their mortgage. Most U.K. property reports point to a property slowdown, with Halifax saying annual price growth has fallen to 4 percent from 10 percent in early 2016. According to Acadata and LSL, London house prices may be falling at their fastest pace since the financial crisis.
“The downtick in the house value measures is a concern,” said Nina Skero, head of macroeconomics at the CEBR.
“One’s perception of own home value has direct implications on their future willingness to spend.”
The CBI survey points to continued pressure on households from the mix of stronger price increase and sluggish wage growth. Official data this month showed stores had their worst quarter in four years in the three months through September. The John Lewis Partnership, owner of a grocery and department store chain, has seen sales growth slow by more than half this year.
The second report on the UK retail sector was from the British Retail Consortium which stated that retail employment dropped at the fastest rate since 2008.
From The Independent, UK retailers cut jobs over the past three months at the fastest rate since comparable records began in 2008, due to technological change and rising employment costs, the British Retail Consortium said on Thursday.
The BRC, which represents major retailers, said its members employed 3.0 per cent fewer staff in the third quarter of this year than during the same time in 2016, and total hours worked fell by 4.2 per cent year-on-year.
Both were the steepest falls since the BRC started collecting records in 2008, when Britain was in the middle of its sharpest recession in decades. This contrasts with the picture in the broader economy, where the unemployment rate is its lowest since 1975 and job creation has been strong, albeit partly at the expense of wages. Still, the BRC report chimed with a European Commission survey last month that showed British retailers’ expectations for employment sank to their lowest since late 2011.
“The pace of job reductions in the retail industry is gathering steam,” BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson said.
“Behind this shrinking of the workforce is both a technological revolution in retail, which is reducing demand for labour, and government policy, which is driving up the cost of employment,” she added.
Retail, which accounts for just under 10 per cent of jobs in Britain, has a lot of low-paid jobs that have been affected by rapid rises in the minimum wage in recent years, as well as a new government training levies and pension requirements.
So while Corbyn and May continue to battle, and the central bank is threatening rate-hikes, the nation's core is collapsing. One wonders whether hard, soft, or no Brexit would make any difference now…
- The EU Lectures Journalists About PC Reporting
Authored by Bruce Bawer via The Gatestone Institute,
- Nor, we are told, should we associate "terms such as 'Muslim' or 'Islam'… with particular acts," because to do that is to "stigmatize." What exactly does this mean? That when a man shouts "Allahu Akbar" after having gunned down, run over with a truck, or blown to bits dozens of innocent pedestrians or concertgoers, we are supposed to ignore that little detail?
- But that is what this document is all about: advising reporters just how to misrepresent reality in EU-approved fashion.
- It is interesting to note that while many people fulminate over President Trump's complaints about "fake news," they are silent when an instrument of the EU superstate presumes to tell the media exactly what kind of language should and should not be used when reporting on the most important issue of the day.
"Respect Words: Ethical Journalism Against Hate Speech" is a collaborative project that has been undertaken by media organizations in eight European countries – Austria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Slovenia, and Spain. Supported by the Rights and Citizenship Programme of the European Union, it seeks, according to its website, to help journalists, in this era of growing "Islamophobia," to "rethink" the way they address "issues related to migratory processes, ethnic and religious minorities." It sounds benign enough: "rethink." But do not kid yourself: when these EU-funded activists call for "rethinking," what they are really doing is endorsing self-censorship.
In September, "Respect Words" issued a 39-page document entitled Reporting on Migration & Minorities: Approach and Guidelines. Media outlets, it instructs, "should not give time or space to extremist views simply for the sake of 'showing the other side.'" But which views count as "extremist"? The report does not say – not explicitly, anyway. "Sensationalist or overly simplistic reporting on migration," we read, "can enflame existing societal prejudices" and thus "endanger migrants' safety." Again, what counts as "sensationalist" or "overly simplistic"? That is not spelled out, either. Nor, we are told, should we associate "terms such as 'Muslim' or 'Islam'… with particular acts," because to do that is to "stigmatize." What exactly does this mean? That when a man shouts "Allahu Akbar" after having gunned down, run over with a truck, or blown to bits dozens of innocent pedestrians or concertgoers, we are supposed to ignore that little detail?
Or perhaps we should entirely avoid covering such actions? After all, the document exhorts us not to write too much about "sensationalist incidents involving migrants," as "[v]iolent individuals are found within every large group of people." If, however, we do feel compelled to cover such incidents, we must never cease to recall that the "root causes" of these incidents "often have nothing to do with a person's ethnicity or religious affiliation." What, then, are those root causes? The report advises us that they include "colonialism, racism, [and] general social inequality." Do not forget, as well, that there is "no structural connection between migration and terrorism."
When the EU-funded activists behind the document "Reporting on Migration & Minorities" call for "rethinking," what they are really doing is endorsing self-censorship.
At least the report's authors do not have the audacity to maintain that there is no connection between Islam and terrorism. But they do urge us to remember that Islam is "diverse." The notion that it is inherently violent is — what else? — a "stereotype." So is depicting Islam as "grounded in a different reality and lacking common value with other cultures" or portraying Muslim immigrants as being "fundamentally different from the citizens of the host country." And it is just plain wrong, needless to say, to encourage "the widespread perception that there is a 'cultural clash' between Islam and the West with religion at the heart of the 'problem.'" (On the contrary: Islam is, the report tells us, "a belief system that can exist alongside others.") And do not dare to suggest that Islamic culture is in any way "inferior to Western culture." Or that Muslim men are "highly patriarchal." (Repeat after me: "Many societies around the world remain highly patriarchal, independent of religion.") And do not pay too much attention to Muslim women's "clothing styles." Why? Because doing so tends to "homogenise" them. (Banish from your mind the thought that it is the clothing itself that homogenizes them.)
During the last couple of years, many countries in Europe have experienced a veritable tsunami of Islamic migration. But responsible journalists, according to "Respect Words," must never, ever put it that way: "When describing migration, don't use "phrases such as 'tide,' 'wave' and 'flood'" (or, the authors later add, "horde" or "influx") because such language can "evoke the sense of a 'mass invasion.'" It "dehumanises migrants," you see, and "constructs a false sense among the audience of being 'under siege' by an 'enemy' that must be repelled." Of course, much of Europe is "under siege"; this fact is becoming clearer by the day; to use milder terms when discussing this topic is to do nothing less than misrepresent reality. But that is what this document is all about: advising reporters just how to misrepresent reality in EU-approved fashion.
"Inform your audience," the report urges journalists, "about the reasons why people feel compelled to leave their homelands, and investigate what connections there may be to policies and practices of European states." Possibly, however, a massive percentage of the Muslims pouring into certain European states are doing so because of those states' "policies and practices" — namely, their readiness to start handing immigrant families large sums of cash the minute they arrive, to set them up with free housing, furnishings, etc., and to allow them to stay on the dole for the rest of their lives. Many of those countries are more generous to Muslim newcomers than they are to their own citizens who have fallen on hard times; immigrants often go to the front of the line, while elderly citizens of some of these countries – people who have worked hard and paid into the welfare system since the world was young – have been turned out of their homes in order to accommodate newly-arrived Muslim families.
But these obviously are not the "policies and practices" to which the "Respect Words" document is referring. Quite the opposite. The transparent implication here is that Muslim refugees and asylum seekers are fleeing conditions for which they and others in their countries of origin hold no responsibility whatsoever and that can, in fact, ultimately be traced back to Western wrongdoing, whether in the last generation or centuries ago. Never mind that Muslims took over Persia, the Byzantine Empire, all of North Africa and the Middle East, Greece, Northern Cyprus, much of Eastern Europe, and Southern Spain. Ultimately, everything that is wrong with the Muslim world is seemingly the fault of the West, so Europeans owe all incomers a new life — and perhaps even a new country — peaceably handed over to them so that they can import sharia law?
No, the report does not quite go so far as to make this argument. But the report does caution that even to touch on the question of "whether asylum seekers' claims are genuine" or "whether migrants have a right to be in the country" is thoroughly inappropriate: it places the focus on "law and order" rather than on such things as "the fundamental right of asylum." Yes, you read that correctly: "the fundamental right of asylum." Never mind that under international law not everyone is entitled to asylum — and that a huge proportion of self-styled asylum seekers in Europe today have no legitimate grounds for such a claim but are, like many of us, seeking better economic opportunities.
But such facts are inimical to the authors of the "Respect Words" document. In their view, no human being can be "illegal"; therefore, the word "illegal," they admonish, should be used to describe actions, not people.
The only surprising thing about this document is that it actually includes a brief section on anti-Semitism, in which it suggests — believe it or not — that equating Israel and Nazi Germany may not be a good idea. For the most part, however, the report is one long taxpayer-funded catalog of politically correct protocols which — if adhered to by everyone in Europe who is professionally involved in reporting on events concerning Islam and immigration — would guarantee a full-scale whitewash of the alarming developments currently underway on this unfortunate continent. It is interesting to note that while many people fulminate over President Trump's complaints about "fake news," they are silent when an instrument of the EU superstate presumes to tell the media exactly what kind of language should and should not be used when reporting on the most important issue of the day.
- Lies And Distractions Surrounding The Diminishing Petrodollar
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
There are a few important rules you have to follow if you want to join the consortium of mainstream economic con-men/analysts. Take special note if you plan on becoming one of these very "special" people:
1) Never discuss the reality that government fiscal statistics are not the true picture of the health of the economy. Just present the stats at face value to the public and quickly move on.
2) Almost always focus on false positives. Give the masses a delusional sense of recovery by pointing desperately at the few indicators that paint a rosier picture. Always mention a higher stock market as a symbol of an improving economy even though the stock market is irrelevant to the fundamentals of the economy. In fact, pretend the stock market is the ONLY thing that matters. Period.
3) Never talk about falling demand. Avoid mention of this at all costs. Instead, bring up "rising supply" and pretend as if demand is not a factor even worth considering.
4) Call any article that discusses the numerous and substantial negatives in the economy "doom porn." Ask "where is the collapse?" a lot, when the collapse in fundamentals is right in front of your face.
5) Avoid debate on the health of the economy when you can, but if cornered, misrepresent the data whenever possible. Muddle the discussion with minutia and circular logic.
6) When a crash occurs, act like you had been the one warning about the danger all along. For good measure, make sure alternative economic analysts do not get credit for correct examinations of the fiscal system.
7) Argue that there was nothing special about their warnings and predictions and that "everyone else saw it coming too;" otherwise you might be out of a job.
Now, if you follow these rules most of the time, or religiously, then you have a good shot at becoming the next Paul Krugman or one of the many hucksters at Forbes, Bloomberg or Reuters. A cushy job and comfortable salary await you. Good luck and Godspeed!
However, say you are one of those weird people cursed with a conscience; becoming a vapid mouthpiece for the establishment may not sound very appealing. Or, maybe you just have OCD and you can't stand the idea of "creative math" when it comes to economic data. Whatever the case may be, you want to outline the deeper facts of the economy because the economy is life — it is the structure which holds together our civilization, and if we lie about it in the short term, then we only set ourselves up for catastrophe in the long run. Welcome to another dimension. Welcome to the world of alternative economics.
Every aspect of the U.S. economy or the global economy can be presented two very different ways depending on whether you "interpret" the data to fit a preconceived conclusion, or simply relay it to the public as it really is.
Let's use oil and the petrodollar as an example…
To illustrate the mainstream establishment reaction to legitimate economic concerns on oil, I highly suggest going back and reading an article by Foreign Policy, the official magazine of the Council On Foreign Relations, titled "Debunking The Dumping-The-Dollar Conspiracy," published in 2009. The idiocy of this article was truly bewildering at the time it was released, but even more so now in retrospect.
First, it is important to note that Foreign Policy refused to even acknowledge the issue of the dollar losing petro-currency status until Robert Fisk of The Independent, someone closer to mainstream exposure, dared to broach the topic, warning that a trend was in play to dump the dollar as the petro-currency by 2018. The alternative economic community had been warning about the world moving away from U.S. oil dominance for some time beforehand.
Second, the CFR uses a typical circular fallacy when confronting the potential end of the dollar's world reserve status; the fallacy that the dollar is the world reserve currency because "the U.S. is the preeminent world economic power." Actually, the reverse is true — the U.S. is the world's preeminent economic power only because the dollar has world reserve status. It was also once an industrial powerhouse after WWII, but this was ONLY because the U.S. was one of the few manufacturing hubs in the world that wasn't demolished by years of kinetic destruction. When you are the only game in town, of course you reap huge economic benefits including massive international investment, but not forever.
Today, obviously, the U.S. is far surpassed by other nations in the area of manufacturing and production, and has also been surpassed as the largest global importer and exporter. The "preeminence" argument is unmitigated garbage.
Third, almost every danger Foreign Policy dismissed as "conspiracy" back in 2009 is now coming true. Just as Robert Fisk warned, and just as the alternative economic community warned long before him, numerous shifts in the world of oil as well as geopolitical relationships have created a spiraling nexus of anti-dollar sentiment. Is it possible that the dollar will lose petro-status by 2018? Absolutely, and here is why…
While the U.S. remains the world's largest oil consumer according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), American consumption of petroleum products has greatly diminished over the past few years; falling demand by increasingly destitute U.S. consumers has left oil producers searching for buyers elsewhere. The World Economic Forum noted in 2015 the drastic fall in U.S. demand since the 2008 debt crisis, but this admission went largely unnoticed in the mainstream media. Interestingly, while demand was crashing, the price per barrel continued to skyrocket because of the Federal Reserve's inflationary QE policies. Almost immediately after the Fed began tapering QE, oil prices drastically declined in line with the lack of existing demand.
In 2017, the EIA claims there has been a rise in global demand since the second quarter. And has "projected" increasing demand including higher U.S. demand going into 2018, outpacing supply.
Yet, at the same time the EIA admits a frustrating stagnation in global oil demand, with the U.S. being the primary drag on consumption since 2010.
So, which trend are we supposed to believe? The one that is right in front of us, or the one that is optimistically projected? It is clear, even according to "official" statistics on crude oil imports, that the U.S. market began sinking in 2009 to levels not seen since the 1990's and has not recovered since. Everyone knows that each new year is supposed to bring exponential demand, like clockwork. But this has not been the case at all in the U.S.
Meanwhile, China has recently surpassed the U.S. as the world's largest oil importer, even though the EIA lists the U.S. as the world's largest oil "consumer."
The argument mainstream analysts would probably make here is that imports of oil are diminishing because U.S. shale oil is filling demand domestically. This argument overlooks the overall process of declining demand, though. The US is the largest consumer of oil NOW, but will that pace continue? According to the data, the answer is no. Americans are buying less petroleum products since the 2008 credit crisis, regardless of where they come from, and oil producers are seeking to diversify into other markets, and other currencies.
On top of that, even if it were true that imported oil is crumbling because US domestic oil is filling rising demand, this still begs the question – Why would oil producing nations stick with the dollar as the petrocurrency when the US has decided to take its ball and go home?
The US has now become a COMPETITOR in the oil market with shale, so why would OPEC nations and others also continue to give the US the enormous advantage of owning petrocurrency status?
In the meantime, the geopolitical situation grows more unstable. I believe the Iranian sanctions issue has gone ignored far too long, and this has direct repercussions on the dollar's petro-status. How? Well, consider this — Europe continues its appetite for Iranian oil, with 40 percent of Iran's oil exports going to the EU. With the very oddly timed U.S.-led effort by the Trump administration to renew sanctions, Europe has been caught in a catch-22; either defy sanctions and upset relations with the U.S. or lose a significant source of petroleum imports. For now it appears that the EU will support sanctions, but this time solidarity on the issue is nowhere near as strong as it was back in 2012.
With Iran as a major supplier for Europe as well as China, and overtaking Saudi Arabia as the top oil supplier for India, Trump's latest call to put economic pressure on the nation may add more fuel to the accelerating rationale against the dollar as the primary trade mechanism for oil. The question becomes, who benefits from American influence in oil, and who suffers? The more countries that suffer because of a world reserve dollar, the more likely they will be to look for an alternative.
China has deepened ties to Russia for this exact reason. With Russia supplanting Saudi Arabia as China's largest petroleum source, and bilateral trade between Russia and China cutting out the dollar as world reserve, this is just the beginning of the shift. In the past week it has been hinted that China will be shifting in the next two months into using its OWN currency, the Yuan, to price oil instead of using the dollar.
Saudi Arabia, America's longtime partner in the oil dominance chain, is now moving away from the old relationship. Tensions between the Saudis and the U.S. State Department over the rather surreal Qatar embargo are just part of a series of divisions. With China's influence in the region increasing, the mainstream has finally begun to acknowledge that Saudi Arabia may be "compelled" to trade oil in currencies other than the dollar.
Why is oil so important? Because energy, along with currency, is the key to understanding the state of the economy. When demand for energy goes stagnant, this usually means the economy is stagnant. When a nation has maintained a monopoly on global energy trade by coupling its currency to oil, an addiction can be formed and its financial structure becomes dependent in that addiction being continuously satiated.
Foreign Policy argued in 2009 that oil trade in dollars is "nothing more than a convention." I would actually agree with that in part; it is indeed a convention that can change dramatically at any given moment. But, Foreign Policy asserts that there would be no consequences for the U.S. if and when the change takes place and the dollar loses petrostatus. This is absurd. Trillions in dollars are held overseas and the singular function of those dollars is to fulfill international trade based on the "convention" of the dollar's world reserve status. What purpose do those dollar's serve if world reserve status is abandoned? The answer is none.
All of those dollars would come flooding back into the U.S. through various channels. Market psychology would immediately trigger a massive loss in the dollar's international value, not to mention incredible inflation would be spiking here at home. This process has already begun, and it is looking more and more like the next couple of years will bring a vast "reset" (as the IMF likes to call it) in the hegemony of certain currencies.
Some people believe this will be a wellspring, a change for the better. They think the death of the dollar will lead to "decentralization" of the global economy and a "multipolar world," but the situation is far more complex than it seems. I will go into greater detail in my next article as to why the dollar and the U.S. economy in general has actually been slated for deliberate demolition and how this will likely come about.
As far as oil and petro-status are concerned, the mainstream media is perfectly willing to report on the developments I have mentioned here in a fleeting manner, but at the same time they are completely unwilling to account for the effects that will result or the deeper meaning behind these events. They will report on the smaller stories, but refuse to acknowledge the bigger story. It is quite a contradiction, but a contradiction with a purpose.
- Goldman Sachs Maintains The Most Tax Havens Of Any US Company… By Far
Multinational companies based in the United States are able to avoid paying an estimated $100 billion in federal income tax every year through the use of tax havens.
As Statista's Niall McCarthy notes, a recent report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has found that 366 of America's largest 500 companies maintain 9,755 tax haven subsidiaries holding over $2.6 trillion in accumulated profits.
You will find more statistics at Statista
Despite only having three tax haven subsidiaries in Ireland, Apple stashes the most cash off shore by far, some $246 billion which helps the company avoid $76.7 billion in U.S. taxes.
The Goldman Sachs Group maintains the most tax havens of any large U.S. company by far with 905 in total. That includes 511 in the 511 in the Cayman Islands (though the company does not have an office there), 183 in Luxembourg, 52 in Ireland and 41 in Mauritius.
Morgan Stanley is in second place with 619 tax haven subsidiaries while ThermoFisher Scientific rounds off the top three with 199.
Even though small island nations like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands are notorious for tax avoidance schemes, the Netherlands is actually the country most frequently used as a tax haven by American companies.
- DoD Plans Solar-Storm-Based National Blackout Drill During Antifa Protests In November
According to The National Association for Amateur Radio (ARRL), elements of the US Department of Defense (DOD) will simulate a “communications interoperability” training exercise across the United States on November 04-06. The announcement released on October 24 has not been widely distributed to the media, because the drill is simulating a total grid collapse and could spark public fear.
Explained by Army MARS Program Manager Paul English,
“This exercise will begin with a national massive coronal mass ejection event which will impact the national power grid as well as all forms of traditional communication, including landline telephone, cellphone, satellite, and Internet connectivity,”
In July, we warned about the US government quietly preparing for a massive coronal mass ejection with the passage of an Executive Order – “Coordinating Efforts to Prepare the Nation for Space Weather Events”.
Here is snippet of section 1 of the executive order:
Space weather events, in the form of solar flares, solar energetic particles, and geomagnetic disturbances, occur regularly, some with measurable effects on critical infrastructure systems and technologies, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), satellite operations and communication, aviation, and the electrical power grid. Extreme space weather events — those that could significantly degrade critical infrastructure — could disable large portions of the electrical power grid, resulting in cascading failures that would affect key services such as water supply, healthcare, and transportation. Space weather has the potential to simultaneously affect and disrupt health and safety across entire continents. Successfully preparing for space weather events is an all-of-nation endeavor that requires partnerships across governments, emergency managers, academia, the media, the insurance industry, non-profits, and the private sector.
Back in April 2017, we wrote an article titled ‘Yesterday’s Broad Power Outage Likely Caused By Geomagnetic Storm‘. While everyone thought terrorism was to blame, we correctly pointed out that large power failures in major US cities was due to an intense geomagnetic storm registering 8-10 on K-Planetary Index.
Earthsky.org provides an easy understanding of what is a cornoal mass ejection…
A CME can launch a billion tons of plasma from the sun’s surface into space, at speeds of over a million miles per hour. Every so often, the sun burps. But, unlike myself, when the sun burps, it does so with the power of 20 million nuclear bombs. These hiccups are known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs)—powerful eruptions near the surface of the sun driven by kinks in the solar magnetic field. The resulting shocks ripple through the solar system and can interrupt satellites and power grids on Earth.
Back to the exercise on November 04-06, the US Department of Defense headquarters entity will work with the US Army and US Air-Force MARS organizations and the Amateur Radio community to request status reports for 3,143 US counties. During the exercise, communication frequencies will use HF NVIS, VHF, UHF, and non-internet linked Amateur Radio repeaters.
In addition, Army MARS Program Manager Paul English said,
We want to continue building on the outstanding cooperative working relationship with the ARRL and the Amateur Radio community,” English said. “We want to expand the use of the 60-meter interop channels between the military and amateur community for emergency communications, and we hope the Amateur Radio community will give us some good feedback on the use of both the 5-MHz interop and the new 13-MHz broadcast channels as a means of information dissemination during a very bad day scenario.
Full Report from The National Association for Amateur Radio (ARRL):
Bizarrely enough, this was first reported by Rob Dew of InfoWars, the US Department of Defense (DOD) training exercise will occur on ANTIFA’s day of rage across the United States.
On refusefascism.org, a post titled: November 4 It Begins: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! has more than 33,000 shares on Facebook…. The post explains what the group’s intentions are during the day of rage.
The bottom line: The United States government is quietly preparing for a major space-weather event to paralyze communication systems and energy grids across the entire country. As a citizen, you’re not allowed to know this knowledge and frankly you will not be prepared—only the government will be. The writing is on the wall of what is coming through an executive order and DOD drills.
No wonder public trust with government is at historic lows, because you’re not allowed to know the truth.
Simultaneously, the wealthiest families who own mega corporations in the United States are plowing millions into their proxy armies called community organizing groups. Let’s just hope, a coronal mass ejection doesn’t occur when these severely misguided folks are protesting.
* * *
Here is the curve ball: Is the United States really preparing for a North Korean EMP attack?
- 1,000,000,000,000 – Japanese Foreign Assets Top One Quadrillion For First Time
"…a quadrillion here, a quadrillion there… and pretty soon you're talking real money!"
For the first time in history, foreign assets held by Japanese institutional and individual investors appear to have topped 1,000 trillion yen ($8.79 trillion), according to Nikkei estimates.
The amount has increased roughly 50% during the past five years and now is more than twice as much as the country's gross domestic product.
Japanese investors are in the midst of a major shift — pulling their cash out of domestic securities and placing it in overseas markets.
Securities seem to have accounted for nearly half of the 1,000 trillion yen that has escaped overseas. Japanese investors were holding 453 trillion yen worth at the end of June, up 100 trillion yen or so over the past three years.
By investment destination, nearly half of securities investments were directed to the U.S., while close to 30% went to Europe.
They have been pushed to this collective decision by a hyper-aggressive Bank of Japan, which for more than four years now has been flooding the country's economy with so much yen that cash instruments can only earn negligible interest.
And given Shinzo Abe's recent super-majority election win… do not expect this flood of liquidity – fungibly leaking out to the rest of the world's assets – to stop anytime soon!
Just ask Kuroda…
- From Shadow Wars To Overt War: The Pentagon's New 'Scramble For Africa'
When news broke of the October 4 ambush and deaths of four elite Green Beret soldiers in Niger, the immediate reaction voiced among congressional leaders and echoed generally in the media was: we have troops in Niger? But the bigger questions of the US military's increasingly sizable footprint in Africa (or what has long been called our 'Shadow War') quickly disappeared from public debate, instead, in usual fashion the media quickly focused on myopic details of phone calls and whether Trump's handling of the aftermath was "presidential" enough.
Gone were the larger looming questions the average American might rightly ask: when did Congress authorize or oversee operations in Africa which would put "boots on the ground" in potential live combat zones? What is the ultimate purpose in our being in Africa? Were the tragic deaths, and subsequent sufferings of their families worth whatever nebulous mission they were tasked with? If this was about fighting ISIS in Africa, how did ISIS establish a presence in Africa to begin with? (hint: it could have something to do with US-driven regime change wars in Iraq, Libya, and Syria).
But as has been the case with all administrations going back to 9/11, the moment the White House and congressional leaders invoke those magical letters, AUMF (the 16-year old authorization for use of military force), the media quickly falls in line, in spite of the fact that the War Powers Resolution (WPR) was designed to prevent the president from unilaterally placing US troops in harm's way (though because it's Trump, and not Obama, even CNN will publish the occasional and rare anti-war op-ed).
'Shadow Wars' become overt wars: Regime change begets terrorism begets more regime change ad absurdum.Meanwhile on the "serious" network talk shows with "expert" panels, such inconvenient big picture questions are never dealt with, not even as the Pentagon absurdly offers the rationale of military expansion in Africa as key to a "global strategy" as ISIS is a "global threat" – or so we are told. AFRICOM (US Africa Command) defines its mission as to defeat “transnational threats in order to advance U.S. national interests and promote regional security, stability, and prosperity.”
So if we are now in the business of defeating all potential threats labelled "transnational" then of course a large-scale military presence can be justified just about anywhere, no questions asked (akin to Dick Cheney's notorious "one percent doctrine": if there was even “a one percent chance” that a threat was real “we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.”) Indeed, at the very moment the Islamic State is in rapid retreat and is on the verge of collapsing in Iraq and Syria, the mantra is now once again (conveniently) ISIS! ISIS! EVERYWHERE! …And now especially on a whole new continent: Africa.
The below map has been around for a while, but its creators assure us it was approved by "respected counter-terrorism experts"…
Map source: The Daily MailSenator Lindsey Graham, of course, loves such jingoistic talk. He told Meet the Press over the weekend that "he had no idea" there were 1000 troops in Niger, and it then took him less than a minute to invoke 9/11 and the AUMF (predictably) to say "the war [on terror] is going to places we haven't heard of before" – after which he literally described it as "endless". But for Graham and other hawks, however, this presents yet another opportunity for US military expansion, including ever-swelling defense budgets, and more "projection" of US power abroad. Though the US now has troops in 53 out of 54 countries, Graham was elated at the idea that the US military was fighting "radical Islamic extremism" in Niger and throughout Africa.
Sen. Graham said further, "If you don't think it's a generational struggle, you don't understand the war. If you think it's limited to the Mid East, you don't understand the theology. It is spreading throughout the world," and added, "Particularly Africa." Of course, Graham – with his chicken-hawk non-existent war record understands neither war nor Africa: this is simply the classic Graham-McCain-neocon recipe for being everywhere, all the time.
And keep in mind this was his reaction upon discovering there were troops in Niger in the first place after learning of the deaths of four young soldiers. Senator Rand Paul responded best when he said on Monday, "You know you are in too many wars in too many places when even warmonger Lindsay Graham can’t keep track anymore."
You know you are in too many wars in too many places when even warmonger Lindsay Graham can’t keep track anymore
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 23, 2017
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But the big question ignored in mainstream media is this: Is the United States in the midst of a new military "scramble for Africa"?
Below are astounding statistics and figures excerpted from veteran Pentagon and Africa researcher and journalist Nick Turse's new investigation into the Pentagon's presence in Africa titled appropriately, The war you've never heard of:
- U.S. troops are now conducting 3,500 exercises, programs, and engagements per year, an average of nearly 10 missions per day, on the African continent, according to the U.S. military’s top commander for Africa, General Thomas Waldhauser.
- Secretary of Defense James Mattis reportedly indicated to two senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee Friday that these numbers are only likely to increase as the U.S. military shifts even greater attention to counterterrorism in Africa.
- When U.S. Africa Command first became operational in 2008, it inherited 172 missions, activities, programs, and exercises from other combatant commands. Five years in, that number shot up to 546.
- Today’s figure of 3,500 marks an astounding 1,900 percent increase since the command was activated less than a decade ago, and suggests a major expansion of U.S. military activities on the African continent.
- These developments stand in stark contrast to early assurances that AFRICOM’s efforts would be focused on diplomacy and aid.
*****
- But despite a claimed "diplomacy and aid" presence, AFRICOM has launched 500 airstrikes in Libya in the last year alone, and U.S. forces have regularly carried out drone attacks and commando raids in Somalia.
- In May, for example, a Navy SEAL was killed by al Shabaab militants in Somalia while “assisting partner forces,” according to AFRICOM. Earlier this month, four Special Forces soldiers were killed in an ambush while providing “advice and assistance” to local forces in Niger.
- U.S. troop deaths or scandals are frequently the only mechanism by which Americans come to know about military deployments to African nations like Niger.
- Every day, 5,000 to 6,000 U.S. personnel are deployed across the African continent.
- These near-constant training exercises, missions, and activities with troops from Benin and Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Chad, Gabon and Guinea Bissau, not to mention Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, the Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Togo and Uganda, among other nations, remain largely unknown to most Americans.
*****
- The number of African troops trained by U.S. military personnel jumped 89 percent… from 22,825 trained in 2014 to at least 42,815 individuals a year later.
- This month, Donald Yamamoto, the acting assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the Trump administration’s proposed $5.2 billion African aid budget would address “key priorities” such as “assist[ing] partner nations to defeat ISIS branches and affiliates and other terrorist organization threats and networks in Mali and the Sahel, Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin, Somalia and the Horn of Africa, and elsewhere.”
- Experts warn that further militarizing African countries which have "inadequate civilian control of the military” will result in absurdities such as… in 2012, for example, a U.S.-trained Army captain, Amadou Sanogo, overthrew Mali’s elected government. Two years later, Lt. Col. Isaac Zida, another U.S.-trained officer, seized power in Burkina Faso.
*****
- Six years ago, a deputy commanding general for U.S. Army Special Operations Command gave a conservative estimate of 116 missions being carried out at any one time by Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other special operations forces across the globe.
- Today, according to U.S. military documents… special operators are carrying out nearly 100 missions at any given time — in Africa alone. It’s the latest sign of the military’s quiet but ever-expanding presence on the continent, one that represents the most dramatic growth in the deployment of America’s elite troops to any region of the globe.
- In 2006, just 1 percent of all U.S. commandos deployed overseas were in Africa. In 2010, it was 3 percent. By 2016, that number had jumped to more than 17 percent.
- Postcard From A Brave New World Order
Dear Mustafa,
I arrived in Karachi at 5.30am this morning on the direct PIA flight from Heathrow. The city of 26 million people had not yet woken up and I made it to the Sind Club in under 20 minutes. But as I write this now I can hear the horn-filled throb of city life on all four sides of the Club walls; this city pulsates with growth.
If you click on the map I attach here you will see one of the main reasons – the Chinese Economic Corridors – otherwise know as ‘One Belt…One Road’. Pakistan lies directly on one of these routes, but look at this map carefully as it will change our world and world order, wherever we live.
Lets look a some facts on ‘One Belt…One Road’:
- It connects 65 countries and 4.4 billion people.
- In 2016 Chinese companies signed 8,158 contracts in 61 countries worth $150b.
- In 2016 China’s trade with the One Belt…One Road countries reached $953b.
Over the next 10 years China will spend $2 trillion on ‘One Belt…One Road’ infrastructure, and, more amazingly, they are not asking the investee countries and corporates to pay it back; 80% of the money spent will be a perpetual bond, with only the interest needed to be paid. The principal is never returned.
What is also very clear from the map is that China has no interest in controlling the seas. In fact they have taken a conscious decision to bypass the seas, to bypass the 7th, 8th and 9th US fleets that currently ring the Eurasian landmass. The US navy can sail the oceans to their heart’s content, the action is now on land. And to that end the first test train from China arrived directly in London in July this year; it took 20 days less than by sea. This is all pretty revolutionary stuff.
China is attempting ‘the project of the century.’
And as I am served a cool lemonade at the Club, a final remnant of the British empire, it is another empire – the American empire – that may be taking its last few sips of leadership.
See you in London next week.
Chris
- Rental Insecurity: Survey Finds 1 In 5 American Renters Missed A Payment In Past 3 Months
A new survey conducted by ApartmentList.com recently found that Americans, despite historically low unemployment levels and surging stock indices which would both seem to suggest that ‘everything is awesome’, are having a very difficult time making ends meet. Per the survey, some 20% of renters admit they were unable to make their monthly payments on time at least once over the preceding three months with the results being even worse among minorities and those lacking a college degree.
- Analyzing data from Apartment List users, we find that nearly one in five renters were unable to pay their rent in full for at least one of the past three months. We estimate that 3.7 million American renters have experienced an eviction.
- Evictions disproportionately impact the most vulnerable members of our society. Renters without a college education are more than twice as likely to face eviction as those with a four-year degree.
- Additionally, we find that black households face the highest rates of eviction, even when controlling for education and income. Perhaps most troublingly, households with children are twice as likely to face an eviction threat, regardless of marital status.
- The impacts of eviction are severe and long-lasting. Evictions are a leading cause of homelessness, and research has tied eviction to poor health outcomes in both adults and children. These effects are persistent, and experiencing an eviction makes it difficult to get back on one’s feet.
- Performing a metro-level analysis, we find that evictions are most common in metros hit hard by the foreclosure crisis and in those experiencing high rates of poverty. Perhaps counterintuitively, expensive coastal metros have comparatively low rates of eviction, in part because strong job markets with high median wages offset expensive rents in those areas.
As ApartmentList notes, some 3.7 million Americans, of roughly 118 million total renters, have experienced an eviction at some point in their life. Meanwhile, “rent insecurity” is even more prevalent with nearly 30% of folks making less than $30,000 per year saying they have difficultly making monthly rent payments.
3.7 million Americans have experienced eviction, with rental insecurity affecting nearly one in five.
Our Apartment List estimates show that 3.3 percent of renters have experienced an eviction at some point in the past, and 2.4 percent were evicted from their most recent residence. With an estimated 118 million renters in the U.S. today, we estimate that 3.7 million Americans have been affected by eviction at some point. If we assume that some share respondents fail to report informal evictions, this estimate is most likely understated.
While experiencing eviction is a worst-case scenario with dire effects, a much larger share of renters still struggle with some form of rental insecurity. Our analysis shows that 18 percent of respondents had difficulty paying all or part of their rent within the past three months. The issue is particularly acute for low-income renters, 27.5 percent of whom were recently unable to pay their full rent.
Renters with just a high school diploma are more than three times as likely to have faced an eviction threat in the past year than those with a Bachelor’s degree.
Of those who did not attend college, 4.1 percent cited an eviction as the reason for their last move, compared to just 1.9 percent of those with at least some college education. This trend points to a broader issue of the housing market leaving behind less educated Americans. A recent Apartment List study showed that the gap in homeownership rates between high school and college graduates widened from 1.6 percent in 1980 to 14.9 percent in 2015.
A similar trend holds when broken down by income. Of those earning less than $30,000 per year, 11 percent faced an eviction threat in the past year, and 3.4 percent were evicted from their previous residence. In contrast, for those earning more than $60,000 per year, these figures are 3.1 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively.
Meanwhile, households with children were found to be twice as likely to face an eviction threat, regardless of marital status.
Single parent households are at the highest risk, with 30.1 percent reporting difficulty paying rent within the past three months. However, married couples with children do not fare much better, with 27.2 percent struggling to pay rent. For those without children, the rates are 14.7 percent for single respondents and 13.3 percent of married respondents. Our findings are consistent with previous research showing that, among tenants who appear in eviction court, those with children are significantly more likely to be evicted.
This result points to the fact the child care represents an essential but often overwhelming expense for many families, even those with both parents in the house. Analysis from Care.com shows that average daycare costs for toddlers range from $8,043 to $18,815 per year. Furthermore, one-third of families surveyed reported that childcare costs take up 20 percent or more of their household income.
Not surprisingly, evictions were found to be most prevalent in metro areas where poverty rates are the highest.
Of the 50 largest metros in the nation, evictions are most prevalent in Memphis, with 6.1 percent of users reporting a prior eviction. Most of the metros with the highest eviction rates are located in the South and Midwest and include Atlanta, Indianapolis and Dallas. We find that the factors most strongly correlated with eviction rates include (1) the rate of foreclosures from 2007 to 2008, during the height of the foreclosure crisis, and (2) current poverty rates.
Memphis, for example, has the highest share of its population living in poverty at 19.4 percent, and it also has the highest eviction rate. In metros with high poverty rates, many households may qualify for assistance through programs such as Section 8, but, unfortunately, only a small share of those eligible for such benefits actually receive them, leaving the majority of low-income households struggling to pay rent.
Las Vegas had the second highest foreclosure rate from 2007 to 2008 at 9.2 percent and now has the sixth-highest eviction rate at 5.5 percent. This correlation suggests that many of the areas hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis have had a difficult time recovering. Despite lower housing costs, renters in these areas — some of whom are likely former owners who had their homes foreclosed upon — face a lack of opportunity that makes it difficult for them to pay their rent.
Of course, with rental rates steadily climbing since the great recession, in spite of stagnant wages, it’s hardly surprising that Yellen’s “recovery” hasn’t helped all Americans equally.
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