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Debt Rattle October 11 2024

Oct 112024
 
 October 11, 2024  Posted by at 8:22 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  71 Responses »


Jean-Francois Millet The Young Shepherdess 1870-73

 

• They’re Just Not That Into You (DeMartino)
• ‘Too Late’ For Harris Rematch – Trump (RT)
• Dem Strategist Claims Trump Vowed To EXTERMINATE People With Eugenics (MN)
• ‘Total Killer’ – Trump on Modi (RT)
• Global Denuclearization Deal Was Close – Trump (RT)
• Russia Rubbishes Trump’s Nuclear Arms Claim (RT)
• Nearly 3 Million Americans Have Voted So Far. Here’s What We Know. (ET)
• Delayed Ramstein Meeting Speaks Volumes About Zelensky Regime’s Failure (Sp.)
• Capitulation to Save Lives Only ‘Victory’ Left to Ukraine (DeMartino)
• Netanyahu’s ‘God Complex’ Caused Cancellation of Defense Chief’s US Visit (Sp.)
• Does Israel Wag America or Does America Wag Israel (Paul Craig Roberts)
• The Fall of Israel (Scott Ritter)
• US Elites Inclined to Cover Up P. Diddy Sex Scandal (Sp.)
• Russia Calls Out US Deep State on Covering Up P. Diddy Sex Scandal (Sp.)
• EU Committing ‘Energy Suicide’ – Gazprom CEO (RT)

 

 

 

 

RFK Trump legacy

RFK critical thinking

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Don jr

 

 

 

 

“Volodymyr Zelensky is willing to kidnap his own people and send them to die simply to hold off his defeat until after the US presidential elections.”

• They’re Just Not That Into You (DeMartino)

As Hurricane Milton is nearing landfall, victims of Hurricane Helene are still waiting for supplies and rescue. Meanwhile, FEMA says it doesn’t have enough funding to last the hurricane season and taxpayers in the affected areas are undoubtedly having buyer’s remorse over all the funds Congress has allocated to Ukraine and Israel. The issue, it seems, is the American people don’t really do anything for the elite in this country. Sure, everyday people make up the tax base and quite literally are the economic engine that led to the 1%’s great fortunes, but that’s expected. Ukraine and Israel are new and exciting. Big bombs and bigger contracts, that’s the way to a president’s heart. Volodymyr Zelensky is willing to kidnap his own people and send them to die simply to hold off his defeat until after the US presidential elections.

Benjamin Netanyahu is genociding a population so the West can have a forward operating base in the Middle East. What has North Carolina done for America recently? They’ve been coasting on that “first in flight” tagline for far too long. Last week, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre admitted that only $4 million had been sent directly to hurricane victims. That number has likely increased in the week since but it is still a pathetically paltry sum a full week after Hurricane Helene hit. Meanwhile, FEMA keeps touting its top-line number of $286 million, which has primarily been given out to well-connected aid organizations that filled out the organization’s “Vendor Profile Forum,” enabling it to engage in “business with FEMA” (their words) if approved.

And even that number pales in comparison to what the government spent on previous major hurricanes, like Katrina and Andrew. Maybe it is time for Americans to accept the facts. When it comes to the ruling elite and the Biden administration, they just aren’t that into you.

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“..he is “leading in the polls, with the lead getting bigger by the day – and leading in all swing states.”

• ‘Too Late’ For Harris Rematch – Trump (RT)

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said that he is not going to debate his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris again before the November 5 election, and outlined his rationale for the decision. Trump made the announcement on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, a few hours after Fox News reported that it had made a final pitch to host a televised face-off between the two US presidential candidates in Pennsylvania on October 24 or 27. “It is very late in the process, [early] voting has already begun – there will be no rematch!” he wrote in an all-caps. The former president implied that he had been victorious in his first and only debate with Harris on September 10. “The first thing a prizefighter does when he loses a fight is say that he ‘demands A Rematch,’” he said of his rival in the race for the White House.

A poll commissioned by CNN suggested that 67% of registered voters who watched that debate believed Harris to be the winner. “Besides, Kamala stated clearly, yesterday, that she would not do anything different than Joe Biden, so there is nothing to debate,” Trump pointed out. He was referring to the vice president’s appearance on ABC’s program ‘The View’ on Tuesday, during which the hosts pressed Harris to name a decision she would have made differently if she had been the US president instead of Joe Biden. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” the Democratic nominee replied. Harris joined the presidential race in June as Biden stepped down as his party’s candidate after a poor performance in his debate with Trump on June 27.

Another reason presented by the Republican contender for not needing to debate his opponent again is because he is “leading in the polls, with the lead getting bigger by the day – and leading in all swing states.” According to polling averages provided by ABC News on Thursday, Harris is actually in the lead, on 48.4%, with Trump 2.5% behind. The former president previously declined the offer by Harris to hold a debate on CNN on October 23. Instead, he suggested another face-off on Fox News on September 4 or on September 25 on NBC News, but the vice president never confirmed her participation.

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“While she was saying all this, CNN’s chyron read “Trump Links Migrants to Murderers: ‘It’s In Their Genes.’”

• Dem Strategist Claims Trump Vowed To EXTERMINATE People With Eugenics (MN)

A deranged Democrat strategist appeared on CNN and claimed that Donald Trump has promised to “exterminate” people with “bad genes,” suggesting that she is at risk because she is a “black lesbian.” Yes, it really has gotten that crazy. Aisha Mills seriously argued that Trump, should he be elected, will engage in a eugenics program to eliminate black people and gay people. “Listen, this isn’t the first time we heard this kind of talk from Donald Trump, and it reeks of authoritarianism,” Mills stated, adding “It also harkens back to a time of Hitler who used the same exact language that Donald Trump is now quoting to talk about the people who he thinks are poisoning the blood of the nation.”

She continued, “You know, all of this smells like an affinity towards eugenics, which really should give us all pause, because when we remember the last person, the last awful authoritarian dictator who believed in eugenics, it was someone who really wanted to exterminate an entire people because they thought that they didn’t have good genes and because they were trying to create a certain type of race.”

Republican strategist David Urban, who was also on the segment, attempted to point out how completely bat shit Mills’ assertions are, urging that it is “just shameful to compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.” Mills charged that Urban is “doing Donald Trump’s bidding” and then claimed that she is “at risk of being exterminated” by Trump for being a “black lesbian.” When Urban asked her to provide any evidence of Trump saying such a thing, she shouted back “I’m not going to be lectured by some white man who has no idea what he’s talking about and is trying to rewrite history here.” “I am afraid as an American of a Donald Trump presidency, and his actual quotes don’t lie because I take him seriously and I think that he believes what he says. And that is why he is a danger and a threat to America,” she further blathered.

While she was saying all this, CNN’s chyron read “Trump Links Migrants to Murderers: ‘It’s In Their Genes.’” This all stems from Trump positing that illegal immigrant murderers, 13,000 of them convicted under the Biden Harris administration, people who have come into the US illegally and have killed Americans, might have “bad genes.” He never talked about “exterminating” anyone, only about securing the border and preventing thousands of murderers and violent criminals getting in. Mills is clearly mentally unstable, yet another example of a rabid leftist engaging in this bizarre fantasy about Trump throwing them in detention camps or even worse, executing them, and contributing to the vile rhetoric that has almost gotten him assassinated twice.

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“On the outside, he looks like he’s your father. He is the nicest and a total killer..”

• ‘Total Killer’ – Trump on Modi (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has expressed his admiration for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling him a “friend of mine” and the “nicest human being.” Speaking on the Flagrant podcast hosted by Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh, the Republican presidential candidate claimed that India’s political landscape had been “very unstable” before Modi took office in 2014. “On the outside, he looks like he’s your father. He is the nicest and a total killer,” Trump stated. In fact, Modi’s predecessor, Manmohan Singh of the Congress Party, had held power from 2004 to 2014. Trump also reminisced about Modi’s [visit] to the US in 2019, when he participated in the grand ‘Howdy, Modi’ rally in Houston, Texas, addressing the Indian diaspora. The event was attended by tens of thousands and was described as the largest gathering ever for a foreign leader in the US.

”It was me and him, and it was beautiful. There were around 80,000 people, and it felt crazy. We were walking around. Today, maybe I wouldn’t be able to do something like that,” Trump added, seemingly alluding to the recent assassination attempts against him. Trump recounted conversations with Modi regarding India being “threatened” by a “certain country.” “I said, let me help; I am very good with those people,” the former president remarked, before appearing to impersonate Modi, by altering his tone and saying: “I will do it; I will do anything necessary. We have defeated them for hundreds of years.”

“He was talking about a certain country; you can probably guess which one,” Trump continued, apparently referring to Pakistan, India’s nuclear-armed neighbor with which it has had longstanding border disputes and has accused of sponsoring cross-border terrorism. Ahead of Modi’s visit last month to the US for the ‘Summit of the Future’ conference at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, as well as the Quad summit of leaders from the US, Japan, India, and Australia hosted by President Joe Biden in Delaware, Trump suggested that he would meet with the Indian prime minister. “He (Modi) happens to be coming to meet me next week,” Trump stated during a town hall meeting in Flint, Michigan, referring to Modi as a “fantastic man.”

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“Nuclear weapons are “the biggest threat we have in the world today,” Trump argued. “It’s not global warming, where the oceans are rising 1/8 of an inch in the next 500 years.”

• Global Denuclearization Deal Was Close – Trump (RT)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said Washington almost reached an agreement on nuclear weapons with Russia and China during his time in the White House. The former president made the claim during a two-hour interview with comedian Andrew Schulz, posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday. “We were close to a deal for getting rid of nuclear weapons. It would be so good,” Trump said. “I’m talking about Russia, ourselves, and China. We would then bring everyone else into it.” Nuclear weapons are “the biggest threat we have in the world today,” Trump argued. “It’s not global warming, where the oceans are rising 1/8 of an inch in the next 500 years.” Neither Russia nor China have yet commented on Trump’s claim about a denuclearization treaty being in the works during his administration.

Trump’s remarks came during a discussion of Iran’s alleged nuclear program, in which he criticized US President Joe Biden for being reluctant to confront Tehran. Biden has publicly urged Israel to refrain from striking Iranian nuclear and oil facilities. The five nuclear-armed members of the UN Security Council struck a deal with Tehran in 2015, under which Iran would not enrich uranium beyond a certain level, and therefore be unable to build atomic weapons. Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the arrangement in 2018. Though Biden promised to reinstate the deal, his diplomats have failed to get any traction on the issue over the past four years. In 2019, Trump also pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) Treaty, accusing Russia of being in breach of it. That left the New START as the last remaining arms control deal between Russia and the US.

Trump initially sought to get China to join the treaty, but Beijing declined, and it appeared as if New START might expire at the start of Trump’s second term. The Biden White House extended the treaty in February 2021, but it now seems likely to expire in 2026. Russia suspended its participation in New START in February 2023, citing the illegal and illegitimate US sanctions preventing its reciprocal enforcement, as well as US support for Ukrainian attacks on Russian strategic airbases. Trump officially lost the 2020 election to Biden but has questioned the vote’s legitimacy ever since. He won the 2024 Republican nomination and will face current Vice-President Kamala Harris – nominated by the Democrats after Biden withdrew from the race in July – in the November 5 election.

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Or maybe not…

• Russia Rubbishes Trump’s Nuclear Arms Claim (RT)

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has denied a claim that Moscow, Beijing and Washington were at one point close to reaching a denuclearization agreement, a claim made earlier this week by former US President Donald Trump. “No, that is not true. It is well-known that attempts by the Trump administration to put a Chinese delegation at the negotiations table with us [Russia and the US] did not end in a success,” the official said on Thursday. Any hypothetical nuclear reduction talks will have to involve “nuclear allies of the US, meaning the UK and the French Republic, which, naturally, showed no desire to join the negotiations too,” Ryabkov added. Trump, who is running for a second term in office, has regularly raised –on his campaign trail– the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons.

In an interview with comedian Andrew Schulz posted on X on Wednesday, the Republican candidate claimed that Russia, the US and China were “close to a deal for getting rid of nuclear weapons,” with “everyone else” potentially brought into it at a later time. The US under Trump pulled out of a number of nuclear-arms-related agreements, including the bilateral Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia, which it quit in 2018. Washington accused Moscow of violating its terms but Western press reported that the US was concerned that the agreement imposed no restrictions on its rising strategic rival, China. The INF treaty used to ban the US and Russia from developing and deploying certain types of land-based nuclear-capable missiles. It was signed in the late 1980s and was meant to prevent an accidental nuclear war.

The scrapped weapons had flight times of mere minutes, which gave the rival sides of the Cold War a very short window to decide whether to disregard a detected launch as a false positive or to order retaliation, before any incoming weapons reach their targets and the ability to respond is diminished. New START, the last surviving US-Russian bilateral agreement on nuclear reduction, is set to expire in 2026. Ryabkov told journalists that Moscow sees no basis for talks about its prolongation, or any other issues of strategic stability, as long as the US maintains its hostile policy towards Russia. This will remain the case “regardless of who becomes the next president of the US,” he stressed.

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Time flies…

• Nearly 3 Million Americans Have Voted So Far. Here’s What We Know. (ET)

Nearly 3 million Americans have cast early ballots either in person or by mail with under four weeks to go until Election Day, an election tracking site shows. As of 6:43 p.m. on Oct. 9, 2,877,590 people had cast ballots in states that report early voting data, according to an update from the University of Florida’s Election Lab website. Of that figure, nearly 504,000 people had voted early in person, and more than 2.37 million had voted by mail, the tracking site found. About 47.5 million mail-in ballots have been requested so far. In comparison, more than 92 million mail-in ballots were requested through the 2020 election, according to the university. In the states reporting how people voted by party, 56.3 percent of people who had returned early ballots were Democrats, representing about 732,378 people. Another 27.4 percent were Republican, representing 356,797 voters, and 16.2 percent, or 210,980, were independent or members of a third party, according to the website.

When broken down by age, nearly 60 percent of early voters were over 65, the tracking site found. Another 28 percent were age 41 to 65, while 9 percent were age 26 to 40, and only 3.2 percent were aged 18 to 25. Slightly more than 54.4 percent of people who returned early ballots were female, and roughly 44.6 percent were male, the site found. The remaining 1.1 percent were marked “unknown,” according to the site. Among early voters, about 72 percent were white, 8.6 percent were black, 2.2 percent were Hispanic, 2.4 percent were Asian, and 14.3 percent were marked “unknown,” the site stated. Early in-person voting started on Oct. 9 in Arizona, making it the earliest of this year’s presidential battleground states to enable residents to cast a ballot at a traditional polling place ahead of Election Day.The start of in-person voting in the closely contested state is also drawing the presidential tickets, with both campaigns scheduling visits in the state this week.

The Oct. 9 start date for early voting overlaps with campaign stops by both vice presidential nominees, Democrat Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Republican Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who are each holding events in Tucson, Arizona, on that day. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, is scheduled to host a rally in Phoenix on Oct. 10, while former President Donald Trump will hold an event on Oct. 13 in Prescott Valley, north of Phoenix. Early voting, particularly by mail, has long been popular in Arizona, where nearly 80 percent voted before Election Day in 2020, according to the secretary of state’s office. Each of Arizona’s 15 counties is required to open at least one site for in-person early voting, which runs until the Friday before the Nov. 5 general election. In Maricopa County, a dozen voting centers are scattered around the metro Phoenix area. Early in-person voting has been underway in some states for several weeks now. It begins next week in four more swing states: Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Nevada.

Following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, the state’s election board this week approved an emergency measure that changes voting rules. The rule changes apply to 13 counties that saw infrastructure, voting sites, and mail delivery impacted by Helene, which made landfall in late September. One change approved by the board includes enhancing in-person early voting by allowing county boards to modify early voting sites, dates, and hours. It will also allow a county election board for one county to open a polling site in another county, depending on the circumstances, the state election board stated. Voters in affected counties can now request an absentee ballot in person up until Nov. 4, the day before the general election, according to the election board.

Completed ballots can be dropped off by Nov. 5 at 7:30 p.m. at a polling location. Voters who were displaced are also allowed to turn in ballots to another county’s elections board by the same deadline, the state said. Previously, voters could turn in absentee ballots to early voting sites only in their county or to their county elections board by Election Day. South Carolina took action earlier this month to extend its voter registration deadline to Oct. 14, while Georgia elections officials have said they do not expect major disruptions from Helene. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order allowing election supervisors in 13 counties impacted by Helene to make voting-related changes. The state is bracing for a major hurricane, Milton, which is expected to hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on the night of Oct. 9.

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“..money follows a winning hand, not a losing one..”

• Delayed Ramstein Meeting Speaks Volumes About Zelensky Regime’s Failure (Sp.)

President Joe Biden’s decision to remain in the United States – resulting in the postponement of a summit in Germany organized by Ukraine’s NATO allies – is not due to Hurricane Milton, asserts ex-DoD analyst and retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski. “The risk is high that Biden is not current on his understanding of this situation, and will say something that will embarrass or overly commit the US in the region,” Kwiatkowski said, adding that the Biden administration sees “the US must… minimize US policy failures that led to the destruction of Ukraine as a functioning and potential EU state.” According to the pundit, the Biden administration sees “the US must solve a new problem in Ukraine, and to minimize US policy failures that led to the destruction of Ukraine as a functioning and potential EU state.”

“The NATO game in Ukraine has run its course, and money follows a winning hand, not a losing one,” she said, referring to the Zelensky regime’s failed 2023 counteroffensive and Kiev’s “compound strategic miscalculation” in the Kursk region, that cost the Ukrainians even more loss of territory and depletion of manpower. Kwiatkowski continued that Washington’s allies vis-a-vis Ukraine “already understand that a miracle of military prowess and productivity in the West isn’t coming in time to save Ukraine.” In the meantime, NATO war planners don’t seem to be ready to talk about a post-war Ukraine plan yet, she said, presuming that “it must be made ready soon.”

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“The mayor of Dnepropetrovsk today spoke out that there’s a problem, there’s hardly any men in the city, so they have no one to defend the city..”

• Capitulation to Save Lives Only ‘Victory’ Left to Ukraine (DeMartino)

On Saturday, US President Joe Biden indefinitely delayed his meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, citing the dual crisis of Hurricane Helene and Milton. However, the delay was also seen as a slight against Zelensky, who planned to press Biden to support his so-called victory plan. Sports are often compared to war. NFL Films are full of flowery prose about the soldiers of the gridiron battling to the finish. And it is often said that there are no symbolic victories, no half-measures, no capitulation in sports. A win –and nothing else– is a win. But life isn’t a sport. There is no timer in real life, except for death, and that can hit zero at any moment. Every day it does for scores of people, some in incredibly gruesome and violent ways, more so in recent years. The elite play with our lives like a sport, but it is not a game. Reality is a shared continual experience that lasts as long as we do, all you can do is work to improve it while you are on the field.

Enter Volodymyr Zelensky, the man ostensibly able to make decisions in Ukraine but one seemingly without the ability to do anything. I imagine Zelensky was proud of himself when he morphed from a comedian with an unusual method of playing the piano, to the NATO-backed and installed “leader” of Ukraine. I imagine that the first night he slept in Marie Palace, he stayed up late thinking about all the things he would do with his newfound power. I also presume he woke up sometime between then and now and found out that power was nothing but a dream. Maybe it was in 2019 when an Azov battalion fighter embarrassed Zelensky while he was allegedly attempting to get them to abide by the Minsk agreements. Or maybe he woke up when Ukraine had a peace treaty signed with Russia, only to have then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson come and tell him to scrub the whole thing and condemn his country to a bloody and fruitless fight with a much larger and more powerful country.

Or maybe it was this morning, when he found out the Ramstein conference, where he planned to ask Biden for more assistance and permission to strike deep inside Russia, had been delayed to an unspecified date. Zelensky’s so-called “victory plan” will go unheard. “There is no victory plan for Zelensky. Everybody understands that. His days are numbered,” explained whistleblower and former Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko on Sputnik’s The Final Countdown. “We’re going to see how many days there are. [Is he] going to stay afloat until New Year’s? Or [is he] going to stay afloat until November 5th – the [US] elections? Or until January [when the new term begins]? This is Zelensky’s timetable now.” Zelensky is beset by enemies on all sides. Not just on the battlefield but internationally and domestically. The West is no friend to Zelensky. They assured him he could win with their help. They assured him that they’d stick by him “for as long as it takes.”

Anyone with a knowledge of US history could have told him that the US has a history of chewing up and spitting out its supposed allies, but Zelensky was a mere actor, what qualification did he have to doubt the leaders of the West? Since they never blame themselves, the US will blame Zelensky for losing to Russia in a fight they never expected him to win and will look to replace him as Ukraine transitions to a rump state, but they’d prefer that he holds on until after the election in November. “They need to sustain themselves. The deep state, the Biden administration, Kamala Harris, [the] Obamas, they need to show that they are still fueling this war, that they’re fighting Russia to stay afloat until the elections. That is the main goal for them, and until then they will decide what’s going to happen next,” explained Telizhenko.

“Kamala or Trump, they’re going… to blame Europe and Zelensky and the Nazis in Ukraine. [Say] that they didn’t do their job, even though they were given all the money that the world could give them, they didn’t win.” There is also Azov, who never respected Zelensky to begin with and would be furious if he asked for peace. His political rivals are also salivating at Zelensky’s perilous hold on power. “The [Petro] Poroshenko people, the neo-Nazi radical groups, which Zelensky thinks he controls but they’re controlled by the Ukrainian intel and law enforcement, together with the United States [Ukrainian People’s Deputy of Ukraine] Yulia Tymoshenko, [Kiev Mayor Vitali] Klitschko, that crowd, they are going to eat him alive like spiders,” Telizhenko said. Lastly, the people of Ukraine themselves are increasingly turning on Zelensky. Those that wanted, or could be forced to fight in Ukraine have already been sent to the frontline. “The mayor of Dnepropetrovsk today spoke out that there’s a problem, there’s hardly any men in the city, so they have no one to defend the city,” Telizhenko explained.

Over the summer, the anti-war underground in Ukraine started to grow, with multiple videos showing the vehicles used by mobilization officers being burned with gasoline. Without the support of his people, his military, his government, or his nominal allies in the West, Zelensky has one option left: turning to Russian President Vladimir Putin and requesting capitulation. It’s not the end he wanted, but nearly a million Ukrainian men have been killed trying to secure his vision of victory. This is not a game. Zelensky should not worry himself with what he could have had, even though what he was offered by the Russians in Istanbul is far better than he can hope for now. Instead, he needs to look forward and make the only move he can to end the bloodshed. “A win for Ukraine is saving more lives,” argued Telizhenko. “As [many] lives as they can save, as [many] men they can save, women and children to rebuild Ukraine in the future, that’s going to be a win for Ukraine.”

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“..The closer the US election nears, the more unhinged Netanyahu gets and the more “outrageous actions” he performs..”

• Netanyahu’s ‘God Complex’ Caused Cancellation of Defense Chief’s US Visit (Sp.)

The sudden cancellation of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s visit to the US may be related to his complicated relationship with Israel’s PM Netanyahu, suggests Tel Aviv-based international relations expert Dr. Simon Tsipis. According to Tsipis, Netanyahu is afraid that Gallant may be gunning for him and would immediately start plotting against him upon arriving in the US. “Netanyahu is paranoid, he has a king syndrome, a god complex,” says Tsipis. “He constantly fears that someone might overthrow or supplant him. This paranoia of his grows more acute with each passing day. He sees traitors everywhere, he sees enemies inside his inner circle.” Seeing how the potential Israeli strike on Iran was the very issue Gallant and Austin were supposed to discuss in the US, Netanyahu basically ended up “holding hostage the entire Middle East, including Israel’s population and Iranian society,” argues Tsipis.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that Netanyahu is essentially trying to blackmail the US by threatening to start a major conflict right on the eve of the US presidential election, the expert adds. “The relations between the US and Netanyahu are quite strained. Neither Democrats nor Republicans can hold the election normally if there is a big war raging in the Middle East,” Tsipis explains. “This is Netanyahu’s biggest leverage and the primary instrument of blackmail.” The closer the US election nears, the more unhinged Netanyahu gets and the more “outrageous actions” he performs, Tsipis notes.

He also suggests that the upcoming phone call between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden is going to be related to the security situation in the Middle East: namely, Netanyahu will likely seek the United States’ support in case of a war with Iran, whereas Biden will probably demand from Netanyahu to not start such war in the first place. Finally, Tsipis points out that one should not necessarily equate Benjamin Netanyahu with Israel. “Netanyahu does not represent the entire Israel,” he insists, arguing that the Israeli prime minister currently “acts as a dictator.”

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“We are approaching Armageddon from two directions, and the word can’t get out.”

• Does Israel Wag America or Does America Wag Israel (Paul Craig Roberts)

Americans who pay attention are critical of Israel for its control not only of US foreign policy but also US domestic policies, such as those regulating speech, and even tenure decisions of Catholic universities. CIA personnel have complained that attempts to rein-in Israeli spying on America have been politically blocked. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, reveal Israel’s power over America. It is hard to see it any other way when American universities, such as Harvard, prevent students from protesting Israel’s genocide of Palestine, and when in the middle of the genocide, the US Congress shows its support for the genocide by inviting Israeli prime minister Netanyahu to address Congress and reward his war crimes with 53 standing ovations. How can Washington be any more subservient to Israel than that?

[..] Michael Hudson and Richard Wolfe are credible witnesses, because they, especially Hudson, participated in the formation of Washington’s policy to use and direct Israel in behalf of US hegemony in the Middle East. Israel is Washington’s proxy against the Muslims, just as Ukrainians are Washington’s proxy against Russia, just as Georgians were when Washington sent them to invade South Ossetia, and just as the British and Europe are by serving Washington’s hegemony at the risk of their own destruction. Looking at it from this standpoint, the view that Israel controls Washington serves as a cover to protect Washington from responsibility for Israel’s actions that serve Washington’s agendas.

Instead of choosing between the two explanations, I would say both are true. The cover has been in place for 50 years, and during that time due to belief in it, acquired its own power. The consequence is that whereas Israel has as much power over Americans’ First Amendment rights as the US Supreme Court, Israel continues as Washington’s proxy against the Arabs. The Hudson-Wolfe explanation originated as an interview hosted by Nima Alkhorshid on October 6, 2024. At places it seems there are errors in the transcription that result in confusion, but if you attend to the confusing passages you can figure out what is being said.

In the last part of the interview, Hudson and Wolfe seem to agree with my position that the Russians, Arabs, and Iranians are miscalculating when they rely on threats of wider war and demonstrations of ability to strike Israel to bring the Washington hegemon to his senses. What they are actually doing is giving away their strategic advantage to Washington and to Israel without getting credit for trying to stop the widening of the wars. Hudson and Wolfe support the point that I have often made. No one with a wide audience, money, or clout from a think tank, university, or major foundation is saying a word about the risks of two wars spinning out of control into nuclear war. Those few of us speaking are isolated individuals denounced as Russian agents, anti-semites, and purveyors of disinformation. This should scare the world to death. We are approaching Armageddon from two directions, and the word can’t get out.

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“..a propensity for violence against innocents which defines the Israeli way of war and, by extension, the Israeli nation..”

• The Fall of Israel (Scott Ritter)

I have previously written about Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, calling it “the most successful military raid of this century.” I have described the Hamas action as a military operation, while Israel and its allies have called it a terrorist action on the scale of what transpired against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. “The difference between the two terms,” I noted, “is night and day — by labeling the events of October 7 as acts of terrorism, Israel transfers blame for the huge losses away from its military, security, and intelligence services, and onto Hamas. If Israel were, however, to acknowledge that what Hamas did was in fact a raid — a military operation — then the competency of the Israeli military, security, and intelligence services would be called into question, as would the political leadership responsible for overseeing and directing their operations.”

Terrorism employs strategies that seek victory through attrition and intimidation — to wear an enemy down and create a sense of helplessness on the part of the enemy. Terrorists by nature avoid decisive existential conflict, but rather pursue asymmetrical battle which pits their strengths against the weaknesses of their enemies. The war that has gripped the Levant since Oct. 7, 2023, is not your traditional anti-terrorism operation. The Hamas-Israeli conflict has morphed into a conflict between Israel and the so-called axis of resistance involving Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansarullah (the Houthi of Yemen), the Popular Mobilization Forces, i.e. militias of Iraq, Syria and Iran. It is a regional war in every way, shape, or form that must be assessed as such. The Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz noted in his classic work, On War, that “war is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.”

From a purely military perspective, the Hamas raid on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was a relatively minor engagement, involving a few thousand combatants from each side. As a global geopolitical event, however, it has no contemporary counterpart. The Hamas raid triggered a number of varied responses, some of which were by design, such as luring the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza, where they would become trapped in a forever war they could not win, triggering the dual Israeli doctrines governing military response to hostage taking of the “Hannibal Doctrine” and the Israeli practice of collective punishment, the “Dahiya Doctrine.” Both of these doctrines put the IDF on display to the world as the antithesis of the “world’s most moral military” by exposing the murderous intent ingrained into the DNA of the IDF, a propensity for violence against innocents which defines the Israeli way of war and, by extension, the Israeli nation.

Prior to Oct. 7, 2023, Israel was able to disguise its true character to the outside world, convincing all but a handful of activists that its actions in targeting “terrorists” were proportional and humane. Today the world knows Israel as the genocidal apartheid state it really is. The consequences of this new global enlightenment are manifest.

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“..federal authorities possess “several terabytes of electronic data from P. Diddy and his empire”..”

• US Elites Inclined to Cover Up P. Diddy Sex Scandal (Sp.)

US media earlier reported that federal authorities possess “several terabytes of electronic data from P. Diddy and his empire” as part of the prosecution of the 54-year-old hip-hop mogul. Speaking to Sputnik, US constitutional historian and political commentator, Dan Lazare, said that it remains to be seen how the sex scandal surrounding American rapper Sean Combs, better known as P. Diddy, will further unfold. The scandal shows “the really ugly underside of the US entertainment industry, where one man, a billionaire, was able to run wild and essentially engage in a lot of sex crimes of a really horrific sort, against women,” Lazare underscored. He recalled that there are “a lot of very big name celebrities who are there, including Donald Trump, Al Sharpton, many Hollywood stars, etc.”

With the 2024 US presidential election race now in full swing, the photograph of P. Diddy with the former POTUS and his wife Melania could have been released “in an attempt to get Trump, to embarrass Trump,” Lazare said. According to the analyst, “some members” of the American elites “are so inclined to cover up” the brouhaha over the P. Diddy case. “Certainly, he was buying influence, and he was eagerly sought out by some of the most famous names of the day, all of whom are now acutely embarrassed to be associated with him. It reminds me of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. And Epstein made a big point of cultivating the most prominent people in America. So it’s very similar,” Lazare pointed out.

The analyst didn’t rule out that further information on the scandal, and the possible involvement of the US deep state, including its intelligence agencies such as the FBI “will come out” soon. “How far this scandal will go is impossible to say,” the analyst concluded. P. Diddy, who was arrested at a New York hotel on September 16, is charged with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution, among other felonies. Combs has been denied a $50 million bail after pleading not guilty to all the charges.

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“..a smokescreen and a distraction from the bottomless decline of a society whose elite rapes children.”

• Russia Calls Out US Deep State on Covering Up P. Diddy Sex Scandal (Sp.)

54-year-old Sean Combs, also known as P. Diddy, was charged earlier with sex trafficking, racketeering, conspiracy and other felonies. US political elites knew perfectly well about the crimes committed by P. Diddy, but they turned a blind eye to it, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, told Sputnik when commenting on the scandal surrounding the US rapper. She stated that the scandal is not merely a problem, but a catastrophe, and what’s been revealed is just “the tip of the iceberg.” For many years, P. Diddy’s “white parties” were highly exclusive and not all Hollywood stars were given access. Participation at this level of crime was reserved for the highly exceptional business elites only, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman.

US law enforcement agencies and special services were involved in all this media blackmail, as well as “thousands of people” who were engaged in the “criminal network,” Zakharova said. She also noted that many US experts believe the content of those “freak-offs” was recorded. The records enabled the creation of an “elite network” which has been spreading information to manipulate public opinion for years. Zakharova also made the topic-related remarks on her Telegram page: “Now it is clear why the American deep state is interested in foreign policy, the Ukrainian agenda, hacking accusations against Russia, the “remlin hand,” and purported interference in US elections – all this is a smokescreen and a distraction from the bottomless decline of a society whose elite rapes children.”

The idols of the American show business have collapsed, and continue to do so, dragging neoliberal values into the abyss with them.” “It’s funny and terrifying that a show business big shot has been accused of all the sins of modern America, camouflaged by its political establishment as the new normal.” “All of America knew about these ‘white parties.’ They were discussed so widely that they became memes. A unique situation: everyone talked, but kept mum on the main thing,” Zakharova concluded.

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“..the “deindustrialization of Europe” will continue..”

• EU Committing ‘Energy Suicide’ – Gazprom CEO (RT)

The EU economy is suffering without cheap Russian gas and its industrial production has slumped to record lows, Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller has said. His comments came after the German government warned that the EU’s economic powerhouse is facing a second consecutive year of recession in 2024. The EU gas market is seeing ‘demand destruction’, Miller told the St. Petersburg International Gas Forum on Thursday. The term refers to a situation in which persistently high prices or limited supply of a certain commodity lead to lower demand for it and trigger a search for alternatives. “Some [experts] say that [the situation] may be described as Europe’s energy suicide,” the head of the Russian state-run energy giant said. Others say that the “economic locomotive” has turned into “the sick man of Europe,” Miller added, in apparent reference to Germany.

The EU’s largest economy contracted 0.3% last year, with the slowdown being attributed partly to a sharp drop in pipeline gas imports from Russia. Germany’s GDP is expected to decline by a further 0.2% this year, Berlin’s Ministry for Economic Affairs announced on Wednesday. That would mark the second straight year of recession for the country. Miller argued that the “deindustrialization of Europe” will continue, as well as increasing volatility in the gas market, warning that the trend could lead to “a new price shock for gas and supply disruptions.” According to the Gazprom chief, EU policies have resulted in a nearly 10% decline in industrial production in the bloc, to the lowest levels in a decade. European industry will not become more competitive, Miller argued, saying that industries in the US spend up to five times less on energy.

The EU previously received the bulk of its Russian gas via the Nord Stream pipelines, but supplies stopped indefinitely after the under-sea infrastructure was damaged in a sabotage attack in September 2022. According to EU statistics, Russia’s share in EU gas supplies plunged from 45% in 2021 to 15% in 2023. Russian gas is currently delivered to Western and Central Europe via Ukraine, based on a contract signed by Gazprom and Naftogaz in 2019. Kiev, however, has said it has no intention of extending the agreement when it expires at the end of this year.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Dems drove Elon away

 

 

Elon Obama
https://twitter.com/i/status/1844045138177192180

 

 

Friedman
https://twitter.com/i/status/1844259132926534118

 

 

Stray

 

 

Night train
https://twitter.com/i/status/1844219708440281390

 

 

Pineapple

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 13 2015

Jul 132015
 
 July 13, 2015  Posted by at 10:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


NPC Fordson tractor exposition at Camp Meigs, Washington DC 1922

• The World’s Awash In $5 Trillion In Excess Liquidity (Bloomberg)
• Greece Capitulates to Creditors’ Demands to Cling to Euro (Bloomberg)
• Greek Fury Meets Resignation at Demands for Concessions
• Greece Wins Euro Debt Deal – But Democracy Is The Loser (Paul Mason)
• How The Greeks Could Have The Last Laugh: Adopt The Renminbi (David McWilliams)
• The Euro – A Fatal Conceit (MM)
• A Greek Exit Could Not Be More Costly Than The Current Path (Mitchell)
• Dr Schäuble’s Plan for Europe: Do Europeans Approve? (Yanis Varoufakis)
• Killing the European Project (Paul Krugman)
• Germany Showing ‘Lack Of Solidarity’ Over Greece: Stiglitz (AFP)
• How Fascist Capitalism Functions: The Case Of Greece (Zuesse)
• Russia Considering Direct Fuel Deliveries To Help Greece (AFP)
• Greek Government’s Majority In Question, Says Labor Minister (Reuters)
• Was This Humiliation Of Greeks Really Necessary? (Helena Smith)
• Greek Deal Makes Versailles Look Like A Picnic – Steve Keen (BallsRadio)
• Greece Today, America Tomorrow? (Ron Paul)
• Chinese Buyers Turn Kiwis Into Renters In Their Own Country (NZ Herald)
• China’s Rich Seek Shelter From Stock Market Storm In Foreign Property (Guardian)
• How China’s Stock-Market Muddle May Spread (MarketWatch)
• China’s Market-Tracking ETFs Roiled By Share Suspensions (FT)

Zombie money.

• The World’s Awash In $5 Trillion In Excess Liquidity (Bloomberg)

If you’re worried the Federal Reserve will topple the debt markets, consider this: there’s rarely been so much cash available in the world to buy assets such as bonds. While the prospect of higher U.S. interest rates sent bonds worldwide to the biggest-ever quarterly loss, JPMorgan Chase says the excess money in the global economy – about $5 trillion – will support demand and bolster asset prices. Since 1990, there have been four periods when households, companies and investors held such a surplus. Each time, markets rallied. “The world is awash with unprecedented excess liquidity,” said Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, a strategist at JPMorgan, the top-ranked firm for U.S. fixed-income research by Institutional Investor magazine. “Fed tightening won’t change that.”

The cash cushion has surged in recent years as the world’s central banks injected trillions of dollars into the financial system to jump-start demand after the credit crisis. Now all the extra money that’s sloshing around may help extend the three-decade bull market in bonds even as a stronger U.S. economy pushes the Fed closer to boosting rates from rock-bottom levels. Bonds suffered a setback last quarter as signs of inflation in both the U.S. and Europe sparked an exodus after yields fell to historical lows. They lost 2.23%, the most since at least 1996, index data compiled by Bank of America show. This month, worries over Greece’s financial ruin and China’s stock-market meltdown have pushed investors back into the safety of debt securities. Yet Wall Street is still bracing for a selloff, especially in U.S. Treasuries, once the Fed moves to raise rates that it’s held near zero since 2008.

The U.S. 10-year note, the benchmark used to determine borrowing costs for governments, businesses and consumers, yielded 2.45% as of 9:12 a.m. Monday in London. Forecasters surveyed by Bloomberg say the yield will approach 3% within a year. Although JPMorgan provided plenty of caveats, the company’s analysis suggests it might not play out that way. Helped by bond-buying stimulus in the U.S., Japan and Europe, and increased bank lending in emerging markets, the amount of cash in circulation now totals $67 trillion globally, compared with about $62 trillion of estimated demand, data compiled by the bank show. That happens when the amount of money in the world exceeds the value of the global economy, financial assets and the cash that individuals hoard in response to risk.

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How real is the deal?

• Greece Capitulates to Creditors’ Demands to Cling to Euro (Bloomberg)

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras surrendered to European demands for immediate action to qualify for up to €86 billion euros ($95 billion) of aid Greece needs to stay in the euro. After a six-month offensive against German-inspired austerity succeeded only in deepening his country’s economic mess and antagonizing his European counterparts, there was no face-saving compromise on offer for Tsipras at a rancorous summit that ran for more than 17 hours. “Trust has to be rebuilt, the Greek authorities have to take on responsibility for what they agreed to,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after the meeting ended just before 9 a.m. in Brussels Monday. “It now hinges on step-by-step implementation of what we agreed.”

The agreement shifts the spotlight to the parliament in Athens, where lawmakers from Tsipras’s Syriza party mutinied when he sought their endorsement two days ago for spending cuts, pensions savings and tax increases. They have until Wednesday to pass into law key creditor demands, including streamling value-added taxes, broadening the tax base to increase revenue and curbing pension costs. While the summit agreement averted a worst-case outcome for Greece, it only established the basis for negotiations on an aid package, which would also include €25 billion to recapitalize its weakened financial system.

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“The government is trying to get the least bad, the least catastrophic deal..”

• Greek Fury Meets Resignation at Demands for Concessions

Greek officials and media reacted with fury to the latest European demands for spending cuts and tax hikes, with some resorting to imagery from World War II and the U.S.- led war on terror to describe their predicament. Greece is being “waterboarded” by euro-area leaders, Nikos Filis, the parliamentary spokesman for the ruling Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza, said on ANT1 TV Monday morning. He accused Germany of “tearing Europe apart” for the third time in the past century. Newspapers leveled similar allegations at Germany, which led the hard-line camp at all-night talks that ended with an agreement on the terms needed to open a third bailout for Europe’s most-indebted country. EC President Donald Tusk, announcing the deal after 17 hours of negotiations, said it would entail “strict conditions” and end the threat of Greece exiting the euro.

“The government is trying to get the least bad, the least catastrophic deal,” Labor Minister Panos Skourletis said on ERT TV. “Talk of a Grexit shouldn’t take place when Greece has its back to the wall.” The tone of Greek reaction illustrates the obstacles for Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras as he seeks domestic approval for a deal that creditors called the country’s last chance to stay in the euro. European leaders insisted Greece’s parliament now approve measures including placing state assets in a dedicated fund in exchange for as much as €86 billion in new financing. “The agreement is difficult, but we averted the transfer of public property abroad, we averted the plan to cause a credit crunch and the collapse of the financial system,” Tsipras said after the summit.

“We put up a hard fight for the past six months and we fought to the end in order to get the best out of it, to get a deal which will allow the country to stand on its feet and the Greek people to keep fighting.” According to the initial text for a deal presented to European leaders, Greece needs to pass laws by July 15 to raise sales taxes, cut pension payments, alter the bankruptcy code and enforce automatic spending cuts if the next budget misses its targets. A key sticking point was the involvement of the IMF, which Tsipras at one point called “criminal.” Those measures will be difficult for Tsipras to sell to a public that voted decisively in a July 5 referendum to reject an earlier austerity package that was less onerous than the measures under discussion now. The premier, who was elected on an anti-austerity platform in January, also faces the challenge of keeping Syriza together through upcoming parliamentary votes.

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“Everybody on earth with a smartphone understands what happened to democracy last night.”

• Greece Wins Euro Debt Deal – But Democracy Is The Loser (Paul Mason)

The eurozone took itself to the brink last night, and we will only know for certain later whether its reputation and cohesion can survive this. The big powers of Europe demonstrated an appetite to change the micro-laws of a smaller country: its bakery regulations, the funding of its state TV service, what can be privatised and how. Whether inside or outside the euro, many small countries and regions will draw long-term negative lessons from this. And from the apparently cavalier throwing of a last-minute Grexit option into the mix by Germany, in defiance of half the government’s own MPs. It would be logical now for every country in the EU to make contingency plans against getting the same treatment – either over fiscal policy or any of the other issues where Brussels and Frankfurt enjoy sovereignty.

Parallels abound with other historic debacles: Munich (1938), where peace was won by sacrificing the Czechs; or Versailles (1919), where the creditors got their money, only to create the conditions for the collapse of German democracy 10 years later, and their own diplomatic unity long before that. But the debacles of yesteryear were different. They were committed by statesmen. People who knew what they wanted and miscalculated. It was hard to see last night what the rulers of Europe wanted. What they’ve arguably got is a global reputational disaster: the crushing of a left-wing government elected on a landslide, the flouting of a 61 per cent referendum result. The EU – a project founded to avoid conflict and deliver social justice – found itself transformed into the conveyor of relentless financial logic and nothing else.

Ordinary people don’t know enough about the financial logic to understand why this was always likely to happen: bonds, haircuts and currency mechanisms are distant concepts. Democracy is not. Everybody on earth with a smartphone understands what happened to democracy last night.

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Nice!

• How The Greeks Could Have The Last Laugh: Adopt The Renminbi (David McWilliams)

The other day Enda Kenny speculated aloud that Greece should follow Ireland. Michael Noonan thinks that too. Apparently, they should do what we did and, if Greece did, there’d be no problems. Maybe we should examine this proposal because what is on the table for Greece right now makes little sense. Is there an alternative for an inventive Greece – one that might follow Ireland’s blueprint? Before we answer that, let’s examine what’s on the table for Greece right now. The German/EU offer maintains that the price for staying in the Euro is possibly 10 to 15 years of austerity with no alternative industrial model. There should be no debt forgiveness and there should be years of low to zero growth as the Greeks grind out a meagre existence largely from tourist euros.

Because there is no capital, this will occur at a time when Greek tourist assets will plummet and those that are worth something, such as tourist hotels, will be bought off by German and other investors for half nothing. In time, the Greeks will end up as workers in the tourist industry, working for foreign owners of the assets. The profits from these assets will be repatriated back to Germany, boosting the German current account surplus, while the wages for this labour will be spent in Greece on imported goods, which may or may not be made in Germany. Basically Jamaica with ouzo! Over time, the Greek standard of living will remain low and Greek people with talent will have no choice but to emigrate. There may be some pick-up in the economy but as long as there is huge debt-servicing costs, this pick-up will largely go to servicing past debts.

If there is some new EU loan made available to Greece, this will simply be borrowing from tomorrow not to pay for today but to pay for yesterday. The Greeks should do all this in order to have the privilege of paying for this stuff in the Euro. It seems a high price to pay for a currency, don’t you think? But the alternative is, according to the EU, to revert to the drachma, watch the currency fall, watch the drachma value of Greece euro debts rise, allow the national balance sheet to implode and ensure that the banks collapse. In other words, flirt with short-term Armageddon.

[..] Okay, but how can Greece get lots and lots of foreign investment into the country while still using a currency that is strong and in so doing, change irrevocably their economy? How can they move onto a higher productivity level without all these debt repayments? They can do it by adopting the Chinese Renminbi! Yes, you read it right. There’s no point for the Greeks in going back to the drachma if that will destroy its banking system. Why not do what Ireland has done over the years and adopt some other country’s currency? What’s in it for China? Everything!

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“Imagine that the euro had never been introduced … do you seriously think that we would have a crisis as deep as what we have seen over the past seven years in Europe?”

• The Euro – A Fatal Conceit (MM)

Imagine that the euro had never been introduced and we instead had had freely floating European currencies and each country would have been free to choose their own monetary policy and fiscal policy. Some countries would have been doing well; others would have been doing bad, but do you seriously think that we would have a crisis as deep as what we have seen over the past seven years in Europe? Do you think Greek GDP would have dropped 30%? Do you think Finland would have seen a bigger accumulated drop in GDP than during the Great Depression or during the banking crisis of 1990s? Do you think that European taxpayers would have had to pour billions of euros into bailing out Southern European and Eastern European governments? And German and French banks!

Do you think that Europe would have been as disunited as we are seeing it now? Do you think we would have seen the kind of hostilities among European nations as we are seeing now? Do you think we would have seen the rise of political parties like Golden Dawn and Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain? Do you think anti-immigrant sentiment and protectionist ideas would have been rising across Europe to the extent it has? Do you think that the European banking sector would have been quasi paralyzed for seven years? And most importantly do you think we would have had 23 million unemployed Europeans? The answer to all of these questions is NO!

We would have been much better off without the euro. The euro is a major economic, financial, political and social fiasco. It is disgusting and I blame the politicians of Europe and the Eurocrats for this and I blame the economists who failed to speak out against the dangers of introducing the euro and instead gave their support to a project so economically insane that it only could have been envisioned by the type of people the British historian Paul Johnson called “Intellectuals”.

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It’ll happen yet anyway.

• A Greek Exit Could Not Be More Costly Than The Current Path (Mitchell)

It appears the Germans (with their Finish and Slovak cronies) have lost all sense of reason, if they ever had any. Germany has the socio-pathological excuse of having suffered from an irrational inflation angst since the 1930s and has forgotten its disastrous conduct during the 1930s and 1940s and also the generosity shown it by allied nations who had destroyed its demonic martial ambitions. Finland and Slovakia have no such excuse. They are just behaving as jumped-up, vindictive show ponies who are not that far from being in Greece’s situation themselves. Sure the Finns have a national guilt about their own notorious complicity with the Nazis in the 1940s but what makes them such a nasty conservative allies to the Germans is an interesting question.

It also seems to be hard keeping track with the latest negotiating offer from either side. But the trend seems obvious. The Greeks offer to bend over further and are met by a barrage of it is going to be hard to accept this , followed by a Troika offer (now generalised as the Eurogroup minus Greece which is harsher than the last. And so it goes from ridiculous to absurd or to quote a headline over the weekend. From the Absurd to the Tragic, which I thought was an understatement. There are also a plethora of plans for Greece being circulated by all and sundry, most of which hang on to the need for the nation to run primary fiscal surpluses, with no reference to the scale of the disaster before us (or rather the Greek people). It is surreal that this daily farce and public humiliation (like the medieval parading of recalitrants in stocks) is being clothed as “governance”. Only in Europe really.

We now know that the Eurogroup is not content to destroy the credibility of the Greek government and have the Greek prime minister come cap in hand begging for money and agreeing to turn his back on the sentiments of his own people, expressed so strongly last Sunday. The latest document from the Recession Cult has demanded even deeper measures from Athens, which Euclid Tsakalotos has apparently acceded to.

They now want a primary surplus target of 3.5% of GDP by 20183 , much deeper pension cuts, widespread product market deregulation, a more comprehensive privatisation program (so that the northern capital owners can get their hands on Greek assets for cheap), massive deregulation of the labour market, wind-back legislation since the beginning of 2015 which have not been agreed with the institutions and run counter to the program commitments and put all of that on top the harsh austerity that has already been pushed leading into the referendum. The sentiment is that Germany is not going for an exit for Greece but total submission and probably a new government by the end of the week .

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One man has not given up.

• Dr Schäuble’s Plan for Europe: Do Europeans Approve? (Yanis Varoufakis)

Article to appear in Die Zeit on Thursday 16th July 2015 – Pre-publication summary: Five months of intense negotiations between Greece and the Eurogroup never had a chance of success. Condemned to lead to impasse, their purpose was to pave the ground for what Dr Schäuble had decided was ‘optimal’ well before our government was even elected: That Greece should be eased out of the Eurozone in order to discipline member-states resisting his very specific plan for re-structuring the Eurozone.

This is no theory. How do I know Grexit is an important part of Dr Schäuble’s plan for Europe? Because he told me so!

I wrote this article not as a Greek politician critical of the German press’ denigration of our sensible proposals, of Berlin’s refusal seriously to consider our moderate debt re-profiling plan, of the European Central Bank’s highly political decision to asphyxiate our government, of the Eurogroup’s decision to give the ECB the green light to shut down our banks.

I wrote this article as a European observing the unfolding of a particular Plan for Europe – Dr Schäuble’s Plan. And I am asking a simple question of Die Zeit’s informed readers:

Is this a Plan that you approve of?
Do you consider this Plan good for Europe?

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#ThisIsACoup

• Killing the European Project (Paul Krugman)

Suppose you consider Tsipras an incompetent twerp. Suppose you dearly want to see Syriza out of power. Suppose, even, that you welcome the prospect of pushing those annoying Greeks out of the euro. Even if all of that is true, this Eurogroup list of demands is madness. The trending hashtag ThisIsACoup is exactly right. This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for.

Can anything pull Europe back from the brink? Word is that Mario Draghi is trying to reintroduce some sanity, that Hollande is finally showing a bit of the pushback against German morality-play economics that he so signally failed to supply in the past. But much of the damage has already been done. Who will ever trust Germany’s good intentions after this? In a way, the economics have almost become secondary. But still, let’s be clear: what we’ve learned these past couple of weeks is that being a member of the eurozone means that the creditors can destroy your economy if you step out of line. This has no bearing at all on the underlying economics of austerity.

It’s as true as ever that imposing harsh austerity without debt relief is a doomed policy no matter how willing the country is to accept suffering. And this in turn means that even a complete Greek capitulation would be a dead end. Can Greece pull off a successful exit? Will Germany try to block a recovery? (Sorry, but that’s the kind of thing we must now ask.) The European project — a project I have always praised and supported — has just been dealt a terrible, perhaps fatal blow. And whatever you think of Syriza, or Greece, it wasn’t the Greeks who did it.

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“Here you have the advanced countries trying to undermine a global effort to stop tax avoidance. Can you have a better image of hypocrisy?”

• Germany Showing ‘Lack Of Solidarity’ Over Greece: Stiglitz (AFP)

Prominent economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz accused Germany on Sunday of displaying a “lack of solidarity” with debt-laden Greece that has badly undermined the vision of Europe. “What has been demonstrated is a lack of solidarity by Germany. You cannot run a eurozone without a basic modicum of solidarity. It is really undermining the common sense of vision, the sense of common solidarity in Europe,” the Colombia University professor and former World Bank chief economist told AFP. “I think it s been a disaster. Clearly Germany has done a serious blow, undermining Europe,” he said.

“Asking even more from Greece would be unconscionable. If the ECB allows Greek banks to open up and they renegotiate whatever agreement, then wounds can heal. But if they succeed in using this as a trick to get Greece out, I think the damage is going to be very very deep.” Stiglitz is in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for this week s international development financing summit, which is presented as crucial for United Nations efforts to end global poverty and manage climate change by 2030. He is supporting the creation of an international tax organisation within the UN to fight against tax evasion by multinationals, although this has yet to win Western agreement.

International tax rules that allow large companies to avoid tax end up costing developing countries $100 billion every year, according to Oxfam. “European leaders and the West in general are criticising Greece for failure to collect taxes,” Stiglitz said. “The West has created a framework for global tax avoidance… Here you have the advanced countries trying to undermine a global effort to stop tax avoidance. Can you have a better image of hypocrisy?”

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Very strong from Zuesse.

• How Fascist Capitalism Functions: The Case Of Greece (Zuesse)

There is democratic capitalism, and there is fascist capitalism. What we have today is fascist capitalism; and the following will explain how it works, using as an example the case of Greece. Mark Whitehouse at Bloomberg headlined on 27 June 2015, “If Greece Defaults, Europe’s Taxpayers Lose,” and presented his ‘news’ report, which simply assumed that, perhaps someday, Greece will be able to get out of debt without defaulting on it. Other than his unfounded assumption there (which assumption is even in his headline), his report was accurate. Here is what he reported that’s accurate: He presented two graphs, the first of which shows Greece’s governmental debt to private investors (bondholders) as of, first, December 2009; and, then, five years later, December 2014.

This graph shows that, in almost all countries, private investors either eliminated or steeply reduced their holdings of Greek government bonds during that 5-year period. (Overall, it was reduced by 83%; but, in countries such as France, Portugal, Ireland, Austria, and Belgium, it was reduced closer to 100% — all of it.) In other words: by the time of December 2009, word was out, amongst the aristocracy, that only suckers would want to buy it from them, so they needed suckers and took advantage of the system that the aristocracy had set up for governments to buy aristocrats’ bad bets — for governments to be suckers when private individuals won’t.

Not all of it was sold directly to governments; much of it went instead indirectly, to agencies that the aristocracy has set up as basically transfer-agencies for passing junk to governments; in other words, as middlemen, to transfer unpayable debt-obligations to various governments’ taxpayers. Whitehouse presented no indication as to whom those investors sold that debt to, but almost all of it was sold, either directly or indirectly, to Western governments, via those middlemen-agencies, so that, when Greece will default (which it inevitably will), the taxpayers of those Western governments will suffer the losses. The aristocracy will already have wrung what they could out of it.

Who were these governments and middlemen-agencies? As of January 2015, they were: 62% Euro-member governments (including the European Financial Stability Facility); 10% IMF, and 8% ECB; then, 17% still remained with private investors; and 3% was owned by “other.” Whitehouse says: “Ever since the region’s sovereign-debt crisis first flared in 2010, European nations have been stepping in for Greece’s private creditors – largely German and French banks — by lending the country [Greece] the money to pay them off. Thanks to this bailout [of ‘largely German and French banks’], banks and [other private] investors have much less at stake than before.”

So: what got bailed-out was private investors, not ‘the Greek people’ (such as the ‘news’ media assert, or try to suggest). For example, a reader’s comment to Whitehouse’s article says: “A reasonable assumption is that a large part of the Greek debt to the Germans was the result of Greek consumption of German goods and services bought with the German provided credit. In that case, the Germans have lost the Greek goods and services that could have potentially been bought with the money that is owed to them.” But this is entirely false: that “consumption” was by the aristocracy, not by the public, anywhere or at any time. After all: It’s the aristocracy that get bailed-out — not the public, anywhere.

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“..we are studying the possibility of organising direct deliveries of energy resources to Greece, starting shortly.”

• Russia Considering Direct Fuel Deliveries To Help Greece (AFP)

Russia is considering direct deliveries of fuel to Greece to help prop up its economy, Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Sunday, quoted by Russian news agencies. “Russia intends to support the revival of Greece’s economy by broadening cooperation in the energy sector,” Novak told journalists, quoted by RIA Novosti news agency. “Accordingly we are studying the possibility of organising direct deliveries of energy resources to Greece, starting shortly.”

Novak said that the energy ministry expected “to come to an agreement within a few weeks,” but did not specify what type of fuel Russia would supply. Greece’s left-wing leadership has made a show of drawing closer to Moscow in recent months as the spat with its international creditors has grown more ugly. In June, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras during a visit to Russia sealed a preliminary agreement for Russia to build a €2 billion gas pipeline through Greece, extending the TurkStream project, which is intended to supply Russian gas to Turkey.

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Greek politics will get a shake-up. But only Syriza can govern.

• Greek Government’s Majority In Question, Says Labor Minister (Reuters)

The strength of the Greek government’s majority is in question and no-one can blame lawmakers who won’t agree to the terms of a cash-for-reforms deal with the country’s creditors, Labor Minister Panos Skourletis said on Monday. Eurozone leaders argued late into the night with near-bankrupt Greece at an emergency summit, demanding that Athens enact key reforms this week to restore trust before they will open talks on a financial rescue. “Right now there is an issue of a governmental majority (in parliament),” Skourletis told state TV ERT. “I cannot easily blame anyone who cannot say ‘yes’ to this deal.” “We aren’t trying to make this deal look better, and we are saying it clearly: this deal is not us,” he added.

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This is a question?

• Was This Humiliation Of Greeks Really Necessary? (Helena Smith)

In return for a third bailout – this time staggered over three years and amounting to €53bn – Greeks essentially have been told to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. And that is the good scenario. The alternative – Grexit – would have bypassed purgatory but taken crisis train passengers straight to hell. Greeks know that the next 48 hours will define them and Europe, too. But whatever happens, they also know the choice is one between a complete march into the unknown or a conscious decision to take measures that – for a time, at least – will inflict further damage on a country already hollowed out by the eviscerating effects of austerity. Either way, the future is bleak.

In this, Tsipras’s brinkmanship has not helped: trust is so eroded between the leadership in Athens and creditors abroad that aid, if given, will not be handed magnanimously. Almost everyone I know now fears that Greece will be left to rot in the eurozone. Politically, there is tumult on the horizon. That, in the early hours of Saturday, so many government MPs refused to give their vote to the proposed package of pension and budget cuts, tax rises and administrative reform does not portend well. Many Greeks may now credit Tsipras for convincing Europe’s fiscally obsessed creditors that the country’s debt burden remains the cause of its woes (as indeed it does), but that will not cut much ice with hardliners in his party.

Events have moved at such giddying speed that ironically most Greeks do not appear to blame Tsipras for ignoring the resounding rejection that he himself had urged when the economic demands of lenders were put to popular vote last weekend. The referendum, like so much else, has become part of the blanket of crisis. That the measures were less severe than the ones the government ultimately accepted has, in a further irony, been similarly played down. Greece, in truth, has skated so close to the edge – apocalyptic scenarios more real than ever before – that Tsipras’s spectacular U-turn has come as a welcome relief. Across an ever-fractious political spectrum, he has been applauded for putting his country before his party.

In the event of financial rescue, the hope is that Tsipras finally tackles the maladies that have so pervasively held back the country’s potential. Like no other party in power, Syriza is well placed to tackle the age-old malignancies of tax evasion, cronyism and corruption. But the leader will also face conflict on the streets. In the back alleys of Athens, where activists work in dark offices stacked with freshly painted placards and banners – the ammunition of the war against austerity – the battle is already on. “There will be demonstrations every day,” vowed Petros Papakonstantinou of the anti-capitalist bloc Antarsya. “And we will press for a general strike. That won’t be easy when the left is in power.”

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In fine form.

• Greek Deal Makes Versailles Look Like A Picnic – Steve Keen (BallsRadio)

This interviewed was recorded before the deal was supposedly struck, but the sentiment still stands. Just how much does Greece have to give away. Too much says economist Steve Keen.

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“Even as its economy collapses and the government makes cuts in welfare spending, Greece’s military budget remains among the largest in the European Union..”

• Greece Today, America Tomorrow? (Ron Paul)

The drama over Greece’s financial crisis continues to dominate the headlines. As this column is being written, a deal may have been reached providing Greece with yet another bailout if the Greek government adopts new “austerity” measures. The deal will allow all sides to brag about how they came together to save the Greek economy and the European Monetary Union. However, this deal is merely a Band-Aid, not a permanent fix to Greece’s problems. So another crisis is inevitable. The Greek crisis provides a look into what awaits us unless we stop overspending on warfare and welfare and restore a sound monetary system. While most commentators have focused on Greece’s welfare state, much of Greece’s deficit was caused by excessive military spending.

Even as its economy collapses and the government makes (minor) cuts in welfare spending, Greece’s military budget remains among the largest in the European Union. Despite all the handwringing over how the phony sequestration cuts have weakened America’s defenses, the United States military budget remains larger than the combined budgets of the world’s next 15 highest spending militaries. Little, if any, of the military budget is spent defending the American people from foreign threats. Instead, the American government wastes billions of dollars on an imperial foreign policy that makes Americans less safe. America will never get its fiscal house in order until we change our foreign policy and stop wasting trillions on unnecessary and unconstitutional wars.

Excessive military spending is not the sole cause of America’s problems. Like Greece, America suffers from excessive welfare and entitlement spending. Reducing military spending and corporate welfare will allow the government to transition away from the welfare state without hurting those dependent on government programs. Supporting an orderly transition away from the welfare state should not be confused with denying the need to reduce welfare and entitlement spending.

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New Zealand better beware. Wait till housing collapses on top of the logging and dairy crashes.

• Chinese Buyers Turn Kiwis Into Renters In Their Own Country (NZ Herald)

Mainland Chinese money snapped up at least 80% of residential sales in parts of Auckland in March but were nearer 90% in May, a whistle blower from the industry says. The Herald reported at the weekend Labour data that showed people of Chinese descent accounted for 39.5% of the almost 4000 Auckland transactions between February and April. Yet Census 2013 data showed ethnic Chinese who are New Zealand residents or citizens account for only 9% of Auckland’s population. The property insider – who wanted to protect their identity because they feared for their job – said the situation was much more serious than the Labour data suggested. The numbers should be more than doubled due to the weight of capital coming out of Mainland China, the whistle blower said.

One big Auckland real estate agency, where many salespeople are of Chinese ethnicity, was selling almost every single property throughout many suburban areas to people living in China, the insider said. In some cases, those buyers had a New Zealand connection “but it’s one group disenfranchising the other. It’s really taken off in the last 18 months. I’ve been studying the figures since October.” “The Kiwis, South Africans and British have dropped out of the market because they just can’t compete with the Chinese. The people living in China buy the places the Kiwis are trying to get, then those places are rented out the next day,” the insider said. That showed the person is in an important position in the property sector with extensive access to information unavailable to the public revealing who the buyers really are.

“We’re becoming tenants in our own country. It’s utterly outrageous. The Chinese are interested in Panmure, Ellerslie, Greenlane, Epsom, Remuera, the North Shore – not so much the west.” In some cases, a single Chinese resident was spending up to $15 million on Auckland properties and the higher the bidding at auctions went, the happier they were. “They simply don’t care how much they pay. It’s not related to the CV. If they pay another $400,000 more, that’s $400,000 they’re better off as it’s $400,000 they have shifted out of Mainland China. If they continue vacuuming up all the existing properties at the current rate of consumption, what will that do? The Chinese will outbid everyone at the auction. I’m sick of the phone bidder from Guangzhou. I’m relieved that someone at last is talking about this,” the insider said of Twyford’s data.

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“..it implies that this is a capital movement rather than just individuals looking to park money.“

• China’s Rich Seek Shelter From Stock Market Storm In Foreign Property (Guardian)

Real estate agents in Australia, Britain and Canada are bracing for a surge of new interest in their already hot property markets, with early signs that wealthy Chinese investors are seeking a safe haven from the turmoil in Shanghai’s stock markets. Sydney agent Michael Pallier said in the past week alone he has sold two new apartments and shown a A$13.8m (US$10.3m) house in the harbourside city to Chinese buyers looking for an alternative to stocks. “A lot of high-net-worth individuals had already taken money out of the stock market because it was getting just too hot,” Pallier, the principal of Sydney Sotheby’s International Realty, said. “There’s a huge amount of cash sitting in China and I think you’ll find a lot of that comes to the Australian property market.”

Around 20% has been knocked off the value of Chinese shares since mid-June, although attempts by authorities to stem the bleeding are having some effect. Many wealthy Chinese investors had already cashed out. Major shareholders sold 360bn yuan (US$58bn) in the first five months of 2015 alone, compared with 190bn yuan in all of 2014 and an average of 100bn yuan in prior years, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. While much of that money may initially be parked in more liquid assets like US Treasury bonds and safe-haven currencies such as the Swiss franc, there is growing evidence that foreign property sales may receive a boost.

“There is anecdotal evidence that Chinese buyers have intensified their interest in safe-haven global property markets, including London, as a result of the recent stock market volatility,” said Tom Bill, head of London residential research at Knight Frank. Ed Mead, executive director of realtor Douglas & Gordon in London, said his firm had seen two buyers from China looking to buy whole blocks of flats. “It is unusual to see the Chinese block buying, it implies that this is a capital movement rather than just individuals looking to park money.“

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“../Beijing’s panicky policy actions may reveal that the economy is in worse shape than is being let on.”

• How China’s Stock-Market Muddle May Spread (MarketWatch)

Despite China’s troubled stock markets finding a floor last week, do not expect any quick return to normality. The dramatic stock rout and subsequent heavy-handed interference by authorities will not be easily forgotten. It has not just rattled investor confidence, but also damaged the political credibility of President Xi Jinping. For China’s legions of retail investors, the heavy losses have been compounded by wholesale stock suspensions — with half of Shenzhen and Shanghai stocks still not trading. This is a likely to fuel anxiety so long as investors are trapped in stock positions with no liquidity. It is also likely to lead to a sea change in investor mood from only weeks earlier, when some were even selling the roof over their head to buy equities.

There may be a nasty surprise when the first post-suspension bid prices come in. Albert Edwards at Société Générale highlights the experience in 2008, when Pakistan suspended trading on the Karachi Stock Exchange to try to “put a floor” under stocks after a share-price slump. This episode left authorities’ reputation in tatters, and when the market reopened, it quickly lost another 52%. For foreign investors, many of the bizarre interventions by Beijing last week will have raised a number of other, more fundamental questions about the competence of China’s leadership and the true state of the economy. One area of renewed uncertainty is the ongoing policy commitment to allowing market forces to play a larger role in the economy, a part of Beijing’s larger reform program.

The reintroduction of a ban on initial public offerings and spate of stock suspensions set a worrying precedent and will refocus attention on political risk. This, in turn, will place a cloud of doubt over plans for liberalizing interest rates, the capital account and the domestic bond market. Foreign investors are likely to think twice as they face the risk that the government may simply suspend reforms if prices start going against them. These recent actions suggest the voices of conservatives opposed to market reforms are in the ascendancy. Perhaps the more worrying take-away is that Beijing’s panicky policy actions may reveal that the economy is in worse shape than is being let on.

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More losses.

• China’s Market-Tracking ETFs Roiled By Share Suspensions (FT)

A wave of stock suspensions has played havoc with exchange traded funds tracking Chinese markets, causing wild price swings and big price gaps between passive funds and the assets they track. More than 1,400 companies — more than half of all listings — are on trading halts in China, in an effort to shield themselves from the dramatic equity market sell-off that has wiped trillions of dollars off the value of Chinese stocks. The suspensions have left a number of ETFs holding frozen shares or derivatives linked to them, even as the funds themselves continue to trade. One Hong Kong-listed ETF that tracks China’s small-cap board, the ChiNext, traded every day last week, despite more than two-thirds of the underlying shares it reflects being suspended.

On Friday, the CSOP ChiNext ETF jumped by a fifth, while the index itself rose only 4.1%. Concerns have been growing globally over the potential mismatch between the liquidity of the underlying collateral that ETFs hold and that of their units. The Bank of International Settlements warned last month that the growth of passive funds may have created a “liquidity illusion” in bonds, although analysts say the problems currently facing Chinese equity ETFs are specific to the idiosyncrasies of that market. Chinese shares have tumbled in the past month, as millions of retail investors unwind leveraged bets on the market. Beijing has responded with various supportive measures, including bans on short selling, and on stock sales by large shareholders.

The central bank has also been funnelling money to brokerages to help them buy equities. Trading volumes for many China-tracker ETFs have doubled over the past two weeks, as market volatility has risen. ETFs have experienced wild daily price swings as investors use passive funds for price discovery of suspended Chinese assets. Last Thursday, the Deutsche X-Trackers Harvest CSI 300 ETF, which trades in New York, rose 20%. The extent of share suspensions has made ETFs “one of the only tradable instruments” for global investors looking to manage their exposure to Chinese stocks, said Warren Deats, head of Asia-Pacific portfolio trading at Barclays. Such funds are performing like futures contracts, he added, with investors using them to estimate the true level of the market — a view echoed by fund providers.

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