Arthur Rothstein “Bank that failed. Kansas” May 1936
There are so many different polls with even more different results, you’d think they do it on purpose.
• UK’s Johnson Ahead But Polls Suggest Majority Might Be Tough (R.)
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is heading into Britain’s election next week with a lead in opinion polls, but some of the surveys also suggest that his chance of winning a parliamentary majority could be too close to call. Four opinion polls published on Saturday put the lead of Johnson’s Conservative Party over the main opposition Labour Party at between eight and 15 points, five days before the Dec. 12 national election. At the lowest end of that range, Johnson cannot count on winning the majority in parliament he needs to take Britain out of the European Union by Jan. 31, especially if voters choose to put aside their usual allegiances to vote tactically over Brexit.
Polling firm Savanta ComRes said Johnson’s lead over Labour had shrunk to eight points from 10 in a previous poll published on Wednesday – the tightest margin of Saturday’s four surveys. Its head of politics, Chris Hopkins, said the final few days of the campaign could be crucial. “The margins are incredibly tight,” he said. “The Conservative lead over Labour dropping or increasing by one or two points could be the difference between a hung parliament and a sizeable Conservative majority.” The election pits Johnson’s plan to get Brexit done next month against Labour’s call for a second referendum on a new Brexit deal under its veteran socialist leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Opinion pollsters were embarrassed by Britain’s last election in 2017, when they under-estimated the size of Labour’s support which cost previous prime minister Theresa May her majority and threw Brexit into chaos. They also failed to predict the victory of the Leave campaign in the 2016 EU membership referendum. However, one poll, published before the 2017 election, by YouGov, was more accurate in predicting the number of seats won by each party. Known as an MRP poll – an acronym for its Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification model – it predicted 93% of results in individual constituencies correctly. The Sunday Times said a poll by Datapraxis, also using the MRP model and based on 500,000 online interviews, predicted that Johnson would win a majority of 38 in parliament next week, down from a projection of 48 two weeks ago.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1203590220173713409
It doesn’t take that many votes.
• Calls Grow To Stop Boris Johnson With Tactical Voting As Race Tightens (O.)
A cross-party alliance of opposition politicians has launched an 11th-hour appeal to anti-Tory voters to consider switching allegiance in Thursday’s general election, amid signs that a late surge of tactical voting in a few swing seats could deprive Boris Johnson of a majority in parliament. The calls from senior Labour, Liberal Democrat and SNP figures come as a major poll suggests Johnson’s likely majority has been cut in half in the last two weeks – from 82 a fortnight ago to just 40 with four days to polling day. The analysis of almost 30,000 voters, for the pro-EU Best for Britain campaign, also finds that tactical votes by as few as 40,700 people in 36 key seats could prevent Johnson from forming a majority government.
Without a majority, Johnson is unlikely to be able to deliver the central promise of the Tory campaign – “to get Brexit done” – as he will struggle to get enough MPs’ votes. The DUP, which agreed to prop up the Tories after the 2017 general election, is now fiercely opposed to Johnson’s Brexit deal. The special polling analysis concludes that if tactical voting keeps the Tories out in the three dozen seats, the Conservatives would have 309 MPs, Labour 255, the SNP 49, the Lib Dems 14, Plaid Cymru three and the Greens one. To guarantee a majority, a governing party needs 325 MPs.
Naomi Smith, Best for Britain’s chief executive, said: “This election is on a knife-edge, and, if enough Remainers hold their nose and vote for the candidate with the best chance of stopping the Tories, we’re heading for a hung Parliament and a final-say referendum.”
Not sure this is the scandal it’s made out to be, but transparency is key.
• Patient Data From GP Surgeries Sold To US Companies (G.)
Data about millions of NHS patients has been sold to US and other international pharmaceutical companies for research, the Observer has learned, raising new fears about America’s growing ambitions to access lucrative parts of the health service after Brexit. US drugs giants, including Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly, have paid the Department of Health and Social Care, which holds data derived from GPs’ surgeries, for licences costing up to £330,000 each in return for anonymised data to be used for research. Campaigners working to protect the privacy of patients’ medical histories said they were concerned at the lack of transparency that surrounded the sale of licences and a lack of clarity about what the data was being used for.
The most recent accounts of the government organisation that issues the licences, Clinical Practice Research Datalink or CPRD, reveal it received more than £10m in revenue last year. “Patients should know how their data is used. There should be no surprises. While legitimate research for public health benefit is to be encouraged, it must always be consensual, safe and properly transparent,” said Phil Booth, coordinator of medConfidential, which campaigns for the privacy of health data. “Do patients know – have they even been told by the one in seven GP practices across England that pass on their clinical details – that their medical histories are being sold to multinational pharma companies in the US and around the world?”
[..] Last week, a leak of secret government papers about private discussions between UK and US officials over a post-Brexit trade deal showed that the “free flow of data” was a “top priority” for the US. America appears to be pressing for unrestricted access to Britain’s 55 million health records, which are estimated to have a total value of £10bn a year. A minute of one of the meetings says: “On data flows, the critical element highlighted by the US was agreement that no parties will restrict information.” Another US demand is for “data localisation” to be ruled out, meaning the data of NHS patients could be stored on cloud servers abroad.
That and demographics. Much more from Hamilton and as usual, tons of graphs.
• How The Democrats & Federal Reserve Ensured Trump’s Re-Election (Hamilton)
July 31…Debt Ceiling Deal – July 31st of this year, Senate Democrats carried President Trump’s budget deal eliminating the debt ceiling through July 31st of 2021. This after a majority of Trump’s House Republicans voted against the budget deal but House Democrats overwhelmingly passed it. And thus the debt ceiling was no more. Since July 31st, the Treasury has issued over $1 trillion in net new debt but that is just the start. Trump tweeted there would always be plenty of time to make budget cuts “later”.
July 31…Federal Reserve begins series of interest rate cuts – On July 31st, the Federal Reserve begins cutting rates and has cut rates from 2.4% to 1.55% or a 35% reduction on the cost of overnight intra-bank lending, the foundation of credit.
August 21.. Federal Reserve restarts QE – In August, the Fed ceased quantitative tightening (QT) and restarted quantitative easing (QE). The Federal Reserve balance sheet has expanded by over $300 billion in short order, with an $180 billion increase in Treasuries held. The supposed rationale for the QE restart, inadequate excess reserves or liquidity…
Excess Reserves Not Restarted – With all the new QE, hardly any of it has been added to bank excess reserves…just a paltry $16 billion out of the $306 billion in new currency digitally conjured.
Direct Monetization – That is $290 billion in new dollars directly in banks hands…and banks do what banks do, which is leverage those dollars by 5x’s to 10x’s (or more), resulting in…
Asset Explosion – Using the Wilshire 5000 as a proxy (as it represents all publicly traded US equities), US equities have risen $2.42 trillion over the 4 month period as all the new digitally conjured cash has been passed to large banks for the “assets” they held…or about a 8.5x the quantity of new “not QE” and “not excess reserves”.
[..] Debt creation by periods, 1960 through 2000, 2000 through 2008, and 2008 through 2019. Relatively stable corporate debt creation, collapsing mortgage debt, and surging federal debt. And collapsing mortgage debt and surging federal debt is only just getting started, because…
And finally, why mortgage debt won’t be rising anytime soon and all debt creation will be up to the federal government. The chart below shows the annual change in young (working age) versus elderly…a surging population of elderly versus huge deceleration of growth among the working age population.
Just a reminder, elderly earn and spend half as much as working age persons and “destroy money” via deleveraging while working age persons “create money” via undertaking new loans (debt). The current and future situation is one of collapsing credit and collapsing money creation as the growth of deflationary elderly overwhelms inflationary working age growth…and into that entirely predictable situation, steps the Federal government, Federal Reserve, and ludicrous politicians to serve the interests of the few at the expense of the many.
Bloomberg.
• Tracking Every Presidential Candidate’s TV Ad Buys (538)
Wonder what he’s got.
• Trump: Giuliani To Deliver Report On Ukraine Trip To Congress, Barr (Hill)
President Trump said that Rudy Giuliani, his personal attorney, will deliver a report to Congress and Attorney General William Barr about information he uncovered during his latest trip to Ukraine. “He’s going to make a report, I think to the attorney general and to Congress. He says he has a lot of good information. I have not spoken to him about that information yet,” Trump told reporters Saturday. “He has not told me what he found, but I think he wants to go before Congress … and also to the attorney general and the Department of Justice,” he added. “I hear he has found plenty.” Giuliani raised eyebrows this week when he traveled to Ukraine as the House conducts a whirlwind impeachment investigation into whether the president abused his power.
Democrats say Trump overstepped his bounds by pressuring Kyiv to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden on unfounded corruption allegations and disproven claims that Ukraine was involved in 2016 election meddling. During his trip, Giuliani met with multiple Ukrainian officials as he continued his campaign to convince American lawmakers Trump did nothing wrong. Photos from the visit showed the ex-New York City mayor meeting with a former Ukrainian diplomat who has propagated the unsubstantiated claim that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. He also met with Yuriy Lutsenko, a Ukrainian politician, former prosecutor general and important figure in the impeachment inquiry, who proposed a joint corruption investigation between the U.S. and Ukraine.
Reading between the lines, what we see is America can only keep up by going to war and spending more with that as an excuse.
• Is Russia Overtaking The US In The Realm Of Strategic Bombers? (SF)
In March 2018, Russia announced that it would completely overhaul its entire Tu-160 long-range strategic bomber fleet by 2030. According to Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov, the entire fleet of Tu-160 bombers will be replaced with the newer Tu-160M2 version, in addition to heavy upgrades of all operational aircraft. All on-board radio-electronic equipment and engines will be replaced. Serial production of the Tu-160M2 will begin in 2023 and the plan is for it to remain a state of the art warplane for the next 40 years. The Russian Aerospace Forces intend to purchase no less than 50 such aircraft.
The first such warplane is to be delivered in 2021, with 3 more in 2023. Afterwards serial production will continue with 3 Tu-160M2s being produced per year. The Tupolev Tu-160 (NATO codename: Blackjack) is a long range, supersonic, variable geometry wing, strategic bomber -designed to penetrate sophisticated air defense systems at low altitude and supersonic speed. It is the Soviet counterpart to the US Air Force B-1B Lancer strategic bomber.
[..] Currently, the US operates three types of strategic bombers – the B-1B, the B-2, and the B-52. The US Air Force has 62 B-1Bs, out of which, according to data from August 2019, only 6 were fully operational, with the others being grounded or undergoing maintenance. They have been in service since 1985. The longest serving bomber in the US Air Force is the B-52A which was commissioned back in 1955. The existing fleet was upgraded to the B-52H Stratofortress, commissioned in 1961. It is planned for this warplane to be operated until 2050. As of June 2019, there were 58 B-52 bombers in operation, with 18 more in reserve.
The B-2 is the only stealth bomber in operation anywhere in the world. It was commissioned in 1993. Thef US Air Force operates 20 such warplanes. There is also the B-21 Raider stealth bomber in development by Northrop Grumman. The first test aircraft is being built in Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, California, facility and has yet to make its maiden flight. The optimistic forecast is that the first bomber should enter service by 2025.
Beijing actively encourages additional oil imports. If you don’t produce output now, you’ll be cut next year. Fill your teapot!
• China Crude Oil Imports Hit Record High As Refiners Race To Use Up Quotas (R.)
China’s crude oil imports hit a record high on a daily basis in November, as refiners operated at high run rates to use up annual import quotas. The world’s top oil buyer imported 45.74 million tonnes of crude, equivalent to 11.13 million barrels per day (bpd), according to data released by the General Administration of Customs on Sunday. That compared with 10.72 million bpd in October and 9.61 million bpd in November last year. For the first 11 months of 2019, China brought in a total of 461.88 million tonnes, or 10.09 million bpd, up 10.4% from the same period last year, the data showed. As the year draws to a close, private refineries, known as teapot refiners, are ramping up output to use up their crude import quotas for the year in order to be able to apply for more quotas next year.
[..] Total natural gas imports, including liquefied natural gas (LNG) and pipeline, in November rose 3.3% from the same period last year to 9.45 million tonnes, customs data showed. In the period of January-November, natural gas imports reached 87.11 million tonnes, up 7.4% from same period last year. On Monday, Russia started to transport pipeline gas from Siberia to northeastern China.
Another failed coup.
• US Government Drops Case Against Journalist Max Blumenthal (GZ)
The US government has dropped its bogus charge of “simple assault” against journalist Max Blumenthal, after having him arrested on a 5-month-old warrant and jailed for nearly two days. The Grayzone has learned that Secret Service call logs recorded during the alleged incident were either not kept or destroyed. The mysteriously missing evidence included print documents and radio recordings that may have exposed collusion between Secret Service officers operating under the auspices of the US State Department and violent right-wing hooligans in an operation to besiege peace activists stationed inside Venezuela’s embassy in Washington, DC.
Blumenthal, who is the editor of The Grayzone, was arrested at his home on October 25 by a team of DC cops who had threatened to break down his door. He later learned that he was listed in his arrest warrant as “armed and dangerous,” a rare and completely unfounded designation that placed Blumenthal at risk of severe harm by the police. The government’s case rested entirely on a false accusation by a right-wing Venezuelan opposition activist, Naylet Pacheco, that Blumenthal and Benjamin Rubinstein had assaulted her while they were delivering food to Venezuela’s embassy in Washington, DC in the early morning on May 8. (Rubinstein is the brother of journalist and Grayzone contributor Alexander Rubinstein, who was reporting from inside the embassy at the time.)
The Grayzone has reported extensively on the corruption of coup leader Juan Guaidó, whom Washington recognizes as “interim president” of Venezuela, as well as the scandals plaguing Guaidó’s “ambassador” to the United States, Carlos Vecchio. Vecchio personally presided over the weeks-long siege of Venezuela’s embassy in Washington, DC, stage-managing efforts by a mob of rabid right-wing activists to prevent peace activists from receiving deliveries of food and sanitary supplies. As The Grayzone reported, the Donald Trump administration has diverted USAID funding originally intended to assist Central American migrants to pay the salaries of Vecchio and his team in Washington.
[..] Lawyers representing Blumenthal and Rubinstein placed multiple and highly specified discovery requests to the prosecutor for Secret Service call recordings and reports logged on May 8 at the location of the embassy food delivery. The US prosecutor was unable to satisfy the request, verbally confirming that if the documents had existed, they no longer did. “This is highly unusual and highly notable, almost inexplicable in the ordinary course of operations that these records were not maintained and preserved,” said Carl Messineo, the counsel to Rubinstein and a co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. “Given the false nature of allegations and that they advanced a prosecution based on these it is really questionable that this information was not produced.”
It’s getting out of hand. Australia has a huge water/moisture shortage.
• Fire ‘Too Big To Put Out’ May Blanket Sydney In Smoke For Months (NW)
A wildfire blazing 37 miles northwest from Sydney, Australia has been determined to be “too big to put out,” leaving residents to evacuate and the city with the prospect of months of heavy smoke. The fire is currently 1,150 square miles across and is comprised of several fires merging into one. Called the Gospers Mountain mega blaze, 2,200 firefighters are reported to be out in the field battling the fire, with groups of Canadian and American firefighters said to be joining them soon. Walkabout Wildlife Park has evacuated hundreds of animals to keep them safe from the fire. But the Bureau of Meteorology declared that some of the fires were too big to extinguish and would only be put out when the country received a good rain.
Sydney may be blanketed in smoke for weeks—possibly months. Sydney has already been enduring higher smoke levels than normal, and hospital officials report a 10 percent increase in admissions. Health officials warn that those who inhale the smoke long term might see effects similar to smoking cigarettes. “A cigarette is basically a plant that we purposely inhale. And in bushfires, it’s another plant that we’re inhaling the smoke from, so it’s not surprising the health effects are actually quite similar,” said Associate Professor Brian Oliver, an expert in respiratory disease from the University of Technology, Sydney to the BBC. “We cannot stop these fires, they will just keep burning until conditions ease, and then we’ll try to do what we can to contain them,” said NSW RFS deputy commissioner, Rob Rogers to the ABC.
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