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Western “Thinking” on Nuclear Weapons

Apr 262023
 
 April 26, 2023  Posted by at 5:00 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  10 Responses »


Mark Chagall I and the village 1911

 

 

My good friend Wayne brings up some interesting questions about weapons, in the view of the current Ukraine conflict. Are nuclear weapons the most terrifying ones we know? Or have hypersonic precision weapons taken that “crown”? The answer is not all that obvious.

There is a persistent rumor that sometime in March, Russia hit a secret NATO base deep underground near Kiev with a hypersonic Kinzhal missile and took out some 300 people, including a bunch of high-placed NATO commanders. I have neither seen this confirmed nor, perhaps more importantly, denied. But Russia has no reason to boast about it, and the US has even less reason to acknowledge it happened.

What we do know is that US/NATO (or even China) doesn’t have these weapons, and Russia does. And that, from what I’ve read, partly has to do with the fact that since the missiles move at speeds of up to Mach 15 (15x speed of sound), they need a special heat resistant coating that only Russia has been able to develop. Moreover, these hypersonic missiles are not just much faster than any other missile, they are also far better at hitting precision targets. Try hitting a bunker 60 meters or more underground.

Here’s Wayne for some philosophy:

 

 

Wayne Hall:

The 1980s were the decade of the Non-aligned Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movement. The Non-aligned movement’s political line differed from that of the Communist-Party controlled anti-nuclear movements, which took their lead from Soviet diplomacy. The Non-aligned current had some party-political cover from Eurocommunist parties. It said “there are no good and bad nuclear weapons”. Implication: Soviet nuclear weapons are bad. To be consistent the movement should have called for Soviet nuclear disarmament when the USSR disintegrated, particularly because it was not clear at first whether Yeltsin would be better or worse than Gorbachev. Some of us did indeed call for unilateral Soviet nuclear disarmament.

NATO policy was for removal of Soviet nuclear weapons from Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine. But not from Russia. Why not from Russia? Well, for a start, that would mean abolition of the Russian nuclear bogy. What justification could there then be for NATO’s nuclear weapons? The Non-Aligned Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movement was clearly confused. Why were they not raising the demand for nuclear disarmament of Russia? They had spent the nineteen eighties ridiculing ideas of “nuclear deterrence”.

Yeltsin turned out to be (or at least to appear) even more open to ideas of nuclear disarmament of Russia than Gorbachev had been. The Non-Aligned Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movement called out NATO for fraud. Even official spokespersons acknowledged that nuclear weapons were “more of political than of military utility”. In other words they were useless, except for politicians (and journalists). The Swedes had recognized the uselessness when the nuclear hawk Olof Palme changed his stripes and became an anti-nuclear activist, presiding over unilateral nuclear disarmament of Sweden.

A demand for unilateral nuclear disarmament of Russia would have been a brilliant poke in the eye for the Tory smartypants who were always jeering: “If you want unilateral nuclear disarmament, recommend it to the Soviets!” Instead of raising the demand, some anti-nuclear activists simply started pointing out to each other that the Cold War is over and this should be recognized. Others didn’t do even that.

Since March 2023, the unnecessary character of Russian nuclear weapons has been confirmed. In March a provocation was staged inside Russia (by Ukraine? By NATO?) with civilians including children being killed and injured. Putin declared that there would be retaliation, and indeed, there was, within days. A command bunker in Ukraine four hundred feet underground (too deep then for run-of-the-mill bunker-busting technology) was hit by a Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missile and hundreds of dignitaries and high-ranking NATO personnel were allegedly killed. The media were pretty silent about it. And pretty soon the gaslighting started.

If this Kinzhal strike typifies the code of ethics that Russia intends to follow in its war making, the superfluous character of Russian nuclear weapons is confirmed. Attacks on civilians are punished by attacks on the top leadership of the side that resorts to them. The media propaganda machine is now bending over backwards to scream that the Kinzhals are “nuclear capable”. So what? Is a nuclear weapon needed to wipe out political leadership in a bunker? It is said that the United States has begun testing its own hypersonic missiles but the tests so far have failed. Will this failure be the prelude to a new arms race, or to abandonment of the 20th century mode of conducting wars particularly from 1914 onwards? The twentieth century mode of mass politics and mass slaughter of civilians?

When one studies the ideas of Hitler apologists it is easy to come to the conclusion that Hitler’s key intellectual mistake was to assume that the category “white people” includes Germans. The Boers had to learn the same lesson in South Africa, I suppose. Given this and given the assumptions of “nuclear deterrence”, which is an acceptable doctrine for the white people of NATO but not for the white people of Russia unless they face the “fact” that they too require to be “deterred” from destroying all life on planet earth, WOKE notions that “only white people can be racist” become comprehensible and the Hitlerian misreadings of the Coudenhove-Kalergi prediction/recommendation(?) of a world of mulattos following the extinction of “white people”, elevatable into a praiseworthy program for the future of this world.

If racism cannot be overcome intellectually there is obviously no alternative to overcoming it, or “trying to”, biologically. Is there? It seems to me that the logic of Russia’s development of hypersonic missiles, particularly given the way they appear to be using them, is the opposite of the motives according to which nuclear weapons were initially developed: i.e. elaboration of a mass “shock and awe” effect. Hypersonic missiles apparently aim at introducing military precision: graduated retaliation, which so far has been used to retaliate for attacks on the civilians of one’s own side. But the retaliation has been strikingly disproportionate, suggesting that one is planning to really stigmatize cowardly attacks on unarmed civilians. In effect stigmatize modern mass destruction warfare.

If it is true that “the West” is behind in this hypersonic missiles technology, how is it going to respond? Through embarking on a hypersonic missiles arms race? If it does to Russia what Russia has just done to it in Ukraine, there is a widespread view that this will trigger generalized nuclear war, which “the West” claims not to want. So what would be the purpose of getting ahead in hypersonic missiles technology? Public relations? Being first for the sake of being able to say that one is first?

It is said that nuclear weapons serve political more than military purposes, but those political purposes have to do with the “shock and awe” effect, not the ability to launch a precision strike at the nerve centre of the enemy (and so trigger the nuclear war one supposedly seeks to avoid). Will “the West” think this through or will it just go ahead anyway and “try to catch up and overtake”? Is “the West” thinking coherently about nuclear weapons?

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle May 22 2020

May 222020
 
 May 22, 2020  Posted by at 11:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  12 Responses »


Cave of swimmers, Gilf Kebir plateau, Sahara c6000 BCE

 

• Just 7.3% Of Stockholm Had COVID19 Antibodies By End Of April (G.)
• Brazil Suffers Record Daily Coronavirus Death Toll, Soon To Be World No. 2 (R.)
• Which US States Meet WHO Recommended Testing Criteria? (Johns Hopkins)
• US Layoffs Spread Despite Businesses Reopening (R.)
• New Zealand Discussing ‘Helicopter Money’ Handouts To Stimulate Economy (R.)
• Washington State Loses 100s Of Millions Of Dollars In Unemployment Fraud (ST)
• America’s 600+ Billionaires So Far Made $434 Billion During The Pandemic (F.)
• US Prepared To Spend Russia, China Into Oblivion To Win Nuclear Arms Race (R.)
• Biden Asks Amy Klobuchar To Undergo Vetting As Possible Running Mate (CBS)
• Warren Pivots On ‘Medicare For All’ In Bid To Become Biden’s VP (Pol.)
• Appeals Court Orders Judge In Flynn Case To Explain Actions (JTN)
• The Railroading of Michael Flynn (Lake)
• Russiagate Began With Obama’s Iran Deal Domestic Spying Campaign (Tablet)

 

 

Another record in global new cases over past 24 hrs at 109,627:

• US + 28,215
• Brazil + 17,564
• Russia + 8,894
• India + 7,784
• Peru + 4,749
• Chile + 3,964
• Mexico + 2,973
• Pakistan + 2,603
• Saudi Arabia + 2,532

New deaths
• US + 1,503
• Brazil + 1,188
• Mexico +357
• UK +338

 

 

 

• Cases 5,218,496 (+ 109,627 from yesterday’s 5,108,869)

• Deaths 335,069 (+ 4,987 from yesterday’s 330,082)

 

 

 

From Worldometer yesterday evening -before their day’s close-

 

 

From Worldometer

 

 

From SCMP:

 

 

From COVID19Info.live:

 

 

 

 

Herd immunity is a failed figment of the imagination, and not one to experiment on the entire population of a country with.

• Just 7.3% Of Stockholm Had COVID19 Antibodies By End Of April (G.)

Just 7.3% of Stockholm’s inhabitants had developed Covid-19 antibodies by the end of April, according to a study, raising concerns that the country’s light-touch approach to the coronavirus may not be building up broad immunity. The research by Sweden’s public health agency comes as neighbouring Finland warned that it would be risky to welcome tourists from Sweden after figures suggested the country’s death rate per capita was the highest in Europe over the seven days to 19 May. Sweden’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said the Stockholm antibodies figure was “a bit lower than we’d thought”, but added that it reflected the situation some weeks ago and he believed that by now “a little more than 20%” of the capital’s population had probably contracted the virus.


However, the public health agency had previously said it expected about 25% to have been infected by 1 May and Tom Britton, a maths professor who helped develop its forecasting model, said the figure from the study was surprising. “It means either the calculations made by the agency and myself are quite wrong, which is possible, but if that’s the case it’s surprising they are so wrong,” he told the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. “Or more people have been infected than developed antibodies.” Björn Olsen, a professor of infectious medicine at Uppsala University, said herd immunity was a “dangerous and unrealistic” approach. “I think herd immunity is a long way off, if we ever reach it,” he said after the release of the antibody findings.

Read more …

They’re only just starting.

• Brazil Suffers Record Daily Coronavirus Death Toll, Soon To Be World No. 2 (R.)

Brazil suffered a record of 1,188 daily coronavirus deaths on Thursday and is fast approaching Russia to become the world’s No. 2 COVID-19 hot spot behind the United States. Brazil also passed 20,000 deaths on Thursday and has 310,087 confirmed cases, up over 18,500 in a single day, according to Health Ministry data. The true numbers are likely higher but Brazil has not carried out widespread testing, the ministry said. President Jair Bolsonaro is under growing pressure for his handling of the outbreak, which looks set to destroy the Brazilian economy and threatens his re-election hopes.


He strongly opposes social distancing measures and has repeatedly pushed for greater usage of chloroquine as a remedy for the virus, despite health experts’ warnings about risks. Bolsonaro’s relationship with governors and mayors has also grown increasingly bitter. The president is angry over local shutdowns to slow the spread of the virus and argues that keeping the economy running is more important. Bolsonaro said he will approve on Thursday or Friday a 60 billion-real ($10.72 billion) federal aid program for states and cities hit by coronavirus but asked governors for support freezing public sector pay increases.

Read more …

An unfortunate format for the graph. Click the link to the original for a somewhat better version.

• Which US States Meet WHO Recommended Testing Criteria? (Johns Hopkins)

On May 12, 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) advised governments that before reopening, rates of positivity in testing (ie, out of all tests conducted, how many came back positive for COVID-19) of should remain at 5% or lower for at least 14 days. If a positivity rate is too high, that may indicate that the state is only testing the sickest patients who seek medical attention, and is not casting a wide enough net to know how much of the virus is spreading within its communities. A low rate of positivity in testing data can be seen as a sign that a state has sufficient testing capacity for the size of their outbreak and is testing enough of its population to make informed decisions about reopening.

Which U.S. states are testing enough to meet the WHO’s goal? The graph below compares states’ rate of positivity to the recommended positivity rate of 5% or below. States that meet the WHO’s recommended criteria appear in green, while the states that are not testing enough to meet the positivity benchmark are in orange.

Read more …

Time to assess what jobs will never return. There will be millions.

• US Layoffs Spread Despite Businesses Reopening (R.)

Millions more Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, more than two months after a shutdown of the country to deal with the coronavirus crisis, pointing to a second wave of layoffs in industries not initially impacted by closures caused by the pandemic. The Labor Department’s weekly jobless claims report on Thursday, the most timely data on the economy’s health, also showed the number of people on unemployment rolls surging to a record high in early May, suggesting that businesses were probably not rushing to rehire workers as they reopen.

This also raises questions about the efficacy of the government’s Paycheck Protection Program. A broad lockdown of the country in mid-March to contain the spread of COVID-19 initially led to layoffs in mostly low-wage consumer-facing businesses such as restaurants and retailers. But economists say weak demand was causing layoffs in other industries like utilities, information, finance and insurance, and education. “This raises the possibility that new private and public sector cutbacks may be creating a major barrier to stopping the labor market bleeding,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economics in Holland, Pennsylvania.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits totaled a seasonally adjusted 2.438 million in the week ended May 16, down from 2.687 million in the prior week, the government said. Last week’s claims reading [..] marked the seventh straight weekly decline. First-time claims have been gradually decreasing since hitting a record 6.867 million in the week ended March 28. Still they remained more than triple their peak during the 2007/09 Great Recession. The elevated claims have also been blamed on backlogs after the unprecedented amount of applications overwhelmed state unemployment offices.

[..] Attention is shifting from new claimants for jobless benefits to the number of people still on aid. These so-called continuing claims numbers are reported with a one-week lag, but are considered a better gauge of the labor market. They offer a glimpse into how soon the economy ramps up and companies’ ability to get people off unemployment or keep workers on payrolls as they access their share of a historic fiscal package worth nearly $3 trillion, which offered loans that could be partially forgiven if they were used for employee salaries. Continuing claims surged 2.525 million to a record 25.073 million in the week ending May 9.

Read more …

Nice size economy to try something like it. But they dare not call it UBI.

• New Zealand Discussing ‘Helicopter Money’ Handouts To Stimulate Economy (R.)

New Zealand is considering distributing free cash directly to individuals as a way of policy stimulus to help boost the economy reeling from a COVID-19 pandemic driven contraction, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said on Friday. At a regular news conference Robertson was asked to share details about the government’s plans for launching ‘helicopter money’ – whether it would be the central bank printing money and distributing it or the government increasing its borrowing and then handing it out. Robertson said the concept was being discussed but “it’s not something that has got to that level of discussion at all.” “I am pretty keen on making sure that fiscal policy remains the role of the government,” he added.


The idea of helicopter money, or dumping cash unexpectedly onto a struggling economy, is slowly gaining currency among economists and policymakers as the pandemic looks to inflict the worst blow to global growth since the Great Depression in the 1930s. None of the wealthy countries have embarked on it, though, citing risks such as central bank independence and the risk of flaring long-term inflation. In a helicopter money drop, a central bank would directly increase the money supply and, via the government, distribute the new cash to the population with the aim of boosting demand and inflation.

Read more …

An entire state run by gullible grandmas.

• Washington State Loses 100s Of Millions Of Dollars In Unemployment Fraud (ST)

Washington state officials have acknowledged the loss of “hundreds of millions of dollars” to an international fraud scheme that hammered the state’s unemployment insurance system and could mean even longer delays for thousands of jobless workers still waiting for legitimate benefits. Suzi LeVine, commissioner of the state Employment Security Department (ESD), disclosed the staggering losses during a news conference Thursday afternoon. LeVine declined to specify how much money was stolen during the scam, which is believed to be orchestrated from Nigeria. But she conceded that the amount was “orders of magnitude above” the $1.6 million that the ESD reported losing to fraudsters in April.

LeVine said state and law enforcement officials were working to recover as much of the money as possible, though she declined to say how much had been returned so far. She also said the ESD had taken “a number of steps” to prevent new fraudulent claims from being filed or paid but would not specify the steps, to avoid alerting criminals. “We do have definitive proof that the countermeasures we have put in place are working,” LeVine said. “We have successfully prevented hundreds of millions of additional dollars from going out to these criminals and prevented thousands of fraudulent claims from being filed.”

Thursday’s disclosure, which came after state officials had largely refused to discuss the scale of the fraud, helped explain the unusual surge in the number of new jobless claims filed last week in Washington. For the week ending May 16, the ESD received 138,733 initial claims for unemployment insurance, a 26.8% increase over the prior week and one of the biggest weekly surges since the coronavirus crisis began. That sharp increase came as the number of initial jobless claims nationwide fell 9.2%, to 2.4 million, according to data released earlier in the day by the Labor Department.

Read more …

Since they won’t stop it, and it can’t last either, it’s up to you.

• America’s 600+ Billionaires So Far Made $434 Billion During The Pandemic (F.)

America’s billionaires saw their wealth increase by $434 billion during the course of the global pandemic, according to a new report, a staggering figure that coincided with upheaval to the global economy and more than 38 million Americans filing for unemployment. Per the report by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies’ Program for Inequality, between March 18 and May 19, the total net worth of the 600-plus U.S. billionaires jumped by $434 billion or 15%, based on the group’s analysis of Forbes data. The top five U.S. billionaires (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison) saw their wealth grow by a total of $75.5 billion.


Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has seen his net worth grow 30.6% in the past two months, boosting it to $147.6 billion; the fortunes of Bezos and Zuckerberg combined grew by nearly $60 billion, or 14% of the $434 billion total. Tech stocks have continued to rise, with both Facebook and Amazon hitting new all-time highs on Wednesday. While the technology sector has remained strong, many Americans in other markets haven’t been nearly as fortunate, as evidenced by an additional 2.4 million workers filing for temporary unemployment benefits last week, and with 47% of adults reporting that they or another person in their household has lost income since mid-March. Low-income earners have been hit hardest over the last two months, as almost 40% of people working in February and earning less than $40,000 annually have lost their jobs over the last month.

Read more …

They know the US has already lost the arms race, but A) you can’t explain that to the people, and B) the industry must be kept well-fed.

• US Prepared To Spend Russia, China Into Oblivion To Win Nuclear Arms Race (R.)

U.S. President Donald Trump’s arms control negotiator on Thursday said the United States is prepared to spend Russia and China “into oblivion” in order to win a new nuclear arms race. “The president has made clear that we have a tried and true practice here. We know how to win these races and we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion. If we have to, we will, but we sure would like to avoid it,” Special Presidential Envoy Marshall Billingslea said in an online presentation to a Washington think tank.

Read more …

Just in case he still doubted he does NOT intend to win.

• Biden Asks Amy Klobuchar To Undergo Vetting As Possible Running Mate (CBS)

Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, has been asked by Joe Biden to undergo a formal vetting to be considered as his vice presidential running mate, one of several potential contenders now being scrutinized by his aides ahead of a final decision, according to people familiar with the moves. In an interview with Stephen Colbert on Thursday night, Biden said “no one’s been vetted yet by the team” but confirmed the initial preliminary outreach to gauge interest is “coming to an end now.” Biden said the “invasive” vetting process will soon begin. When pressed on Klobuchar’s chances of making his running mate “short list,” Biden responded positively: “Amy’s first rate, don’t get me wrong.”


The request for information from potential running mates like Klobuchar “is underway,” a senior Biden campaign aide tells CBS News. If a potential contender consents, she should be poised to undergo a rigorous multi-week review of her public and private life and work by a hand-picked group of Biden confidantes, who will review tax returns, public speeches, voting records, past personal relationships and potentially scandalous details from her past. While several are expected to consent to a vetting, at least one potential contender has bowed out. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who is running for reelection this year, declined Biden’s invitation to be considered, according to a person familiar with her decision. But Senator Maggie Hassan, the other New Hampshire senator, has agreed to be vetted, according to local news reports.

Read more …

https://twitter.com/megslay27/status/1263591562476285954

• Warren Pivots On ‘Medicare For All’ In Bid To Become Biden’s VP (Pol.)

In the thick of primary season, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden brawled over “Medicare for All”: He called her approach “angry,” “elitist,” “condescending”; she shot back, anyone who defends the health care status quo with industry talking points is “running in the wrong presidential primary.” Six months later, with Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee and Warren in the running for VP, she is striking a more harmonious chord. “I think right now people want to see improvements in our health care system, and that means strengthening the Affordable Care Act,” she told students at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics this week, while adding that she still wants to get to single payer eventually.


The shift is the latest public signal Warren has sent Biden’s way in recent weeks that she wants the job of vice president — and wants Biden to see her as a loyal governing partner despite their past clashes, which go back decades. Warren’s policy-centered, team-player pitch is counting on Biden caring more about Jan. 20 than Nov. 3, when he makes his vice presidential pick. In other words, that the current crisis has elevated governing concerns above political ones — and that the times call for someone with her policy chops and, yes, plans.

Read more …

The power of Sidney Powell.

• Appeals Court Orders Judge In Flynn Case To Explain Actions (JTN)

A federal appeals court Thursday has agreed to hear a request from Michael Flynn’s legal team to remove the district judge overseeing his case, and has also ordered the judge to explain his controversial and unorthodox conduct in handling it. Judge Emmett Sullivan has been given a June 1 deadline to respond. The government has also been invited to “respond in its discretion” during that window. Flynn’s legal team had filed a request on Tuesday asking the appeals court to remove Judge Emmett Sullivan from the case, claiming the judge was biased against the defendant. Following the Justice Department’s request earlier this month to dismiss the case against Flynn, Sullivan had appointed retired federal Judge John Gleeson to file an amicus curiae brief arguing in favor of not dropping the case against the general.


Flynn’s lawyers sharply criticized Sullivan’s handling of the case. “The district judge’s latest actions – failing to grant the Government’s Motion to Dismiss, appointing a biased and highly-political amicus who has expressed hostility and disdain towards the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss the prosecution, and the promise to set a briefing schedule for widespread amicus participation in further proceedings – bespeaks a judge who is not only biased against Petitioner, but also revels in the notoriety he has created by failing to take the simple step of granting a motion he has no authority to deny,” the Tuesday petition read.

Read more …

Good long overview.

• The Railroading of Michael Flynn (Lake)

As it happens, the FBI case manager for the Flynn investigation, Joe Pientka, had indeed drafted a memo closing the Flynn investigation—but he hadn’t filed it formally. Because of Pientka’s “incompetence” (the word was Peter Strzok’s, in a delighted text exchange on January 4, 2017, with his paramour Page), the probe was not shut down and a new predicate wasn’t required. In his motion to dismiss the prosecution of Flynn, U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea said this “sidestepped a modest but critical protection that constrains the investigative reach of law enforcement: the predication threshold for investigating American citizens.”

Until the end of April 2020, Pientka’s memo was kept from Flynn’s counsel and the public. It has been released only now because career U.S. attorney Jeffrey Jensen completed his review of Flynn’s case and declassified documents relevant to it. The Pientka memo provides far more detail on the status of the Flynn investigation than was previously known—and what it shows isn’t pretty. We learn from the memo that after the FBI ran down a lead provided by a confidential human source about Flynn’s contact with a person with links to the Russian state, the bureau could not confirm that any such relationship ever existed. That source was likely Stefan Halper, a fellow at Cambridge University and an intelligence community insider. Halper was being paid by the U.S. government to inform on Flynn as well as another Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos.

Flynn’s suspected contact, whose name is redacted in the memo, is likely Svetlana Lokhova. She is a Russian-born academic who, the Guardian and other news outlets reported in 2017, had traveled in the same car with Flynn as they left a Cambridge University seminar in 2016. These stories made it seem as if Lokhova was luring Flynn into a honey trap, during which sex is offered for blackmail leverage later on. “The CIA and FBI were discussing this episode, along with many others, as they assessed Flynn’s suitability to serve as national security adviser,” the Guardian reported.

The Lokhova story was a smear. Two months after it was published, the Guardian was forced to append an embarrassing correction. The correction read in part, “Her lawyers have also subsequently informed us that she does not have privileged access to any Russian intelligence archive. We also wish to make clear, for the avoidance of doubt, that there is no suggestion that Lokhova has ever worked with or for any of the Russian intelligence agencies.” Last year, Lokhova sued Halper and several news organizations for the smear against her.

https://twitter.com/SidneyPowell1/status/1263557289950228481

Read more …

Flynn was opposed to it. He had to go.

• Russiagate Began With Obama’s Iran Deal Domestic Spying Campaign (Tablet)

Obama and his foreign policy team were hardly the only people in Washington who had their knives out for Michael Flynn. Nearly everyone did, especially the FBI. As former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s spy service, and a career intelligence officer, Flynn knew how and where to find the documentary evidence of the FBI’s illegal spying operation buried in the agency’s classified files—and the FBI had reason to be terrified of the new president’s anger. The United States Intelligence Community (USIC) as a whole was against the former spy chief, who was promising to conduct a Beltway-wide audit that would force each of the agencies to justify their missions.

Flynn told friends and colleagues he was going to make the entire senior intelligence service hand in their resignations and then detail why their work was vital to national security. Flynn knew the USIC well enough to know that thousands of higher-level bureaucrats wouldn’t make the cut. Flynn had enemies at the very top of the intelligence bureaucracy. In 2014, he’d been fired as DIA head. Under oath in February of that year, he told the truth to a Senate committee—ISIS was not, as the president had said, a “JV team.” They were a serious threat to American citizens and interests and were getting stronger. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers then summoned Flynn to the Pentagon and told him he was done.

“Flynn’s warnings that extremists were regrouping and on the rise were inconvenient to an administration that didn’t want to hear any bad news,” says former DIA analyst Oubai Shahbandar. “Flynn’s prophetic warnings would play out exactly as he’d warned shortly after he was fired.” Flynn’s firing appeared to be an end to one of the most remarkable careers in recent American intelligence history. He made his name during the Bush administration’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where soldiers in the field desperately needed intelligence, often collected by other combat units. But there was a clog in the pipeline—the Beltway’s intelligence bureaucracy, which had a stranglehold over the distribution of intelligence.

Flynn described the problem in a 2010 article titled “Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan,” co-written with current Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger. “Moving up through levels of hierarchy,” they wrote, “is normally a journey into greater degrees of cluelessness.” Their solution was to cut Washington out of the process: Americans in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan needed that information to accomplish their mission.

Read more …

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Debt Rattle July 13 2016

Jul 132016
 
 July 13, 2016  Posted by at 8:33 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  11 Responses »


Tim McKulka Elderly Woman Receives Emergency Food Aid, Sudan 2008

• Markets Are In The Twilight Zone, Get Ready For New New Deal (AFR)
• BOE Governor Carney Accused Of ‘Peddling Phoney Forecasts’ Over Brexit (G.)
• Carney Should Stop Being So Gloomy About Brexit (Ashoka Mody)
• German Leaders Demand Brexit Clarity From New British PM (R.)
• British Pensions £383 Billion Underwater As Liabilities Hit Record (Tel.)
• Ireland’s Economists Left Speechless by 26% Growth Figure (BBG)
• Losing Australia’s AAA Rating To Make Losers of Mortgage Holders (BBG)
• The Richest Generation in US History Just Keeps Getting Richer (BBG)
• A Year After Bailout, Greece Struggles For Brighter Future (AFP)
• EU Development Aid To Finance Armies In Africa (EuO)
• Global Arms Race Escalates As Sabres Rattle In South China Sea (AEP)
• Economic Theory as Ideology (Zaman)
• Half Of All US Food Produce Is Thrown Away (G.)

 

 

Thought we were already there.

• Markets Are In The Twilight Zone, Get Ready For New New Deal (AFR)

Macquarie analysts have likened the bizarre and inherently contradictory moves in markets to a “twilight zone” which is leading investors to a world where free-market economic thinking will be overtaken by the “nationalisation of credit” and state-sponsored growth. Think about that. Monetary policy is beating a path to a world where conventional market signals such as credit spreads and the price of risk will “finally perish” and be unseated by one where states are the drivers of credit, and spending and capital formation is the domain of central banks. “It would take the form of state-sponsored stimulation of consumption, investment, [research and development] and rescuing what essentially is a bankrupt financial superstructure (ie banks, insurance, life and pensions),” the Macquarie report, authored by Hong Kong-based analyst Viktor Shvets, said.

“Whilst similar to FDR’s New Deal, it would be a far more distorted world than either the 1930s or the 1960s-70s, with brand new investment signals.” [..] The unusual commentary from Macquarie says this “state driven paradise” will be brought on by ongoing high levels of volatility and “discontinuities” similar to what markets are grappling with today. “We don’t believe these conditions are yet satisfied, but the chances are high that they would be over the next 12-18 months. In the meantime, we still expect half-hearted ‘stop and go projects’. Japan is likely to be the first to ‘jump’ and wholeheartedly embrace this merger of fiscal, income support and monetary policies but others would eventually follow. It is just a matter of time.”

The Bank of Japan and re-elected Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have signalled a fiscal-led stimulus package in excess of ¥10 trillion ($98 billion) is under consideration. The contradiction that Macquarie is referring to is the way markets have behaved since Brexit, where assets historically linked to “risk-on” and “risk-off” moods have inexplicably rallied in unison. Equities, a classic risk asset, have recovered all of their losses since the Brexit vote on the belief that central banks will step in and lift asset prices by doing stimulus and ignore sound fears about asset bubbles.

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His role is questionable. Shirked far too close to influencing politics.

• BOE Governor Carney Accused Of ‘Peddling Phoney Forecasts’ Over Brexit (G.)

Mark Carney has agreed to hand notes of private meetings he had with the chancellor in the run-up to the EU referendum to MPs, after a Treasury select committee hearing where the governor of the Bank of England faced questions about whether he had “peddled phoney forecasts” about the risks of a vote for Brexit. In his first appearance at the Treasury select committee since the referendum, the Bank’s governor faced questions about whether he had tried to scare the electorate by warning of the economic shock – and possible recession – that a vote to leave the EU would cause. Andrew Tyrie, the committee’s chairman, citing two former chancellors and two former leaders of the Conservative party, said the Bank had also been accused of “startling dishonesty”.

Tyrie, a Conservative MP, told Carney that the accusations, if true, would be a “very robust assault on the Bank’s credibility” and also of the independence from government it was granted in 1997 that could not be recovered under the Canadian’s tenure. Carney said he had held private meetings with George Osborne before the 23 June vote. He agreed that the MPs could appoint someone to review the notes of those meetings but said he would be reluctant for them to be made public. Carney was also asked by Jacob Rees-Mogg, a prominent Brexit campaigner, whether the Bank should be, like Caesar’s wife, beyond suspicion in terms of being influenced by politicians. The governor, who said politicians had sought to inform him rather than influence him, replied: “Those who cast it [the independence] into question should consider their motivations and their judgments.”

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That would mean Stage Five: Acceptance. It’ll take a while. In the meantime, the ‘gloom’ is driven by politics, not economics. And yes, Carney is the champ, hoping for a self-fulfilling process. The Leave camp, which won (remember?), should perhaps ask for him to step down.

• Carney Should Stop Being So Gloomy About Brexit (Ashoka Mody)

Few have been more downbeat about the outlook for the U.K. economy than the country’s own central bank governor, Mark Carney. If he wants to help mitigate the consequences of the vote to leave the European Union, he should send a more encouraging message by holding back on monetary stimulus. People charged with managing economies usually try to be optimistic, on the logic that their positive attitude will give people and businesses the confidence to spend and invest, ultimately making the optimism self-fulfilling. The rhetoric surrounding Britain’s vote on EU membership has been a glaring exception. In a bid to influence the vote, a chorus of global policymakers predicted dire consequences. That chorus has sadly persisted.

After voters chose to leave, the secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Angel Gurria, reiterated forecasts of higher unemployment and permanent damage to household incomes. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, said that the decision was “casting a shadow over international growth.” Yet Brexit’s shadow is hard to discern amid the broader global decline in output growth and interest rates that began in early 2014. Perhaps no one, though, has been as active as Carney in stoking feelings of gloom and doom – a particularly notable feat, given that central bank governors rarely make predictions of economic and financial turmoil, especially when it concerns their own currency.

As far back as May, the Bank of England said that the possibility of Brexit was already weighing on the British pound, even though much of the decline in sterling’s value had happened earlier, when the polls – and especially the betting markets – showed a clear lead for the “Remain” campaign. The currency actually stabilized during the brief period when polls showed the “Leave” campaign gaining ground. Markets have come to anticipate Carney’s public appearances as harbingers of bad news. The pound began to decline in the hours before his first major post-Brexit speech on June 30, and he did not disappoint: Brexit-induced uncertainty, he insisted, had caused “economic post-traumatic stress disorder amongst households and businesses, as well as in financial markets.”

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Or else what?

• German Leaders Demand Brexit Clarity From New British PM (R.)

German leaders stepped up the pressure on Britain’s incoming prime minister Theresa May on Tuesday by demanding she swiftly spell out when she will launch divorce proceedings with the European Union. “The task of the new prime minister … will be to get clarity on the question of what kind of relationship Britain wants to build with the EU,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference. Her finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said clarity was needed quickly to limit uncertainty after Britain’s shock choice for ‘Brexit’, which has rocked the 28-nation bloc and thrown decades of European integration into reverse. May, 59, will on Wednesday replace David Cameron, who is resigning after Britons rejected his advice and voted on June 23 to quit the EU.

On arriving and departing from Cameron’s last cabinet meeting, she waved a little awkwardly from the doorstep of 10 Downing Street, shortly to become her home. She will face the enormous task of disentangling Britain from a forest of EU laws, accumulated over more than four decades, and negotiating new trade terms while limiting potential damage to the economy. The pound was up 1.2% against the dollar at around $1.3150, boosted by the appointment of a new prime minister weeks earlier than expected after May’s main rival dropped out. But it remains more than 12% below the $1.50 it touched on the night of the June 23 referendum, reflecting concerns that Brexit will hit trade, investment and growth.

The German leaders spoke after May’s ally Chris Grayling appeared to dampen any hopes among Britain’s EU partners that her rapid ascent might accelerate the process of moving ahead with the split and resolving the uncertainty hanging over the 28-nation bloc.

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Which of course can be blamed on Brexit again. But it’s really just a Ponzi scheme dying a natural death.

• British Pensions £383 Billion Underwater As Liabilities Hit Record (Tel.)

Britain’s gold-plated pensions now have record-breaking liabilities of £1.75 trillion after the EU referendum triggered a rout in their core gilt and equity holdings, highlighting the difficulty of funding the UK’s retirement needs. The country has almost 6,000 defined benefit schemes, which are obliged to pay their members an amount in retirement often tied to their final salary. Just 950 of these schemes were in surplus on June 30, with the rest hoping to make up the shortfall from long-term investment returns. In total, defined benefit funds are £383.6bn underwater, compared to £294.6bn just a month ago, as the tumbling UK government bond yields added to liabilities while global stock markets wiped value from the schemes’ equity investments.

Around 78pc of the long-term liabilities of the schemes are funded, down from 81.5pc within a month. While these figures are merely a snapshot, the data from the Pension Protection Fund highlights the precarious position of numerous schemes. “Companies are having to divert profits into schemes to make good on their promises, which means less investment capital to help businesses grow and less money available to invest in the pensions of younger workers,” said Tom McPhail, head of retirement policy at Hargreaves Lansdown. “Accrued pension rights have to be respected and investors have to be able to trust the system, however there is also a growing argument for the Government to look at finding a more balanced approach to the retirement funding needs of UK workforce.”

UBS analysts have estimated that a 1pc fall in real yields on government bonds results in a 10pc rise in pension liabilities, although this varies by scheme depending on how many bonds they hold. Gilts have jumped in price, lowering their yields, as global investors seek out safe havens. Industrial companies have the largest pension burdens, amounting to 77pc of their overall market value of the businesses, according to UBS’s research, while telecoms firms have liabilities worth 56pc of their value and utilities’ liabilities have reached 54pc.

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Hilarious.

• Ireland’s Economists Left Speechless by 26% Growth Figure (BBG)

In three days, Jim Power is due in London to brief the British-Irish Trade Association on the state of the Irish economy. Now, he has no idea what he is going to say. The economy grew 26% in 2015, officials from the Central Statistics Office told a stunned room full of economists and reporters in Dublin on Tuesday. Previously, they had estimated growth of 7.8%. “I’m not going to stand up and say the economy grew by 26%,” Power, an independent economist, said after the release. “It’s meaningless – we would be laughing” if these numbers came out of China, he said. The figure is mostly explained by the open nature of Ireland’s economy and its attraction to U.S. companies seeking access to a 12.5% tax rate.

Among firms that have inverted to Ireland, mostly through acquisitions, are Perrigo and Jazz Pharmaceuticals. Corporations with assets overseas of €523 billion were headquartered in Ireland in 2014, up from €391 billion in 2013, according to the statistics office. “We are a very small economy, and if we get a big increase in assets, this is what happens,” Michael Connolly, an official at the CSO, said on Tuesday. Once explained the numbers are “believable,” he said. In a statement, Finance Minister Michael Noonan pointed out that growth numbers cut Ireland’s debt and deficit ratios. Trouble is, they carry downsides too. For one, tax inversions artificially inflate the size of Ireland’s economy.

When the headquarters of a group of companies becomes resident in Ireland, all of its global profits may be counted as part of the nation’s gross national income, according to the ministry. Since 2008, that gauge has been boosted by about 7 billion euros thanks to corporate relocations, without accompanying substance or employment, the ministry has said. This in turn drives up the country’s contribution to the European Union budget, which is based on the size of the economy. For a second thing, it leaves self-described “baffled” analysts like Power at a loss to explain the state of the Irish economy. Power says he’ll look at indicators like employment growth and tax revenue for a better gauge, and guesses Ireland’s underlying economic growth was 5.5% last year.

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A world of pain.

• Losing Australia’s AAA Rating To Make Losers of Mortgage Holders (BBG)

The biggest losers after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull scraped through to win Australia’s fractious elections could be homebuyers facing higher costs on their A$1.6 trillion ($1.2 trillion) in mortgages. The price to protect bonds issued by the nation’s banks climbed seven basis points last week after S&P Global Ratings cut its outlook on Australia’s AAA grade to negative on concern government deficits will persist without “more forceful” decisions to rein in shortfalls. It also put the nation’s biggest lenders on notice. Stephen Miller, BlackRock’s head of fixed income for Australia, said Wednesday there’s a “real risk” Australia loses its top debt score.

“An increase in funding costs relating to a ratings downgrade will impact bank margins, but banks may choose to offset this via loan pricing,” said Anthony Ip at Citigroup in Sydney, adding that any increase in funding costs will be significant but manageable. “At the end of the day it’s still a competitive lending market.” Australia’s largest lenders – Australia & New Zealand Banking, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank and Westpac Banking – rely on offshore bond markets for a fifth of their funding requirements, central bank data show. If their rankings were lowered after a sovereign downgrade, that would increase borrowing costs as much as 20 basis points, prompting them to slap mortgagees with higher interest rates, according to Citigroup.

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I smell a timebomb.

• The Richest Generation in US History Just Keeps Getting Richer (BBG)

Baby boomers started turning 65 in 2011, marking the unofficial beginning of their retirement years. The timing could not have been better for older boomers, who are already part of the wealthiest generation in U.S. history. Since then, the broad S&P 500-stock index is up 91%, including dividends. U.S. stocks hit a record high yesterday. Market performance in the early years of retirement is a crucial worry for anyone living off a nest egg. In the worst-case scenario, stocks crash just as retirees start spending their savings, leaving them in a hole they can no longer earn their way out of. Older boomers have experienced what is arguably the best-case scenario: The S&P 500 has returned 269% since its March 2009 low.

As a recent study in the Journal of Financial Planning shows, wealthy retirees can be very cautious about spending down their savings. This instinct, along with the stock market’s new record, suggests that many boomers are likely to end up with far more money than they know what to do with. Researchers followed the spending and investing behavior of 65- to 70-year-olds from 2000 to 2008. The poorest 40% of the survey respondents generally spent more than they earned, according to the study, which was funded by Texas Tech University. Those in the middle were able to keep their spending at about 8% below what they could have safely spent from pensions, investments, and Social Security.

The wealthiest fifth, meanwhile, had a gap of as much as 53% between their spending and what they could have spent. The authors wrote: “Retirees in the top quintile of financial wealth were spending nowhere near an amount that would place them in danger of running out of money. In fact, the average financial assets of wealthy retirees increased during this period and most retirees spent less than their income.” In other words, these affluent Americans retired and then continued to get richer. That’s quite a feat when you’re no longer working, particularly against the backdrop of the mediocre stock market of the early 2000s.

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Conditions in Greece are getting worse, fast. I’ll soon have more on that, firsthand. Meanwhile, another 4 refugees died this morning off Lesbos.

• A Year After Bailout, Greece Struggles For Brighter Future (AFP)

A year after it fought and lost a tug-of-war with its creditors, Greece remains a country that seems adrift, and many of its citizens view the present as joyless and the future as grim. Summer 2015 saw Greece’s youthful left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras wage an extraordinary battle between the mighty European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF. Over five months, Tsipras and his firebrand finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, took Greece and Europe to the brink as they demanded the creditors ease reforms imposed under two previous bailouts agreed since 2010. As the EU, ECB and IMF took a hard line, Greece’s financial flows shrank and a bank crisis loomed – but Tsipras, instead of buckling, stunned the world by announcing a referendum on the new deal proposed by creditors.

On July 5, 62% of voters rejected the package. But even with the mandate of the Greek people behind him, Tsipras backed down: the risk of seeing Greece thrown out of the eurozone was too much. Instead, in a dramatic U-turn, he let go of Varoufakis, replaced him with the more moderate Euclid Tsakalotos – and just over a week later, signed the third bailout. The deal was worth €86 billion over three years and laden with conditions, such as tax hikes and pension reforms, considered by critics to be so tough that social media buzzed with talk of a coup d’etat. Since then, Greece has soldiered on, weathering popular unrest and the consequences of the 2015 migration crisis, while Tsipras strives to defend his leftwing credentials.

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Brussels is completely lost. Time to end its misery.

• EU Development Aid To Finance Armies In Africa (EuO)

The EU commission wants to finance foreign armies as part of a larger effort to stop people from fleeing to Europe, including in countries with patchy human rights. A commission draft proposal released on Tuesday (5 July) spells out reasons why it is “necessary to provide assistance to the militaries of partner countries”. Some €100 million that were initially slated for development aid will be diverted to finance military-led border control exploits and other initiatives like mine-clearing The EU money can also be used to finance anything from troop transport vehicles to uniforms and surveillance equipment. Even furniture, stationary and “sport facilities” are covered. The EU has already contracted out some €1 billion from 2001 to 2009 when it came to things like law enforcement and border management.

But this is the first time it will pump money directly into a foreign military structure. “The direct financing of the military is not possible [at the moment]. Due to exceptional circumstances in some partner countries, it was important to close this gap,” notes the document, a joint communication to the European Parliament and EU Council. The document attempts to quell some concerns over how the money will be used. It notes, for instance, that it won’t fund “recurrent military expenditure”, weapons and ammunition, and combat training. But such limitations are unlikely to be taken seriously by critics. “This proposal is nothing short of scandalous,” said German Green deputy Reinhard Butikofer.

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No Ambrose, not the International Court of Justice. The ruling was by the Permanent Court of Arbitration. And your conclusion is fit for the National Enquirer: “The world has not been in such peril since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

• Global Arms Race Escalates As Sabres Rattle In South China Sea (AEP)

The South China Sea has become the most dangerous fault-line in the world. Beijing and Washington are on a collision course over these contested waters, the shipping lane for 60pc of global trade. As expected, the International Court of Justice in The Hague has ruled that China has no “historic title” to areas of this sea stretching all the way to the ‘nine dash line’ – deep into the territorial waters of a ring of South East Asian states. Equally expected, Beijing has dismissed the verdict with scorn, accusing the tribunal of “shamelessly abusing its authority”. The state media said the country “must be prepared for any military confrontation” with the US, and must not flinch from war if provoked.

It is the latest in a series ominous developments in Asia and Europe that are rapidly subverting the Western international system and setting off a global rearmament race with strong echoes of the late-1930s. Tensions are flaring up across so many spots in East Asia that global investment funds are actively betting on defence stocks and technology companies linked to military expansion. Nomura has launched an “Asian Arms Race Basket” as a hedge against potential conflicts in the East China Sea, the Straits of Taiwan, and the South China Sea. Among the companies listed are Mitsubishi Heavy Industry and Sumitomo Precision in Japan, China Shipbuilding and AVIC Aircraft in China, Korea Aerospace and the explosives group Hanwha, as well as Reliance Defence and Bharat Electronics in India.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute says China spent $215bn on defence last year, a fivefold increase since 2000, and more than the whole of the European Union combined. It is developing indigenous aircraft carriers. US experts say its “Two-Ocean Strategy” implies a fleet of five or six aircraft carrier battle groups to project global power. Japan has upgraded its once invisible Self-Defence Force to a full-fledged fighting machine with a humming new headquarters and an air of determined alertness. The country has been increasing military spending for the last four years, especially under its nationalist leader Shinzo Abe, commissioning its largest warship since the Second World War, an 800-ft DDH-class helicopter carrier.

Rearmament has paradoxical effects. It acts as a form of Keynesian stimulus, as it did in the late 1930s. The spending might absorb some of the Asian savings glut and eat into excess industrial capacity, lifting the world out of secular stagnation, but it is a lethal way to do it. A parallel process is underway in Europe where defence spending has been shooting up since the Russian invasion of Crimea, ending years of neglect and austerity budgets. Outlays are expected to rise by 20pc in Central and Eastern Europe this year, and 9.2pc in South-Eastern Europe, according to the French think-tank IRIS.

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Not terribly smart people.

• Economic Theory as Ideology (Zaman)

[..] For a very long time, economists refused to take results from experiments seriously, because these were in direct conflict with axioms at the heart of economic theories. The empirical failure of economic axioms led to the creation of “Behavioral Economics,” which studies actual behavior of human beings. In any scientific field, “behavioral economics” would be the center of attention, since it matches the observational evidence about human behavior. Furthermore, the axiomatic theory, which is contradicted by the empirical evidence, would be a long forgotten idea belonging to the primitive history of economic science. Surprisingly, mainstream economic textbooks, used all over the planet, continue to teach axiomatic theories of human behavior as if they are true, while behavioral economics remains neglected and ignored.

Why do economists maintain an ideological commitment to patently false theories of human behavior? Certainly it is not because these theories are noble and elevating. In fact, many observers have argued that these theories create immoral behavior, by teaching that selfishness, without concern for morality or society, is rational for everyone, and good for society. For example, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman taught that businesses should maximize profits, without any concern for social responsibility. Given this license, multinational corporations have gone on a rampage, exploiting natural resources by using methods which threaten to destroy the planet. The easiest way to make a profit is to appropriate a priceless natural treasure, like a rainforest, and chop it down for timber.

The losses from industrial wastes are changing the composition of the atmosphere, oceans, lakes and rivers, and inflicting costs on all human beings, but creating profits for corporate coffers. This strategy is called ‘socializing the losses and privatizing the gains.’ With massive profits, it is easy to buy politicians to prevent environmental concerns from getting in the way. The book Merchants of Doubt documents a well funded campaign to create doubt about climate change, so that corporations can continue to make profits while destroying the planet. The persistence of economic theories which celebrate and glorify these poisonous ideologies of personal greed and social irresponsibility can be traced to corporate funding of think-tanks and research which promote “free markets”. The charms of “freedom” propagated by economic ideologies conceal the ugly reality of corporate freedom and wage slavery of the masses.

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The glory of mankind.

• Half Of All US Food Produce Is Thrown Away (G.)

Americans throw away almost as much food as they eat because of a “cult of perfection”, deepening hunger and poverty, and inflicting a heavy toll on the environment. Vast quantities of fresh produce grown in the US are left in the field to rot, fed to livestock or hauled directly from the field to landfill, because of unrealistic and unyielding cosmetic standards, according to official data and interviews with dozens of farmers, packers, truckers, researchers, campaigners and government officials. From the fields and orchards of California to the population centres of the east coast, farmers and others on the food distribution chain say high-value and nutritious food is being sacrificed to retailers’ demand for unattainable perfection.

“It’s all about blemish-free produce,” says Jay Johnson, who ships fresh fruit and vegetables from North Carolina and central Florida. “What happens in our business today is that it is either perfect, or it gets rejected. It is perfect to them, or they turn it down. And then you are stuck.” Food waste is often described as a “farm-to-fork” problem. Produce is lost in fields, warehouses, packaging, distribution, supermarkets, restaurants and fridges. By one government tally, about 60m tonnes of produce worth about $160bn, is wasted by retailers and consumers every year – one third of all foodstuffs. But that is just a “downstream” measure.

In more than two dozen interviews, farmers, packers, wholesalers, truckers, food academics and campaigners described the waste that occurs “upstream”: scarred vegetables regularly abandoned in the field to save the expense and labour involved in harvest. Or left to rot in a warehouse because of minor blemishes that do not necessarily affect freshness or quality. When added to the retail waste, it takes the amount of food lost close to half of all produce grown, experts say. “I would say at times there is 25% of the crop that is just thrown away or fed to cattle,” said Wayde Kirschenman, whose family has been growing potatoes and other vegetables near Bakersfield, California, since the 1930s. “Sometimes it can be worse.”

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