- We'll "Definitely" Interfere In 2020, Just "Don't Tell Anybody": Putin Mockingly Tells NBC Reporter
We’ll “Definitely” Interfere In 2020, Just “Don’t Tell Anybody”: Putin Mockingly Tells NBC Reporter
Absolutely no laughing matter for the likes of Rachel Maddow and others who have now spent years locked deep in their ‘Russiagate’ navel-gazing, but at least Putin still hasn’t lost his sense of humor about it.
While speaking on a panel of industry and political leaders at the Russian Energy Week conference, Putin mocked reports already alleging Moscow plans to interfere in the 2020 US presidential election. When pressed by NBC News correspondent Keir Simmons over whether former Special Counsel Robert Mueller was accurate in predicting Russia would “attempt to interfere” in the 2020 election, Putin leaned forward in a gesture to act like he was whispering a ‘secret’:
“I’m going to tell you a secret,” Putin said, leaning forward.
“Yes, we will definitely intervene, don’t tell anybody” he continued to an applauding crowd.
“You know, we have enough of our own problems,” Putin continued. “We are engaged in resolving internal problems and are primarily focused on this.”
His characteristic public sarcasm was a hit with the crowd, at an event which included OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo and others. He followed on a more serious note by calling it “ridiculous” that Russia would interfere in the 2020 election.
He also talked down his relationship and interactions with President Trump, describing that the two leaders have never been close.
Putin jokes Russia will “definitely” intervene in the 2020 US elections pic.twitter.com/wY51XTpboQ
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) October 2, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“In my opinion, we have good, businesslike relations, and a relatively stable level of trust,” he said during the conference’s plenary session. “We’ve never been close, and aren’t now.”
However, Putin did come to the US president’s defense when asked about the Ukraine call transcript.
“From what we know, I don’t see anything compromising at all,” Putin told the audience. “I didn’t see that during this phone call Trump demanded compromising material from Zelenskiy at any cost and threatened him that he wouldn’t help Ukraine.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/03/2019 – 02:45 - Twisted Pair, Part 2: US & UK "Barrelling Towards Great Troubles"
Twisted Pair, Part 2: US & UK “Barrelling Towards Great Troubles”
Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
The US and UK are both at risk of severe legal challenges and hence “barrelling down towards great troubles” as I wrote yesterday in Twisted Pair 1 – US.
The reasons are not exactly the same in both cases, but they’re close. It’s about who holds the ultimate power.
Before moving on to the UK’s specific issues, I want to share this from the BBC, one of many pieces yesterday that discuss President Trump talking to foreign leaders, and that all accuse him in one way or another of wanting to ‘dig up dirt’ about Joe Biden (something that could just as well be defined as trying to find out how Russiagate started).
This one is about Trump asking Australia for help because obviously there’s a strong connection to the country in the person of former Australia High Commissioner to the UK Alexander Downer, who claims Trump ‘aid’ George Papadopoulos told him in May 2016 that Moscow had dirt on Hillary Clinton. Papadopoulos has always denied saying it.
But it appears the world media have made it their task to vilify Trump’s efforts to investigate Russiagate, so expect much more of it. The article for instance also mentions Bill Barr talking to Italian and British intelligence. Yeah, they’re serious about wanting to find out what happened. I’d suggest you get used to that. But here’s what I want to share:
[..] while the Ukraine call is linked to the serious issue of potential influencing of an upcoming US election, the Australian one refers to events around a past election. White House spokesman Hogan Gidley suggested this was uncontroversial. “I’m old enough to remember when Democrats actually wanted to find out what happened in the 2016 election,” he said.
I thought that was pretty good.
But on to Albion, where the legal mess is likely much bigger than in the States, because its laws are so opaque. Sure, NOW people are clamoring for a written constitution, but NOW is a tad late. I read the other day in a Dutch paper that Queen Elizabeth had asked her advisors if she could sack Boris Johnson, and couldn’t find coverage of it in any UK paper. Still can’t. Isn’t that curious? We’ll have to do with yesterday’s New York Post: “It was the first time in her 67-year reign that the Queen asked for clarification on how to dismiss a British prime minister, the report claimed.”
The Queen didn’t actually look to fire Johnson, she simply didn’t know the laws surrounding the topic, she wanted to know what her legal position is. And that seems to typify the entire situation unfolding in the country. Nobody has any idea who has the -ultimate- power to execute any far-reaching policies and decisions. That would appear to be a very dangerous conundrum, because it may allow the loudest, -physically- strongest and perhaps even most deceitful to prevail.
There was someone in a recent Automatic Earth comments section who listed all 11 UK Supreme Court judges and concluded they were all “Remainers”. That is a slippery slope too many. Because if you intend to disqualify the highest court in a country, you invite in anarchy. Now, you may favor “Leave”, but that kind of thing will surely come back to bite you in the face.
Besides, the Supreme Court decision to declare Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament unlawful was the only one a highest court could possibly have made. Because Britain, like so many other western nations, is a parliamentary democracy. The only thing I’ve seen that looks like a constitution there says in eight words that parliament is senior to the monarch. That means it is senior to the executive branch as well. It has to.
Whereas a Scottish court ruled a few weeks ago that the prorogation decision was justiciable, and declared it unlawful, a lower UK court said it was non-justiciable, that is was up to Parliament, and that Parliament could “sit” whenever it wanted. But Parliament hasd just been prorogued, and therefore could NOT sit whenever it wanted. That lower court even contradicted itself: “Parliament is the master of its own proceedings. It is for parliament to decide when it sits. Parliament can sit before and after prorogation..”
So they have to make up their minds. It would be demonstrably silly if the Queen could fire the Prime Minister. It would be much less silly if Parliament could do it, though. Which would also be less silly than the Prime Minister being allowed to shut down Parliament with impunity in a parliamentary democracy. You have to look at the legal implications.
Now, the world is increasingly divvied up in antagonistic (i.e. twisted) pairs.
In the US, if you don’t hammer Trump ten times a day and twice on Sundays, you get accused of effectively supporting him. In the UK, if you question Boris Johnson’s quest towards Halloween Brexit, you’re against ‘the people’, and their will. And that’s why we have laws. It’s just that British laws are terribly vague, and that’s why the courts became involved (as I predicted they would for a long time).
Today, Boris Johnson is sending a ‘plan’ to Europe that he has labeled ‘take it or leave it’. Which leads many to question his desire to reach a deal at all. More importantly, the European Union (Withdrawal) (No 2) Act 2019, aka the Benn Act, was passed by parliament last month and requires the government to ask for an extension until 31 January 2020 if no deal is agreed.
Boris has suggested he will ignore it. But that would mean the executive branch is effectively senior to the legislative branch. It would also mean the end of the parliamentary democracy that Britain has been for what is it, 400 years?! I have no horse in this fight or dog in this race, but that to me looks extremely dangerous. Be careful what you wish for.
The UK Supreme Court is in for the by far busiest time of its existence. And by the way, you can criticize the court, but only really by criticizing the way the judges on it are appointed, and then take action to change that way. If you try to question its credibility, however, you destroy the credibility of the entire judicial system, all of it.
Again, be careful what you wish for. It’s not hard to understand why and how people point to the 2016 Brexit referendum to justify a Brexit strategy, but they too will still have to follow the rules and laws, or they will create mayhem. That goes for both sides, of course, but for Boris Johnson to try and take the UK out of the EU in violation of the Benn Act would unleash a lot of disorder that he and his people may not fully comprehend yet
And there’s something else going on in the UK that I wrote about recently in “The Will of the People”, but which still doesn’t generate much interest. That is, this whole issue is no longer about Leave vs Remain, there is a third group, Leave But With A Deal. Ironically, the Leave side seeks to group these people in with the Remainers, which is both not honest and may not serve their own interests.
That is because Leave But With A Deal may well be the largest group out there. There are Tories and Labour supporters in it, plus independents and some LibDems, and they’re there for the taking for Boris. Only, they insist on a deal with the EU being in place. If there’s no such deal on October 19, they automatically become Boris’s opponents. But why would he let them? Why not get a serious deal on the table?
Johnson will attempt to blame the failure of his latest proposal, plus all previous ones, on the EU. But has Brussels been all that unreasonable in the negotiations? I’m no EU fan, but it’s an honest question. They have one large issue: Ireland. The Good Friday agreement is sacred for them, because it is for Ireland. And Boris today allegedly proposing some kind of border infrastructure regardless will not fly.
A difficult topic, for sure, but then we’re 3,5 years on from the referendum, and what has the UK done since then? London gives the impression that peace in Ireland is less important for them than it is for Brussels, and that is not wise. As former Northern Ireland negotiator Jonathan Powell said in a video I posted earlier today, what will happen is easy to predict:
A hard border undermines the basis of the Good Friday Agreement – Jonathan Powell told us in August.
But what does the former Northern Ireland negotiator make of reports of the PM’s latest offering on the backstop? He joins us at 22:30https://t.co/Qhrwo8Aank#Newsnight pic.twitter.com/lr4XBw4l47
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) October 1, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Even if you just put in a camera on the border, the dissident Republicans will shoot at it. Then you put in police to protect the camera, they’ll shoot at the police. Next up is the army to protect the police, and so on and so forth. Perhaps a unified Ireland is a solution, though that will take time, but a hard Brexit certainly is not. But Boris appears to play games with this, suggesting there will have to be customs facilities some way or another: “Each of the IRA campaigns started as a border campaign”, says Powell.
Summarized, we have this third group, not Leave or Remain but Leave But With A Deal, and they are being ignored and/or labeled Remain. Whereas they could be key to Johnson and his supporters’ desire to Leave. Look, Boris has no majority in Parliament anymore, not even if the DUP he apparently sucked up to vote with him. He needs something else but is running out of time.
Then again, Boris has pledged to Leave by Halloween. Now his personal credibility is at stake, and it’s become more important than the credibility of his party, of Parliament and even of the entire court system. Next up: the Queen. Who didn’t want to sack him but was royally miffed about him advising her to prorogate which put her in a very not amused position when her own Supreme Court declared her decision unlawful.
It would appear to be in Johnson’s own interest, if he wants to carry through Brexit, for him and his team to do a lot more homework. He’s already mightily miffed the Queen, the Supreme Court has accused him of attempting to push through an unlawful act, and he’s lost his party’s majority in Parliament.
Boris’s support may seem solid in his own party conference in Manchester today, but let’s hope he doesn’t get even more blinded by that than he already is, because the consequences could well be catastrophic. And of course I see, and understand, all the people who want the result of the referendum honored, but there’s a whole new ball game underway today, and it would be foolish to ignore that.
You can still go for Brexit, but Good Friday is a giant and unnecessary leap too far to achieve it. As is trying to make the executive branch claim seniority over the legislative one, or the Supreme Court, to achieve your goal. You can wish, but beware.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/03/2019 – 02:00 - International Criminal Court To Mull MbS Probe For "Crimes Against Humanity"
International Criminal Court To Mull MbS Probe For “Crimes Against Humanity”
A US-based law firm has sent a formal petition to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague calling for an investigation into Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman over the Jamal Khashoggi murder and other crimes against humanity.
This after a recent UN report holds the Saudi government responsible for the Oct. 2, 2018 grizzly killing of the journalist at the consulate in Istanbul, which MbS in a “60 Minutes” interview this week said was a “mistake” that was ultimately his “full responsibility” — while also vehemently denying that he ordered the hit. According to CNN,
Attorneys Bruce Fein, a former associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, and W. Bruce DelValle drafted the petition on behalf of the National Interest Foundation, a Washington nonprofit frequently critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East, saying Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “has ruthlessly and systematically persecuted his political detractors, opponents, or rivals,” since being elevated to his position in June 2017. The petition was submitted in July but had not been made public.
The document charges the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia with “a widespread… systematic attack directed at civilian political opponents” in and out of the kingdom – no doubt a reference to both Khashoggi’s death as well as a crackdown on political opponents and dissidents, likely including the ongoing Saudi-led bombing of Yemen.
The filing further said he’s “guilty of murder, torture, rape, extortion, illegal detentions, wrongful prosecutions, and the death penalty, i.e., crimes against humanity as defined in Article 7 of the Rome Statute.”
“A component of the crown prince’s systematic attacks or persecution of his opponents,” the filing states, “was his order to assassinate courageous journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which was executed by the Saudi Raid Intervention Group by killing and dismembering… him in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.”
“Nothing of significance happens in the kingdom absent the crown prince’s direction or approval,” the filing states.
“Even if he said he did not order the assassination of Mr. Khashoggi, the law makes him culpable for it,” one of the filing attorneys, Bruce Fein, told Al Jazeera. “As someone who knows everything of significance in Saudi Arabia, MBS should have known about the planned murder even if he was not supervising his thugs.”
The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, via Reuters. Interestingly, the crown prince’s admissions in the 60 Minutes interview could be used against him in any ICC court proceedings, given he essentially admitted government “responsibility” while claiming no personal knowledge of the planned murder.
“This was a heinous crime,” Prince Mohammed, 34, told “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired Sunday. “But I take full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia, especially since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government.”
Asked if he ordered the murder of Khashoggi, who had criticized him in columns for The Washington Post, Prince Mohammed replied: “Absolutely not.”
If the Hague-based ICC should move forward with charges against MbS it would be devastating to the ‘reformist’ prince’s image and to the prospects of the kingdom’s economically ambitious Vision 2030 makeover.
However, it would remain only symbolic in that the Hague has no ultimate enforcement power in terms of bringing rulers to justice — typically unless Western allies assist, as has been the case with war criminals in Africa or the 1990’s Balkan conflict.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/03/2019 – 01:05 - Brandon Smith: Trump Cannot Be Anti-Globalist While Working With Global Elites
Brandon Smith: Trump Cannot Be Anti-Globalist While Working With Global Elites
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
In the summer of 2016 during the election campaign I examined the Trump phenomenon and how it relates to the globalist narrative. I concluded that Trump would be president based on the fact that having a (supposedly) hardcore nationalist and populist conservative in the White House over the next four years would in fact be highly beneficial to the elites. At the time the Federal Reserve was getting ready to tighten liquidity, which would inevitably lead to market volatility and a crash in fundamentals. By the end of Trump’s first term, or perhaps at the beginning of his second term, the recessionary crisis would become obvious to the general public. Trump, and all conservatives, would be blamed for the resulting disaster that the banking elites engineered.
During the election it was unclear to me if Donald Trump was a puppet of the elites. He could have simply been a convenient scapegoat for the coming crash. Today, it is obvious that he is indeed controlled opposition.
As I’ve noted in numerous articles, Trump’s associations with the globalists go way back. He was saved by the Rothschild banking family from crippling debts in multiple property developments in Atlantic City during the 1990’s. The Rothschild agent that handled Trump’s bailout was none other than Wilbur Ross, the senior managing director of Rothschild New York. Ross is now Trump’s Commerce Secretary, which indicates that his relationship to the Rothschilds continues to this day.
In 2016 Trump offered positions in the White House to a vast array of global elitists, some of them from the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank whose stated goals include the erasure of borders and the end of national sovereignty. These members include:
Elaine Chao, United States Secretary of Transportation
Jamie Dimon, Member of Strategic and Policy Forum
Jim Donovan, Deputy Treasury Secretary
Larry Fink, Member of Strategic and Policy Forum
Neil M. Gorsuch, Supreme Court Justice
Vice Admiral Robert S. Harward, National Security Advisor (declined appointment)
Trump then went on to bring in long time elites with ties to the globalist establishment and the Federal Reserve such as John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Robert Lighthizer, Larry Kudlow, and Steve Mnuchin, etc. The list goes on and on…
During the campaign, Trump consistently (and rightly) criticized Hillary Clinton’s many ties to the banking cabal, including her close relationship with internationalist banks like Goldman Sachs. He also made multiple criticisms against globalism. Then, he argued that the economic recovery under Obama was actually a massive financial bubble – the markets were artificially propped up by the Federal Reserve’s stimulus and low interest rates, and indicators like unemployment stats were rigged. Again, this was all true.
Yet, after his election Trump proceeded to saturate his cabinet with the same banking elites he once attacked, and then he took FULL CREDIT for the markets and the fake employment and GDP numbers only months later.
Once in office, Trump suddenly abandoned his promise to indict the Clintons, and any pursuit of fighting the globalists fell by the wayside. Instead, Trump turned all his attention on China, opening the door to an economic war as a useful distraction for the globalists while they continued to pull the plug on financial life support. If Trump was going to do battle with the globalist establishment, why would he surround himself with so many elites and why would he hold up China as a primary threat instead of global banking institutions?
We still hear Trump talk about how the Federal Reserve is run by ignorant people, and how the “future belongs to patriots, not globalists”, but Trump’s hyperfocus on the markets and the trade war with China do nothing to combat the globalist agenda. In fact, these actions help the globalists immensely.
Trump is sticking to the pattern of criticizing the Fed’s higher interest rates as the cause of the economic downturn while AT THE SAME TIME continuing to take full credit for the same fraudulent economic data and the market bubble he once admonished. What does this accomplish? Well, Trump’s job is to undermine conservatives and the liberty movement by pretending to be one of us. His attacks on the Fed, while legitimate (in part), are meaningless if he maintains that he is the sole reason why the economy and the markets move.
In essence, the globalists are using Trump to delegitimize anti-Fed arguments by attaching him to those arguments AND the failing economy simultaneously. As he falls from fiscal grace, the intent is that all anti-fed and anti-globalist arguments will die with him. Who would want to take the same ideological stance as the man who brought the global economy to ruin? Currently, the mainstream media is focusing on Trump’s hypocrisy in demanding a weaker dollar after calling for a STRONGER dollar during his campaign. They are also insinuating that Trump is trying to deflect blame onto the Fed while his trade war is the “real cause” of the recession. I’ve been warning about this outcome for quite some time, and now it’s happening.
Trump’s bizarre behavior vindicates my deepest suspicions during the election – Trump is not just an unwitting scapegoat, he is a participant in the game, playing a theatrical role, a bumbling villain. In the script, he is the anti-globalist who trips over his own hubris and causes the downfall of the American empire. He is playing the pig-headed conservative that proves once and for all why conservative philosophy is “evil” and why the leftists were right all along. Part of his job is to co-opt the liberty movement, redirect its energies into pointless pursuits, and to make us look ridiculous or dangerous by the end of his presidency.
However, there is a bit of a conundrum forming for the elites…
Trump’s true nature is slowly being revealed as we cross the point of no return on the economy and the “global economic reset”. When Trump openly supports Red Flag gun laws designed to usurp gun rights through back door confiscation, or when he commits to a military buildup by sending troops to Saudi Arabia in an obvious first step towards war with Iran, this causes many conservatives in the liberty movement to question Trump’s loyalties (as they should). The elites have to find a way to keep conservatives and liberty activists blindly riding the Trump train for as long as possible, for if we begin to question the narrative too soon, it becomes harder for them to draw us into supporting actions which will be blamed for the burgeoning economic and geopolitical crisis.
To be sure, some people in the liberty movement have attached themselves to Trump so completely that there is no escape. They will now be tempted to double down on their defense of his actions and his associations, forever claiming that Trump is “playing 4D chess” and that he is “keeping his enemies close”, no matter how insane these assertions are. Some have even argued that conservatives should “go to war” if Trump is impeached. This is foolish. Most of us are NOT interested in fighting a civil war over Trump. If we fight a civil war, it will certainly not be over a puppet of the banking establishment.
Some of these activists are well meaning, but they are playing right into the hands of globalists. Others are so desperate to maintain relevancy that they will say anything to get attention.
It is vital that liberty activists understand that the Trump presidency is a psyop aimed first and foremost AT THEM. As the leftist media outlet Bloomberg once happily predicted in an editorial titled ‘The Tea Party Meets Its Maker’, Trump could absorb conservative movements (those they called the “Tea Party”) and destroy them once and for all.
Recent events and Trump’s rhetoric are carefully staged to make him appear anti-globalist, but the aggressive nature of this propaganda was predictable. The elites have to draw conservatives back into the fold somehow, and so they are throwing as many crumbs as they can from Trump’s table without him actually accomplishing anything in our favor.
Getting rid of John Bolton was the beginning of the latest psyop campaign, as Bolton represents a hated element among many liberty activists and the establishment had no choice but to finally reduce his footprint in the White House. However, this was too little too late, as many conservatives are already well aware of the many other elites permeating Trump’s cabinet. He would have to get rid of ALL of them in order to impress us. And so, the elites moved on to phase two…
The latest Ukrainian scandal and the potential impeachment of Trump is a perfect example of globalist reverse psychology. Like Russiagate, the impeachment inquiry will likely go nowhere, and it’s not meant to go anywhere. The elites have no intention of removing Trump from office and they never did. The purpose of the Ukraine scandal is actually twofold:
First, it will indeed pull many conservatives back onto the Trump train as they assume the establishment is “out to get him” even though he is working directly with them.
Second, the Ukraine scandal will blow back on Joe Biden, removing him from the Democratic running for president, leaving the door open for either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. The elites do not appear to want Biden in 2020 and are constructing a narrative in which he bows out of the race or loses extensive ground in the primaries. I continue to predict, as I did in July, that Elizabeth Warren will be the Democratic candidate in 2020 (some people laughed when I suggested this in July…I don’t see too many of them laughing now as Warren pulls into a virtual tie with Biden in the polls). Whether or not this will translate to a second term for Trump, or the end of the line, it is too early to tell.
I would note, however, that Warren was the first Democratic candidate to suggest that an economic crash was on the horizon, and I believe this is setting the stage for her to become an “I told you so” candidate in 2020. If this is the case, then Trump is probably slated to lose the election.
Another crumb thrown to conservatives is the sudden reopening of discussion on the Clinton emails. This will lead some liberty activists to assume that MAYBE, this time, Trump is going to follow through on his claim that he would investigate and prosecute the Clintons. I say this, though I think many reading this already know: Trump is not going to touch the Clintons. But he will pretend he is looking into the matter if it helps lure conservatives back into the false narrative, but that is all.
Trump’s UN speech in which he criticized globalism was the latest and perhaps the most blatant attempt to sucker conservatives into thinking maybe Trump is indeed “playing 4D chess”. He’s not. Rather, Trump is playing the role he has always played, just as he played his role on WWE Wrestling, or his role in The Apprentice; it is Trump’s JOB to attack the globalists, and it is their job to PRETEND to attack him. All the while the real targets of attack are conservatives, sovereignty activists and freedom advocates.
What is the purpose of this facade, this fake wrestling match between Trump and the elites? To get conservatives invested in a false paradigm, to co-opt our movement and our momentum, and ultimately to chain us to Trump’s reputation and then drown us when he goes down. While activists wait around for Trump to take action against the globalists, they sit idle accomplishing very little. While activists put all their hopes in Trump as a solution to the globalist problem, they remain unprepared for the fallout when it’s revealed that he was a complete waste of time. The masterstroke of the elites using Trump as a weapon is that ONE MAN might be able to nullify the activism of millions.
The solution? To remain continually vigilant of Trump’s rhetoric and policies and to call him out when he does anything that violates constitutional principles or anything that aids the globalists in their efforts to trigger an economic reset. I have to laugh, because the globalists may have made a fatal error in relying on Trump as a means to bring down conservatives and the liberty movement. By placing all their eggs in one basket (or all their strings on one puppet), they have left themselves open to influence by liberty activists. The more we call out Trump on his strange behaviors, his connections to the establishment and his flip flopping, the less useful he is to them. They will have to continually adapt their tactics to us (they already have been), or perhaps even postpone efforts to crash the markets or implement draconian Red Flag laws. By our investigative efforts, we can buy time for the movement to grow, and this bodes ill for the elites in the long run.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/03/2019 – 00:15 - Global Opinion On China Is Divided
Global Opinion On China Is Divided
China has marked the 70th anniversary of Communist Party rule with a parade involving 15,000 soldiers and advanced military hardware.
However, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, the celebrations have been overshadowed by the outbreak of fierce anti-government protests in Hong Kong which have occurred in defiance of a protest ban.
At least one of the activists is in a serious condition after being shot in the chest at point blank range by the police.
Amidst the demonstrations and celebrations, a Pew Research Center survey found that global views of China are mixed.
You will find more infographics at Statista
The infographic above shows a selection of countries from the polling with 85 percent of respondents in Japan holding a negative view of China. Unsurprisingly given the trade war, 60 percent of people in the U.S. also hold an unfavorable view of China.
The Russian public is far more positive with 71 percent viewing China favorably, according to Pew Research.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/02/2019 – 23:55 - Which Data Skills Do You Need To Get Ahead In The Next 10 Years?
Which Data Skills Do You Need To Get Ahead In The Next 10 Years?
Submitted by Priceonomics,
In 2011, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen famously posited thatsoftware is eating the world. His point was that nearly all industries are being upended by software and as a result, the seemingly safe jobs of senior executives could evaporate unless they adapt with the times.
Today, data is eating the world. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, the internet of things and data analytics are creeping into companies across the globe, and being data literate will be table stakes for business leaders. In this article, we aim to document the growing belief among senior business executives that learning data skills are critical to their jobs and future career advancement.
Earlier this year, Splunk commissioned a survey of over 1300 global business leaders to help determine just how important data skills are, which countries value them the most for career advancement, and which skills in particular are most prized.
The survey found that well over 80% of executives say that data skills are required for promotion in their companies. Of all the countries analyzed, executives in China said their companies valued data skills the highest. However, while many executives noted data literacy was critical for advancement, the survey shows that many executives are actually resistant to learning new data skills. Why? When asked, many business leaders simply stated they were “too old” to learn, which was another way of saying data is hard
***
The value of data in the enterprise is multifold. The Economist has declared data to be the world’s most valuable resource while Forrester states it’s “the new currency of business.” When asked, executives in the survey tend to agree; data drives organizational success on multiple vectors:
In nearly every aspect of management, data is rated as extremely or very valuable. While data has traditionally been used to drive efficiency, the above chart hints at its emerging use cases for identifying growth and innovation, as well as a cybersecurity line of defense.
It’s potentially challenging to get 80%+ of executives to agree on anything, but the survey reveals that business leaders think data skills are now a requirement for becoming a senior leader and those skills will only become more valuable over time.
The survey also looked at geographic variation in how business executives view the value of data skills. Is data literacy disproportionately a requirement for success in one country versus another?
On each question regarding the value of data skills, Chinese business leaders scored highest on emphasizing its importance. Over 90% of respondents in China noted that they need data skills to get promoted and that data literacy was a requirement for entering senior management. Even for general office work, 88% of respondents in China noted that data skills were a requirement. If data skills are table stakes for competing in the global economy in the future, Chinese businesses are foremost in recognizing this education need.
Just what does it mean to be data literate in the modern enterprise? Data literacy can be split into two different components: hard skills such as using programs to analyze the data and soft skills such as using judgment to visualize and interpret the data. Hard skills involve working with data sets and using programs to produce results. Softer skills are often built up over time by practicing your hard skills and gaining a judgment around how to interpret and confidently lead data-driven teams.
Given that nearly all executives surveyed recognized the value of data skills, it was surprising that many business leaders are reluctant to pick up new data skills later in their career. 73% of executives surveyed stated that data skills were more difficult for them to pick up than other business skills. Additionally 53% of those surveyed stated they felt they were “too old” to learn data skills (qualitative research on the same leaders shows what they’re really saying is “data is too hard”).
Executives know they need to pick up data skills to stay competitive in the workplace yet resist doing so because of the perceived difficulty. For companies, investing in data skills training programs is a way to upskill their workforces with skills that executives may not pick up on their own.
Demand for data skills continues to rise
The demand for data skills in the enterprise continues its inexorable rise. If a company’s existing workforce is slow to pick up data skills, companies look to external hires to fill the gaps. This trend is evidenced by job sites where data-related positions are skyrocketing. On LinkedIn, data related jobs dominate the “fastest growing jobs” lists.
On the Indeed job search engine, the growth in data-related job postings continues. One proxy for this is to look at the rate of job postings for data scientists, which has grown over 50% in just the last 2 years:
While data science jobs get a lot of publicity as a “hot career,” the reality is data science is not the only data-related career with high growth and demand. Dataquest, a data learning company, notes that jobs as diverse as operations analyst to digital marketing manager all require some level of advanced data skills, are highly demanded by employers, and command high salaries.
***
At a recent conference, Morgan Stanley CTO of Infrastructure Tsvi Gal stated “We [may be] in banking, but we live and die on information…. Data analytics is the oxygen of Wall Street.” As more traditional industries compete on the basis of gleaning insights from data, the demand for data literate executives will continue to rise. The dominant companies of the 21st century may not just be those that use data most effectively, but those who successfully retrain their existing workforce to effectively compete in a world where data is eating everything.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/02/2019 – 23:35 - Vindicated 'FX Cartel' Trader Accuses Citi Of Trying To "Frame" Him, Sues For $112 Million
Vindicated ‘FX Cartel’ Trader Accuses Citi Of Trying To “Frame” Him, Sues For $112 Million
Six years after prosecutors in New York and London cracked down on Citigroup, JPM, Deutsche Bank and a handful of others in the so-called foreign exchange “cartel” case – the sequel to the persecution of banks for rigging benchmark interest rates (most notably Libor) to benefit their own positions – one of the traders who just barely escaped a lengthy jail term for his alleged role in the plot is fighting back against the bank he said spread lies about him and deliberately tried to “frame” him.
In yet another market manipulation case that could have “potentially profound implications for the way banks and regulators treat individuals connected to allegations of industry-wide wrongdoing”, the former head of Citigroup’s European FX trading desk is suing his former employer for throwing him under the bus, the FT reports.
Rohan Ramchandani
The trader, Rohan Ramchandani, claimed in a civil suit filed in New York on Wednesday that Citi “singled him out” for “intense scrutiny” from US and UK regulators. Ramchandani’s lawyers described the alleged plot as a “secret scheme” to “dirty up” their client’s name.
After accusing Citi of using him as a human shield to absorb scrutiny as the scandal unfurled, Ramchandani’s legal team said their client is seeking ~$112 million in damages. Even though he was acquitted in a criminal trial that wrapped up late last year (three years after Citi reached a $1.3 billion settlement with the DoJ and the Fed over the allegations), Ramchandani says he has struggled to find another job in finance.
“Employers should not be allowed to throw innocent employees under the bus, nor to play judge, jury and executioner, in an attempt to limit their corporate liability,” Ramchandani said in a statement to the FT.
Later, the lawsuit reads:
“Citi quite literally fabricated an antitrust case for the DoJ against Ramchandani based upon knowingly false allegations that he engaged in market manipulation and collusion.”
In response, the bank dismissed Ramchandani’s claims as being “without merit,” and vowed to “contest them vigorously.”
If Ramchandani had been convicted, he would have spent more than a decade in prison. Fortunately for him, he didn’t pursue a plea deal and was correct in his conviction that he would be acquitted (which he was).
In his lawsuit, Ramchandani describes how Citi “knowingly” pushed the DoJ to pursue a criminal case against him, even “without probable cause” in a bid by the bank to shield itself from prosecution. Moreover, a former lawyer for Citi and Ramchandani’s boss both claimed that he had done nothing wrong. The lawyer even described him as “collateral damage”.
What’s worse, Citi’s press office was also involved in a smear campaign against Ramchandani, coordinating “negative leaks” about him to try and deflect scrutiny away from Citi. Ramchandani’s former boss Jeff Feig, who has since left the bank, wrote to him during the trial to say he was “shocked and appalled” by the whole affair. Feig added that he was “praying the jury sees your innocence.”
Ramchandani was indicted in early 2017 alongside a former Barclays trader and a former JPM trader. All three men were indicted over their involvement in the ‘cartel’ case, and a New York grand jury approved all three indictments, despite the fact that all three men had been living and working in London for most of their careers. The three traders all voluntarily surrendered to American authorities.
At the time, authorities claimed the three men used an online chatroom dubbed “the Cartel” to coordinate their market manipulation. The scandal had erupted four years earlier in 2013; the three traders weren’t the first to be arrested, and Citi used the complaint against Ramchandani as the basis for its own guilty plea. Most of the traders later claimed that the chatroom was dubbed “the Cartel” in jest.
by the spring of 2015, Citigroup had reached a settlement with regulators in the UK and US: The bank agreed to pay a total of more than $2 billion in fines. It also joined four other major banks in submitting to a parent-level guilty plea.
But by basing its admissions of guilt on Ramchandani’s alleged wrongdoings, Citi managed to avoid a class-action lawsuit and protect its ability to continue participating in US markets.
Which means: Whatever amount the bank must expend settling Ramchandani’s claims will have been worth it, seeing as the alternative – that is, not using him as a pariah during the ‘cartel’ case – could have resulted in serious repercussion.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/02/2019 – 23:15 - Central Bankers Go Green… Why?
Central Bankers Go Green… Why?
Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
I was told many depressing things as a child.
Watching World Vision infomercials educating the west to the want and misery suffered by millions of children in the third world, I wasn’t alone in asking adults “why”? When I enjoyed all the comforts of food security, electricity and running water, why were these other children living in poverty? I know that I was not the only bewildered child to receive the shallow response that I did from family and teachers when I was told that this “simply is the way it is”. At best, we privileged few in the 1st world could hope that $1/day would alleviate their pain, but really there was no great solution.
Later in life, as my closest friends found themselves enmeshed in university political science and economic programs, the innocent curiosity that recognized injustice for what it was not only died under the weight of materialist theories of human nature which their parents paid good money to feed them, but upon leaving school, those same friends actually became witting accomplices in that very system which their youthful hearts recognized as wrong so many years earlier. Since humanity was intrinsically selfish and our economic system so immutable, the best we could hope for was success in life and enjoy being on the receiving end of destiny.
Again, I know that I’m not alone in this experience, as tens of millions of citizens took to the streets all around the world on September 27 to march for the earth, repulsed by corrupt consumerism and celebrating the advent of a Green New Deal.
This activation of “people power” driven by such institutions as the Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for the Future and the young Greta Thunberg could never have occurred had not a deep sense of injustice and malaise not already been festering in our collective hearts. That sense of injustice and malaise connects us to our deepest humanity and is a purity which unites each of us in a field of compassion with the whole of which we are but parts, and should be celebrated and protected at all costs.
In spite of that purity something much darker showed its ugly face on September 27 which used that inherent goodness to its dark advantage. It is that dark something that I would like to discuss.
You Know Something Isn’t Right When…
The first clue as to the ugly problem can be found in the simple fact that leading central bankers had already issued a call for the same new green banking system which Greta and the countless masses also demanded long before Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for the Future or There is No Time were ever created.
While officially announced on September 22nd at the opening of the UN Climate Summit in NY, a Central Banker’s Climate Compact was unveiled under the leadership of Bank of England Governor Mark Carney that had already been in the works for over 18 months representing over 130 of the world’s largest and corrupt banks calling for a radical decarbonisation of the world economy by 2/3 according to commitments laid out in the 2015 Paris Climate accord.
Bank of England head and Chair of the Bank of International Settlement’s Financial Stability Board (2011-2018) Mark Carney announced at this venue that “climate disclosures must become comprehensive, climate risk management must be transformed and sustainable investing must go mainstream”. Carney then took on a more threatening tone by saying “the firms that anticipate these developments will be rewarded handsomely. Those that don’t will cease to exist”.
Now Mark Carney has been hailed by the environmental lobby as the leading “eco-warrior” of central bankers and those doing the hailing seem to rarely take notice of the blatant fact that the person who sits atop the technocratic power structure that has given rise to the world’s greatest economic and environmental injustices for decades is also the person designing how this dysfunctional world is supposed to be restructured.
So how do Carney and his fellow hive of central bankers propose the world transform?
The New Green System Becomes…
For starters, Carney believes that a new global reserve currency must replace the U.S. Dollar.
What should this post-dollar system be based upon? Well, as of August 23, during a central bankers’ summit in Jackson Hole Missouri, Carney stated that it should be modelled on Facebook’s cryptocurrency the Libra, which is scheduled to start issuance by early next year. Unlike the Libra however, Carney’s cryptocurrency will be entirely controlled by private banking institutions and totally removed from sovereign nation states, which are just too influenced by short term political interests rather than an “enlightened technocratic elite” who know how to truly think long term.
Knowing that China’s Belt and Road Initiative is increasingly becoming the foundation for a viable new economic order, and knowing that the financial oligarchy’s monopoly over world finance will come undone if that were so, Carney also warned that a crypto-digital currency is the only way to stop the Renminbi from becoming the US dollar’s replacement. Carney called his digital solution to be a “synthetic hegemonic currency… through a network of central bank digital currencies” which would base their value upon new standards not existent in the 1971-2019 globalized model.
Redefining value
In a 2015 Lloyds of London Speech preceding the Paris COP21 Climate summit, Carney stated “the desirability of restricting climate change to two degrees above pre-industrial levels leads to the notion of a carbon “budget”- an assessment of the amount of emissions the world can “afford”.
This statement essentially defines the parameters which Greta and her minions of green followers are being induced to call for as a new “post-consumerist” world of monetary valuation while actually merely destroying what little remains of a middle class and empowering an already entrenched oligarchy.
Like all good lies, this one hinges upon a truth.
Carney and the green new dealers recognize that pure “market demand” has totally failed as a standard of assessing “value” of money or any other primary asset in our economy. $4.5 trillion of currency speculation grows like a cancer every day without any positive payback to the real economy while $700 trillion of derivatives hover like a Damocles sword over the world waiting to fall at any moment that “market confidence” disappears as it did in 2007.
But after that truth is acknowledged, what does the “carbon budget” entail which professes to somehow lower the world temperature to within two degrees of pre-industrial temperatures which we must assume to be a solution to an under-defined problem?
According to the Green New Deal proposed by Carney and his allies, in order to bring world carbon dioxide production down to net zero emissions by 2050 as demanded by COP21, several things must happen.
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Green bonds must be expanded en masse, in the similar fashion that victory bonds were created in WW2 to pay for the growth of industry needed to battle Hitler. In this 21st century version of course, it is the Bank of International Settlements which financed Nazism which today wishes to define how the new victory bonds will behave. Rather than finance industrial and scientific growth as occurred in the 1940s, these new bonds promise to shrink it. The associated constraints upon humanity’s ability to support its 7 billion lives is not lost to some cold hearted technocrats and their aristocratic managers at the top.
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In reducing industrial growth through the transition from a carbon-based society towards a “green” energy- fueled society of windmills and solar panels, carbon footprints must be diminished. The degree to which humanity diminishes its carbon footprints is the degree to which Carney and his masters promise to reward economic players with monetary profit. Again this is the very opposite process when compared to the 1938-1971 system of industrial growth which tied dollar values to the growth of the REAL economy (agriculture, industry, science and technology) which tied money to the betterment of human life.
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Carbon Taxes and Cap and Trade mechanisms must become hegemonic which then creates measurable values for the reduction of humanity’s carbon footprint.
Embarrassingly Bad Science
By acting on a purely emotional state of fear and panic as Greta demands we do, Carney-ite technocrats hope that no one bothers to shine light upon the blatant scientific fallacies underlying the entire “green new deal” which the Bank of England is proposing the world adopt.
We must ignore the fact that the “99% of scientists who all agree that global warming is caused by human activity” is really only based upon a survey of 79 anonymous scientists (77 of whom believed in the claim).
We must believe that it has been proven that CO2 is a cause of climate variation, even though all long term measurements of climate and temperature indicate that CO2 follows rather than precedes temperature changes.
We must also believe that this reduction in humanity’s contribution of CO2 to the entire greenhouse effect (which accounts for less than 0.1% of the total) would have any impact whatsoever upon a 2 degree reduction of the global mean temperature from pre-industrial levels (which we have no ability to assess anyway).
We must ultimately assume that perpetual economic growth is a delusion which only fools believe in and that population growth is a problem which must be corrected by a technocratic elite who have the “stomachs to handle the bloodletting”.
Breaking out of our Carrying Capacity
The fact is that there has always been a carrying capacity to humanity and no one should try to deny that reality.
What green technocrats hate to admit is that humanity’s carrying capacity is very different from that found among all other species of life in the biosphere.
While other species find their population potential limited by genetic traits, and environmental constraints, humanity alone can transcend those material limits by leaping into the creative realm of discovery both in the sciences as well as in the arts. The fruits of humanity’s discoveries as outlined in Abraham Lincoln’s brilliant speech On Discoveries and Inventions (1860) is entirely connected to our unbounded capacity for scientific and technological progress.
The reality of the coherence between mankind’s creative powers and the creative power shaping the universe as a whole has been a powerful concept identified millennia ago by Plato, St. Augustine, Nicholas of Cusa and his followers Johannes Kepler, Gottfried Leibniz, Benjamin Franklin and Friedrich Schiller. Its expression (though not always fully understood by those acting upon it) has been the object of hate and fear by an entrenched oligarchy which has launched innumerable wars, assassinations and regime changes to prevent its awakening.
The New Silk Road… Not the Green New Deal
Today, Russia and China have recognized this necessity of unbounded human progress and are fully committed to integrating their economies into an “alternative” financial system centered on the Belt and Road Initiative. While 135 other nations have increasingly joined in this new system, the oligarchy which signs Carney’s paycheques is well aware that a USA under the control of a president who says “the future belongs to patriots, not globalists” creates an intolerable risk that may re-orient America towards this new system and that cannot be tolerated.
Most importantly, when one truly inspects the Belt and Road Initiative’s accomplishments both in Asia as well as Africa and the Middle East, it becomes apparent that the only system which truly has the means to not only replace our bankrupt order while also eliminating war, environmental destruction and squalor is tied directly to what China has built and which has already pulled over 800 million souls out of poverty. NASA even recently confirmed that earth’s biomass grew by 10% entirely because of India and China’s commitment to industrial progress- overturning the foolish notion that economic growth and environmental health must always be at odds.
This is the system which existed only as a dream unknown to most in the west as I watched World Vision programs encouraging me to beg my mother to give $1/day to a kid in Guatemala whose life had been destroyed by that same system which today threatens to destroy what little is left of the third world through a Green New Deal.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/02/2019 – 22:55 -
- NeedWork: WeWork Expands Executive Purge Of Neumann Allies
NeedWork: WeWork Expands Executive Purge Of Neumann Allies
The management purge that began with the firing of former We Company CEO Adam Neumann has gone international, Bloomberg reports.
WeWork has named a new head for its Japanese operations, replacing Chris Hill, who led Japanese operations for the company since it entered the market in 2017. Hill also served as ‘chief product officer’ at WeWork’s parent, the We Company, and has long been seen as a close ally of Neumann’s. He will be replaced by Kazuyuki Sasaki, a former managing director at WeWork Japan.
The management turnover comes as landlords cool to the idea of renting to the company, which could run out of money as soon as next year without the capital infusion that its now-cancelled IPO was supposed to provide. Earlier this week, BBG reported that WeWork had pulled out of a deal to rent office space at Central Quay, an office block in Dublin’s docklands neighborhood.
Hill is one of several executives who are leaving the company now that Neumann has stepped down from the CEO role (he’s still chairman of the board). Neumann stepped aside in a desperate attempt to assuage investors’ concerns about WeWork’s governance, though the company abandoned its IPO anyway. Hill had a family connection: He’s Neumann’s brother-in-law.
WeWork hasn’t broken down revenues by region, but Japan is one of the company’s most important markets, if only because it’s the home of the company’s biggest investor: SoftBank, the Japanese telecoms giant with a VC arm attached. SoftBank and its Vision Fund have together poured nearly $11 billion into the We Company (the firm was also reportedly behind WeWork’s decision to abandon its IPO and its CEO).
SoftBank also reportedly put up another $500 million for a 50% stake for the Japanese joint venture with WeWork. Using that money, WeWork Japan expanded into 21 locations across five cities in just 20 months (the firm is also reportedly designing SoftBank’s new headquarters on the waterfront in Tokyo).
Per BBG, the management purge has also claimed several other members of Neumann’s inner circle: including Michael Gross and Wendy Silverstein, the company’s vice chairman and co-head of its real estate investment arm, respectively. Neumann’s wife, Rebekah Paltrow Neumann, also departed the company after a stint as its “chief brand” and “chief impact” officer.
In a separate report, BBG revealed that WeWork is trying to repair its hard-partying reputation by toning down the launch party for its new European headquarters in London’s Waterloo district, where the company is preparing to open what it has billed as “the largest co-working space in the world.”
The launch ‘event’ will include food and drinks and run for ‘a couple of hours’ said one of BBG‘s sources, unlike previous WeWork parties, which sometimes continued late into the night, with copious amounts of drugs consumed.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/02/2019 – 22:35
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