May 03

Today’s News 3rd May 2018

  • Germans Pay The Highest Income Tax

    Last week, the OECD released the latest edition of its “Taxing Wages” report which focuses on the net personal average tax rate in different nations.

    As Statista’s Niall McCarthy points out, it takes into account income tax and social security contributions paid by employees without family benefits as a share of gross wages.

    Last year, the average share of gross wages paid in tax across the OECD was 25.5 percent. There is a considerable difference in tax rates between countries and they are heavily dependent on earnings and family status…

    Infographic: Where Workers Pay The Highest Income Tax | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    A single worker in Germany will face a high combination of income tax and social security payments that will account for just under 40 percent of his or her gross earnings. Despite that, Germans do get something back such as health insurance, pensions, old-age care and unemployment benefits.

    In Italy, the break down is 21.7 percent for income tax and 9.5 percent for social security, adding up to 31.2 percent in total.

    The U.S. trails with 18.4 percent for income tax and 7.7 percent for social security making for 26.1 percent of gross earnings in total.

  • Eurasia Is Torn Between War & Peace

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    Iran’s top trading partner is China, while Tehran and Moscow have been improving ties as the three countries move closer to cementing a solid alliance…

    Two summits – the cross-border handshake that shook the world between Kim and Moon in Panmunjom and Xi and Modi’s cordial walk by the lake in Wuhan – may have provided the impression Eurasia integration is entering a smoother path.

    Not really. It’s all back to confrontation: predictably the actual, working Iran nuclear deal, known by the ungainly acronym JCPOA, is at the heart of it.

    And faithful to the slowly evolving Eurasia integration roadmap, Russia and China are at the forefront of supporting Iran.

    China is Iran’s top trading partner – especially because of its energy imports. Iran for its part is a major food importer. Russia aims to cover this front.

    Chinese companies are developing massive oil fields in Yadavaran and North Azadegan. China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) took a significant 30% stake in a project to develop South Pars – the largest natural gas field in the world. A $3 billion deal is upgrading Iran’s oil refineries, including a contract between Sinopec and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to expand the decades-old Abadan oil refinery.

    In a notorious trip to Iran right after the signing of the JCPOA in 2015, President Xi Jinping backed up an ambitious plan to increase bilateral trade by over tenfold to US$600 billion in the next decade.

    For Beijing, Iran is an absolutely key hub of the New Silk Roads, or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). A key BRI project is the $2.5 billion, 926 kilometer high-speed railway from Tehran to Mashhad; for that China came up with a $1.6 billion loan – the first foreign-backed project in Iran after the signing of the JCPOA.

    There’s wild chatter in Brussels concerning the impossibility of European banks financing deals in Iran – due to the ferocious, wildly oscillating Washington sanctions obsession. That opened the way for China’s CITIC to come up with up to $15 billion in credit lines.

    The Export-Import Bank of China so far has financed 26 projects in Iran – everything from highway building and mining to steel producing – totaling roughly $8.5 billion in loans. China Export and Credit Insurance Corp – Sinosure – signed a memorandum of understanding to help Chinese companies invest in Iranian projects.

    China’s National Machinery Industry Corp signed an $845 million contract to build a 410km railway in western Iran connecting Tehran, Hamedan and Sanandaj. And insistent rumors persist that China in the long run may even replace cash-strapped India in developing the strategic port of Chabahar on the Arabian Sea – the proposed starting point of India’s mini-Silk Road to Afghanistan, bypassing Pakistan.

    So amid the business blitz, Beijing is not exactly thrilled with the US Department of Justice setting its sights on Huawei, essentially because of hefty sales of value-for-money smart phones in the Iranian market.

    Have Sukhoi will travel

    Russia mirrors, and more than matches, the Chinese business offensive in Iran.

    With snail pace progress when it comes to buying American or European passenger jets, Aseman Airlines decided to buy 20 Sukhoi SuperJet 100s while Iran Air Tours – a subsidiary of Iran Air –  has also ordered another 20. The deals, worth more than $2 billion, were clinched at the 2018 Eurasia Airshow at Antalya International Airport in Turkey last week, supervised by Russia’s deputy minister of industry and trade Oleg Bocharov.

    Both Iran and Russia are fighting US sanctions. Despite historical frictions, Iran and Russia are getting closer and closer. Tehran provides crucial strategic depth to Moscow’s Southwest Asia presence. And Moscow unequivocally supports the JCPOA. Moscow-Tehran is heading the same way of the strategic partnership in all but name between Moscow and Beijing.

    According to Russian energy minister Alexander Novak, the 2014  Moscow-Tehran oil-for-goods deal, bypassing the US dollar, is finally in effect, with Russia initially buying 100,000 barrels of Iranian crude a day.

    Russia and Iran are closely coordinating their energy policy. They have signed six agreements to collaborate on strategic energy deals worth up to $30 billion. According to President Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov, Russian investment in developing Iran’s oil and gas fields could reach more than $50 billion.

    Iran will become a formal member of the Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) before the end of the year. And with solid Russian backing, Iran will be accepted as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) by 2019.

    Iran is guilty because we say so

    Now compare it with the Trump administration’s Iran policy.

    Barely certified as the new US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo’s first foreign trip – to Saudi Arabia and Israel – amounts in practice to briefing both allies on the imminent Trump withdrawal of the JCPOA on May 12. Subsequently, this will imply a heavy new batch of US sanctions.

    Riyadh – via Beltway darling Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, (MBS) – will be all in on the anti-Iran front. In parallel, the Trump administration may demand it, but MBS won’t relinquish the failed blockade of Qatar or the humanitarian disaster that is the war on Yemen.

    What’s certain is there won’t be a concerted Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) front against Iran. Qatar, Oman and Kuwait see it as counterproductive. That leaves only Saudi Arabia and the Emirates plus irrelevant, barely disguised Saudi vassal Bahrain.

    On the European front, French president Emmanuel Macron has stepped up as a sort of unofficial King of Europe, leveraging himself to Trump as the likely enforcer of restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program, as well as dictating Iran to stay out of Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

    Macron has made a direct – and patently absurd – connection between Tehran abandoning its nuclear enrichment program, including the destruction of uranium stockpiles enriched to less that 20%, and being the guilty party helping Baghdad and Damascus to defeat Daesh and other Salafi-jihadi outfits.

    No wonder Tehran – as well as Moscow and Beijing – is connecting recent, massive US weapons deals with Riyadh as well as MBS’s hefty investments in the West to the Washington-Paris attempt to renegotiate the JCPOA.

    Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has been adamant; the JCPOA  was the product of a strenuous seven-country negotiation over many years: “The question is, will it be possible to repeat such successful work in the current situation?”

    Certainly not

    Thus the suspicion widely floated in Moscow, Beijing and even Brussels that the JCPOA irks Trump because it’s essentially a multilateral, no “America First” deal directly involving the Obama administration.

    The Obama administration’s pivot to Asia – which depended on settling the Iranian nuclear dossier – ended up setting off a formidable, unintended chain of geopolitical events.

    Neocon factions in Washington would never admit to normalized Iranian relations with the West; and yet Iran not only is doing business with Europe but got closer to its Eurasian partners.

    Artificially inflating the North Korea crisis to try to trap Beijing has led to the Kim-Moon summit defusing the “bomb the DPRK” crowd.

    Not to mention that the DPRK, ahead of the Kim-Trump summit, is carefully monitoring what happens to the JCPOA.

    The bottom line is that the Russia-China partnership won’t allow for a JCPOA renegotiation, for a number of serious reasons.

    On the ballistic missile front, Moscow’s priority will be to sell S-300 and S-400 missile systems to Tehran, sanctions-free.

    Russia-China might eventually agree with the JCPOA 10-year sunset provisions to be extended, although they won’t force Tehran to accept it.

    On the Syrian front, Damascus is regarded as an indispensable ally of both Moscow and Beijing. China will invest in the reconstruction of Syria and its revamping as a key Southwest Asia node of the BRI. “Assad must go” is a non-starter; Russia-China see Damascus as essential in the fight against Salafi-jihadis of all stripes who may be tempted to return and wreak havoc in Chechnya and Xinjiang.

    A week ago, at an SCO ministerial meeting, Russia-China issued a joint communiqué supporting the JCPOA. The Trump administration is picking yet another fight against the very pillars of Eurasia integration.

  • Russia Kills Jihadists With Weaponized Robot Ahead Of World Cup

    Dramatic footage has surfaced showing Russian counter-terrorism forces slaying jihadist “sleeper cells” and “underground units” ahead of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. In the past few months, Russian troops have launched numerous counter-terrorism operations in the volatile Islamic region of Dagestan.

    According to the Daily Mail, local police in Derbent, a city in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia, located on the Caspian Sea, alerted government officials about dangerous jihadist “sleeper cells” that were planning to attack the civilian population on May 01, known as a traditional holiday in Russia.

    The violent video shows Russian counter-terrorism forces using heavily armored personnel carriers with tremendous firepower, pounding the building with copper and lead bullets, in the town of Derbent, where the jihadist “sleeper cells” were active.

    Once the terrorist compound caught fire, all of the armored personnel carriers retreated to a safe distance, as a small armed robot was seen approaching the compound to finish off the job.

    The video shows a Russian soldier remotely guiding the killer robot through the compound. Video and audio recordings relayed wirelessly back to the command notebook of the robot reveals the terrorist shouting ‘Allahu Akbar,’ followed by an explosion.

    The Daily Mail reported that the heavily armed robot, mounted with a machine gun, was responsible for killing all eleven jihadis.

    “Guns, bullets, knives, and grenades were discovered at the scene,” according to a statement from the Russian Investigative Committee which investigates terrorism cases. Homemade bombs and other deadly weapons were discovered in the compound before it went up in flames.

    Government officials later released graphic images showing the bullet-ridden bodies of the terrorist killed in the raid –which is too gruesome to show.

    Derbent, where the counter-terrorism operation was carried out, is just 590 miles southeast of Volgograd, where England will play their opening 2018 World Cup qualifying group game this summer.

    Security specialists have warned about “lone jihadi” terror attacks during the upcoming 2018 World Cup starting in June. “Sunni Islamist militants, particularly Russian jihadists returning from conflict zones, are the primary source of concern for Moscow,” according to a report released Tuesday by Jane’s Defence Weekly, the defense and security wing of IHS Markit.

    Jane’s Defence Weekly explains how the jihadists buildup in the disputed Northern Caucasus region, has driven Russia to unleash counter-terrorism operations leading up to the World Cup.

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    According to the Washington-based security consultancy the Soufan Group, Russia is the largest exporter of foreign jihadis by country, ahead of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Tunisia. The data shows an estimated 3,417 Russian nationals had trained and fought with ISIS and 400 had returned home by 2017.

    “Returning Russian jihadists pose a likely terrorism threat to security measures at the 2018 FIFA World Cup, motivated by their opposition to the military involvement of Russia and other World Cup participants in the Middle East, and towards Iran and Saudi Arabia,” said Chris Hawkins, a senior analyst at Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre (JTIC).

    While the Kremlin is expected “to intensify its counter-terrorism operations in the majority Muslim semi-autonomous Caucasus regions of Chechnya and Dagestan,” said CNBC, there is a reason to believe Putin will have his hands full ahead and during the World Cup. Russia’s tourism ministry projects more than one million foreign visitors could flood into Russia for the World Cup, which will be held across eleven cities this summer. What could go wrong?

  • China's Long Game In Korea

    Authored by Retired Colonel Lawrence Selling via The Daily Caller,

    Underlying the current lovefest between North Korea and South Korea with the offer of a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War and a possible denuclearization of the peninsula are prospects more ominous for U.S. Asia-Pacific policy.

    The crux of the issue is the concept of spheres of influence.

    One of the chief causes of the Korea War was the perception by North Korea, China and the Soviet Union that the Korean peninsula was outside the U.S. defense perimeter. The genesis of this perception can be attributed to the January 12, 1950 National Press Club speech given by then Secretary of State Dean Acheson, which defined the U.S. sphere of influence from Japan to the Philippines.

    Based on evidence from Russian archives published by the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars:

    “In the spring of 1950 Stalin’s policy toward Korea took an abrupt turn. During meetings with Kim Il Sung in Moscow in April, Stalin approved Kim’s plan to reunify the country by military means and agreed to provide the necessary supplies and equipment for the operation… Stalin’s purpose was not to test American resolve; on the contrary, he approved the plan only after having been assured that the United States would not intervene.

    Because U.S. troops had been withdrawn from the Korean peninsula in 1949, the reasoning behind the North Korean invasion argued; “it would be a decisive surprise attack and the war would be won in three days” and “the U.S. would not have time to participate.” Retired North Korean brigadier general Chung Sang-chin said the Acheson speech was known and “produced a certain influence on Kim Il Sung.”

    Stalin’s intent was to extend Soviet influence in Asia by supporting its proxy North Korea in a scenario wherein the United States could not provide a timely or effective response, thus avoiding a major confrontation and providing the Soviet Union and its communist allies an easy strategic fait accompli.

    Applying the conclusions in the Wilson Center report to the current situation, where Beijing has replaced Moscow as Pyongyang’s sponsor, the North Koreans retain their own goals for reunification and are not simply puppets. Nevertheless, the Chinese continue their close supervision of North Korea.

    The events now taking place represent the intersection of Chinese and North Korea aims. It is no coincidence that Kim Jong Un, in his first known trip abroad since taking power, made an official visit to China in March, just prior to initiating talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and later possibly attending a summit with President Trump.

    The apparent North Korean about-face occurred after a long period of provocation with the development of missiles capable of hitting the United States mainland and what Kim claimed was a missile-ready hydrogen bomb.

    Perhaps, like Stalin, Chinese President Xi Jinping wishes to avoid direct confrontation with the United States on the Korean peninsula, which could derail a grander strategy.

    Instead, as part of that strategy, China hopes to decouple South Korea from the U.S. militarily by making the withdrawal of American forces a quid pro quo for a peace treaty and denuclearization, thereby, again placing Korea outside the U.S. defense perimeter and extending China’s sphere of influence to the shoreline of Japan.

    The Trump administration should remain wary because the present aura of détente surrounding potential Korean reconciliation is inconsistent with recent Chinese actions in the Asia-Pacific region including: alleged Chinese “subversion, cyber intrusions, and harassment on the high seas” against Australia; increased Chinese military activities in the Taiwan straits; and China’s continued aggressive naval operations in the South China Sea.

    In his written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Admiral Philip Davidson, nominated as the new US Pacific Command chief, said that “China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States” and is “able to extend its influence thousands of miles to the south and project power deep into Oceania.”

    The situation in Korea should not be evaluated in isolation, but considered as part of a larger, long-term Chinese strategy, in which North Korea is a partner and where the U.S. needs to maintain a posture of high vigilance and low expectations.

  • 20,000 Indian Troops Engage In War Drill Near Pakistan Border

    In a massive show of force, more than 20,000 troops of strike formations of the Indian Army’s South Western Command have begun exercise Vijay Prahar in the Mahajan Field Firing Ranges close to the India–Pakistan border, according to the Ministry of Defence, Government of India.

    “Strike formations of the command are going through the exercise in Mahajan area close to Suratgarh in Rajasthan in which over 20,000 troops are participating with fighting equipment for a couple of weeks,” Brigadier Anil Gautam, Brigadier General Staff (Information Warfare), South Western Command said.

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    In the immediate wake of Gagan Shakti war drill, which the Indian Air Force flew over 11,000 sorties between 10 and 22 of April, this exercise represents back-to-back military efforts to “refine jointmanship and maximizing the impact of the joint operations, General Gautam said.

    “The exercise is aimed to orchestrate wide spectrum of threats which are planned to be tackled through high tempo joint air and land operation involving hundreds of aircraft, thousands of tanks and artillery pieces supported by real-time intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and just in time logistic support,” General Gautam noted.

    Moments ago, exclusive footage of Exercise Vijay Prahar has been released for the public viewing:

    Vimal Bhatia, a war reporter for 24-years on the border town of Jaisalme said, “Big Army Excercise Vijay Prahar in Mahajan field firing range, Bikaner Formations of Jaipur based Sapta Shakti Command are carrying out Big ‘EXERCISE VIJAY PRAHAR’ in Mahajan Field Firing Ranges Bikaner.”

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    The month-long exercise, which concludes on May 09, is to “help the troops in bolstering their penetrative maneuvers across obstacle-ridden terrain under a nuclear umbrella,” said Zee News. In other words, the Indian Army could be preparing to invade Pakistan — considering the massive drill is being conducted about 40-miles from the India–Pakistan border.

    As per the report, “the formations are practicing and operationalizing certain innovative concepts of operating in the network-centric environment, integrated employment of modern-day sensors with the weapon platforms, employment of attack helicopters in the air cavalry role and bold offensive of application of the Special Forces,” General Gautam added.

    The chances of war breaking out between India and Pakistan is significantly closer as India launches a massive war drill simulating “penetrative maneuvers across obstacle-ridden terrain.” One glance at the Google Earth map above makes one wonder, is India preparing to invade Pakistan?

  • Syria & Iran Prove There's No Chance For North Korean Peace

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

    There is a saying in geopolitics that peace summits are generally a perfect time to prepare for war. This thinking stems from the military philosophy of Sun Tzu, who believed that when a nation is weak it is important to appear strong, and when a nation is at its most dangerous it is important to appear weak or “diplomatic.” Sun Tzu also often praised the virtues of distraction and sleight of hand, not only in war, but in politics as well.

    I would note that Sun Tzu and the Eastern “sleight of hand” methodology is not only a mainstay of Chinese as well as North Korean thought, but also required reading for Western covert intelligence agencies. It is important to fully understand this methodology when examining the East vs. West paradigm, because almost everything you see and hear when it comes to relations with countries like China and North Korea is theater. Their governments have hidden schemes, our governments have hidden schemes and the globalists manipulating both sides have plans that trump everything else.

    Keep all of this in mind when you hear about the sudden and almost inexplicable announcements of peace summits with North Korea in May or June between Pyongyang and the Trump administration.

    Looking at the scenario purely from the perspective of political motive, it’s difficult to discern why Trump has been so obsessed with North Korea since he first entered office. North Korea has always had nuclear capability as well as the ability to deploy those nukes in one form or another against the U.S. North Korea has also always been involved in further nuclear testing and missile testing. The idea that such testing today is somehow a “violation” of arbitrary international standards and etiquette is absurd. Almost every nation in the world is engaged in military expansion and development.

    Then again, if one only looks at surface rhetoric and policy, it is difficult to discern why the Trump White House is equally obsessed with Syria and the Assad regime. One of the primary driving forces behind the Trump election campaign was the idea that this was a candidate that would break from establishment elites in the tradition of perpetual war. Trump’s criticisms of past presidents and their handling of Iraq and the Middle East was supposed to represent a sea change in American policies of aggression. Instead, his cabinet is now laced with the cancers of neo-conservative warhawks (fake conservatives) and globalist banking proponents.

    The U.S. was supposedly mere months away from completely removing its military presence from Syria. Yet a well timed “chemical attack” on a Damascus suburb, blamed on Assad, gave Trump a perfect rationale for keeping troops in the region as well as escalating the use of force through missile bombardment. The original claim under President Obama was that we were in Syria because of the growing threat of ISIS (a terrorist movement supported by western covert intelligence). Now, the new enemy is the target globalists always intended — the Syrian government itself.

    When I see news of North Korea abruptly embracing peace talks just after meetings with China and not long after wild threats were tossed around of impending nuclear conflict, I wonder about the true nature behind the abnormal shift in rhetoric. When I see Trump suddenly speaking of Kim Jong-un as “very honorable” after months of trading character attacks on social media, I have to wonder when the next false flag event similar to the Damascus farce will take place?

    There are already clear signs that all is not as it seems when it comes to a potential North Korean peace agreement.

    North Korea’s offer to halt nuclear testing in exchange for a truce with the U.S. rings a bit hollow when one realizes Pyongyang’s primary nuclear testing site has recently collapsed in on itself from overuse. Any halt on testing by North Korea is likely temporary as secondary sites are prepared.

    It also should come as no surprise that North Korea is willing to enter into diplomatic talks only months after achieving successful tests on their first ICBMs capable of reaching the eastern seaboard of the US. Again, as Sun Tzu taught, when you are most dangerous it is important to appear weak to your enemies.

    Trump’s newest National Security Adviser and neo-con warmonger, John Bolton, expressed “doubts” in interviews that North Korea will “give up” its nuclear armaments. Bolton and other globalists know full well that North Korea has no intention of disarming, and if this is going to be a prerequisite to any peace agreement then I would expect talks to fall apart before they ever begin.

    During initial talks to engineer “peace” in Syria under the Obama administration, the establishment argument was that Assad would have to step down as president of Syria in order for diplomacy to move forward. Of course, as noted above, western covert agencies created ISIS out of thin air just as they created the Syrian civil war out of thin air. They caused an extreme civilian genocide through their ISIS proxies, blamed the Assad regime for the instability in the region and then, when their color revolution failed to unseat Assad, they ask him to relinquish power as a good will offering towards the peace process. See how that works?

    Obviously, globalists knew Assad was never going to step down. Why would he when he knows that this was the goal behind the creation of ISIS from the very beginning? And so, Syria remains a useful point of chaos in the globalist arsenal as a larger war is an ever present possibility. It is a perpetual powder keg that could be set off anytime the globalists choose.

    Iran is also an excellent example of the fraudulent nature of establishment peace agreements.  The initial agreement arrived at in 2015, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA), listed a drastic reduction in Iran’s Uranium stockpile and enrichment facilities.  Iran seems to have complied with this request according to initial reports, and has complied with IAEA requests for inspections.  However, globalist peace deals are never fixed – they can be changed at a moment’s notice to facilitate a breakdown in the agreement.

    The US has recently made demands for the IAEA to inspect not only Iran’s nuclear facilities but also its military sites, which were not under the original IAEA purview.  Iran, of course, is not too happy about the idea of having its military bases subject to foreign inspections.  US officials have also claimed Iran is not following the “spirit of the agreement”; not because of any supposed nuclear development, but because of Iran’s support for the Assad regime in Syria.

    On top of this, the US is seeking to change the original JCPOA while refusing to label the changes a “renegotiation”.  Officials have called for a “supplementary deal”, which to my mind is in fact a renegotiation of the original deal.  This is clearly meant to cause a collapse in the JCPOA, as Iran is unlikely to ever accept a renegotiation.

    Finally, Israel is now claiming that Iran has broken the JCPOA by secretly developing nuclear technology.  Once again, like WMDs in Iraq and chemical weapons attacks in Syria, no hard evidence whatsoever has been produced to support this claim.  But, that might not matter at all as Israel has already initiated strikes against Iranian targets in Syria (Syria and Iran have a mutual defense pact), and they may very well attack Iran directly within the next year.

    Globalists do not care about peace, they only care about timing their wars properly.  The same reality applies to North Korea. Here is how this situation is probably going to play out…

    The Trump administration will enter into peace talks with outlandish demands of complete nuclear disarmament. North Korea has so far offered a freeze on testing, but again, this is probably due to the collapse of their main testing site. A freeze on testing is not the same as total disarmament.

    North Korea will of course refuse disarmament. The establishment will push harder, causing North Korea to pull back from the talks, to reschedule talks multiple time or to abandon talks altogether. Then, the establishment will say North Korea is not serious about peace, therefore, the force of action may be justified. They will say they gave North Korea a chance to do things the easy way, but now the hard way is necessary.

    North Korea missile tests will continue, and new nuke facilities will open. Trump will call for the kinetic termination of such sites.

    People who actually believe that globalists will abandon one of its best geopolitical Pandora’s boxes in North Korea have still not learned their lesson from the Syrian debacle, or from Iran. These regions represent a gold mine of potential international chaos which can be used as cover for all sorts of misdeeds as well as continued economic decline.

    As I have noted in past articles, it is rather convenient for the banking elites at the Federal Reserve that every time they make an announcement of further cuts to their balance sheet as well as continued interest rate hikes a new geopolitical crisis involving Donald Trump simultaneously erupts. Is this mere coincidence, or should we view it as a discernible trend?

    If it is a trend, then I would expect further crisis events involving Syria, Iran and North Korea in May and June as the Fed is set to increase the size of its balance sheet reductions thereby pulling the plug on its long time policy of artificially supporting markets.

    More strikes in Syria as well as destabilizing relations with Iran are likely. A collapse in talks with North Korea should be expected, followed by more plunges in stocks and other assets.

  • Hillary Clinton Now Blaming Socialist Democrats For Historic Election Loss

    Just when we thought Hillary Clinton had run out of people to blame for her 2016 defeat, the former Secretary of State has come up with a new one we never saw coming: Socialist Democrats.

    When asked on Wednesday at the Shared Value Leadership Summit in New York City if she thought that declaring herself  to be a “capitalist” Democrat hurt her in the primaries, Clinton replied, “probably.” 

    “It’s hard to know but I mean if you’re in the Iowa caucuses and 41 percent of Democrats are socialists or self-described socialists, and I’m asked ‘Are you a capitalist?’ and I say, ‘Yes, but with appropriate regulation and appropriate accountability.’ You know, that probably gets lost in the ‘Oh my gosh, she’s a capitalist!’” Clinton concluded, referring in part to the popularity of her Democratic Socialist rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

    So aside from socialists, as a friendly reminder since everyone’s scroll wheel needs a workout every now and again, below is a list of all the “reasons” Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 US election courtesy of the Daily Mail – because it certainly wasn’t her fault. 

    JAMES COMEY

    Clinton is furious that Comey, then the FBI director, publicly revealed the re-opening of the secret email server investigation just before election day – and has said so time after time after time.

    THE FBI  

    Comey’s entire organization does not escape her wrath. 

    ‘The FBI wasn’t the Federal Bureau of Ifs or Innuendoes. Its job was to find out the facts,’ she writes in What Happened.

    VLADIMIR PUTIN

    ‘There’s no doubt in my mind that Putin wanted me to lose and wanted Trump to win,’ she told USA Today in September last year while promoting What Happened. 

    It was hardly a new theme. As early as December the New York Times obtained audio in which she told her donors: ‘Putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring of outrage by his own people, and that is the direct line between what he said back then and what he did in this election.’  

    THE RUSSIANS

    Putin’s entire apparatus gets a name-check. In May she told the Codecon convention how ‘1,000 Russian agents’ had filled Facebook with ‘fake news’.

    She told NPR ‘my path toward November was being disrupted with Russians’.

    WIKILEAKS 

    The ‘transparency website’ is consistently ranked along with Comey by Clinton at the top of her blame list.

    She told NPR : ‘Unfortunately the Comey letter, aided to great measure by the Russian WikiLeaks, raised all those doubts again.’

    And she writes of its founder Julian Assange in What Happened: ‘In my view, Assange is a hypocrite who deserves to be held accountable for his actions.’

    LOW INFORMATION VOTERS

    ‘You put yourself in the position of a low information voter, and all of a sudden your Facebook feed, your Twitter account is saying, “Oh my gosh, Hillary Clinton is running a child trafficking operation in Washington with John Podesta.”,’ she told the Codecon convention in May.

    ‘Well you don’t believe it but this has been such an unbelievable election, you kind of go, ‘Oh maybe I better look into that.”

    THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

    ‘We have an electoral college problem. It’s an anachronism,’ she told Vox. 

    ANTI-AMERICAN FORCES

    ‘I think it’s important that we learn the real lessons from this last campaign because the forces that we are up against are not just interested in influencing our elections and our politics, they’re going after our economy and they’re going after our unity as a nation,’ she told Codecon in May.

    ‘What is hard for people to really accept – although now after the election there’s greater understanding – is that there are forces in our country – put the Russians to one side – who have been fighting rear guard actions for as long as I’ve been alive because my life coincided with the Civil Rights movement, with the women’s rights movement, with anti-war protesting, with the impeachment.

    EVERYONE WHO ASSUMED SHE WOULD WIN

    ‘I was the victim of a very broad assumption that I was going to win,’ she told the Codecon convention.

    BAD POLLING NUMBERS

    Clinton says polls in key states did not serve her. 

    ‘I think polling is going to have to undergo some revisions in how they actually measure people,’ she told the Codecon convention.

    ‘How they reach people. The best assessments as of right now are that the polling was not that inaccurate, but it was predominantly national polling and I won nationally.’

    BARACK OBAMA 

    Clinton has two beefs with Obama: one of them being that he won two terms. Clinton says that succeeding an incumbent is almost impossible for a Democrat.

    ‘No non-incumbent Democrat had run successfully to succeed another two-termer since Vice President Martin Van Buren won in 1836,’ she writes in What Happened.

    But she also says his response to the Russian campaign of interference wasn’t enough.

    ‘I do wonder sometimes about what would have happened if President Obama had made a televised address to the nation in the fall of 2016 warning that our democracy was under attack,’ she writes in What Happened. 

    WHITE WOMEN

    ‘I believe absent Comey, I might’ve picked up 1 or 2 points among white women,’ she told Vox in September.

    ‘White woman… are really quite politically dependent on their view of their own security and their own position in society what works and doesn’t work for them.’

    THE NEW YORK TIMES

    The newspaper was blamed as early as May at the Codecon conference in Rancho Palos Verde, California.

    She singled out its managing editor Dean Baquet – the paper’s most senior editor – and said of coverage of her email issue under his direction: ‘They covered it like it was Pearl Harbor.’

    JOE BIDEN

    Biden could have run against her and didn’t. But Clinton writes: ‘Joe Biden said the Democratic Party in 2016 ‘did not talk about what it always stood for—and that was how to maintain a burgeoning middle class.’

    ‘I find this fairly remarkable, considering that Joe himself campaigned for me all over the Midwest and talked plenty about the middle class.’

    BERNIE SANDERS

    ‘His attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign,’ she writes in What Happened.

    ‘I don’t know if that bothered Bernie or not.’

    BERNIE BROS 

    ‘Some of his supporters, the so-called Bernie Bros, took to harassing my supporters online. It got ugly and more than a little sexist,’ she writes in What Happened. 

    PEOPLE WANTING CHANGE

    ‘I thought, at end of day, people would say, look, we do want change, and we want the right kind of change, and we want change that is realistic and is going to make difference in my life and my family’s life and my paycheck,’ she told Vox.

    ‘That’s what I was offering. And I didn’t in any way want to feed into this, not just radical political argument that was being made on other side, but very negative cultural argument about who we are as Americans.’

    MISOGYNISTS

    Asked by CNN’s Christine Amanpour at the Women for Women International event in new York in May if misogyny was to blame she said: ‘Yes, I do think it played a role.’  

    TELEVISION EXECUTIVES

    ‘When you have a presidential campaign and the total number of minutes on TV news, which is still how most people get their information, covering all of our policies, climate change, anything else was 32 minutes, I don’t blame voters,’ she told The View.

    ‘They don’t get a broad base of information to make decision on. The more outrageous you are, the more inflammatory you are, the higher the ratings are.’

    NETFLIX

    Hillary does not do Netflix and chill – or if she does, she doesn’t find it very relaxing.

    ‘Eight of the top 10 political documentaries on Netflix were screeds against President Obama and me,’ she claimed at the Codecon convention.

    FACEBOOK

    ‘If you look at Facebook the vast majority of the news items posted were fake. They were connected to as we now know the 1,000 Russian agents who were involved in delivering those messages,’ she told Codecon.

    TWITTER

    Usually mentioned in the same breath as Facebook, the micro-blogging site is seen by Clinton as one of the reasons for her loss. 

    She told the Codecon convention in may that Trump had a method in his tweets.

    ‘They want to influence your reality. That to me is what we’re up against, and we can’t let that go unanswered,’ she said.

    CONTENT FARMS IN MACEDONIA

    ‘Through content farms, through an enormous investment in falsehoods, fake news, call it what you will – lies, that’s a good word too – the other side was using content that was flat out false,’ she told the Codecon convention in May. 

    ‘They were conveying this weaponized information and the content of it, and they were running, y’know there’s all these stories, about y’know, and you know I’ve seen them now, and you sit there and it looks like you know sort of low level CNN operation, or a fake newspaper.’

    CAMPAIGN FINANCE

    ‘You had Citizens United come to its full fruition.’ she told Codecon in May.

    ‘So unaccountable money flowing in against me, against other Democrats, in a way that we hadn’t seen and then attached to this weaponized information war.

    THE MEDIA

    ‘American journalists who eagerly and uncritically repeated whatever WikiLeaks dished out during the campaign could learn from the responsible way the French press handled the hack of Macron,’ she writes in What Happened. 

    Now-president Macron had a massive tranche of his emails hacked and released shortly before the French voted. Many outlets did not report on their contents.  

    STEVE BANNON AND BREITBART

    ‘Provided the untrue stories,’ she told the Codecon convention in May. 

    THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

    ‘I set up my campaign and we have our own data operation. I get the nomination. So I’m now the nominee of the Democratic Party. I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party,’ Clinton said told the Codecon convention in May.

     ‘I mean, it was bankrupt. It was on the verge of insolvency. Its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it.’

    THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

    The Republicans were far better prepared for a campaign than the Democrats she claimed, when it came to money and data, telling the Codecon convention: ‘So Trump becomes the nominee and he is basically handed this tried and true, effective foundation.’ 

    CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA

    The data-targeting firm ultimately owned by Robert Mercer, the billionaire Breitbart backer, and his family, is said to have targeted voters to drive them away from Clinton.

    ‘They ultimately added something and I think again we’d better understand that. The Mercers did not invest all that money for their own amusement,’ she told the Codecon convention.

    WOMEN PROTESTERS

    The massive demonstrations in Washington and other cities in the wake of the election were organized as an immediate response to Clinton’s shock defeat.

    But that did not stop Clinton from writing in What Happened: ‘I couldn’t help but ask where those feelings of solidarity, outrage and passion had been during the election.’

    MATT LAUER

    The NBC Today show anchor quizzed both candidates at a ‘commander-in-chief forum’ on board Intrepid in New York. 

    But Clinton – who went first in the back-to-back interviews, complained about Lauer focusing on her secret server and whether it raised questions over her trustworthiness.

    ‘Lauer had turned what should have been a serious discussion into a pointless ambush. What a waste of time,’ she writes in What Happened. She later delighted in his firing for sexual misconduct, saying in December: ‘Every day I believe more in karma.’ 

    WHITE VOTERS

    ‘White voters have been fleeing the Democratic party ever since Lyndon Johnson predicted they would,’ she told Vox.  

    DEMOCRATIC DOCUMENTARY MAKERS 

    ‘We’re not making the documentaries that we’re going to get onto Netflix,’ she told Codecon.

    She was asked by the interviewer: ‘This is because Hollywood isn’t liberal enough?’

    ‘No, it’s because Democrats aren’t putting their money there,’ she replied. 

    BENGHAZI INVESTIGATORS

    The attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in the Libyan city of Benghazi on September 11, 2012, happened when Clinton was Secretary of State. It claimed four American lives, and was the focus of intense investigation by Congress.  

    Clinton told the Today show: ‘Take the Benghazi tragedy – you know, I have one of the top Republicans, Kevin McCarthy, admitting we’re going to take that tragedy – because, you know, we’ve lost people, unfortunately, going back to the Reagan administration, if you talk about recent times, in diplomatic attacks.

    ‘But boy, it was turned into a political football. And it was aimed at undermining my credibility, my record, my accomplishments.’

    VOTER SUPPRESSION

    Suppressing her voters was named by Clinton as one of the major factors in her defeat in her interview on the Today show when she rattled off her laundry list. ‘What was at work here?’ she said.

    ‘In addition to the mistakes that I made, which I recount in the book, what about endemic sexism and misogyny, not just in politics but in our society, what about the unprecedented action of the FBI director,  what about the interference of an adversary nation, what about voter suppression?’ 

    It was a return to a theme – she suggested it was a problem in Wisconsin in an interview in May with New York magazine.

    ‘I would have won had I not been subjected to the unprecedented attacks by Comey and the Russians, aided and abetted by the suppression of the vote, particularly in Wisconsin,’ she said. 

    ‘Republicans learned that if you suppress votes you win.’

    MITCH McCONNELL

    The Senate majority leader is accused of stopping the Obama administration from revealing what Clinton says the Russians were up to, helping tip the balance against her because he did not want a third successive Democratic term in the White House.  

    ‘Mitch McConnell, in what I think of as a not only unpatriotic but despicable act of partisan politics, made it clear that if the Obama Administration spoke publicly about what they knew [on Russia], he would accuse them of partisan politics, of trying to tip the balance toward me,’ she told the New Yorker.   

    THE SUPREME COURT

    Clinton claims the Supreme Court watered down the Voting Rights Act at the Codecon convention.

    ‘You had effective suppression of votes,’ she said.

    ‘I was in the senate when we voted 98-0 under a Republican president, George W Bush, to extend the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court says ‘oh we don’t need it any more’ , throws it out, and Republican governors and legislatures began doing everything they could to suppress the votes.’

    Clinton appears to be referring to Second 4(b) of the Act being ruled unconstitutional by the court in 2013, because it relied on out of date data which meant it was not in line with the 15th Amendment. 

    FATHERS, HUSBANDS, BOYFRIENDS, AND MALE BOSSES

    Clinton says that James Comey’s actions in re-opening the FBI investigation allowed men to influence their wives or girlfriends.

    ‘Women will have no empathy for you because they will be under tremendous pressure – and I’m talking principally about white women – they will be under tremendous pressure from fathers, and husbands, and boyfriends and male employers, not to vote for ‘the girl’,’ she told NPR. 

    THE INVISIBLE STATE

    The newest addition to the list: named by her confidante Lanny Davis as the reason she lost at a reading of his book while Hillary nodded along in approval. 

  • HKMA Warns Public "Manage Risks, Prepare For Volatility" As Stocks, Currency Slide

    Two weeks after HKMA’s intervention managed to lift the HKD off its peg band’s lower limit, the currency tumbled back to its weakest level in 30 years overnight.

    Having hit the lower end of the peg band, the HKD is popping modestly following a statement from Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive Norman Chan, noting that local interest rates should gradually rise along with their USD counterparts under the linked exchange rate system as the U.S. is in an interest rate hike cycle and market is expected a U.S. rate rise in June.

    Additionally, Chan admitted that the HKD-USD interest rate gap attracts carry trade activities, which resulted in the weakening of the Hong Kong currency. Chan noted that as capital flowed out of HKD, aggregate balance shrank and HKD market liquidity should tightened gradually, providing a more “conducive” environment for HKD interest rate normalization.

    And rather notably, the HKD-USD rate-spread has narrowed dramatically (as HIBOR has risen), removing some of the enticement to enter the carry trade (but remaining a solid 75-80bps for now)…

    Finally, presumably on the back of an ongoing rise in local rates HKMA’s Chan reminded public to “manage risks prudently to prepare for possible volatility in local interest rates and asset markets..”

    And Hong Kong stocks (and China tech stocks) are headed for their worst loss in a month after the Federal Reserve signaled it will continue to tighten monetary policy and as investors awaited the outcome of U.S.-China talks.

  • Giuliani Says Trump Reimbursed Cohen For Stormy Daniels Hush Payment

    In a Wednesday statement which promises to keep White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders busy for the next few news cycles, former New York City Mayor and recent addition to Trump’s legal team, Rudy Giuliani, told Fox’s Sean Hannity that President Trump reimbursed his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, $130,000 which Cohen paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

    Giuliani, paradoxically in his new capacity as Trump’s lawyer, says that the payment was “perfectly legal” and that it was “not campaign money,” meaning that the payment did not violate campaign finance law. 

    “Funneled through a law firm, and the president repaid it,” Giuliani said, adding “He didn’t know about the specifics of it but he did know about the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this.“

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    Where it gets complicated for Trump is that Cohen told the New York Times in February that he paid $130,000 to Daniels out of his own pocket, and that neither the Trump Organization or the Trump Campaign had anything to do with the 2016 transaction.

    “Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly,” Cohen told The New York Times. “The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.”

    Following the report, nonprofit watchdog group Common Cause filed a complaint with the DOJ and the Federal Election Commission claiming that the payment to Clifford violated campaign finance laws because it was an “unreported in-kind contribution to the president’s 2016 campaign.“

    So with Cohen paying Daniels, and Trump paying Cohen, viola – no problems! Right? 

    Well no: here’s the rub…

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    And now, thanks to Giuliani, Trump will have no choice but to give yet another “explanation” for why the official narrative has just broken down which means more angry tweets and out bursts, and who knows, maybe more chemical false flag attacks by Assad to justify another airstrike or two on Syria.

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