Sep 30

Today’s News 30th September 2018

  • Paul Craig Roberts: Where Does Our Attention Belong – Kavanaugh Or Yemen?

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    There are reports that the Washington-initiated and militarily-supported Saudi Arabian war against Yemen have a starving Yemeni population eating leaves.

    The Saudis, with Washington’s GPS support, continue to target school buses, massacring children as an element of the terror assault against the population, trying to break Yemeni resistance by murdering children on school buses. Washington continues to supply the Saudis with the weapons to target school buses and the diplomatic support to protect the criminal Saudi regime from war crimes charges.

    The European cowards turn their heads. Even Russia is silent. Putin’s “partnership” with the criminal state of Saudi Arabia is more important.

    Isn’t this a far greater offense, an offense that most definitely does not lack evidence, than the accusation that Kavanaugh, a nominee to the US Supreme Court attempted to rape a women 30 or 40 years ago, for which there is no evidence, only accusation, an accusation that the female defense attorney who questioned for the Senate committee the woman claiming abuse found insufficient for an indictment. 

    Of course, this report could be fake news. As in America fake news has taken over from truthful news, we have no way of knowing. All we can conclude is that America has again made a world-wide fool of herself. Thanks to the Identity Politics of the Clinton-corrupt Democratic Party, in the eyes of the world America has assembled a Supreme Court of serial sexual abusers. Makes one wonder why it is so important to the Russian government that Russia joins the West.

    If Kavanaugh attempted to rape someone, why didn’t it come up in his previous judgeship appointment or in his other appointments? Is the reason that these appointments were not relevant to Roe vs. Wade? Is all the MeToo and Democratic Party hysteria over fear that Kavanaugh will help a conservative court overturn Roe vs. Wade and force women into more responsible sex?

    I have never understood why women have considered the termination of life to be a Woman’s Issue as if it is some kind of moral cause. However, I am certain that Roe vs. Wade will not be overturned. After all these years, there are squatters’ rights in women’s ability to choose abortion. The right has existed too long for statutory law to override common law.

    Perhaps, instead, the opposition to Kavanaugh is that he is a white heterosexual male, thereby making the time too delayed before the Identity Politics Democrats can load up the Supreme Court with MeToo feminists, transgendered whatever they are, lesbians, homosexuals, and white-hating blacks in order to “bring justice to the white male exploiter.”

    It was left to a Russian publication to ask why CNN published a fifth accuser’s accusation after the accuser had withdrawn the accusation.

    The real question before the American people is why are they, the media, the government, MeToo feminists, the Identity Politics Democrats and liberal-progressive-left, and conservatives stone silent while Washington enables Saudia Arabia to murder the Yemeni people to the point that Yemenis have to eat leaves in a desperate attempt to survive.

    Clearly, the American idiots have no idea whatsoever what a moral issue is.

  • Officials Promise "Dirty Money" Crackdown As Vancouver Housing Market Grinds To A Halt

    Thanks to an influx of demand from Chinese nationals and other foreigners, Vancouver’s housing market soared in the post-crisis years, with prices more than doubling to levels that were clearly unsustainable, cementing the Pacific Northwest metropolis’ status as the most unaffordable housing market in North America. But the torrid growth ground to a halt earlier this year as home sales plummeted, along with construction of new homes and apartments.

    Vancouver

    The typical single-family home in Vancouver costs more than C$1.5 million ($1.15 million) – roughly 20x the median household income.

    In an effort to let some air out of one of the continent’s most egregious property bubbles, British Columbia’s government has announced an unprecedented crackdown on money laundering in Vancouver’s property market in an attempt to stop a housing-market collapse from taking the city’s GDP with it.

    BC

    The initiative, launched by Attorney General Daid Eby, seeks to create more transparency to expose all the “numbered corporations” (often used as fronts for foreign investors) buying property in Vancouver. The probe will also examine horse-racing and luxury car sales. 

    Attorney General David Eby said that his office is launching an independent review into potential money laundering in real estate, horse-racing and luxury car sales. The review comes in response to recommendations from a previous review into money laundering in the province’s casinos. In addition, Finance Minister Carole James has appointed an expert panel to look directly at money laundering in the housing sector. Both probes will be done by March.

    “There is good reason to believe the bulk of the cash we saw in casinos is a fraction of the cash generated through illicit activities that may be circulating in British Columbia’s economy,” Eby told reporters Thursday in the capital of Victoria. “We cannot ignore red flags that came out of the casino reviews of connections between individuals bringing bulk cash to casinos, and our real estate market.”

    […]

    “Our goal is simple, as you’ve heard: Get dirty money out of our housing market,” James said. “When the real estate market is vulnerable to illicit activity and unethical behavior, people, our communities and our economies suffer. This is something we have to tackle.”

    Still, the success of these initiative will be constrained by the fact that they’re only meant to learn the mechanics of how money is laundered via the Vancouver property market, and then make recommendations about how to stop it. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that, by the time anything is actually done, criminals will have changed their strategies or shifted to different markets. Meanwhile, a study by Transparency International found that it’s impossible to identify the owners of nearly half of the most expensive properties in Vancouver.

    However, it’s only a matter of ti me before prices begin their dramatic descent as sellers finally capitulate and drop their ask down to the highest bid.

  • Fragility Of Middle-East Alliances Becomes Ever More Apparent

    Authored by James Dorsey via MidEastSoccer blog,

    Three recent developments lay bare the fragility of Middle Eastern alliances and a rebalancing of their priorities: the Russian-Turkish compromise on an assault on the rebel-held Syrian region of Idlib, thefate of troubled Abu Dhabi airline Ettihad, and battles over reconstruction of Syria.

    These developments highlight the fact that competition among Middle Eastern rivals and ultimate power within the region’s various alliances is increasingly as much economic and commercial as it is military and geopolitical. Battles are fought as much on geopolitical fronts as they are on economic and cultural battlefields such as soccer.

    As a result, the fault lines of various alliances across the greater Middle East, a region that stretches from North Africa to north-western China, are coming to the fore.

    The cracks may be most apparent in the Russian-Turkish-Iranian alliance but lurk in the background of Gulf cooperation with Israel in confronting Iran as well as the unified front put forward by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

    Russia, prevented, at least for now, a rupture with Turkey, by delaying an all-out attack on Idlib despite Iranian advocacy of an offensive. Turkey, already home to three million Syrians, feared that a Syrian-Russian assault, would push hundreds of thousands, if not millions more across its border.

    If Iran was the weakest link in the debate about Idlib, it stands stronger in its coming competition with Russia for the spoils of reconstruction of war-ravaged Syria.

    Similarly, Russia appears to be ambivalent towards a continued Iranian military presence in post-war Syria, a potential flashpoint given Israel’s opposition and Israeli attacks that led earlier this month to the downing of a Russian aircraft.

    By the same token, Turkey, despite its backing of Qatar in its 15-month-old dispute with a Saudi-UAE-led alliance that is boycotting the Gulf state diplomatically and economically, poses perhaps the greatest challenge to Qatari efforts to project itself globally by operating one of the world’s best airlines and positioning itself as a sports hub.

    Turkey, despite its failure this week to win the right to host Euro 2024 and its lack of the Gulf’s financial muscle, competes favourably on every other front with Qatar as well as the UAE that too is seeking to project itself through soft as well as hard power and opposes Mr. Erdogan because of his Islamist leanings, ties to Iran, and support of Qatar. Turkey wins hands down against the small Gulf states when it comes to size, population, location, industrial base, military might, and sports performance.

    That, coupled with a determination to undermine Qatar, was likely one reason, why the UAE’s major carriers, Emirates and Etihad that is troubled by a failed business model, have, despite official denials, been quietly discussing a potential merger that would create the world’s largest airline.

    Countering competition from Turkish Airlines that outflanks both UAE carriers with 309 passenger planes that service 302 destinations in 120 countries may well have been another reason. Emirates, the larger of the two Emirati carriers, has, a fleet of 256 aircraft flying to 150 destinations in 80 countries.

    These recent developments suggest that alliances, particularly the one that groups Russia, Turkey and Iran, are brittle and transactional, geared towards capitalizing on immediate common interests rather than shared long-term goals, let alone values.

    That is true even if Russia and Turkey increasingly find common ground in concepts of Eurasianism. It also applies to Turkey and Qatar who both support Islamist groups as well as to Saudi Arabia and the UAE who closely coordinate policies but see their different goals put on display in Yemen.

    The fragility of the alliances is further underwritten by Turkish, Russian and Iranian aspirations of resurrecting empire in a 21st century mould and a Saudi quest for regional dominance.

    Notions of empire have informed policies long before realignment across Eurasia as a result of the focus of the United States shifting from the Middle East to Asia, the rise of China. increasingly strained relations between the West and Russia, and the greater assertiveness of Middle Eastern states like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran.

    Then president Suleyman Demirel told this author already in the 1990s in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union and the emergence of independent, mostly ethnically Turkic Central Asian republics that “Turkey’s world stretches from the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China.”

    In a world in which globalization is shaped by geopolitical zones rather than individual countries, Russia’s imperative is to be a region by defining itself as an Asian rather than a European power that would be on par with China, the European Union, and a US zone of influence.

    “Putin does not think along national lines. He thinks in terms of larger blocks, and, ultimately in terms of the world order,” said former Portuguese minister for Europe, Bruno Macaes in a recently published book, The Dawn of Eurasia.

    In doing so, Russia is effectively turning its back on Europe as it reinvents itself as an Asian power on the basis of a Eurasianism, a century-old ideology that defines Russia as a Eurasian rather than a European power.

    The Eurasian Economic Union, that groups Russia, Kazakhstan. Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia, is a vehicle that allows Russia to establish itself as a block in the borderland between Europe and Asia.

    Similarly, Eurasianism has gained currency in Turkey with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who enabled by the demise of the Soviet Union and the re-emergence of a Turkic world, projects his country as a crossroads between Europe, Africa and Asia rather than a European bridge to Asia.

    In that vein, Turkish columnist Sinan Baykent projected this week’s fence-mending visit to Germany by Mr. Erdogan and his proposal for a summit on Syria of Turkish, Russian, German and French leaders as a Eurasian approach to problem solving.

    The meeting between Mr. Erdogan and German chancellor Angela Merkel was meant “to pave the way for a Eurasian solution for the region… There is a new axis forming today between Berlin, Moscow, Ankara, Tehran and maybe Paris… All of these countries are fed up with American unilateralism and excessive policies displayed by the Trump administration.,” Mr. Baykent said.

    If Turkey and Russia’s vision of their place in the world is defined to a large extent by geography, Iran’s topology dictates a more inward-looking view despite accusations that it is seeking to establish itself as the Middle East’s hegemon.

    “Iran is a fortress. Surrounded on three sides by mountains and on the fourth by the ocean, with a wasteland at its centre,” noted Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence platform. Gulf fears are rooted not only in deep-seated distrust of Iran’s Islamic regime, but also in the fact that the foundation of past Persian empire relied on control of plains in present-day Iraq.

    As a result, the manoeuvring of Gulf states, in contrast to Turkey and Russia, is driven less by a conceptual framing of their place in the world and more by regional rivalry and regime survival. Countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE walk a fine line focusing geopolitically on an increasingly unpredictable United States and economically on China and the rest of Asia, including Russia, Korea and Japan.

    What the plight of Idlib, potential change in aviation and competition for reconstruction contracts highlight is the brittleness of Middle Eastern alliances that threatens to be reinforced by economics becoming an increasingly important factor alongside geopolitics.

    “Stakes for all parties are starting to divert from each other in Syria and the prospects of cooperation with Russia and Iran are becoming more challenging,” said Turkish columnist Nuray Mert commenting on the situation in Idlib. Her analysis is as valid for Idlib as it for the prospects of many of the Middle East alliances.

  • Chinese Air Force Holds Live-Fire War Drill In South China Sea Days After US Exercise

    China Central Television, as per the Twitter account of the official People’s Daily newspaper, reported Saturday that the Chinese military deployed fighter jets and bombers to conduct live-fire war drills in the disputed South China Sea, just days after the Japan Air Self-Defense Force and nuclear-capable US B-52 strategic bombers held exercises over the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan on September 27.

    The report said dozens of jet fighters from the People’s Liberation Army Naval Air Force from the Southern Theater Command on early Saturday conducted “live-fire drills to tests pilots’ assault, penetration and precision-strike capabilities at sea,” said The Japan Times.

    Beijing on Thursday blasted the US and Japan exercise over the East China Sea, calling them a “provocation.”

    “China’s principle and standpoint on the South China Sea are always clear,” Defense Ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang said, according to Chinese state-run media. “China firmly opposes U.S. military aircraft’s provocation in the South China Sea, and will take all necessary measures.”

    Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun News said the joint drills between the US and Japan were highly “unusual,” as what we pointed out last week, a China-Japan maritime crisis is inevitable over the disputed Senkaku Islands.

    It seems that Thursday’s move was aimed at keeping China in check amid increasing tensions between Beijing and Washington, including an intensifying trade war. 

    But in a tit-for-tat effort, China hit back with war drills of their own on Saturday.

    Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang criticized unnamed countries (US, United Kingdom, and France) for using freedom of navigation and overflight as excuses to disrupt other countries’ sovereignty and security, disturbing regional peace and stability.

    In August, US bombers conducted similar exercises over the South China Sea. In addition to those exercises, the warplanes integrated with the Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture-based Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group in the region.

    In June, China’s Foreign Ministry said no military in the world could scare China from the South China Sea when the US flew planes in the heavily disputed waters miles from its militarized islands.

    Washington and Beijing have unleashed a series of war drills over the militarization of the South China Sea, where China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines all have active claims.

    Washington and Beijing have yet to clash over the region — the area includes critical shipping lanes through which over $3 trillion in global trade passes each year — and where China has constructed a series of militarized islands. China claims the area with its so-called nine-dash line, which encompasses most of the economic zones. 

    At a moments notice, the region could become unstable and war break out. All eyes on the East Asian maritime region.

  • Elizabeth Warren Hints At 2020 Presidential Run

    Pocahontas is almost ready to make it official.

    Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Saturday during a town hall meeting that she would consider a run for the Democratic nomination in 2020 once the midterms are over.

    “After Nov. 6, I will take a hard look at running for president,” Warren told the crowd in Holyoke, Mass., provoking uproarious applause.

    During the meeting, the Democrat shared her views on President Trump’s agenda and the state of the country in the Trump era, while also weighing in on the controversy surrounding Trump’s SCOTUS pick, Brett Kavanaugh and the allegations of sexual misconduct that have forced the postponement of his confirmation vote pending the outcome of a limited FBI background-check probe, as USA Today reported.

    “I watched powerful men helping a powerful man make it to an even more powerful position,” Warren said, according to the newspaper. “And I thought, ‘Times up'”. “It’s time for women to go to Washington and fix our broken government and that includes a woman at the top.”

    After she declared what was essentially a soft declaration of her 2020 campaign, the crowd responded with a standing ovation, as video of the event showed.

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    Previously, Warren had stayed quiet on her 2020 plans, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” back in March that she wanted to focus on her current job, and denied wanting to run (though her name has consistently been ranked among the likely contenders for the Democratic nom in what remains a wide-open field).

    “I am in this fight to retain my Senate seat in 2018. That’s where I’m focused. That’s where I’m going to stay focused,” Warren told MTP. “I’m not running for president.”

    However, Warren refused to “pledge” to serve out her full six-year term.

    Watch the video below:

    According to RealClearPolitics, Warren, who will be defending her seat in 2018, currently boasts a double-digit lead over her Republican challenger, Beth Lindstrom.

    Warren

    The Boston Globe pointed out that Warren has been campaigning for Democrats in battleground states and making other moves that could presage a presidential run. According to federal filings, she has $15.6 million in her campaign war chest.

    Meanwhile, at a rally in West Virginia, President Trump urged the crowd to vote for Republicans on Nov. 6, saying Warren is “conservative” compared with the new base of the Democratic Party.

    “They’ve gone crazy. They’ve gone loco.”

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  • CNN Founder Ted Turner: Network "Sticking With Politics A Little Too Much"

    In a rare interview on CBS Sunday Morning with CNN founder Ted Turner, the billionaire and former media mogul said his former network now focuses “too much” on politics, and that he wishes the company would strive for more “balanced” programming between politics and other news.

    Turner told veteran anchor Ted Koppel that he rarely follows the news, and only watches his former news channel occasionally.

    Echoing many complaints that CNN has become a left-wing echo chamber with a clear political bias and agenda, Turner told Koppel that “I think they’re sticking with politics a little too much. They’d do better to have a more balanced agenda. But that’s, you know, just one person’s opinion.”

    Turner left Time Warner, the company that owns CNN, in 2006 after the company bought the cable network 10 years earlier. Turner launched CNN in 1980, and grew it to become a global news network viewed in hundreds of countries.

    In the interview that is set to air on Sunday, the 79-year-old Turner also  said he’s suffering from Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disease similar in effects to Alzheimers and which leaves him tired and forgetful.

    “It’s a mild case of what people have as Alzheimer’s,” Turner told Ted Koppel in an interview due to air on CBS. “It’s similar to that. But not nearly as bad. Alzheimer’s is fatal.”

    Turner, who was interviewed on his 113,000-acre ranch near Bozeman, Montana, told Koppel that symptoms previously blamed on manic depression were in fact caused by Lewy body dementia. The late comic Robin Williams also is believed to have suffered from the disease.

    He also discussed his past deliberations about running for president, which he said occurred during his marriage to then-wife Jane Fonda: “Well, the closest I came to running for office was when I was married to Jane Fonda. And when I discussed it with her – she was married to one politician,” Turner says in the interview. “And she said, you know, ‘If you run for, for office, you run alone.'”

     

     

     

  • One Step Closer To Recession, And Jay Powell's Looming Whiplash

    Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

    As you know by now, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates again this week, its eighth increase since the rate hike cycle began in 2015.

    In his post-announcement press conference, Jerome Powell cited a strong economy, low unemployment, solid growth, etc. He said that “It’s a particularly bright moment” for the economy.

    Barring significant developments, the Fed may raise rates again in December and perhaps three times next year.

    Meanwhile, the Commerce Department announced that second quarter U.S. GDP expanded at a 4.2% annualized rate, confirming the earlier estimate.

    On the surface it might look everything is great, that it is a particularly bright moment for the economy. But if you take a hard look behind the numbers, a different picture emerges.

    A lot of the cheerleaders say Trump’s programs of tax cuts and deregulation will produce persistent trend growth of 3–4% or higher.

    Such growth would break decisively with the weak growth of the Obama years. It would also make the U.S. debt burden, currently at 105% of GDP, more sustainable if GDP were to grow faster than the national debt.

    There’s one problem with the happy talk about 3–4% growth. We’ve seen it all before.

    • In 2009, almost every economic forecaster and commentator was talking about “green shoots.”

    • In 2010, then-Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner forecast the “recovery summer.”

    • In 2017, the global monetary elites were praising the arrival (at last) of “synchronized global growth.”

    None of this wishful thinking panned out. The green shoots turned brown, the recovery summer never came and the synchronized global growth was over almost as soon as it began.

    Any signs of trend growth have been strictly temporary (basically moving growth from one quarter to another through inventory and accounting quirks) and are quickly followed by weaker growth. In the first quarter of 2015, growth was 3.2%, but by the fourth quarter that year growth had fallen to a near-recession level of 0.5%.

    In the third quarter of 2016 growth was 2.8%, but it fell quickly to 1.2% by the first quarter of 2017. In the third quarter of 2017 growth was 3.2% but then returned to 2.0% by the first quarter of 2018, about the average for the past nine years.

    This pattern of temporarily strong growth followed by weak growth has been characteristic of the entire recovery that began in June 2009 and entered its 10th year a few months ago. In fact, we’ve seen even more extreme reversals in the recent past.

    In the third quarter of 2013, growth was 4.5%. But by the first quarter of 2014, just six months later, growth was actually negative, -2.1%, comparable to some of the worst quarters in recent recessions.

    Growth was 5.0% in the third quarter of 2014, but then fell off a cliff and was barely positive, 0.2%, in the first quarter of 2015.

    You get the point. Strong quarters have been followed by much weaker quarters within six months on six separate occasions in the past nine years. There’s no reason to believe this trend will end now.

    The longer-term view of the entire recovery is more revealing. The recovery is currently 109 months old, the second-longest since the end of the Second World War. The average recovery since 1980 (a period of longer-than-average expansions) is 83 months.

    So this expansion has been extraordinarily long — far longer than average — indicating that a recession should be expected sooner rather than later.

    But the current expansion has also been the weakest recovery on record. Average annual growth during this expansion is 2.14%, compared with average annual growth for all expansions since 1980 of 3.21%. That 3.21% figure is what economists mean by “trend” growth.

    Even with the latest GDP numbers, the current expansion does not even come close to that trend. The “wealth gap” (the difference between 3.2% trend growth and 2.1% actual growth) is now over $4 trillion. That’s how much poorer the U.S. economy is due to its inability to achieve sustainable trend growth.

    As for the Trump bump, growth in the first quarter of 2018 was 2.0%, slightly below the average since June 2009. Growth for all of 2017, Trump’s first year in office, was 2.6%, slightly above the 2.14% average in this recovery but not close to the 3.5% growth proclaimed by Trump’s supporters.

    In short, growth under Trump looks a lot like growth under Obama, with no reason to expect that to change anytime soon. In fact, the head winds caused by the strong dollar, the trade wars and out-of-control deficit spending may slow the economy and bring future growth down below the average of the Obama years.

    I’ve said repeatedly that the Fed is tightening into weakness. But it’s more than the rate hikes. The Fed is also winding down its balance sheet, and the pace is scheduled to accelerate next year.

    Far from printing money, the Fed is destroying base money at a rapid pace. The Fed is basically burning money. They’re doing this by not rolling over maturing Treasury and mortgage securities they hold on their balance sheet. That’s a “double whammy” of tightening.

    When a security held by the Fed matures and the issuer pays it off, the money sent to the Fed just disappears. It’s called quantitative tightening, or QT.

    When the Fed started QT in late 2017, they urged market participants to ignore it. They said the QT plan was on autopilot, the Fed was not going to use it as an instrument of policy and the money burning would “run on background” just like a computer program that’s open but not in use at the moment.

    It’s fine for the Fed to say that, but markets have another view. Analysts estimate that QT is the equivalent of two–four rate hikes per year over and above the explicit rate hikes.

    Bearing in mind that monetary policy works with a 12–18-month lag, this extraordinary tightening policy in a weak economy is almost certainly a recipe for a recession.

    And expected results are beginning to show up in the markets. Mortgage interest rates are up, mortgage refis are sinking like a stone and housing affordability is suffering.

    This will eventually result in fewer new home purchases, slower household formation and a weakening economy. The Fed will have to reverse course and cut rates, or at least “pause” in raising rates much sooner than they think.

    The Fed knows a recession will happen sooner rather than later and is desperate to acquire some dry powder (in the form of higher rates and a reduced balance sheet) so it can use it when the time comes.

    The problem, of course, is that by pursuing these policies, the Fed will cause the recession it is preparing to cure.

    The single most important factor in my analysis is that when the Fed realizes its mistake of tightening into economic weakness, it will have to turn on a dime and shift to an easing policy.

    Easing will come first through forward guidance and pauses in the rate hike tempo, then possibly actual rate cuts back to zero and finally reversing their balance sheet reductions by expanding the balance sheet through QE4 if needed.

    Jay Powell seems determined to continue rate hikes on an aggressive path and possibly to accelerate the hikes. But he might be in for a severe case of whiplash when he has to make a hard pivot to easing.

    But by then, the damage will have been done.

  • UT Professor's Laptop Plays Porn In Front Of Packed Lecture Hall With 500 Students

    A professor at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough Campus accidentally played a porno to a lecture hall filled with approximately 500 students last week, according to multiple reports. 

    On September 24, a video surfaced that appears to show UTSC psychology professor Steve Joordens playing a pornographic video on the projector screen by accident.

    The incident, which apparently took place at the start of the lecture, was recorded by one of the students in the class via a Snapchat video and subsequently posted onto Reddit, where, along with many memes made about the event, it instantly went viral.

    …

    The class, which was reportedly PSYA01: Introduction to Biological and Cognitive Psychology, had about 500 students in the lecture hall. As seen in the video posted by the student, many students in the class were laughing, though others could be seen walking out of the room.

    …

    “When I saw the [pornographic] video, I was surprised,” the original poster, a first-year student studying Philosophy, wrote. –The Varsity

    “I was not expecting that especially this early in the morning… I found the whole situation funny and he made a lot of people laugh,” said the student. 

    Professor Steve Joordens – who joined UTSC in 1995, responded to the incident – telling The Varsity: “With respect to the event that happened prior to my class on Monday the 24th, I want to be clear that what happened was completely unintentional and I feel absolutely terrible about it,” adding “I have apologized to my class and now I want to move on. Thanks to my students, colleagues and my amazing family for their support and understanding.”

    Surprisingly, the professor didn’t cancel the lecture or really do anything apart from taking the video down and, according to students, said “well that was awkward” and resumed teaching. At face value, it seemed that was the end of the story. Though many students are convinced it’s actually a part of something bigger. –Narcity

    “Everyone makes mistakes so I can’t blame him,” said the student who posted the video. “I hope nothing bad happens in the future and this can just be a thing to laugh about, I hope his job isn’t affected or anything in his personal life either.”

    That said, not everybody think the porn was an accident… 

    One Reddit user who claims they were a student of the professor’s back in 2008 believes the whole thing was staged. This is because a similar odd instance had happened in their own class with the professor, that had been part of a skit meant to enhance the lesson that was being taught that day: 

    Surprisingly enough, it turns out that using pornography as lecture material isn’t a foreign concept. It’s actually been used as educational material in Psychology, Sociology, Gender Studies and sexuality-based courses. But, when you start including that kind of media in your lecture, it is common practice to give students the option not to participate. –Narcity

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  • Your Semi-Annual Golden Week Reminder…"They Are Really Pushing It"

    Authored by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners,

    It’s that time of year. September, the leaves start to turn and the air grows crisp. Autumn smells arrive; the Chinese prepare for their nationalist Golden Week. Ever since 2014 and the dollar’s rise, that is, eurodollar tightening especially in Asia, these holiday bottlenecks are never boring. To be shut down for an entire week in early October, the banking system in China builds up a liquidity stockpile in September.

    There were actually three Golden Weeks up until 2007. The middle one, surrounding Communists’ infatuation with May Day, was quietly dismissed on the recommendation of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). These long holiday breaks were being viewed as disruptive to economic flow.

    In September 1999, the State Council devised the original Golden Week holiday system as a way to standardize vacation time (Communists’ infatuation with sameness, which is very different from equality). It was also intended to boost tourism and economic activity. Economists are the same whether Communist or Western; they all think they can increase spending by changing the most arbitrary factors.

    The biggest factor in the December 2007 elimination of the third week was obvious interruption. Cai Jiming, the project leader for the CPPCC in 2007, told government officials that (translated):

    There are data showing that since the implementation of the Golden Week Vacation system, the pulling effect on consumption has not been great, but it has brought a series of negative effects, such as increasing short-term costs for businesses, declining service quality, and increasing government public management costs.

    China’s National Tourism Administration agreed, so on December 16, 2007, the Chinese Central Government announced a revised Regulation on Public Holidays for National Annual Festivals and Memorial Days. There would now be just the pair in China, two economic disturbances better than three.

    The banking system felt them as much as the real economy, but adjusted well enough. When money was plentiful, no big deal. But as things have really tightened the last four years, the Golden Weeks have become eventful. China’s weeklong New Year every January has tended to be the greater of the two, but October’s celebration of the Communist takeover has contributed its share of interesting behaviors.

    These haven’t been limited to mainland China. Tightening and volatility ahead of the October festival has been witnessed in Hong Kong, too. It’s one of the most obvious changes to the interconnection between CNY and eurodollars.

    September 2018 has taken it one step further still.

    The overnight HIBOR rate, the cost of borrowing Hong Kong dollars unsecured by collateral, spiked higher nearly two weeks ago – right on schedule. On September 13, it was almost 2% and remained at that elevated level through yesterday. Today, the overnight rate fixed at nearly double that, 3.85%.

    The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the city’s currency board, which has acted as a de facto central bank this year given what’s happened with HKD, refused to comment publicly. They would only note privately, in emails obtained by several local media outlets, that “market participants” were watching “elevated interbank rates.”

    They would have to given what’s happened to the currency:

    A reverse from the bottom range of the allowed band should be a welcome sign to Hong Kong’s beleaguered monetary officials. The HKMA has really struggled this year in ways it wasn’t expecting.

    But a surge all at once isn’t what anyone in Hong Kong wants to see. Volatility is always and everywhere the real killer for anything in the banking system. It doesn’t discriminate. Risk perceptions were already challenged by HKD’s sharp decline earlier this year.

    As a technical matter, the dearth of liquidity in the city has apparently brought a rush of funds into the area to take advantage of the surge in rates – HIBOR though unsecured being viewed universally as still at least a low risk if not as before completely risk-free. Near 7.85, sure. But all the way to 7.80?

    The real question is where those funds are coming from. There haven’t been any similar moves in any major currency partners, especially CNY. The closest thing has been the euro’s rebound, though it began back in mid-August (with CNY’s stabilizing).

    Instead, we are left to suspect China’s latest approaching Golden Week. Banks in the hoarding stage can only become more desperate if hoarding is hard to accomplish.

    These holidays have always been disruptive, but the last few years they are really pushing it.

    “They.”

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