cash Archives - Page 2 of 5 - The Automatic Earth

It’s more likely that the last time you bought a pack of gum or a can or soda, you used a credit card. People like their credit cards so much they’re using them even for the tiniest purchases, according to a new survey released Monday from the credit cards site CreditCards.com. Among people with credit cards, 17% said they use them to buy items in brick-and-mortar stores that cost less than $5, up from 11% last year. CreditCards.com surveyed about 1,000 U.S. adults in March 2017. After a lull in the wake of the Great Recession, credit cards are once again being used with increased frequency. The Federal Reserve reported last week that collective credit card debt in the U.S. had reached $1 trillion.

Credit-card debt and auto loan debt balances for people ages 60 and older have also risen since 2008, that Fed data showed, whereas credit-card debt for those 59 and younger has fallen. The Fed, when describing that phenomenon, said lending standards have tightened since the recession, and those who are older may also be more creditworthy. But when consumers can pay their balances each month, turning to credit cards for small purchases isn’t a bad thing, said Matt Schulz, a senior industry analyst for CreditCards.com. Putting more charges on a credit card may indicate consumers feel more optimistic about their financial picture for the future, he said. “People who are chasing rewards realize that those little purchases can add up to a lot of rewards over the course of a year,” he added.

Indeed, several high-profile credit cards offer cash back and perks for spending. For example, Amazon introduced a credit card this year for Prime members that gives 5% cash back on Amazon purchases (Prime itself costs $99 per year.) Some retailers, however, prohibit credit-card purchases below a certain amount to avoid paying transaction fees to the credit-card issuers for such purchases. That said, cash and debit cards still are the go-to options for making small purchases, despite the speed with which credit cards are gaining on them. Of those surveyed, 24% said they use debit cards for small purchases, and 55% said they use cash. It appears younger consumers are behind at least some of the growth in credit card use: Some 70% of baby boomers and their older cohorts, the Silent Generation, still choose cash for small purchases versus 43% of those under 53.

A little incoherent article, but point taken. Countries that try to go cashless should be careful.

• Cash Is Dead. Long Live Cash. (WSJ)

[..] the push to get rid of cash is hitting speed bumps all over. India, for example, is already partly reintroducing its 500- and 1000-rupee bills after the government’s abrupt demonetization program drew sharp criticism for hurting its cash-dependent rural population. The U.S. shows no inclination to pare back its notes. “I’m very conscious of the $100 bill being the world’s reserve currency, and every central bank around the world has stacks of $100 bills where they used to have gold,” Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal shortly before he left office in January. One reason it’s a non-starter in the U.S.: About 8% of people don’t have a checking or savings account, making it all-but-impossible for them to participate in a cashless economy.

Banning cash “would bring the economy and many people to their knees if enforced,” said Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane. In the aboveground economy, card-based and digital payment systems offering ever-greater speed, safety and convenience have been steadily encroaching on paper money, even for small consumer transactions. Euromonitor International, a market-research firm, said the volume of global cash payments in 2016 for the first time fell below payments on credit and debit cards. Some of the growth in cash can be attributed to the financial crisis and the aftermath, when people lost faith in banks, and when ultralow interest rates and anemic investment returns reduced the opportunity costs of holding savings in cash. The number of $100 bills in circulation, worth $1.15 trillion in December, has surged 76% since 2009, according to Federal Reserve data.

“Brexit was a joke. Trump was a joke..”

• A Change In The Change Of Change (Peters)

“The change of change is now negative,” said the CIO. “Global growth is still rising, but the rate of improvement is slowing,” he explained. “Same holds true for global inflation, oil prices, copper, iron ore. Credit growth is slowing in the US, Europe, Japan, China.” If these things were all contracting, we’d plunge into recession, but we’re not there. We’re simply at the point in the cycle where the rate of acceleration is slowing – which is both evidence of a pause, and a precondition for every major turn. “The last time we had a major shift in the change of change was a year ago.” In Jan/Feb 2016, China was imploding. Commodity prices were tanking with equity markets, the dollar soared alongside volatility. Then China unleashed explosive credit stimulus, while the Fed blinked, guiding forward interest rates dramatically lower. Within a short time, the change of change turned positive.

Which is not to say things immediately accelerated, it’s just that they started contracting more slowly. And that marked the time to buy. “Pretty much everything that happened in 2016 can be explained by two things; China and oil prices,” he said. “Literally, that’s it.” China’s stimulus-induced rebound and the oil price recovery is all that mattered. “Brexit was a joke. Trump was a joke. In fact, the only real significance of those events was that they provided investors with opportunities to jump on board the reflation trade at back near Q1 prices.” The reflation trade quietly began in the Q1 collapse, and accelerated off the extreme post-Brexit summer lows in global interest rates. That’s what made last year remarkable. Even investors who missed the first opportunity, had two chances to make a lot of money.” You see, that reward is usually reserved for those who act on the first signs of a change in the change of change.

Credit shrinks, the Zombies fall.

• Great Debt Unwind: Bankruptcies Surge (WS)

Commercial bankruptcy filings, from corporations to sole proprietorships, spiked 28% in March from February, the largest month-to-month move in the data series of the American Bankruptcy Institute going back to 2012. They’re up 8% year-over-year. Over the past 24 months, they soared 37%! At 3,658, they’re at the highest level for any March since 2013. Commercial bankruptcy filings skyrocketed during the Financial Crisis and peaked in March 2010 at 9,004. Then they fell sharply until they reached their low point in October 2015. November 2015 was the turning point, when for the first time since March 2010, commercial bankruptcy filings rose year-over-year.

Bankruptcy filings are highly seasonal, reaching their annual lows in December and January. Then they rise into tax season, peak in March or April, and zigzag lower for the remainder of the year. The data is not seasonally or otherwise adjusted – one of the raw and unvarnished measures of how businesses are faring in the economy. Note that there is no “plateauing” in this chart: since the low-point in September 2015, commercial bankruptcies have soared 65%! That red spike is the mega-increase in March:

At first, they blamed the oil bust. The price of oil began to collapse in mid-2014. By 2015, worried bankers put their hands on the money spigot, and a number of companies in that sector, along with their suppliers and contractors, threw in the towel and started filing for bankruptcy protection. But now the price of oil has somewhat recovered, banks have reopened the spigot, Wall Street has once again the hots for the sector, new money is gushing into it, and oil & gas bankruptcy filings have abated. So now they blame brick-and-mortar retail which is in terminal decline, given the shift to online sales. I have reported extensively on the distress of the larger chain stores, but brick-and-mortar retailers include countless smaller operations and stores that no ratings agency follows because they’re too small and can’t issue bonds, and many of them are even more distressed.

[..] Now come the consumers – not all consumers, but those with mounting piles of debt and stagnating or declining real incomes, of which there are many. They’d been hanging on by their teeth, with bankruptcy filings consistently declining since 2010. But that ended in November 2016. In December, bankruptcy filings rose 4.5% from a year earlier. In January they rose 5.4%. It was the first time consumer bankruptcies rose back-to-back since 2010. I called it “a red flag that’ll be highlighted only afterwards as a turning point.” In March, consumer bankruptcy filings rose 4% year-over-year, to 77,900, the highest since March 2015, when 79,000 filings occurred, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute data. The turning point has now been confirmed. Total US bankruptcy filings by consumers and businesses in March spiked 40% from February and rose 4% year-over-year to 81,590, the highest since March 2015:

Trust at risk.

• Trump’s Rollback of Bank Regulations Risks a Bondholder Backlash (Street)

President Donald Trump’s pledge to roll back regulations on U.S. banks could face resistance from an influential constituency: bondholders. While stockholders of firms like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs have cheered Trump’s plans to repeal or soften rules imposed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, bond-rater Standard & Poor’s is warning that such a move could undermine the industry’s creditworthiness. Measures like “stress testing,” in which regulators evaluate banks annually to determine if they’re sufficiently prepared to withstand a deep economic or market downturn, have made the firms safer, according to S&P. And so-called resolution planning – the practice of planning in advance how big banks would be wound down following a Lehman Brothers-style collapse – also has contributed to the industry’s resilience, the ratings firm wrote in a March 20 report.

The timetable for any such changes isn’t yet clear, however. Trump in February signed an executive order directing U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to identify any laws that might impede economic growth or vibrant markets. Those could include the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, signed by former President Barack Obama to curb risky activities like using excessive borrowings to fuel earnings growth and allowing in-house traders to speculate on markets with proprietary capital. “An overhaul of Dodd-Frank could be detrimental for bank creditors,” S&P wrote in the report. “If changes to Dodd-Frank watered down these features, and if banks reacted to such changes by weakening their financial management, we could lower ratings.” The fresh concerns could contribute to a shift in investor sentiment that’s been mostly positive toward banks since Trump’s surprise election on Nov. 8.

Xi responds after he’s left Mar-a-Lago.

• Syria Strike Designed To Intimidate North Korea: China State Newspaper (G.)

Donald Trump’s decision to attack Syria had also been designed to intimidate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a Chinese newspaper has claimed, as G7 foreign ministers meet to discuss the fallout from last week’s missile incursion. The state-run Global Times said a US strike against North Korea would unleash carnage on the Korean peninsula. The US navy has deployed a strike group towards the western Pacific Ocean, to provide a presence near the Korean peninsula. South Korean officials suspect Kim may be planning to hold his country’s sixth nuclear test later this week to mark the 105th anniversary of the birth of founder Kim Il-sung on 15 April, an event a number of foreign journalists have been invited to cover.

In an editorial entitled: ‘After Syria strikes, will North Korea be next?’, the Global Times suggested the US might now be preparing to launch “similar actions” against Pyongyang and warned of catastrophic consequences if it did. “A symbolic strike against North Korea by the US would bring a disaster to the people in Seoul,” the newspaper said, claiming a “decapitation attack” on North Korea was now “highly possible”. Such a strike would “very likely evolve into large-scale bloody war on the peninsula”. The Global Times noted the decision to deploy a strike force to the Western Pacific over the weekend and cautioned Pyongyang against doing anything that might further inflame the situation.

“New nuclear tests will meet with unprecedented reactions from the international community, even to a turning point.” The warnings came after the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, claimed that the situation in North Korea had “reached a certain level of threat that action has to be taken”. Asked if the attack on Syria could be seen as a message to Pyongyang, Tillerson told ABC: “The message that any nation can take is: ‘If you violate international norms, if you violate international agreements, if you fail to live up to commitments, if you become a threat to others, at some point a response is likely to be undertaken.”

“Hayek: state regulation leads to totalitarianism. But instead self-regulating markets led to today’s authoritarians.”

• Is Globalisation Dead? (Pettifor)

In the BBC’s brief and pressured half-hour I wanted to get across that globalisation had not delivered on its promise – to make ‘the market’ the main driver of a more effective, more productive economy; to transform societies into nations of ‘shareholders’; to ensure a revolution in homeownership, and to avoid what Hayek called the threat of a totalitarian state. Instead financial globalisation has been an era largely fuelled by carbon (oil and coal) – as had been the case for over a century. However, unlike the Bretton Woods era, post 1970s de-regulated financial globalisation was built on mountains of private and public debt. The first – private debt – led to recurring financial crises, and the second – public debt – rose as private sector activity weakened, and tax revenues fell.

The consequences of these recurring financial crises in ‘advanced’ economies included ‘austerity’, the removal of employment protection, rising housing and education costs, the return of deflationary pressures, high unemployment, falling real wages, low productivity and rising inequality. These crises have led to increased insecurity and over-rapid social and economic change- as well as the greatest financial and economic crisis since 1929 (itself a product of excessive laissez-faire ideology). More widely, the insecurities and dislocations generated by financial globalisation have led whole populations to seek the ‘protection’ of a strong man (e.g. Presidents Trump, Duterte in the Philippines, Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia).

Not that this worries the extreme adherents of laissez-faire – recall how Hayek supported the murderous dictator Pinochet in Chile for his brutal imposition of deregulatory ‘reform’. And so, contrary to Hayek’s expectations, financial globalisation has proved that it is market fundamentalism, and not the regulatory state that is leading the world into an era of authoritarianism and totalitarianism – in the US, Eastern Europe, India and China.

But politicians will keep saying that it’s all because not enough is being built. Why don’t you raise rates first and see what happens?

• Housing Costs Are Pushing People Further Out of Sydney (BBG)

New South Wales has taken over as Australia’s economic engine as the mining investment boom tails off, with central Sydney contributing almost a quarter of the nation’s growth last fiscal year. That success has come with a price. As workers flock to Sydney, an under-supply of housing, coupled with record-low interest rates, has made the city the world’s second-most expensive property market. Home prices jumped 19 percent in the past 12 months, stoking concern home ownership is increasingly beyond the reach of younger people. That’s a big political problem for the state’s new Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who made housing affordability one of her priorities when she took the job in late January. Housing affordability is “a barbecue stopper,” Berejiklian, 46, said in an interview in her Sydney office on Thursday.

“We are convinced if we put downwards pressure on prices through supply, that’s the best way we can solve it as a state government.” Sydney’s housing completions reached a 15-year high in 2016, though Berejiklian says the state is only now playing catch-up after “a decade of under-investment.” “There are about 100,000 dwellings we are behind on in terms of really digging into the demand,” she said. [..] There are several barriers to boosting housing supply in Sydney. The city is bordered by mountains to the west, the ocean to the east and rivers and national parks to the north and south, restricting the supply of new land, while moves to increase housing density in established suburbs have run into opposition from residents. That’s meant in the past three years, almost 70 percent of new detached houses have been built more than 30 kilometers from Sydney’s central business district…

“..the Canadian government has been trying to find ways to “crystallize” the value in some of its property assets…”

• Toronto Mayor Says He’s Open to Sale of City Real Estate Assets

Toronto’s mayor won’t rule out selling some of the city’s prime downtown real estate as he looks to make better use of assets amid an unprecedented property boom. “Would I take that off the table? No, I wouldn’t,” Mayor John Tory said in an interview last week at Bloomberg’s Toronto office. Selling buildings in the city’s costly downtown market probably wouldn’t be “quite as politically charged” as divesting other types of assets, such as the parking authority or power utility Toronto Hydro, he said. The need for North America’s fourth-largest city to fund critical transit upgrades and housing improvements coincides with skyrocketing property prices in the region. Toronto’s real estate portfolio includes 6,976 buildings with 106.3 million square feet (9.9 million square meters), almost half of which is multifamily, according to a Dec. 6 report on the city’s assets.

With all of the demands on the city to raise money for building transit lines and repairing existing housing, then “might you be looking at the business case for handling real estate in a different way? Because this is the most expensive downtown real estate you could possibly have,” said the mayor, elected in 2014. The report, commissioned by the city and conducted by Deloitte, estimates the value of municipal real estate including community housing, parks and forestry is C$27 billion ($20 billion), while the annual operating costs in “core” real estate and facilities management is C$1.1 billion. Tory said he watched with passing interest the federal government’s sale earlier this year of the Dominion Public Building. The historic downtown property beside Toronto’s Union Station sold for about C$275 million ($205 million), according to newspaper reports.

The property was “super underutilized,” BMO analyst Heather Kirk said in an interview, adding the Canadian government has been trying to find ways to “crystallize” the value in some of its property assets. “What a building is worth to the government in current form is totally different than the value to a developer,” Kirk said. “They are buying density.” When asked how any properties might be sold, Tory stressed he didn’t currently have any specific recommendations to make to the city council, although “I just know those are things that sit out there still as options that are in front of the city government to raise money to do the things we have to do,” he said.

Ehh.. how do you lock up the Bank of England?

• Secret Recording Implicates Bank of England In Libor Manipulation (BBC)

A secret recording that implicates the Bank of England in Libor rigging has been uncovered by BBC Panorama. The 2008 recording adds to evidence the central bank repeatedly pressured commercial banks during the financial crisis to push their Libor rates down. Libor is the rate that banks lend to each other and it sets a benchmark for mortgages and loans for ordinary customers. The Bank of England said Libor was not regulated in the UK at the time. The recording calls into question evidence given in 2012 to the Treasury select committee by former Barclays boss Bob Diamond and Paul Tucker, the man who went on to become the deputy governor of the Bank of England. Libor, the London Interbank Offered Rate, tracks how much it costs banks to borrow money from each other.

As such it is a big influence on the cost of mortgages and other loans. Banks setting artificially low Libor rates is called lowballing. In the recording, a senior Barclays manager, Mark Dearlove, instructs Libor submitter Peter Johnson, to lower his Libor rates. He tells him: “The bottom line is you’re going to absolutely hate this… but we’ve had some very serious pressure from the UK government and the Bank of England about pushing our Libors lower.” Mr Johnson objects, saying that this would mean breaking the rules for setting Libor, which required him to put in rates based only on the cost of borrowing cash. Mr Johnson says: “So I’ll push them below a realistic level of where I think I can get money?” His boss Mr Dearlove replies: “The fact of the matter is we’ve got the Bank of England, all sorts of people involved in the whole thing… I am as reluctant as you are… these guys have just turned around and said just do it.”

The warnings have always been there. Totally ignored.

• The Fire In The Hold Of The Doomed Euro (Ward)

The more basic stuff goes back at least twenty years, to the period where trouble was stored up for the future by fanatical federalists cutting every corner and pulling out all the stops to get EMU (the prototype single currency) up and running. Several eminent economists on continents ranging from Australia and the US to the UK and Europe itself made very sound predictions at the time about coming disaster, and they did so saying two related things: 1) It would offer Germany a cheap, fixed currency leading inevitably to its economic dominance, 2) It would point up the economic consequences of imposing one rigid means of exchange on 18 varietal cultures, leading generally to Southern/South Eastern Europe falling behind.

Just to add more weedkiller to the poisonous formulation, the key European leaders not only ignored the advice; they also first, ignored all the data showing that several member States were nowhere near ready to join the eurozone based on agreed criteria; and then second, were implicated in several corrupt deals on commodities – as varied as German butter, Italian wines and Greek olive oil – to cloud the existence of stark differentials in both export and industrial development. For once, the economic naysayers proved to be soothsayers. Messrs Hollande and Muscovici shrink from the limelight about their own book on the subject of cultural difference (fancy that) but it proved to be spot on….as did the musings of Lawson and Thatcher et al in relation to Germany’s dominance.

The Mark from around 1963 until the creation of EMU was the most reliable, performance-related currency on the planet. But only massive debt forgiveness by the victors after the Second World War enabled that outcome. Both the realities in that last paragraph explain why lectures from Hollande and Merkel today – when joined by hypocrisy from Draghi at the ECB – evoke so much hatred of the EU’s prime movers among the so-called ClubMed nations….and those of us Brits in the Brexit camp. I make these points not to be nihilistic, but rather to level the playing field of media coverage that has been so bombed, excavated, deliberately over-watered and then tilted for good luck by Brussels, Wall Street and Berlin obfuscation and mendacity since 2010. A very real outcome of nihilism is being encouraged (and indeed made inevitable) by the EC’s refusal to recognise that – even as the SS Eunatic set sail – there was a raging fire in the hold.

Big words.

• Tsipras: Debt Relief Prerequisite to Legislate New Measures (GR)

The mid-term debt relief measures so that Greece can enter the quantitative easing program is the prerequisite to vote for the new measures, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Sunday. Addressing the SYRIZA Central Committee, the party leader spoke about the new austerity measures his administration has agreed to with creditors. He spoke of a compromise that had to be made so that measures had to be counter-balanced by social relief measures of equal fiscal value and aid that the Greek negotiating team. “There are measures that are neither necessary, nor are they the ones we would ever choose, but the compromise achieved would have counter-measures that would counterbalance the fiscal impact and generate zero fiscal balance, and both will be legislated and implemented simultaneously,” Tsipras said.

Speaking on the initial agreement reached at the Malta Eurogroup on Friday, the prime minister said that, “After Malta the way for the identification of the medium-term measures for the debt is open. This will send a clear message to the markets that the uncertainty is over.” “Now we will be the ones to decide the fiscal path the country will follow after the end of the program,” Tsipras said, explaining the strategy for the next round of negotiations. He stressed that without medium-term measures for debt relief that would allow Greece to enter the QE program, he would not implement the new measures.

The prime minister also unleashed an indirect attack against main opposition New Democracy claiming that, “Some were scheming so that the evaluation would not close, because they didn’t want us to be the ones who will pull Greece out of the crisis.” He also attacked ND leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis accusing him of “rushing to meet with the German finance minister to get his blessing and undermine the negotiations.” He also said that the conservative party espouses extreme neoliberalism.

It was a big mistake to put the Great Barrier Reef near Australia.

• Great Barrier Reef at ‘Terminal Stage’ (G.)

Back-to-back severe bleaching events have affected two-thirds of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, new aerial surveys have found. The findings have caused alarm among scientists, who say the proximity of the 2016 and 2017 bleaching events is unprecedented for the reef, and will give damaged coral little chance to recover. Scientists with the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies last week completed aerial surveys of the world’s largest living structure, scoring bleaching at 800 individual coral reefs across 8,000km. The results show the two consecutive mass bleaching events have affected a 1,500km stretch, leaving only the reef’s southern third unscathed. Where last year’s bleaching was concentrated in the reef’s northern third, the 2017 event spread further south, and was most intense in the middle section of the Great Barrier Reef.

This year’s mass bleaching, second in severity only to 2016, has occurred even in the absence of an El Niño event. Mass bleaching – a phenomenon caused by global warming-induced rises to sea surface temperatures – has occurred on the reef four times in recorded history. Prof Terry Hughes, who led the surveys, said the length of time coral needed to recover – about 10 years for fast-growing types – raised serious concerns about the increasing frequency of mass bleaching events. “The significance of bleaching this year is that it’s back to back, so there’s been zero time for recovery,” Hughes told the Guardian. “It’s too early yet to tell what the full death toll will be from this year’s bleaching, but clearly it will extend 500km south of last year’s bleaching.”

A really funny man died over the weekend.

• John Clarke has Died

We featured quite a few Clarke and Dawe videos through the years. Here’s a few favorites:

How does the financial system work?

European Debt Crisis

The Greek Economy

Debt Rattle April 6 2017

Apr 062017

April 6, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:38 am Finance Tagged with: BLICS, bubble, cash, crisis, false flag, Fed, Glass-Steagall, paycheck, PIGS, unmask 4 Responses »

DPC Oyster luggers along Mississippi, New Orleans 1906

• Euro Saves Germany, Slaughters the PIGS, & Feeds the BLICS (Hamilton)

• Greece Wants Eurozone Summit If Deal On Bailout Doesn’t Happen Soon (AP)

• Half Of American Working Families Are Living Paycheck To Paycheck (MW)

• Trump Top Economic Adviser Cohn Backs Split Of Lending, Investment Banks (BBG)

• IMF Explains How To Subvert Resistance Against Elimination Of Cash (Häring)

• Precursors to the ’08 Crisis are Repeating Now (Nomi Prins)

• Former Fed Advisor Says Central Bank Shouldn’t Comment On Equities (CNBC)

• Is the Fed’s Balance Sheet Headed for the Crapper? (DiMartino Booth)

• Toronto House Price Bubble Goes Nuts (WS)

• Interest-Only Loans ‘To End In Tears’ (Aus.)

• China Is More Fragile than You Realize (DR)

• Syria Gas Attack: Assad’s Doing…Or False Flag? (Ron Paul)

• Reports In Unmasking Controversy Were Detailed (Fox)

• We Are Heading For The Warmest Climate In Half A Billion Years (Conv.)

Absolutely brilliant by Chris Hamilton. Many more graphs in the article. h/t Tyler

• Euro Saves Germany, Slaughters the PIGS, & Feeds the BLICS (Hamilton)

Germany was well aware of it’s post WWII collapsing birth rate and the impact of this on economic growth as this shrinking population of young made it’s way into the Core. Consider Germany’s Core population peaked in 1995 and it’s domestic consumer base has been shrinking since, now down over 3.3 million potential consumers (about a 9% Core decline…remember a depression is a 10% decline in economic activity, which a 9% and growing decline in German consumers would have almost surely induced).

GERMANY

The chart below shows Germany’s Core population from 1950–>2040…but understand this is no guestimate through 2040. This is simply taking the existing 0-24yr/old population (plus anticipated immigration) and sliding them into the Core through 2040. Germany’s Core population is set to fall by over 30% or 10+ million by 2040 (far more than the 7 million Germans of all ages who died in WWII).

But Germany had a plan. With the advent of the EU and Euro just as Germany’s Core began shrinking, Germany was able to avoid the pitfalls of a shrinking domestic consumer base, circumvent the strong German currency, and effectively quadruple it’s effective export market across Europe. German exports, as a % of GDP, have essentially doubled since the advent of the Euro (22% in ’95 to almost 50% in ’16). The chart below highlights Germany’s shrinking Core vs. rising GDP (primarily via exports) since 1995.

[..] the German motivation for the EU and Euro are fairly plain as are the resultant economic transfusion from South to North. But for Germany to be a winner, there had to be a loser in this shrinking pie game. Hello PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain), you lost. As the old poker adage goes, when you don’t know who the sucker at the table is…it’s you. Particularly when you “win big” at first and it all seems so easy…but then it all turns.

PIGS

The chart below shows the PIGS Core population peaking about 15 years later than in Germany but likewise clearly rolling over. By 2040, the PIGS Core population will be back at it’s 1960 levels…down from the 2010 peak by 17 million or about a 30% decline.

But if we look at the PIGS combined GDP and Core population…we see a very different picture than in Germany. The chart below shows the PIGS GDP turned down ahead of the Core population peak. The rise in GDP in these nations was a credit bubble premised on cheap EU wide interest rates more appropriate for Germany. Exports as a % of GDP (which were higher than Germany’s in ’95) have risen less than half of Germany’s increase (rising as a % primarily due to declining PIGS GDP). Low German wage increases and high quality German goods helped displace PIGS domestic manufacturing base.

The logical consequence of the article above. Economic warfare. Tsipras complains about the Troika “moving the goalposts”, but that’s exactly the game, Alexis.

• Greece Wants Eurozone Summit If Deal On Bailout Doesn’t Happen Soon (AP)

Top Greek and European officials indicated Wednesday that it’s possible to reach a breakthrough in the country’s difficult bailout talks over the next two days. Greece’s prime minister said that if a deal on paying Athens the next bailout installment fails to materialize, the eurozone should hold a special summit. Alexis Tsipras said negotiators are “just a breath away” from an agreement at Friday’s scheduled meeting in Malta of the so-called eurogroup, the gather of finance ministers from countries that use the euro. But Tsipras blamed unnamed negotiators among Greece’s European creditors and the IMF for “moving the goalposts” each time Greece was getting close to meeting approval conditions for the bailout. “We are not playing games here … that must stop,” he said, after talks in Athens with EU Council President Donald Tusk.

Greece has to agree on budget measures to get access to its loans. But the talks have dragged on for months, freezing the latest loan payout and hurting chances of a Greek economic recovery after years of recession and turmoil. Without the bailout payment, Greece would struggle to make a debt payment in July, raising anew the prospect of default. Tsipras’ left-led government is pushing for a comprehensive deal that would cover more than just spending cuts and harsh reforms by Greece, but also alleviate the country’s debt burden and ease its access later this year to international bond markets. “If the eurogroup is not in a position to (reach an agreement) on Friday, I have asked President Tusk to convene a eurozone summit to achieve an immediate agreement,” Tsipras said. “I don’t think that will be needed, because there will be a result on Friday, but these delays cannot continue.”

Is it just me, or do we see similar surveys once a week these days? How can anyone maintain that the US economy is doing fine?

• Half Of American Working Families Are Living Paycheck To Paycheck (MW)

More than seven years after the Great Recession officially ended, there is yet more depressing research that at least half of Americans are vulnerable to financial disaster. Some 50% of people is woefully unprepared for a financial emergency, new research finds. Nearly 1 in 5 (19%) Americans have nothing set aside to cover an unexpected emergency, while nearly 1 in 3 (31%) Americans don’t have at least $500 set aside to cover an unexpected emergency expense, according to a survey released Tuesday by HomeServe USA, a home repair service. A separate survey released Monday by insurance company MetLife found that 49% of employees are “concerned, anxious or fearful about their current financial well-being.”

One explanation: Americans are crippled under the same amount of debt as they had during the recession. The New York Federal Reserve on Monday predicted that total household debt will reach its previous peak of $12.68 trillion in 2017. The last time it reached that level was in the third quarter of 2008, during the depths of the Great Recession. Indeed, it’s already close: Total household debt in the fourth quarter of 2016 was $12.58 trillion. Fewer borrowers have housing-related debt in 2017 and, instead, have taken on auto and student loans.

One illness can push people to the brink of financial ruin. Wanda Battle, a registered nurse for four decades, was recently hit with a $100,000 medical bill. She has visited her local emergency room on more than one occasion due to severe migraines and mini-strokes. Battle, who is based near Nashville, Tenn., managed to reduce her latest hospital bill to $32,000 based on her relatively low income, but still faces $650 monthly payments for a previous $22,000 medical bill. “There were times I couldn’t work,” she told MarketWatch. “I have not held a job that is continuous.”

Glass Steagall. Interesting.

• Trump Top Economic Adviser Cohn Backs Split Of Lending, Investment Banks (BBG)

In a private meeting with lawmakers, White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said he supports a policy that could radically reshape Wall Street’s biggest firms by separating their consumer-lending businesses from their investment banks, said people with direct knowledge of the matter. Cohn, the ex-Goldman Sachs executive who is now advising President Donald Trump, said he generally favors banking going back to how it was when firms like Goldman focused on trading and underwriting securities, and companies such as Citigroup primarily issued loans, according to the people, who heard his comments. The remarks surprised some senators and congressional aides who attended the Wednesday meeting, as they didn’t expect a former top Wall Street executive to speak favorably of proposals that would force banks to dramatically rethink how they do business.

Yet Cohn’s comments echo what Trump and Republican lawmakers have previously said about wanting to bring back the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law that kept bricks-and-mortar lending separate from investment banking for more than six decades. In the years after the law’s 1999 repeal, banks such as Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase gobbled up rivals and pushed into all sorts of new businesses, becoming one-stop-shopping financial behemoths. Many banking executives believed that the inclusion of former finance executives like Cohn in Trump’s White House would temper major changes such as a Glass-Steagall return. But his Wednesday remarks suggest he could be a wildcard should Congress get serious about reinstating the law. White House officials haven’t said what an updated version of Glass-Steagall might look like.

They actually wrote a manual.

• IMF Explains How To Subvert Resistance Against Elimination Of Cash (Häring)

The IMF has published a Working Paper on “de-cashing”. It gives advice to governments who want to abolish cash against the will of their citizenry. Move slowly, start with harmless seeming measures, is part of that advice. In “The Macroeconomics of De-Cashing”, IMF-Analyst Alexei Kireyev recommends in his conclusions:

“Although some countries most likely will de-cash in a few years, going completely cashless should be phased in steps. The de-cashing process could build on the initial and largely uncontested steps, such as the phasing out of large denomination bills, the placement of ceilings on cash transactions, and the reporting of cash moves across the borders. Further steps could include creating economic incentives to reduce the use of cash in transactions, simplifying the opening and use of transferrable deposits, and further computerizing the financial system. The private sector led de-cashing seems preferable to the public sector led decashing. The former seems almost entirely benign (e.g., more use of mobile phones to pay for coffee), but still needs policy adaptation.

The latter seems more questionable, and people may have valid objections to it. De-cashing of either kind leaves both individuals and states more vulnerable to disruptions, ranging from power outages to hacks to cyberwarfare. In any case, the tempting attempts to impose de-cashing by a decree should be avoided, given the popular personal attachment to cash. A targeted outreach program is needed to alleviate suspicions related to de-cashing; in particular, that by de-cashing the authorities are trying to control all aspects of peoples’ lives, including their use of money, or push personal savings into banks. The de-cashing process would acquire more traction if it were based on individual consumer choice and cost-benefits considerations.”

Note, that the author is not talking about unreasonable objections and imagined disadvantages: He does count it among the advantages of de-cashing in the very next paragraph that personal savings are pushed into banks and he also does count total control of all aspects of financial life under the pros, as in the last sentence of the last quote below.

“As de-cashing gives incentives to economies’ agents to convert their currency in bank deposits, the deposit base of the banking system will increase, which can help reduce the lending rates and expand credit.”

And finally the advice to do it together:

“Coordinated efforts on de-cashing could help enhance its positive effects and reduce potential costs. At least at the level of major countries and their currencies, the authorities could coordinate their de-cashing efforts. Such coordinated efforts are, in particular, important in the decisions to phase out large denomination bills for all major currencies, to use ceilings and other restrictions on cash transactions, and to introduce the reporting requirements for cash transactions or their taxation. For currency areas, a single decashing policy would be clearly preferable to a national one. Finally, consensus between the public and the private sector and outreach on the advantages and modalities of gradual decashing should be viewed as key preconditions for its success.”

They’re all over the place.

• Precursors to the ’08 Crisis are Repeating Now (Nomi Prins)

The biggest banks are still as dangerous as they were before the last crisis, even as they push for less regulation. The big six banks U.S. banks are JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. Despite their belly-aching about heinous Dodd-Frank Act regulations cramping their betting style, they have all done damn good recently. Since Trump was elected and started talking about deregulation, the big six bank stock values have collectively skyrocketed 33.5% (as of March 10th). Bank of America tops that rise with an eye-popping increase of 48.8% in three months. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley shares shot up 36.6%. Of course, most stocks have been moving up since the election. But keep in mind that the S&P 500 rose just 10.9% during that same period.

Beyond a few extra capital requirements (mostly in the form of a set of rules called Basel III coming from Europe), the need to establish a “living will” in case of another financial emergency, and some limitations on risky trading, not much has changed for these banks. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the big six banks’ total assets have increased by 21%. The big four by 25%. Yet, of the total Global Derivatives Notional amount of $544 trillion, the big six U.S. banks carry $168 trillion of it. Comparing that figure to their total assets, we get a leverage amount of 24 times. To put that in perspective, that’s only slightly less than the leverage their derivatives positions before the 2008 crisis. The biggest banks are still the ones most at risk, and most threatening to anyone with money in the stock market. Cracks have started popping up that make it clear to us that the next financial crisis is just around the corner.

[..] The Fed’s data shows bank lending to businesses has been strong, perhaps too strong. That’s why it’s just now starting to trail off. We’ve had an epic credit expansionary cycle on the back of cheap, central bank fabricated money and ultra-loose monetary policy — what I call “artisanal” money. But defaults and distressed credit activity is rising. Last year, corporates posted their fifth-highest yearly default volume. According to Forbes, “62 companies defaulted on $59.3 billion in debt — 57% higher than the $37.7 billion of defaults in 2015.” That’s an ominous trajectory.

Bank of America just revealed that its 30-90 day consumer credit delinquencies are rising significantly again. So are delinquencies at Wells Fargo. The bank card default rate is at a 42 month high. U.S. subprime auto loan losses are at their highest level since the ’08 crisis. Banks that had been offering more commercial real estate loans now say they will tighten standards. Fears are rising that a greater%age will become delinquent just as they did in the lead up to the last financial crises. A downturn is inevitable. It’s a matter of when, not if.

Of course it shouldn’t.

• Former Fed Advisor Says Central Bank Shouldn’t Comment On Equities (CNBC)

Federal Reserve officials commented on the stock market in March, as minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee meeting revealed the central bank is working to reduce its $4.5 trillion in bonds on its balance sheet this year. Danielle DiMartino Booth, a former Dallas Fed advisor and president of Money Strong, said on CNBC’s Power Lunch on Monday, “It always makes me uncomfortable,” when the central bank comments on U.S. equities. In the summary of the March meeting, Fed members “commented that the recent increase in equity prices might in part reflect investors’ anticipation of a boost to earnings from a cut in corporate taxes or more expansionary fiscal policy, which might not materialize.

They also expressed concern that the low level of implied volatility in equity markets appeared inconsistent with the considerable uncertainty attending the outlook for such policy initiatives.” “I don’t think it’s necessarily the purview of central bankers to comment on this,” DiMartino Booth said. She said the Fed’s comments on the market shows “they are also verbally concerned about financial instability,” and may consider it when the Fed makes fiscal policy decisions, in addition to labor and inflation mandates. David Nelson, chief strategist at Belpointe Asset Management, agreed, “I don’t think the Fed should be commenting on stock prices.”

“..getting from Point A ($4.5 trillion) to Point B ($2 trillion based on balance sheet contracting just over a tenth the size of the country’s GDP) will take at least five years.”

• Is the Fed’s Balance Sheet Headed for the Crapper? (DiMartino Booth)

The good news, for those fearing having to enter monetary rehab, is that it’s going to take a mighty long time to shrink the balance sheet. The fine folks over at Goldman Sachs figure that getting from Point A ($4.5 trillion) to Point B ($2 trillion based on balance sheet contracting just over a tenth the size of the country’s GDP) will take at least five years. (An aside for you insomniacs out there: Have a look back at Mind the Cap, penned back on December 16, 2015, released hours before the Fed hiked rates for the first time in order to raise the cap on the Reverse Repo Facility (RRP) to $2 trillion. (Mind The Cap via DiMartinobooth.com) Come what may, you can consider Goldman’s estimate of the terminal value of a $2 trillion balance sheet and the size of the RRP to be anything but coincidental.)

In any event, things change. As per Goldman, by 2022, “…changes in Fed leadership, regulation, Treasury issuance policy, or macroeconomic conditions could alter both the near-term path and the intended terminal size of the balance sheet.” Indeed. It is entertaining to watch market pundits shift in their skivvies trying to assure the masses that a shrinking balance sheet will be welcomed by risky assets. It was downright comical to read that the Fed’s strategically allowing only long-dated Treasuries to expire and not be replaced would prevent the yield curve from inverting, thus staving off recession. Pardon the interruption, but domestic non-financial sector debt stood at about 140% of GDP in 1980. Today, it’s crested 250% of GDP and keeps rising.

Interest rate sensitivity, especially in commercial real estate, household finance and junk bonds is particularly acute. Oh, and by the way, monetary policy is a global phenomenon. At last check, the European periphery and emerging market corporate bond market were not in the best position to weather a rising rate environment. The best performance, though, was delivered by Chair Janet Yellen herself. In the spirit of giving credit its due, Business Insider’s Pedro da Costa highlighted this delightful nugget from testimony Yellen presented to Congress in February: “Waiting too long to remove accommodation would be unwise, potentially requiring the FOMC to eventually raise rates rapidly, which could risk disrupting the financial markets and pushing the economy into recession.” Isn’t the rapidly flattening yield curve communicating that ‘removing accommodation’ today is one and the same with ‘pushing the economy into recession’?

Better do something, Justin. This is going to blow up in YOUR face.

• Toronto House Price Bubble Goes Nuts (WS)

Residential property sales in Greater Toronto soared 17.7% year-over-year to 12,077 homes, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB). New listings jumped 15.2% to 17,052. Prices for all types of homes, based on the MLS Home Price Index Composite “Benchmark,” soared 28.6%. The “average” selling price soared 33.2%! That average selling price of C$916,567 is up from C$688,011 a year ago. Over the past five years, it has doubled! The heavenly manna was spread across the spectrum. For condos, the average price in Greater Toronto soared 33.1% to C$518,879; for townhouses it soared 32.9% to C$705,078; for semi-detached houses, 34.4% to C$858,202; and for detached houses, 33.4% to C$1,214,422. Even the house price bubble in Beijing cannot compete with this sort of miracle; new house prices there increased only 22% year-over-year in February.

And Sydney’s fabulous house price bubble just flat out pales compared to the spectacle transpiring in Toronto, with prices up only 19% in March. Vancouver has its own housing bubble to deal with. But there, the government of British Columbia has tried to tamp down on wild speculation with various measures, including a transfer tax aimed squarely at foreign non-resident investors, with “mixed” success. Now the great fear in Toronto’s real estate circles is that the government of Ontario might impose similarly cruel and unusual punishment on the participants in this spectacle. Some measures are on the table, with folks wondering how to stop the bubble from inflating further and causing even greater harm to the real economy when it deflates, as all bubbles eventually do.

They’re reluctant. It seems they want to see how BC’s measures are washing out in Vancouver. The central government too is trying to fine-tune some macroprudential measures, but they’ve had absolutely no effect on Toronto’s housing bubble. And the Bank of Canada, which has been fretting about the housing bubble for a while – always couched in its very careful terms – refuses to raise rates. Everyone is talking. No one dares to do anything real about Toronto’s house price bubble. In Toronto, according the real estate folks, it’s all based on fundamentals. It’s based on supply and demand and very rational calculated thinking, and there is no bubble in sight, lenders are just fine, and if Canadians are locked out of the housing market, so be it, it’s just a shortage of housing, really.

We’re supposed to believe Australia never got the memo? Get real.

• Interest-Only Loans ‘To End In Tears’ (Aus.)

Former National Australia Bank boss Don Argus has added to warnings about the overreliance of interest-only loans, declaring it is going to “lead to tears” as interest rates eventually move higher. After a widely expected decision by the Reserve Bank to leave its official cash rate unchanged at a record low 1.5% at its monthly board meeting yesterday, Mr Argus declared that borrowers had “forgotten” the cyclical nature of interest rates. “You can only hope that some of these dizzy values that you see people paying for houses now, you hope that they stand up on any correction, any economic correction”, Mr Argus told The Australian. Backing a tightening of so-called macroprudential controls on home lending announced by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority last week, Mr Argus, a former BHP Billiton chairman, said the capacity of borrowers to repay loans “was always a primary concern in housing loans of yesteryear”.

“If you progressed to just an interest-only environment, that’s only going to lead to tears.” However, in a speech given in Melbourne last night, RBA governor Philip Lowe took aim at banks and other lenders for making overly generous serviceability assessments. “Despite the focus on this area over recent times, too many loans are still made where the borrower has the skinniest of income buffers after interest payments”, Dr Lowe said. “In some cases, lenders are assuming that people can live more frugally than in practice they can, leaving little buffer if things go wrong. So APRA quite rightly has said lenders can expect a strong supervisory focus on loans with a very low net income surplus.” Dr Lowe also noted that the prevalence of interest-only lending was “unusual” globally.

“A reduced reliance on interest-only loans in Australia would be a positive development and would help improve our resilience. With interest rates so low, now is a good time for us to move in this direction,” he said. Almost 40% of residential mortgage lending in Australia is interest-only, where the borrower pays off the interest rather than the principal.

“It is about regime survival for a Chinese Communist Party that faces existential risk if they stumble.”

• China Is More Fragile than You Realize (DR)

China’s economy is not just about providing jobs, goods and services. It is about regime survival for a Chinese Communist Party that faces existential risk if they stumble. Given the systemic problems inherent in trying to run an economy in the absence of the accurate price signals only free markets provide (a problem for both Chinese socialism and the West’s corrupt crony markets), their challenges are worsening every day. Malinvestments the size of ghost cities are not lost on the world’s central bankers who fear a systemic collapse of China’s economy, nor on the brilliant investors who are betting on China’s collapse like they bet against the corrupt banking products in the U.S. housing bubble. Before the 2008 financial crisis, the Chinese debt-to-GDP ratio was 147%; now, it is at about 250%.

Quietly, the Chinese leadership has begun to lower growth expectations but even those numbers should be taken with skepticism. The methodology used to calculate their GDP figures is not publicly known but uses economic data that can be manipulated for sake of appearances. Declining growth impacts China’s financial market as well. Local banks are struggling with non-performing debt rapidly increasing. Non-bank financial institutions referred to as the “shadow banking system” are spreading, with little regulation or recognition of the risks. The government’s attempts to better regulate the system is stymied by local corruption where exaggerated assets and little documentation mask a wave of malinvestments. Like the appearance of no-doc “liar” loans in the U.S. in 2004-2006, the entire shadow banking system is signalling risk of systemic collapse.

Another source of malinvestment is the real estate market. Commercial real estate bubbles are breathtaking and residential real estate values have begun to fall. This seriously threatens social unrest as many Chinese families have put their life savings into real estate believing well intended but nonsensical government assurances of support to an ever increasing housing market. As is typical with most countries, the Chinese government tries to mask the ravages of inflation by adjusting their public measurement downwards. Doing so conceals the impact it has on households. But when values collapse wiping out the entire family savings for their old age, there will be a terrifying political backlash.

Yet another concern is that the 2008 Lehman bankruptcy marked a plateau in world trade. This has been particularly difficult for China as exports accounted for more than 40% of their GDP. With reduced global trade, China began to lose competitiveness in the market place. Inflation of the money supply in the Chinese economy required higher wages to offset rising prices. In turn, China tried to move into higher value exports by manufacturing more technologically advanced and complicated products. Unfortunately, in the transition, quality suffered and foreign markets began to look for alternatives to Chinese components.

Good to see I’m not the only one who questions the narrative (see Any of this Sound Familiar?).

• Syria Gas Attack: Assad’s Doing…Or False Flag? (Ron Paul)

Just days after the US Administration changed course on Syrian President Assad, saying he could stay, an alleged chemical weapon attack that killed dozens of civilians has been blamed on the Syrian government. Did Assad sign his own death warrant with such an attack…or does some other entity benefit?

“Sort of like in a divorce case where lawyers are hired, investigators are hired just to find out what the other person is doing from morning until night and then you try to piece it together later on.”

• Reports In Unmasking Controversy Were Detailed (Fox)

The intelligence reports at the center of the Susan Rice unmasking controversy were detailed, and almost resembled a private investigator’s file, according to a Republican congressman familiar with the documents. “This is information about their everyday lives,” Rep. Peter King of New York, a member of the House Intelligence committee said. “Sort of like in a divorce case where lawyers are hired, investigators are hired just to find out what the other person is doing from morning until night and then you try to piece it together later on.” On the House Intelligence Committee, only the Republican chairman, Devin Nunes of California, and the ranking Democrat Adam Schiff, also of California, have personally reviewed the intelligence reports. Some members were given broad outlines.

Nunes has consistently stated that the files caused him deep concern because the unmasking went beyond the former national security adviser Mike Flynn, and the information was not related to Moscow. Schiff said in a statement, “I cannot comment on the content of these materials or any other classified documents, and nothing should be inferred from the fact that I am treating classified materials the way they should be treated – by refusing to comment on them. Only the Administration has the power to declassify the information and make it available to the public.” Former National Security Adviser Rice is under scrutiny after allegations she sought to unmask the identities of Trump associates caught up in surveillance – such as phone calls between foreign intelligence targets. Rice denies ever having sought such information for political purposes and has defended her requests as routine.

[..] During his March 20 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, NSA director Admiral Mike Rogers said only 20 individuals within the agency are authorized to approve those requests. “They receive specific training, there are specific controls put in place in terms of our ability to disseminate information out of the databases associated with U.S. persons,” Rogers said at the time. What it appears to suggest is that the NSA itself agreed that the instances in which Rice requested unmasking warranted that action. FBI Director James Comey was less direct. “I don’t know for sure. As I sit here, surely more, given the nature of the FBI’s work,” he testified.

What’s a 100 million more or less?

• We Are Heading For The Warmest Climate In Half A Billion Years (Conv.)

Carbon dioxide concentrations are heading towards values not seen in the past 200m years. The sun has also been gradually getting stronger over time. Put together, these facts mean the climate may be heading towards warmth not seen in the past half a billion years. A lot has happened on Earth since 500,000,000 BC – continents, oceans and mountain ranges have come and gone, and complex life has evolved and moved from the oceans onto the land and into the air. Most of these changes occur on very long timescales of millions of years or more. However, over the past 150 years global temperatures have increased by about 1ºC, ice caps and glaciers have retreated, polar sea-ice has melted, and sea levels have risen.Some will point out that Earth’s climate has undergone similar changes before. So what’s the big deal?

Scientists can seek to understand past climates by looking at the evidence locked away in rocks, sediments and fossils. What this tells us is that yes, the climate has changed in the past, but the current speed of change is highly unusual. For instance, carbon dioxide hasn’t been added to the atmosphere as rapidly as today for at least the past 66m years. In terms of geological time, 1ºC of global warming isn’t particularly unusual. For much of its history the planet was significantly warmer than today, and in fact more often than not Earth was in what is termed a “greenhouse” climate state. During the last greenhouse state 50m years ago, global average temperatures were 10-15ºC warmer than today, the polar regions were ice-free, palm trees grew on the coast of Antarctica, and alligators and turtles wallowed in swamp-forests in what is now the frozen Canadian Arctic.

Debt Rattle March 26 2017

Mar 262017

March 26, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:56 am Finance Tagged with: cash, Dijsselbloem, EU, flippers, grains, grapes, normalization, Obama, Ogallala, populism, Trump 2 Responses »

Marion Post Wolcott “Center of town. Woodstock, Vermont. Snowy night” 1940

• Will Trump’s Victory Break Up the Democratic Party? (Michael Hudson)

• Condo Flippers in Miami-Dade Face The End Of A Bubble (WS)

• What Global Central Bank Normalization Would Look Like (ZH)

• Populism: The Phenomenon (Dalio et al)

• The Peak Of – Dirty – Cash? (ZH)

• Explaining Why White Middle Aged America Is Killing Itself (Worstall)

• Brexit Vote Is ‘Closed Nationalism’ That Belongs In Past, Says Italian PM (G.)

• Drink and Women – It’s A Culture Thang (DA)

• Portugal’s Cabral Says Dijsselbloem Resignation Is Best for EU (BBG)

• Trump Marks Greek Independence Day With Ominous Message (AP)

• Syrian Asylum Seekers In UK Forced Into Poverty, Fear Deportation (G.)

• Ogallala: What Happens to the US Midwest When the Water’s Gone? (NatGeo)

Long analysis by Hudson. Trump as Obama’s legacy. And ousting Bernie has left America without a Democratic party, like some self-fulfilling prophecy. (Graph is from another source, but a very good fit)

• Will Trump’s Victory Break Up the Democratic Party? (Michael Hudson)

Trump is sufficiently intuitive to proclaim the euro a disaster, and he recommends that Greece leave it. He supports the rising nationalist parties in Britain, France, Italy, Greece and the Netherlands, all of which urge withdrawal from the eurozone – and reconciliation with Russia instead of sanctions. In place of the ill-fated TPP and TTIP, Trump advocates country-by-country trade deals favoring the United States. Toward this end, his designated ambassador to the European Union, Ted Malloch, urges the EU’s breakup. The EU is refusing to accept him as ambassador. At the time this volume is going to press, there is no way of knowing how successful these international reversals will be. What is more clear is what Trump’s political impact will have at home. His victory – or more accurately, Hillary’s resounding loss and the way she lost – has encouraged enormous pressure for a realignment of both parties.

Regardless of what President Trump may achieve vis-à-vis Europe, his actions as celebrity chaos agent may break up U.S. politics across the political spectrum. The Democratic Party has lost its ability to pose as the party of labor and the middle class. Firmly controlled by Wall Street and California billionaires, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) strategy of identity politics encourages any identity except that of wage earners. The candidates backed by the Donor Class have been Blue Dogs pledged to promote Wall Street and neocons urging a New Cold War with Russia. They preferred to lose with Hillary than to win behind Bernie Sanders. So Trump’s electoral victory is their legacy as well as Obama’s. Instead of Trump’s victory dispelling that strategy, the Democrats are doubling down. It is as if identity politics is all they have.

Trying to ride on Barack Obama’s coattails didn’t work. Promising “hope and change,” he won by posing as a transformational president, leading the Democrats to control of the White House, Senate and Congress in 2008. Swept into office by a national reaction against the George Bush’s Oil War in Iraq and the junk-mortgage crisis that left the economy debt-ridden, they had free rein to pass whatever new laws they chose – even a Public Option in health care if they had wanted, or make Wall Street banks absorb the losses from their bad and often fraudulent loans. But it turned out that Obama’s role was to prevent the changes that voters hoped to see, and indeed that the economy needed to recover: financial reform, debt writedowns to bring junk mortgages in line with fair market prices, and throwing crooked bankers in jail.

Obama rescued the banks, not the economy, and turned over the Justice Department and regulatory agencies to his Wall Street campaign contributors. He did not even pull back from war in the Near East, but extended it to Libya and Syria, blundering into the Ukrainian coup as well. Having dashed the hopes of his followers, Obama then praised his chosen successor Hillary Clinton as his “Third Term.” Enjoying this kiss of death, Hillary promised to keep up Obama’s policies. The straw that pushed voters over the edge was when she asked voters, “Aren’t you better off today than you were eight years ago?” Who were they going to believe: their eyes, or Hillary? National income statistics showed that only the top 5% of the population were better off. All the growth in GDP during Obama’s tenure went to them – the Donor Class that had gained control of the Democratic Party leadership. Real incomes have fallen for the remaining 95%.

Rates still no low enough?

• Condo Flippers in Miami-Dade Face The End Of A Bubble (WS)

Miami-Dade’s spectacular condo flipping mania is in turmoil, with sales plunging, inventory-for-sale soaring, and new supply flooding the market. It’s not like Miami hasn’t been through this before. In February, existing home sales of all types fell 10% year-over-year, to 1,835 homes. These sales “do not include Miami’s multi-billion dollar new construction condo market,” the Miami Association of Realtors clarified in its report on March 23. And this new construction market that is not included has become distressed. Sales of single-family homes fell 10% in February, to 881 houses. The report blamed the shortage of properties “in popular price points.” Prices have been rising sharply, and at the price points where people could actually buy a house – below $250,000 – few sellers were playing ball.

Hence a stalling market. Sales of high-priced units rose, but they weren’t enough to pull out the totals. Condo sales fell 10% as well, to 954 units. This time, the report didn’t blame the lack of supply. Instead: “Existing condo sales are competing with a robust new construction market.” At the same time, inventory of existing condos for sale, not including new units, rose 10% to 15,289. At the current sales rate, supply soared 29% to 14 months. This chart by StatFunding shows the plunge in sales and the surge in condos listed for sale. I circled the last five Februaries on the sales line (red). From February 2014 to February 2017, condo sales have plunged 25%. Andrew Stearns, StatFunding’s founder and CEO, calls the resale inventory – the dark green line that has soared 90% since early 2013 – “scary”:

When ‘normalization’ becomes the scariest idea around.

• What Global Central Bank Normalization Would Look Like (ZH)

As a result of countless failures by central banks to normalize monetary policy over the past 7 years, the market – especially bonds and rates – has become openly cynical and outright skeptical regarding the possibility of a successful renormalization of policy by global central banks. After all, Japan has been trying to do that for over 30 years and has yet to succeed; the ECB hiked in 2011 resulting in near collapse of the Eurozone. Ironically, the recent Trumpflation trade – which few expected as a result of the “shocking” Trump election victory – has emerged as the most credible catalyst to prompt inflation not only in the US but around the globe, resulting in two Fed rate hikes in rapid succession.

Still, now that Obamacare repeal has failed, and questions are rising whether Trump will be able to implement his proposed Tax reform, the market has aggressively faded not only the broader Trumpflation trade, but also all of the recent dollar strength since the US election: in short, bets on a “bening” global reflation are rapidly fading, suggesting that the latest push to normalize monetary policy will once again result in failure. And yet, “what if it goes according to plan” this time? That’s the question posed by Barclays’ Christian Keller who notes that, at least for the time being, “The synchronized upswing in the global economy continues, supporting sentiment, which thus far has ignored elevated policy uncertainties. Headline inflation is increasing due to stable oil prices, while core inflation rates are mixed.”

And, assuming nothing changes, this sets the backdrop for monetary policy normalization, albeit at different speeds and modes. Taking this thought experiment one step further, what would happen if indeed this time central banks are successful to renormalize monetary policy without leading to a market crash. In that case, Barclays expects three Fed hikes in 2017 and 2018, respectively. The ECB is likely to taper further in 2018 and to start increasing depo rates in parallel (in 2018). Conveniently, Barclays has created the following chart which lays out what “coordinated global renormalization” would look like. It can serve as a benchmark to those keeping tabs on where various central banks are in the current attempt to restore monetary normalcy.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, populist.

• Populism: The Phenomenon (Dalio et al)

Populism is a political and social phenomenon that arises from the common man, typically not well- educated, being fed up with 1) wealth and opportunity gaps, 2) perceived cultural threats from those with different values in the country and from outsiders, 3) the “establishment elites” in positions of power, and 4) government not working effectively for them. These sentiments lead that constituency to put strong leaders in power. Populist leaders are typically confrontational rather than collaborative and exclusive rather than inclusive. As a result, conflicts typically occur between opposing factions (usually the economic and socially left versus the right), both within the country and between countries. These conflicts typically become progressively more forceful in self- reinforcing ways.

Within countries, conflicts often lead to disorder (e.g., strikes and protests) that prompt stronger reactions and the growing pressure to more forcefully regain order by suppressing the other side. Influencing and, in some cases, controlling the media typically becomes an important aspect of engaging in the conflicts. In some cases, these conflicts have led to civil wars. Such conflicts have led a number of democracies to become dictatorships to bring order to the disorder that results from these conflicts. Between countries, conflicts typically occur because populist leaders’ natures are more confrontational than cooperative and because conflicts with other countries help to unify support for the leadership within their countries.

In other words, populism is a rebellion of the common man against the elites and, to some extent, against the system. The rebellion and the conflict that comes with it occur in varying degrees. Sometimes the system bends with it and sometimes the system breaks. Whether it bends or breaks in response to this rebellion and conflict depends on how flexible and well established the system is. It also seems to depend on how reasonable and respectful of the system the populists who gain power are.

[..] In the period between the two great wars (i.e., the 1920s-30s), most major countries were swept away by populism, and it drove world history more than any other force. The previously mentioned sentiments by the common man put into power populist leaders in all major countries except the United States and the UK (though we’d consider Franklin D. Roosevelt to be a quasi-populist, for reasons described below). Disorder and conflict between the left and the right (e.g., strikes that shut down operations, policies meant to undermine the opposition and the press, etc.) prompted democracies in Italy, Germany, Spain, and Japan to choose dictatorships because collective/inclusive decision making was perceived as tolerance for behaviors that undermined order, so autocratic leaders were given dictatorial powers to gain control.

The differences are huge. In lots of countries going cashless is not going to fly.

• The Peak Of – Dirty – Cash? (ZH)

In several major economies it’s crunch time for the future of cash. Goldman Sachs notes that this is largely policy-driven: tangible steps are being taken to wean economies off cash (e.g. India, Europe); but adds that, at the same time consumer expectations around convenience are rising and enabling technologies have proliferated in the shape of contactless cards, mobile wallets, cryptocurrencies and more. So, they ask, does the decline in cash payments imply the demise of cash? Not necessarily. Technology has been an important catalyst for shrinking cash usage, but it is by no means a new phenomenon. As we wrote in 2012, the first technological step-change in the payments arena was the shift from cash to plastic money, i.e. credit and debit cards, which happened in the 1960s.

There are many parallels to be drawn between that period and the ongoing shift to digital money: an initial period of an increasing number of providers was followed by a consolidation stage that established a few players (Visa and MasterCard primarily) as the industry standards, eventually accelerating the adoption of plastic money. However, the availability of technology alone has not ensured the demise of cash. As the following chart shows, there are several advanced economies in which it is still the dominant mode of payment in volume terms (surprisingly quite a few European countries are in the bottom left quadrant).

Japan is a striking example of this; lots of tech and lots of cash. The US also stands out, and this could at least partly be attributed to the fact that regulators in the US have explicitly stated that the market should manage the shift to digital payments by itself. On the other hand, Scandinavian countries are on the cusp of becoming some of the first cashless societies, as a result of industry-co-ordinated steps and government initiatives. Swish, a payment app developed jointly by the major Swedish banks, has been adopted by nearly half the Swedish population, and is now used to make over nine million payments a month. About 900 of Sweden’s 1,600 bank branches no longer keep cash on hand or take cash deposits and many, especially in rural areas, no longer have ATMs.

In conjunction with that, cash transactions were just c.2% of the value and 20% of the volume of all payments made last year (down from 40% five years ago). Denmark’s move to a cashless society is a deliberate result of policy, with the government removing the obligation for some retailers to accept payment in cash. Without this legislative push, we believe cash is very difficult to disrupt and substitute. After all, it is a free and convenient mode of transacting. So far, the selling point of the most broadly used alternatives to cash (cheques and cards) is greater convenience. But that hasn’t been sufficient to meaningfully reduce the market share of cash in countries outside Scandinavia and Canada.

Plenty of theories.

• Explaining Why White Middle Aged America Is Killing Itself (Worstall)

Back 18 months the team of Anne Case and Angus Deaton (who has since gained the economics Nobel) released a famous paper pointing out that white rural Americans were killing themselves. So much so that expected lifespans were in fact falling such was the rise in middle aged morbidity. That original paper found that the effect was geographically concentrated. And as I remarked at the time that’s a bit of a problem for the causality of that rise in morbidity. For we’ve got rather a lot of migration out of those rural areas. And it’s the better educated doing the leaving. Thus it is possible (no, no one has studied this in enough detail as yet for anyone to know) that the effect found is entirely down to those migration effects.

We know very well that poorer and less educated people are more likely to die in middle age than richer and better educated. So, if all the better educated and thus, in our current society, higher income people move away we will observe a rise in the death rate among the remnant population. Case and Deaton have returned to this subject with a new paper. And they agree that there is some of this compositional effect in their earlier findings: “It is important not to focus on those with less than a high school degree, a group that has grown markedly smaller over time, and is likely to be increasingly negatively selected on health.” And: “.. we note that for age-groups younger than 45, there has been a decline in the fraction of WNHs with only a high school degree, so that selection may be playing some role for the younger groups.”

Excellent, so that intuition of mine about those compositional effects was indeed correct at least in part. However, this new paper then drives a steamroller through my explanation by showing that this rise in morbidity is country-wide among that class and age group, middle aged and less educated whites. Except, well, I’m not quite sure it does. Fortunately, as I said last time, this is such an important result coming from such a well known name that it will be fully investigated. It’s not just going to be either ignored nor accepted at face value either. People will keep picking away at this until the definitive answer is understood.

Yeah, the idea behind the EU was good. The execution has been terrible though. Celebrate while holding your breath.

• Brexit Vote Is ‘Closed Nationalism’ That Belongs In Past, Says Italian PM (G.)

Britain’s decision to leave the EU has been described by the Italian prime minister as “closed nationalism” that belongs in the past during a summit in Rome to celebrate the bloc’s 60th anniversary. In an address at the Orazi and Curiazi Hall of the Capitol in the Piazza del Campidoglio, where the EU was founded six decades ago, Paolo Gentiloni expressed his discomfort with the motives behind the referendum result. He blamed the EU for not responding adequately to the economic crisis of 2008, but said: “That triggered in part of public opinion, unfortunately the majority of public opinion in the United Kingdom, it triggered a crisis of rejection. It brought forward the closed nationalism that we thought has been closed down in the archives.”

The leaders of the 27 member states that will make up the EU after the UK’s departure assembled on Saturday to mark the day on which six nations signed what was to become the Treaty of Rome. They signed a Rome declaration, which offered ringing phrases about peace and unity, and the importance of maintaining the union. “We, the leaders of 27 member states and of EU institutions, take pride in the achievements of the European Union: the construction of European unity is a bold, far-sighted endeavour,” it says. “Sixty years ago, recovering from the tragedy of two world wars, we decided to bond together and rebuild our continent from its ashes.

“We have built a unique union with common institutions and strong values, a community of peace, freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, a major economic power with unparalleled levels of social protection and welfare. “European unity started as the dream of a few, it became the hope of the many. Then Europe became one again. Today, we are united and stronger: hundreds of millions of people across Europe benefit from living in an enlarged union that has overcome the old divides.” The document stipulates that the EU will make progress on a social dimension, building on its citizens’ rights, and that some member states will enhance their cooperation, particularly in the field of defence. The text concludes: “We have united for the better. Europe is our common future.”

Grains vs grapes. Why Southern Europeans are not big drinkers.

• Drink and Women – It’s A Culture Thang (DA)

When it comes to consumables, though, blowing it on drink is not such a southern European thing. On old professor of mine, an expert in the history of booze (among other substances) often observed that Europe is divided into north and south by distinct cultures of intoxication rooted in our prehistory – the grape in the south, the grain in the north, originally the function of geography and climate which in turn determined access to different sources of plant sugar.

It is the grain-fermenting northerners who have traditionally drunk themselves to oblivion, and it is them that felt the teetotal backlash of the protestant reformation, whereas the Mediterranean world used their fermented grape juice more sparingly and even made it “taboo” by ghoulishly turning it into blood in the Christian sacrament. It is said that you can still observe this divide by walking down the main street of any Mediterranean town hosting a Club 18-30 resort in high tourist season. Some might say, therefore, that Jeroen is merely projecting his own cultural inclinations. They don’t call it Dutch courage for nothing.

No, when it comes to consumables, another famous one-line aetiology of the Greek crisis comes to mind: “We ate it together” (”Mazí ta fágame”), is what PASOK grandee Theodoros Pangalos poffered in 2010 in response to the question “where did the money go?”. A succinct description of the workings of clientelism, delivered by a true master of the art. The saying survives and thrives, in large part because it had a grotesque, evocative appeal in light of the speaker’s own well-fed physique, an apparent embodiment of gluttony openly admitting to the sin and beckoning us to join him at the trough. In the popular imagination it conjured up images of the Greek political class, bloated with greed both physical and metaphorical, sharing a well-furnished table with their clients, the ordinary voters.

And although we, too, like to accuse our elites of eating Marie Antoinette’s cake and caviar (or perhaps the Greek pre-crisis equivalent, lobster spaghetti), the most appropriate fare loading down the table would be a cholesterol feast, most likely at Baïraktaris, the legendary Athens kebab house and political hangout. Not the starched white tablecloths of Washington’s Palm Grill, London’s private clubs, or the Michelin-starred chateaux of Gallic political intrigue, but oilcloth and stacks of paper napkins, the great equaliser, where we do indeed tuck in together in large, boisterous groups. You may recall Baïraktaris as the scene of another famous apophthegm, by another regular, former Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, to the effect that “five pimps run this country”. And that is as far as I will go with the “women” element.

Bartender, stop serving this man.

• Portugal’s Cabral Says Dijsselbloem Resignation Is Best for EU (BBG)

Portugal’s Economy Minister Manuel Caldeira Cabral said Jeroen Dijsselbloem, whose Dutch party lost elections this month, should quit as chairman of the European finance ministers’ group after his comments about the duties of nations getting aid were deemed offensive. “It would be the best thing for Europe and the best thing he could do,” Cabral said in a Bloomberg Television interview from the Boao Forum for Asia, an annual conference on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. “He just lost an election and I think he should not be trying to blame others for his own failures.” Dijsselbloem is under pressure to resign as leader of the euro area’s finance ministers after a German newspaper cited him saying, “I can’t spend all my money on women and drink and then at the end ask for your help.”

That remark inflamed tensions between stronger economies in the north and weaker nations including Greece, Ireland and Portugal. The Eurogroup chief has said he regrets causing offense, but doesn’t intend to resign. “I don’t think we can let the Eurogroup be divided in that way, and for that reason that person should be out,” Cabral said. “One of the worst things that some European responsibles have done in the past is not being leaders and trying to surpass their own difficulties at home by accusing other countries. This is a way of destroying Europe.”

On the U.K.’s withdrawal from the European Union, Cabral said the bloc must focus on getting good results from negotiations in the next two to five years and then moving on to other issues. He said broader trade pacts should be the goal rather than making Brexit the only thing on the agenda for Europe and the U.K. The EU should focus on trade talks that give serious results and make a priority “of opening to the world, of negotiating with Asia, of being part of this intuitive of One Belt-One Road with China and establishing links with Asia,” he said in the interview.

Large military parade yesterday in Athens. Fighter jets flying so low car alarms were going off all the time.

• Trump Marks Greek Independence Day With Ominous Message (AP)

President Donald Trump has marked Greek Independence Day with a rather ominous message. At a White House reception, Trump said that in the years to come “we don’t know what will be required to defend our freedom.” But he said it will take “great courage, and we will show it.” Greek Independence Day commemorates the start of the 1821 war that led to Greece’s independence after nearly 400 years as part of the Ottoman Empire. It’s celebrated annually on March 25. Trump told the crowd, “I love the Greeks.” He also introduced Greek-American members of the White House staff, including chief of staff Reince Priebus. Trump said Priebus is “really terrific and hard-working,” along with being “one of the top Greeks in the country.”

“..they were often too scared to pick up their allowance for fear of being detained.”

• Syrian Asylum Seekers In UK Forced Into Poverty, Fear Deportation (G.)

Hundreds of Syrian asylum seekers are struggling to survive in the UK, with some facing destitution and others forced into exploitative work because they are afraid of being detained and deported. The Observer has found Syrian asylum seekers working in warehouses, construction sites and garages for as little as £10 a day. Many had stopped signing in with the Home Office after being held in detention centres for months. Hundreds more are living in destitution, reliant on charities for food parcels and clothes. Mike Adamson, chief executive of the British Red Cross, said: “A two-tier system, where Syrian nationals who arrive in the UK as asylum seekers are left vulnerable to exploitation, seems completely at odds with the spirit behind the government’s commitment to offer a safe home to 20,000 Syrian refugees under its resettlement programme.

The Observer interviewed 10 Syrians, all living in limbo because of the Dublin regulation, which means asylum seekers can be sent back to the first EU country they reach. The men were fighting removal to countries including Bulgaria, where Human Rights Watch found asylum seekers being shot at, beaten with weapons by uniformed officials and sent back to Turkey. Several of the men we spoke to were being threatened with removal to Hungary, despite the fact that the Home Office told the Observer that it is not currently returning asylum seekers there. At least 50 Syrians have been removed under the regulation since the start of 2015, prompting some to drop off the radar. Eight of the men interviewed said that they had stopped signing in with immigration authorities because they were afraid of detention and removal. Most had family in the UK and were supporting themselves by working illegally.

[..] The Red Cross said it had seen 1,341 destitute Syrian asylum seekers in Britain last year, up from 1,159 the year before. In South Yorkshire, a quarter of all destitute asylum seekers seen, of all nationalities, said they experienced hunger every day. In nearly half of all the cases seen by the Red Cross, asylum seekers were facing destitution, despite receiving the full £36 a week afforded to them under government rules. The Syrians the Observer interviewed said they were often too scared to pick up their allowance for fear of being detained.

Return to the desert. It’ll take centuries to refill the aquifer.

• Ogallala: What Happens to the US Midwest When the Water’s Gone? (NatGeo)

For the past 60 years, the Ogallala has been pumped out faster than raindrops and snowmelt can seep back into the ground to replenish it, thanks largely to irrigation machinery like the one sleeping nearby. As a result, in parts of western Kansas, the aquifer has declined by more than 60% during that period. In some parts, it is already exhausted. The decline is steady now, dry years or wet. In 2015 rain was exceptionally heavy—50 to 100% above normal. Even so, water levels in the wells dropped again. Wilson’s field report will put the best face on it, noting it was the slowest decline in five years.

Tagging along with Wilson, I am nearing the end of a 5,000-mile journey along the back roads of Ogallala territory, from South Dakota to Texas. My drive has taken me through some of the most productive farmland anywhere, home to at least a $20-billion-a-year industry that grows nearly one-fifth of the United States’ wheat, corn, and beef cattle. It’s also a place facing hard choices: Farmers can reduce consumption of water to further extend the life of the aquifer. Or they can continue on their path toward an end that is already in sight. Some don’t like to frame the dilemma quite so starkly. But if they don’t reduce pumping and the aquifer is drained, food markets will be profoundly affected around the world. In the coming decades this slow-speed crisis will unfold just as the world needs to increase food production by 60%, according to the United Nations, to feed more than nine billion people by mid-century.

The draining of North America’s largest aquifer is playing out in similar ways across the world, as large groundwater basins in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East decline rapidly. Many of these aquifers, including the southern Ogallala, have little ability to recharge. Once their water is gone, they could take thousands of years to refill. “The consequences will be huge,” says Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and lead researcher on a study using satellites to record changes in the world’s 37 largest aquifers. “We need to sustain groundwater to sustain food production, and we’re not doing it. Is draining the Ogallala the smartest thing for food production in the U.S. and globally? This is the question we need to answer.”

Debt Rattle March 6 2017

Mar 062017

March 6, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:03 am Finance Tagged with: cash, China, Erdogan, EU, fake news, Growth, pollution, Renzi, stench, UBI, Yemen 8 Responses »

Dorothea Lange Negro woman who has never been out of Mississippi July 1936

• The Government Doesn’t Actually Want Housing To Be More Affordable (SMH)

• In Praise Of Cash (Aeon)

• Basic Income Isn’t Just A Nice Idea. It’s A Birthright (G.)

• Oil Falls On Lower China Growth Targets, Doubts On Russian Output Curbs (R.)

• China’s Credit Target Implies Adding Entire German GDP This Year (BBG)

• Record-Breaking Stocks A Bad Reason For The Fed To Raise Interest Rates (BI)

• Leaving The EU Is The Start Of A Liberal Insurgency (Carswell)

• Deutsche Bank CEO Cryan Has A New Strategy: Reverse His Old Strategy (BBG)

• Renzi’s Return Clouded By Probe Into Father, Government Minister (BBG)

• The Iraq War Stench Lingers Behind Today’s Preoccupation With Fake News (G.)

• Saudi Arabia Stealing 65% of Yemen’s Oil in Collaboration with US, Total (AHT)

• Turkey’s Erdogan Compares German Behavior With Nazi Period (R.)

• US Asks Ankara For Steps To Ease Aegean Tension (K.)

• Greece Desperate For Growth Strategy As Public Mood Darkens (G.)

• Polluted Environments Kill 1.7 Million Children A Year (R.)

From Australia, but applicable worldwide. Mortgages in housing bubbles are the main engine of money (credit) creation in our economies. Boith governments and banks depend on them for profit, taxes and ultimately survival. Imagine if housing prices halved, the entire construct would collapse. They’ll do anything to keep the game going. And then they will fail.

• The Government Doesn’t Actually Want Housing To Be More Affordable (SMH)

The federal government’s problem with making housing more affordable is that it becomes, by definition, cheaper. And that’s not something that the federal government wants to see happen for some very understandable reasons. Back in the Howard era Australians were encouraged to invest in housing as a form of wealth creation, partially as a way of addressing rental strain and mainly as a way to ensure people had assets and therefore didn’t go selfishly claiming pensions later on. That’s when the negative gearing and capital gains exemptions were introduced that made buying property such a sweet deal. So now there are a lot of Australians who have put their retirement eggs in the basket marked “leveraging the hell out of my mortgage to buy more investment properties” for the last couple of decades and who will be therefore disadvantaged if the value of housing drops.

And then there’s pure self interest at work too, since between a third and half of all our representatives have investment properties – the PM himself owns seven properties, for example. How keen would you say that our parliamentary representatives are to make their portfolios drop in value, especially for something as stupid as the greater good? Also, as well we know thanks to the efforts of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, the NSW Liberals are so beloved by property developers that the party went to some effort to find a way of accepting donations from them despite those donations being completely illegal. If they suddenly become the party that makes property less lucrative, there’d be no donations to justify the creation of opaque entities like the Free Enterprise Foundation.

[..] Will housing become more affordable in Australia? Absolutely! And it could happen one of two ways. This complex web of legislation can be gently and strategically unpicked via careful bipartisan cooperation across our different spheres of government in concert with the private sector in an effort to create a sane, universally beneficial housing system at all levels. Alternatively, we can choose to leave things be until the housing bubble bursts and plunges Australia into a crippling recession. And since this is politics in 2017, we can assume that Plan A is already off the table.

Using cash is fast becoming a revilutionary act.

• In Praise Of Cash (Aeon)

The cashless society – which more accurately should be called the bank-payments society – is often presented as an inevitability, an outcome of ‘natural progress’. This claim is either naïve or disingenuous. Any future cashless bank-payments society will be the outcome of a deliberate war on cash waged by an alliance of three elite groups with deep interests in seeing it emerge. The first is the banking industry, which controls the core digital fiat money system that our public system of cash currently competes with. It irritates banks that people do indeed act upon their right to convert their bank deposits into state money. It forces them to keep the ATM network running. The cashless society, in their eyes, is a utopia where money cannot leave – or even exist – outside the banking system, but can only be transferred from bank to bank.

The second is the private payments industry – the likes of Mastercard – that profits from running the infrastructure that services that bank system, streamlining the process via which we transfer digital money between bank accounts. They have self-serving reasons to push for the removal of the cash option. Cash transactions are peer-to-peer, requiring no intermediary, and are thus transactions that Visa cannot skim a cut off. The third – perhaps ironically – is the state, and quasi-state entities such as central banks. They are united with the financial industry in forcing everyone to buy into this privatised bank-payments society for reasons of monitoring and control. The bank-money system forms a panopticon that enables – in theory – all transactions to be recorded, watched and analysed, good or bad. Furthermore, cash’s ‘offline’ nature means it cannot be remotely altered or frozen.

This hampers central banks in implementing ‘innovative’ monetary policies, such as setting negative interest rates that slowly edit away bank deposits in order to coerce people into spending. Governments don’t really mention that monetary policy agenda. It isn’t catchy enough. Rather, the key weapons used by the alliance are more classic shock-and-awe scare tactics. Cash is used by criminals! People buy drugs with cash! It’s the black economy! It supports tax evasion! The ability to present control as protection relies on constant calls to imagine an external enemy, the terrorist or Mafiosi. These cries of moral panic are set in contrast to the glossy smiling adverts about digital payment. The emerging cashless society looms like a futuristic sunrise, cleansing us of these dangerous filthy notes with rays of hygienic, convenient, digital salvation.

From Thomas Paine to Henry George, the reason for UBI has long been known. Call it ‘ground rent’ or ‘land value tax’. Tax the ownership class, not the workers. ‘Birthright’ may sound strange today, but is it really?

• Basic Income Isn’t Just A Nice Idea. It’s A Birthright (G.)

Every student learns about Magna Carta, the ancient scroll that enshrined the rights of barons against the arbitrary authority of England’s monarchs. But most have never heard of its arguably more important twin, the Charter of the Forest, issued two years later in 1217. This short but powerful document guaranteed the rights of commoners to common lands, which they could use for farming, grazing, water and wood. It gave official recognition to a right that humans nearly everywhere had long just presupposed: that no one should be debarred from the resources necessary for livelihood. But this right – the right of habitation – came under brutal attack beginning in the 15th century, when wealthy nobles began fencing off common lands for their own profit.

[..] the success of basic income – in both the north and south – all depends on how we frame it. Will it be cast as a form of charity by the rich? Or will it be cast as a right for all? Thomas Paine was among the first to argue that a basic income should be introduced as a kind of compensation for dispossession. In his brilliant 1797 pamphlet Agrarian Justice, he pointed out that “the earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race”. It was unfair that a few should enclose it for their own benefit, leaving the vast majority without their rightful inheritance. As far as Paine was concerned, this violated the most basic principles of justice.

Knowing that land reform would be politically impossible (for it would “derange any present possessors”), Paine proposed that those with property should pay a “ground rent” – a small tax on the yields of their land – into a fund that would then be distributed to everyone as an unconditional basic income. For Paine, this would be a right: “justice, not charity”. It was a powerful idea, and it gained traction in the 19th century when American philosopher Henry George proposed a “land value tax” that would fund an annual dividend for every citizen. The beauty of this approach is that it functions as a kind of de-enclosure. It’s like bringing back the ancient Charter of the Forest and the right of access to the commons. It restores the right to livelihood – the right of habitation.

Yeah, output cuts. Sure.

• Oil Falls On Lower China Growth Targets, Doubts On Russian Output Curbs (R.)

Oil prices fell in Asian trade on Monday, wiping out some of the gains of the previous session amid worries lower growth targets in China could cut oil demand and ongoing concern over Russia’s compliance with a global deal to cut oil output. But worries over escalating violence in the Middle East put a floor under prices. Brent crude futures dropped 29 cents, or 0.5%, to $55.61 a barrel as of 0638 GMT after settling 1.5% higher in the previous session. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell 30 cents, or 0.6%, to $53.03 a barrel after closing the previous session up 1.4%. “The main drag affecting markets today is the lowering of growth targets by China and tighter regulatory controls which implies less demand for oil and commodities in general,” said Jeffrey Halley at Oanda brokerage in Singapore.

China aims to expand its economy by around 6.5% this year, Premier Li Keqiang said in his work report at the opening of the annual meeting of parliament on Sunday. That is lower than the 6.7% growth achieved last year. China also plans to cut steel and coal output this year in an effort to tackle pollution, its top economic planner said on Sunday, while China’s newly appointed banking regulator vowed on to strengthen supervision of the lending sector. Meanwhile, figures by Russia’s energy ministry released last week showed February oil output was unchanged from January at 11.11 million barrels per day (bpd), casting doubt on Russia’s moves to rein in output as part of a pact with oil producers last year. That came as oil prices rose on Friday as the dollar weakened modestly after a speech by Fed Chair Janet Yellen, which suggested a rate increase would come at the end of its two-day meeting on March 15.

“China’s great ball of money.”

• China’s Credit Target Implies Adding Entire German GDP This Year (BBG)

China’s credit engine will keep humming this year, adding the rough equivalent of Germany’s annual economic output to its already massive stock of total social financing (TSF), according to estimates derived from the nation’s 2017 targets. Adding higher equity market financing and about 5 trillion yuan ($725 billion) worth of local government bond swaps to the official credit growth target of 12%, analysts at UBS see TSF expansion of 14.8% this year. They calculate that’s equal to a whopping 23 trillion yuan, or $3.3 trillion, addition to the amount of total credit already swishing around the world’s second-largest economy. “China’s pace of leverage increase will be slowing, albeit not by that much,” economists led by Hong Kong-based Wang Tao wrote in a report.

“The government’s intention for a still strong pace of credit growth and recent notable tightening in China’s money market and bond market attest to the difficulties facing the PBC in balancing monetary policy.” China’s great ball of money creates a constant headache for policy makers as money flows from asset class to asset class, creating bubbles along the way. It’s a particular dilemma for the People’s Bank of China because it needs new credit to generate the kind of growth its leaders desire – around 6.5% or higher if possible this year. The M2 money supply target was cut to 12% this year from 13% in 2016, while still higher than the 11.3% actual expansion last year.

So wrong so many times, and still taken serious. You’d almost admire them for it.

• Record-Breaking Stocks A Bad Reason For The Fed To Raise Interest Rates (BI)

Federal Reserve officials say their decisions on interest rate policy hinge on the ebb and flow of economic data, not the whims of financial markets. They have repeatedly downplayed the effect of short-term market fluctuations in their policy moves, aimed at maintaining a strong labor market and 2% inflation over the medium term. But the thing about markets is, they don’t really matter until they suddenly do. That may be the case at the moment, with Fed officials suddenly signaling in unison, without major changes in the economic data, that an increase in interest rates is coming this month. Investors accordingly shifted from considering a March hike as rather a long shot to seeing it as a near sure possibility in just two weeks. What changed? The stock market continued to set new records without much underlying economic impetus.

When the Fed released minutes from its end of January meeting, they showed members “expressed concern that the low level of implied volatility in equity markets appeared inconsistent with the considerable uncertainty attending the outlook.” The Fed comments on the broad health of the financial markets all the time, but that kind of focus on stock volatility is less common. Fed Chair Janet Yellen and her Vice Chair Stanley Fischer, both speaking on March 3, appeared to seal the deal for a rate increase at the Fed’s upcoming March 14-15 meeting — with Yellen indicating that a hike is coming barring a drastic disappointment in next week’s February jobs report. Fischer was also was fairly unequivocal. “If there has been a conscious effort to move up our hike expectations I am going to join it,” he told a monetary policy conference in New York, sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Carswell is the only MP for Ukip. Farage hates him now. But he has some points: “Trump – or Geert Wilders in the Netherlands – is where you end up when you ignore legitimate public concerns and there isn’t a safety valve. “

• Leaving The EU Is The Start Of A Liberal Insurgency (Carswell)

What is Nigel Farage so cross about? We won the EU referendum, for goodness sake. Since 23 June, I’ve been walking on sunshine. My mood has been a state of Zen-like bliss. Alongside Boris Johnson, David Owen, Gisela Stuart and all of those involved in the official Vote Leave campaign, I spent the referendum arguing that leaving the EU would be an opportunity to make Britain more open, outward-looking and globally competitive. It is becoming increasingly clear to me that this is where Brexit is going to take us. [..] Brexit is often bracketed alongside the election of Donald Trump and the rise of the new radical populist movements in many western countries. But to me the EU referendum result was a safety valve. Trump – or Geert Wilders in the Netherlands – is where you end up when you ignore legitimate public concerns and there isn’t a safety valve.

Throughout history oligarchy has emerged in societies in which power was previously dispersed: in the late Roman republic, and in early modern times in the Venetian and then the Dutch republics. Each time, the emergence of oligarchy was always accompanied by an anti-oligarch insurgent reaction.Many of today’s new radical movements aren’t oligarchs, but an anti-oligarchy insurgency. Trump is no American Caesar about to cross some constitutional Rubicon. Yet such insurgents often ended up unwittingly assisting the oligarchs. In Rome the Gracchi brothers, with their Trump-like concern about cheap migrant labour, caused so much civil strife that an all-powerful emperor seemed a better bet. In Venice, the anti-oligarch rebel Bajamonte launched an unsuccessful coup – and in doing so gave the elite a pretext to create a new, superpowerful executive arm of government, the Council of Ten.

Created to respond to the crisis for six weeks, it ran the republic for the next 600 years. The Dutch anti-oligarch De Witt was so inept, he paved the way for the return of a strong stadtholder, or king. So, too, today. If chaotic, angry insurgents such as France’s Marine Le Pen and the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany party are the alternative, then being governed by remote, unaccountable elites sitting in central banks and Brussels doesn’t seem so unattractive after all. But Brexit isn’t anything like that. It is the beginning of a liberal insurgency. Brexit means that we take back control from the supranational elite. Power can be dispersed outward and downwards. Those who make public policy might once more answer to the public. Cheer up – it might even mean that there is less space for anger in our politics too.

“Even after a recent rally, the stock is 29% lower than when Cryan took the helm in 2015…”

• Deutsche Bank CEO Cryan Has A New Strategy: Reverse His Old Strategy (BBG)

Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan tore up his own turnaround plan in an admission that the 17-month-old effort flopped. Germany’s largest bank late Sunday approved measures – most crucially, plans to raise about $8.5 billion in a share sale – that effectively restart what has already been the most turbulent transformation in its recent history. Among the moves: naming two deputy CEOs who may now be positioned to succeed Cryan; selling a piece of the asset-management business and abandoning the sale of the consumer-banking unit, which was the linchpin of the blueprint he scrapped. Speaking on Monday, Cryan said the deputies were installed at his request as the company will focus more on the German market with the reintegration of Postbank, which he said reflects a strong performance by the unit and a changed environment for banks.

Yet the developments underscore how, almost two years after he took over, Deutsche Bank has been unable to plot a course to a more profitable future while seeking to eliminate 9,000 jobs. “We want to move back into modest growth mode, controlled growth,” Cryan said in the interview. “The operating environment in the U.S. but also increasingly in the euro zone and especially in Germany looks strong. And so I’m reasonably confident about the future.” Deutsche Bank fell 5.4% at 9:16 a.m. in Frankfurt trading, the biggest drop more than four weeks. Before today, the shares had rallied 44% in the past six months. Even though they’re being tapped for a capital infusion for the fourth time since 2010, some investors welcomed the developments as a way to end questions about the firm’s financial strength. S

elling a minority stake in the asset-management unit within the next two years and unloading some assets at the investment bank will help raise another 2 billion euros ($2.1 billion) of capital. Deutsche Bank’s last three capital increases raised about €21.7 billion – compared to the current market value of €26.4 billion. Even after a recent rally, the stock is 29% lower than when Cryan took the helm in 2015. “The shareholder dilution is enormous,” said Michael Huenseler, an investor at Assenagon Asset Management, which holds a stake in Deutsche Bank. “But at the same time, this package should end what has been hurting Deutsche Bank for so long: the discussion about the capital situation. Now the bank has to prove that it can be profitable.”

A boiling cauldron that will keep festering a for a while longer. Italy has a long-standing ownership class that won’t give up easily. Corruption, the mob, the church, secret lodges.

• Renzi’s Return Clouded By Probe Into Father, Government Minister (BBG)

Matteo Renzi’s comeback risks being undermined by a judicial investigation into the father of the Italian former prime minister and a government minister. Rome prosecutors on Friday were due to question Tiziano Renzi, 65, over an accusation of influence-peddling, his lawyer said. The elder Renzi is alleged to have obtained promises of monthly sums of money from Alfredo Romeo, a Naples entrepreneur, in return for mediating on his behalf for public works contracts, Italian news agency Ansa reported. The ex-premier’s father has denied any wrongdoing. [..] “If the investigation goes ahead, it will surely hurt Matteo Renzi’s prospects even if he has nothing to do with it,” said Sergio Fabbrini, director of the school of government at Luiss University in Rome. “This is the most critical moment of his political career, he has to find a new strategy.”

Tiziano Renzi’s lawyer Federico Bagattini said in a telephone interview that his client had done nothing illicit. “We deny that he ever asked for anything, that he ever promised he would intervene, and that he ever received any money or any other benefit,” Bagattini said. Tiziano Renzi said Thursday he had nothing to hide. “I have never asked for money. I never took any. Never,” he said in a statement reported by Ansa. [..] The anti-establishment Five Star Movement, which has made denunciations of political corruption one of its main platforms, has seized on the case. It submitted on Thursday a parliamentary vote of no confidence against Sports Minister Luca Lotti, a close ally of Matteo Renzi, which will test the government’s majority.

Lotti is also under investigation in the case for allegedly revealing confidential information, according to Italian news media, a charge he denied in a post on Facebook on Thursday. Five Star “talks of kick-backs, arrests, contracts – all things which I have nothing to do with,” Lotti wrote. The office of Franco Coppi, Lotti’s lawyer, did not respond to an emailed request for comment on Friday. The case is “an atomic bomb on Italian politics,” Five Star co-founder Beppe Grillo, who wants a referendum on Italy’s membership of the euro, wrote on his blog. “When it explodes, no one will be able to find shelter. Today more than ever we need honesty in institutions.”

It didn’t start yesterday. Western media have been killing off their own credibility for propaganda reasons, for many years.

• The Iraq War Stench Lingers Behind Today’s Preoccupation With Fake News (G.)

[..] with trust in the establishment at an all time low, the institutional heft of traditional media companies becomes a liability rather than an asset, enabling Trump to successfully turn the “fake news” label onto his opponents. Much of that goes back to Iraq. “The period of time between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq represents one of the greatest collapses in the history of the American media,” says Gary Kamiya. “Every branch of the media failed, from daily newspapers, magazines and websites to television networks, cable channels and radio. “Bush administration lies and distortions went unchallenged, or were actively promoted. Fundamental and problematic assumptions about terrorism and the ‘war on terror’ were rarely debated or even discussed. Vital historical context was almost never provided. And it wasn’t just a failure of analysis. With some honourable exceptions, good old-fashioned reporting was also absent.”

Let’s look at the most famous example of how the media was used to make the Iraq war happen. On September 8 2002, the New York Times published a major story by Michael R Gordon and Judith Miller asserting that Iraq had “stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and … embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb”. The piece cited no named sources whatsoever. Rather, it attributed all its significant claims simply to anonymous US officials – and, by so doing, it helped launder the Bush administration’s talking points, lending a liberal imprimatur to unverified (and totally untrue) claims. When the key members of the Bush administration launched a publicity blitz to make the war happen, they were able to quote the New York Times as evidence: in effect, reacting to newspaper revelations for which they themselves were responsible.

For instance, during a CNN appearance, Condoleeza Rice urged the public to support an invasion on the basis that “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”. She’d lifted the phrase directly from Gordon and Miller – who’d taken it from the administration. Elsewhere, Gordon and Miller referred to Iraq’s supposed interest in acquiring high-strength aluminium tubes as an illustration of its nuclear ambitions. Again, the claims came from Bush officials. But when, at the UN General Assembly, Bush told the story, he sounded as if he were repeating a New York Times scoop. A similar circularity defined the propaganda campaign conducted in other countries.

In case you were still wondering why an entire country and its people are being obliterated.

• Saudi Arabia Stealing 65% of Yemen’s Oil in Collaboration with US, Total (AHT)

“63% of Yemen’s crude production is being stolen by Saudi Arabia in cooperation with Mansour Hadi, the fugitive Yemeni president, and his mercenaries,” Mohammad Abdolrahman Sharafeddin told FNA on Tuesday. “Saudi Arabia has set up an oil base in collaboration with the French Total company in the Southern parts of Kharkhir region near the Saudi border province of Najran and is exploiting oil from the wells in the region,” he added. Sharafeddin said that Riyadh is purchasing arms and weapons with the petro dollars stolen from the Yemeni people and supplies them to its mercenaries to kill the Yemenis. Late in last year, another economic expert said Washington and Riyadh had bribed the former Yemeni government to refrain from oil drilling and exploration activities, adding that Yemen has more oil reserves than the entire Persian Gulf region.

“Saudi Arabia has signed a secret agreement with the US to prevent Yemen from utilizing its oil reserves over the past 30 years,” Hassan Ali al-Sanaeri told FNA. “The scientific research and assessments conducted by international drilling companies show that Yemen’s oil reserves are more than the combined reserves of all the Persian Gulf states,” he added. Al-Sanaeri added that Yemen has abundant oil reserves in Ma’rib, al-Jawf, Shabwah and Hadhramaut regions. He noted that a series of secret documents by Wikileaks disclosed that the Riyadh government had set up a committee presided by former Saudi Defense Minister Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz. “Former Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal and the kingdom’s intelligence chief were also the committee’s members.”

“If I want to come to Germany, I will, and if you don’t let me in through your doors, if you don’t let me speak, then I will make the world rise to its feet..”

• Turkey’s Erdogan Compares German Behavior With Nazi Period (R.)

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused Germany on Sunday of “fascist actions” reminiscent of Nazi times in a growing row over the cancellation of political rallies aimed at drumming up support for him among 1.5 million Turkish citizens in Germany. German politicians reacted with shock and anger. German Justice Minister Heiko Maas told broadcaster ARD that Erdogan’s comments were “absurd, disgraceful and outlandish” and designed to provoke a reaction from Berlin. But he cautioned against banning Erdogan from visiting Germany or breaking off diplomatic ties, saying that such moves would push Ankara “straight into the arms of (Russian President Vladmir) Putin, which no one wants”.

The deputy leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party said the Turkish president was “reacting like a wilful child that cannot have his way”, while a top leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party described Erdogan as the “despot of the Bosphorus” and demanded an apology. German authorities withdrew permission last week for two rallies by Turkish citizens in German cities at which Turkish ministers were to urge a “Yes” vote in a referendum next month on granting Erdogan sweeping new presidential powers. Berlin says the rallies were canceled on security grounds. However, Turkish Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci spoke at large events in Leverkusen and Cologne on Sunday while protesters stood outside.

The row has further soured relations between the two NATO members amid mounting public outrage in Germany over the arrest in Turkey of a Turkish-German journalist. It has also spurred growing demands for Merkel to produce a more forceful response to Erdogan’s words and actions. A poll conducted for the Bild am Sonntag newspaper showed that 81% of Germans believe that Merkel’s government has been too accommodating with Ankara. Germany, under an agreement signed last year, relies on Turkey to prevent a further flood of migrants from pouring into Europe. The lead article in German news magazine Der Spiegel on Sunday urged Merkel to free herself from the “handcuffs of the migrant deal”.

[..] A defiant Erdogan said he could travel to Germany himself to rally support for the constitutional changes to grant him greater power. “Germany, you have no relation whatsoever to democracy and you should know that your current actions are no different to those of the Nazi period,” Erdogan said at a rally in Istanbul. “If I want to come to Germany, I will, and if you don’t let me in through your doors, if you don’t let me speak, then I will make the world rise to its feet,” he told a separate event.

And Erdogan will want something in return.

• US Asks Ankara For Steps To Ease Aegean Tension (K.)

American officials have urged Ankara to refrain from action that would further escalate tension with fellow NATO member Greece in the Aegean Sea, Kathimerini understands, adding that the issue was raised during the Munich Security Conference last month, as well as during private contacts in Ankara. Sources told Kathimerini that US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson raised the topic with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on the sidelines of the Munich gathering last month. Assistant Secretary of State John Heffern reportedly asked Turkish officials for steps that will help reduce the recent spike in tensions with Greece.

A few days later, the same sources said, US Ambassador to Ankara John Bass met with Turkey’s Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Umit Yalcin to put pressure in the same direction. Yalcin is said to have attributed the standoffish behavior of the Turkish military to the army’s damaged morale by developments following July’s failed coup attempt. Analysts however say that any autonomy of the Turkish armed forces has been heavily compromised in the wake of the coup. Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias is expected to travel to Washington for a meeting with Tillerson in the coming days. Talks are to be followed by a telephone conversation between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and US President Donald Trump.

Growth is not possible in Greece today. The entire austerity edifice would have to be reversed.

• Greece Desperate For Growth Strategy As Public Mood Darkens (G.)

In navigating the country’s economic collapse, every one of Athens’ post-crisis governments has at some point attempted to change the narrative by diverting attention to development and growth. But the latest shift comes amid evidence that prime minister Alexis Tsipras’s two-party administration has gone a step further, approaching the World Bank for a €3bn loan to finance employment policies and programmes.

The move would highlight the desperation of a government tackling ever-growing poverty rates. Last week, the Cologne Institute for Economic Research said poverty in thrice-bailed out Greece had jumped 40% between 2008 and 2015, by far the biggest leap of any European country. Tsipras has been told he will have to enforce labour market reforms and further pension and income tax cuts if Greece is to realistically achieve a primary surplus of 3.5% – before interest payments are taken into account – once its current rescue programme expires in August 2018. The country faces debt repayments of over €7bn in July and with its coffers near empty would be unable to avert default – and inevitable euro exit – if additional loans weren’t forthcoming.

The prospect of more cuts, when pensions have already been slashed 12 times and some retirees are surviving on little more than €300 a month, has exacerbated the sense of gloom in the eurozone’s weakest member state. “We will have to compromise,” Dragasakis admitted. “Even if such demands are totally irrational,” he said, adding that Greece’s real problem was that it was primarily caught up in an ugly dispute between its lenders over what to do with a debt load close to 180% of GDP. The IMF has projected the pile will reach an “explosive” 275% of output if not relieved – a move that Germany, the biggest provider of bailout funds, refuses steadfastly to agree to. “It is why we have not completed the review,” said Dragasakis of the progress report Athens must conclude to secure further assistance.

The Greek government has been accused of deliberately delaying implementation of reforms. “This government won’t deliver reforms because it doesn’t believe in them,” said the centre-right main opposition leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the Delphi forum. As in antiquity, when kings, warriors and philosophers descended on Delphi at times of uncertainty to consult the Pythia, or prophetess, about their future, politicians, policy gurus, economists and academics gather annually at the place once regarded as the centre of the world to debate Greece’s plight. “What we need is a masterplan and a vision to get out of this crisis,” said Nikos Xydakis, the former European affairs minister who is now parliamentary spokesman for the ruling Syriza party. “A masterplan in financial terms but also a vision for a new identity of Greeks once this crisis ends.”

How mankind gets rid of itself, and can’t help doing it.

• Polluted Environments Kill 1.7 Million Children A Year (R.)

A quarter of all global deaths of children under five are due to unhealthy or polluted environments including dirty water and air, second-hand smoke and a lack or adequate hygiene, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday. Such unsanitary and polluted environments can lead to fatal cases of diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia, the WHO said in a report, and kill 1.7 million children a year. “A polluted environment is a deadly one – particularly for young children,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said in a statement. “Their developing organs and immune systems, and smaller bodies and airways, make them especially vulnerable to dirty air and water.” In the report – “Inheriting a sustainable world: Atlas on children’s health and the environment” – the WHO said harmful exposure can start in the womb, and then continue if infants and toddlers are exposed to indoor and outdoor air pollution and second-hand smoke.

This increases their childhood risk of pneumonia as well as their lifelong risk of chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma. Air pollution also increases the lifelong risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer, the report said. The report also noted that in households without access to safe water and sanitation, or that are polluted with smoke from unclean fuels such as coal or dung for cooking and heating, children are at higher risk of diarrhea and pneumonia. Children are also exposed to harmful chemicals through food, water, air and products around them, it said. Maria Neira, a WHO expert on public health, said this was a heavy toll, both in terms of deaths and long-term illness and disease rates. She urged governments to do more to make all places safe for children. “Investing in the removal of environmental risks to health, such as improving water quality or using cleaner fuels, will result in massive health benefits,” she said.

Debt Rattle January 20 2017

Jan 202017

January 20, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:02 am Finance Tagged with: Amazon, cash, debt, dollar, EU, GDP, inauguration, NATO, NGOs, Trump 3 Responses »

Unknown Masterpiece 2016-7

• Trump’s Tweets Are Little Different From FDR’s Fireside Chats (MW)

• Fortress Washington Braces For Anti-Trump Protests, New Yorkers March (R.)

• Executive Actions Ready To Go As Trump Prepares To Take Office (R.)

• Mnuchin Says Long-Term Strength of US Dollar Is Important (BBG)

• German Opposition Leader Calls For Security Union With Russia, End Of NATO (DW)

• The ‘Ever Closer European Union’ Principle Is “Buried And Gone” (MT)

• Chinese Growth Slips To 6.7% In 2016, The Slowest For 26 Years (AFP)

• China GDP Beats Expectations But Debt Risks Loom (R.)

• There’s an Unexplained $9 Billion Gap in India’s Cash Supply (BBG)

• Amazon Is Going To Kill More American Jobs Than China Did (MW)

• Stiglitz Tells Davos Elite US Should “Get Rid Of Currency” (Black)

• US Government Caught Massively Fabricating Student Loan Default Data (ZH)

• EU Migration Commissioner Urges NGOs To Manage Funds With Transparency (KTG)

Nice angle. Circumventing the press is nothing new.

• Trump’s Tweets Are Little Different From FDR’s Fireside Chats (MW)

Donald Trump, arguably, has already changed the office of the presidency forever, with his prolific tweets, some of which, at least in the lead-up to his Friday inauguration, have endorsed specific companies, lashed out at impersonations and in some case even laid the groundwork for complex policies. Cabinet appointees have found themselves walking back his remarks with some regularity this week. Some observers embrace the transparency of the unfiltered Trump experienced on Twitter. The public wasn’t ruffled one bit when a newly elected Trump’s staff blew off the protocol for press pool reports and end-of-day signoffs. Trump’s delivery mechanism may be relatively new, but the motivation isn’t.

Circumventing the press, and even the carefully crafted press release, is a presidential tack that can be traced as far back as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “fireside chats,” which leveraged the radio medium to deliver Roosevelt directly into American living rooms, said Andrew Card, in an MSNBC interview. Card, White House chief of staff to the second President Bush, also served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. FDR delivered his first radio address on March 12, 1933, in the middle of the crisis of confidence over the U.S. banking system. The intent? Reassure the public as if the president had stopped by personally. It was only after the broadcast’s relative success that they eventually earned the “fireside chat” familiarity. Trump’s tweets are the president-elect’s way to get closer to Americans, too, said Card. And that’s not without risk. Trump’s words represent “empathy” but don’t always reflect “judgment,” said Card.

Are they all protesting the same thing? Where were they 8 years ago?

• Fortress Washington Braces For Anti-Trump Protests (R.)

Washington turned into a virtual fortress on Thursday ahead of Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, while thousands of people took to the streets of New York and Washington to express their displeasure with his coming administration. Some 900,000 people, both Trump backers and opponents, are expected to flood Washington for Friday’s inauguration ceremony, according to organizers’ estimates. Events include the swearing-in ceremony on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and a parade to the White House along streets thronged with spectators. The number of planned protests and rallies this year is far above what has been typical at recent presidential inaugurations, with some 30 permits granted in Washington for anti-Trump rallies and sympathy protests planned in cities from Boston to Los Angeles, and outside the U.S. in cities including London and Sydney.

The night before the inauguration, thousands of people turned out in New York for a rally at the Trump International Hotel and Tower, and then marched a few blocks from the Trump Tower where the businessman lives. The rally featured a lineup of politicians, activists and celebrities including Mayor Bill de Blasio and actor Alec Baldwin, who trotted out the Trump parody he performs on “Saturday Night Live.” “Donald Trump may control Washington, but we control our destiny as Americans,” de Blasio said. “We don’t fear the future. We think the future is bright, if the people’s voices are heard.” In Washington, a group made up of hundreds of protesters clashed with police clad in riot gear who used pepper spray against some of the crowd on Thursday night, according to footage on social media. The confrontation occurred outside the National Press Club building, where inside a so-called “DeploraBall” event was being held in support of Trump, the footage showed.

JFK inaugural parade 1961

Nice detail: “Trump plans on Saturday to visit the headquarters of the CIA in Langley, Virginia…”

• Executive Actions Ready To Go As Trump Prepares To Take Office (R.)

Donald Trump is preparing to sign executive actions on his first day in the White House on Friday to take the opening steps to crack down on immigration, build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and roll back outgoing President Barack Obama’s policies. Trump, a Republican elected on Nov. 8 to succeed Democrat Obama, arrived in Washington on a military plane with his family a day before he will be sworn in during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. Aides said Trump would not wait to wield one of the most powerful tools of his office, the presidential pen, to sign several executive actions that can be implemented without the input of Congress.

“He is committed to not just Day 1, but Day 2, Day 3 of enacting an agenda of real change, and I think that you’re going to see that in the days and weeks to come,” Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said on Thursday, telling reporters to expect activity on Friday, during the weekend and early next week. Trump plans on Saturday to visit the headquarters of the CIA in Langley, Virginia. He has harshly criticized the agency and its outgoing chief, first questioning the CIA’s conclusion that Russia was involved in cyber hacking during the U.S. election campaign, before later accepting the verdict.

Trump also likened U.S. intelligence agencies to Nazi Germany. Trump’s advisers vetted more than 200 potential executive orders for him to consider signing on healthcare, climate policy, immigration, energy and numerous other issues, but it was not clear how many orders he would initially approve, according to a member of the Trump transition team who was not authorized to talk to the press. Signing off on orders puts Trump, who has presided over a sprawling business empire but has never before held public office, in a familiar place similar to the CEO role that made him famous, and will give him some early victories before he has to turn to the lumbering process of getting Congress to pass bills.

The contradictions people seek don’t appear to exist.

• Mnuchin Says Long-Term Strength of US Dollar Is Important (BBG)

Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin told lawmakers the long-term strength of the U.S. dollar is important and said President-elect Donald Trump’s comments that the currency was too high weren’t meant as a longer-run policy. The dollar’s “long-term strength – over long periods of time – is important,” Mnuchin said in response to questions at his confirmation hearing Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee in Washington. “The U.S. currency has been the most attractive currency to be in for very, very long periods of time. I think that it’s important and I think you see that now more than ever.” At the same time, he said the greenback is currently “very, very strong, and what you see is people from all over the world wanting to invest in the U.S. currency.”

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index extended its gains on Thursday. The currency has appreciated more than 5% since Trump won the Nov. 8 election on expectations he will boost economic growth through tax cuts and spending increases. Trump expressed concern about the dollar’s recent appreciation in an interview with the Wall Street Journal this month, saying the currency was “too strong.” That prompted speculation that his administration might reverse longstanding tradition in the U.S. to support a strong-dollar policy. “When the president-elect made a comment on the U.S. currency, it wasn’t meant to be a long-term comment,” Mnuchin said. “It was meant to be that perhaps in the short term the strength in the currency, as a result of free markets and people wanting to invest here, may have had some negative impacts on our ability in trade.”

You can’t keep Germany vested against Russia for too long for opaque reasons. History says so.

• German Opposition Leader Calls For Security Union With Russia, End Of NATO (DW)

The parliamentary leader of Germany’s largest opposition party has urged the dissolution of the NATO alliance. Her remarks come after US president-elect Donald Trump described it as “obsolete.” German opposition leader Sahra Wagenknecht on Tuesday added her voice to calls to dissolve NATO in the wake of US President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial remarks concerning the military alliance “NATO must be dissolved and replaced by a collective security system including Russia,” Wagenknecht told Germany’s “Funke” media group. Wagenknecht, who leads the opposition Left Party in parliament, added that comments made by the future US president “mercilessly reveal the mistakes and failures of the [German] federal government.”

In an interview published by German tabloid “Bild,” Trump described NATO as an “obsolete” organization. “I said a long time ago that NATO had problems. Number one it was obsolete, because it was designed many, many years ago,” he said. “We’re supposed to protect countries. But a lot of these countries aren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States,” Trump added. Germany’s Left Party has previously called for warmer ties with Russia and scrapping the security alliance, measures which appear to be policy concerns for the incoming US administration. The Left Party is Germany’s largest opposition group in parliament, and holds seats in several state legislatures.

Rutte is smart enough to feel the ghost of the times contradicting everything he ran on in the past, but he wants to use it to remain in power. Pragmatism?! It all plays into the hands of Wilders. 2 months to Dutch elections.

• The ‘Ever Closer European Union’ Principle Is “Buried And Gone” (MT)

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and former European Parliament President Martin Schulz clashed over the strategy to relaunch the Union, illustrating the deep division at Europe’s helm in front of the global audience of the World Economic Forum 19 January. Hundreds of business leaders and political figures attending the Davos forum witnessed how fundamentally disunited Europeans are when they are confronted with challenges and the solutions needed to overcome them. Schulz, who stepped down as president of the European Parliament this week, praised the achievements of the past and the need to push forward EU integration. But Rutte told the Socialists and Democrats (S&D group) MEP to “leave out those romantic ideas”, adding that “that is the fastest way to dismantle Europe”.

Europe needs a “pragmatic approach and to stop lofty speeches”, Rutte said. He called for tangible results on migration, security or the internal market in the effort to create jobs. He even went as far to say that the ‘ever closer union’ principle is “buried and gone”. The ‘ever closer union’ goal is seen as the driving force behind the EU project. It was enshrined in the founding Treaty of Rome that celebrates its 60th anniversary this year. While the Dutchman said that the experiences of Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand could not be “a model for the future”, Schulz punched back responding he was not a “romantic” but a “German”. He got an applause when he recalled how the emotional ties after World War II brought peace and prosperity to the continent.

The fight between the two started right from the get-go as Rutte insisted more efforts from France and Italy to reform their economies are needed to save Europe. He warned that if countries failed to meet their promises, it would be harder for Northern leaders like him to convince their citizens about the need to tighten their belts. “At the end, this will have a devastating impact on EU integration”, he warned. But Schulz told the Dutch leader to be “very prudent” about dictating to other countries what they should do, as this could further divide the European bloc. He said that it is the European Commission and Council, and not “several member states”, who are responsible for fiscal and macroeconomic recommendations made to national governments.

Fake news.

• Chinese Growth Slips To 6.7% In 2016, The Slowest For 26 Years (AFP)

China’s economy has grown at its slowest rate in more than a quarter-century as Beijing braces itself for an uncertain outlook that could see a trade stand-off with Donald Trump. After a tumultuous start to 2016, the country’s leaders used huge monetary stimulus to steer the world’s number two economy to hit their annual target and also record the first quarterly pick-up in two years. The Asian superpower is a crucial driver of global growth but Beijing is trying to reduce its heavy reliance on exports and state-backed investment and instead focus on domestic consumer spending to drive expansion. However, the transition has proved bumpy, with the crucial manufacturing sector struggling in the face of sagging global demand for its products and excess industrial capacity left over from an infrastructure boom.

This led to the economy growing 6.7% last year, in line with forecasts but down from 6.9% in 2015, and the worst reading since 1990. The government targeted 6.5-7.0%. The October-December increase of 6.8% also marked the first quarterly improvement since the final three months of 2014. The national statistics bureau called the figure a “good start” for the government’s goal of achieving 6.5% annual growth through to 2020. “China’s economy was within a proper range with improved quality and efficiency. However, we should also be aware that the domestic and external conditions are still complicated and severe,” the bureau said in a statement. It added that the coal and steel industries had cut overcapacity, but structural reform should be the “mainline” this year, urging policymakers to focus on “fending off risks” to stability.

Beats expectations with a 26-year low. Wow.

• China GDP Beats Expectations But Debt Risks Loom (R.)

China’s economy grew a faster-than-expected 6.8% in the fourth quarter, boosted by higher government spending and record bank lending, giving it a tailwind heading into what is expected to be a turbulent year. But Beijing’s decision to prioritize its official growth target could exact a high price, as policymakers grapple with financial risks created by an explosive growth in debt. China’s debt to GDP ratio rose to 277% at the end of 2016 from 254% the previous year, with an increasing share of new credit being used to pay debt servicing costs, UBS analysts said in a note. The fourth quarter was the first time in two years that the world’s second-largest economy has shown an uptick in economic growth, but this year it faces further pressure to cool its housing market, the impact of government efforts at structural reforms, and a potentially testy relationship with a new U.S. administration.

“We do not expect this (Q4 GDP) rebound to extend far into 2017, when a slowdown in the property market and steps to address supply shortages in the commodity sector ought to drag again on demand and output,” said Tom Rafferty, regional China manager for the Economist Intelligence Unit. The economy expanded 6.7% in 2016, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday, near the middle of the government’s 6.5-7% growth target but still the slowest pace in 26 years. Economists polled by Reuters had expected 6.7% growth for both the fourth quarter and the full year. Housing helped prop up growth again in the fourth quarter, with property investment rising a surprisingly strong 11.1% in December from 5.7% in November, even as house prices showed signs of cooling in some major cities.

The mayhem is far from over.

• There’s an Unexplained $9 Billion Gap in India’s Cash Supply (BBG)

India’s unprecedented ban on high-denomination currency bills has led to a mismatch in cash supply that has flummoxed some economists and data crunchers. Indians withdrew about 600 billion rupees ($9 billion) more than the 9.1 trillion rupees of currency in circulation as of Jan. 13, according to a report submitted by the Reserve Bank of India to a parliamentary panel on Wednesday. A copy of the document was seen by Bloomberg News. “This is usually not the case,” said Sujan Hajra, chief economist at Anand Rathi Securities in Mumbai, who was a director at the RBI from 1993-2006. He added that cash with public should be lower than currency in circulation “but then you don’t have demonetization usually.”

Clarity will emerge only once the central bank reconciles and publishes final figures, he said. The central bank has refused to share the amount of invalidated bills that have been deposited and said on Jan. 5 that it is still counting the notes to eliminate errors. In a shock move late on Nov. 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi canceled 15.4 trillion rupees of the 17.7 trillion rupees in circulation and pledged to swap the worthless notes with fresh bills. Between Nov. 9 to Jan. 13, the RBI printed about 5.53 trillion rupees of new notes and put in circulation 25,197 million bank notes aggregating 6.78 trillion rupees, taking total currency in circulation to about 9.1 trillion rupees, according to the RBI’s document on Wednesday. As on Jan. 13 the public had withdrawn close to 9.7 trillion rupees from bank counters and cash-dispensing machines, the document said.

Apples and oranges, but still. Amazon sucks money out of communities. Support your local dealer!

• Amazon Is Going To Kill More American Jobs Than China Did (MW)

Amazon.com has been crowing about its plans to create 100,000 American jobs in the next year, but as with other recent job-creation announcements, that figure is meaningless without context. What Amazon won’t tell us is that every job created at Amazon destroys one or two or three others. What Jeff Bezos doesn’t want you to know is that Amazon is going to destroy more American jobs than China ever did. Amazon has revolutionized the way Americans consume. Those who want to shop for everything from books to diapers increasingly go online instead of to the malls. And for about half of those online purchases, the transaction goes through Amazon.

For the consumer, Amazon has brought lower prices and unimaginable convenience. I can buy almost any consumer product I want just by clicking on my phone or computer — or even easier, by just saying: “Alexa: buy me one” — and it will be shipped to my door within days or even hours for free. I can buy books for my Kindle, or music for my phone instantly. I can watch movies or TV shows on demand. But for retail workers, Amazon is a grave threat. Just ask the 10,100 workers who are losing their jobs at Macy’s. Or the 4,000 at The Limited. Or the thousands of workers at Sears and Kmart, which just announced 150 stores will be closing. Or the 125,000 retail workers who’ve been laid off over the past two years.

Amazon and other online sellers have decimated some sectors of the retail industry in the past few years. For instance, employment at department stores has plunged by 250,000 (or 14%) since 2012. Employment at clothing and electronics stores is down sharply from the earlier peaks as more sales move online. “Consumers’ affinity for digital shopping felt like it hit a tipping point in Holiday 2014 and has rapidly accelerated this year,” Ken Perkins, the president of Retail Metrics, wrote in a research note in December. And when he says “digital shopping,” he really means Amazon, which has increased its share of online purchases from about 10% five years ago to nearly 40% in the 2016 holiday season. It’s only going to go higher, as Amazon aggressively targets other sectors such as groceries and even restaurants with delivery services for restaurant-prepared meals.

Important points by Simon Black.

• Stiglitz Tells Davos Elite US Should “Get Rid Of Currency” (Black)

half a world away at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz made remarks earlier this week that the US should “get rid of currency.” He means paper currency, as in the US should not only get rid of $100 bills… but ALL paper currency– 50s, 20s, 10s, 5s, and even 1s. You guessed it. Stiglitz suggests that regular people don’t need paper money, and that it’s only useful for drug dealers, terrorists, tax evaders, and money launders. This thinking is so 20th century, and it’s simply wrong. ISIS is a great example. The US military has literally blown up more than a billion dollars worth of ISIS’s stockpiles of physical cash during airstrikes. But this hasn’t affected their terrorist activities one bit. That’s because the most notorious terrorist group on the planet famously uses both the world’s oldest currency (gold) and the world’s newest currency (Bitcoin).

Professor Stiglitz has likely never been anywhere near a terrorist, so he likely doesn’t have a clue how they conduct financial transactions. Stiglitz also relies on the old claim that cash facilitates illicit activity. Again, this thinking only highlights a Dark Ages mentality. In the today’s world, drug dealers and prostitutes accept credit cards. No matter what you’re selling on a street corner, whether it’s hot dogs or marijuana, there are plenty of solutions (like Stripe, Square, or PayPal) to easily allow anyone to accept credit card payments. But these intellectuals seem stuck in a Pablo Escobar fantasy that drug dealers have entire rooms filled with cash. What Stiglitz, and perhaps many law enforcement agencies, fail to realize is that one of the biggest tools in masking illegal activity is actually Amazon.com. Specifically, Amazon gift cards.

[..] These guys just don’t get it. Cash isn’t about tax evasion or illegal activity. It’s about having a choice. Any rational person who actually looks at the numbers in the banking system has to be concerned. In many parts of the world, banks are pitifully capitalized and EXTREMELY illiquid. This is especially the case in Europe right now where entire nations’ banking systems are teetering on insolvency. In the United States, liquidity is also quite low, and banks play all sorts of accounting games to hide their true financial condition. Plus, never forget that the moment you deposit funds at a bank, it’s no longer YOUR money. It’s the bank’s money. As a depositor, you’re nothing more than an unsecured creditor of the bank, and they have the power to freeze you out of your life’s savings without even giving you a courtesy call. Physical cash provides consumers another option. If you don’t want to keep 100% of your savings tied up in a system that’s rigged against you and has a long history of screwing its customers, you can instead choose to hold physical cash.

Wonder what the new administration will make of this.

• US Government Caught Massively Fabricating Student Loan Default Data (ZH)

Ever since 2012 we have warned that one of the biggest threats arising from the US student loan bubble – which is no longer disputed by anyone except perhaps members of the outgoing administration – is not that it is soaring at an unprecedented pace, that’s obvious for anyone with the latest loan total number over $1.4 trillion, rising at a pace of nearly $100 billion per year, but that the government – either on purpose or due to honest miscalculation – was not correctly accounting for the true extent of delinquencies and defaults. Today, we finally got confirmation that, as speculated, the US government was indeed fabricating student loan default data, making it appear far lower than it was in reality. An the WSJ reported overnight “many more students have defaulted on or failed to pay back their college loans than the U.S. government previously believed.”

The admission came last Friday, when the Education Department released a memo saying that it had overstated student loan repayment rates at most colleges and trade schools and provided updated numbers. This also means that the number of loan defaults in various cohorts is far greater than previously revealed. A spokeswoman for the Education Department said that the problem resulted from a “technical programming error.” And so, the infamous “glitch” strikes again. How bad was the data fabrication? When The Wall Street Journal analyzed the new numbers, the data revealed that the Department previously had inflated the repayment rates for 99.8% of all colleges and trade schools in the country. In other words, virtually every single number was made to appear better than it actually was. And people mock China for its own “fake data.”

According to an analysis of the revised data, at more than 1,000 colleges and trade schools, or about a quarter of the total, at least half the students had defaulted or failed to pay down at least $1 on their debt within seven years. This is a stunning number and suggests that the student loan crisis is far greater than anyone had anticipated previously. It also means that the US taxpayer will be on the hook for hundreds of billions in government-funded loans once attention finally turns to who is expected to foot the bill for years of flawed lending practices.

Translation: the EU has no idea, none at all, where its hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds have gone. It’s how the aid industry is set up. And the refugees still suffer for no reason other than profit, politics and greed.

• EU Migration Commissioner Urges NGOs To Manage Funds With Transparency (KTG)

EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos urged non-governmental organizations involved in the care of refugees and migrants to manage funds with more transparency. “NGOs must manage available funds with transparency,” Avramopoulos said on Wednesday and called on international organizations operating in the country “to step up their efforts to provide immediate assistance to those in need in the islands.” Avramopoulos was visiting the hot spot of Moria and the refugee camp of Kara on Lesvos together with Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas and EU’s official responsible for NGOs funding, Philippe de Broers.

On his part, Mouzalas said “We covered 70% of the needs in the camps with less money than the money received by NGOs and institutional organizations.” Mouzalas added that the European Commission needed to take tight control of the funds given to NGOs for refugees and migrants. “We have asked the European Commission and the DG Echo (i.e. DG EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection)” for tighter control “and we have stated that we can not we control to this money” he said. Criticism against the NGOs and international organizations comes after a bad weather front left thousands of refugees and migrants exposed to extreme weather conditions with heavy snow fall and polar cold.

Debt Rattle December 16 2016

Dec 162016

December 16, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:46 am Finance Tagged with: antibiotics, cash, CIA, ECB, EU, Putin, rally, roads, Treasurys, Trump, Turkey 2 Responses »

John Vachon Big Four Cafe, Cairo, Illinois 1940

• Obama’s Blunder; Trump’s Gambit (Rickards)

• Trump Rally May Not Last Long – Marc Faber (CNBC)

• This Stock Rally Is More Hope Than Substance (WSJ)

• China, Others are Dumping US Treasurys as Never Before (WS)

• The Longer China’s Record M&A Spree Lasts, The Stranger The Deals Get (BBG)

• ECB Bond Buying Props Up Oil, Cars, Guns, Drones, Gambling, Handbags (DQ)

• EU Agrees Dutch Demands On Ukraine Deal To Avoid ‘Present For Russia’ (R.)

• Justin Trudeau: ‘Globalisation Isn’t Working For Ordinary People’ (G.)

• Crackdown On Cash Is An Attack On The Poor And A Reward For Banks (Soos)

• Why Are the Media Taking the CIA’s Hacking Claims at Face Value? (Nation)

• Turkey Has Back-Up Plans If EU Fails To Keep Visa-Free Travel Promises (AFP)

• “Without Antibiotics, Essentially You Do Not Have Modern Medicine” (R.)

• The Shattering Effect Of Roads On Nature (G.)

We need more refreshing views like this. Actual thinking people.

• Obama’s Blunder; Trump’s Gambit (Rickards)

[..] Russia is a more natural ally of the U.S. than China. Russia is a parliamentary system, albeit with autocratic overtones; China is a Communist dictatorship. Russia has empowered the Orthodox Church in recent decades, while China is officially atheistic. Russia is encouraging population growth while China’s one child policy and sex-selective abortions resulted in the deaths of over twenty million girls. These cultural aspects – elections, Christianity, and family formation – provide Russia with a natural affinity to western nations. Russia is also superior to China militarily despite recent Chinese advances. That makes Russia the more desirable ally in any two-against-one scenario.

The most powerful argument for embracing Russia to checkmate China is energy. The U.S. and Russia are the two largest energy producers in the world. U.S. energy production is set to expand with the support of the Trump administration. Russian production will expand also based in part on initiatives led by Rex Tillerson of Exxon, soon to be Secretary of State. China has few oil and natural gas reserves and relies heavily on dirty forms of coal and some hydropower. The remainder of China’s energy needs is met through imports. An energy alliance between the U.S. and Russia, supported by Saudi Arabia, could leave the Chinese economy and, by extension, the standing of the Communist Party of China, in jeopardy. That threat is enough to insure Chinese compliance with U.S. aims.

An emerging U.S.-Russian entente could also lead to the alleviation of western economic sanctions on Russia. This would open the door to an alliance between Germany and Russia. Those two economies have near perfect complementarity since Germany is technology rich and natural resource poor, while Russia is the opposite. Isolation of Russia is a fool’s errand. Russia is the twelfth largest economy in the world, has the largest landmass of any country in the world, is a nuclear power, has abundant natural resources, and is a fertile destination for direct foreign investment. The Russian culture is highly resistant to outside pressure, but open to outside cooperation. Just as fifty years of U.S. sanctions failed to change Cuban behavior, U.S. sanctions will not change Russian behavior except for the worse.

Engagement, not confrontation is the better course. The new Trump administration gets this. [..] Fortunately it’s not too late to reestablish a balance of power that favors the United States. China is a rising regional hegemon that should be constrained. Russia is a natural ally that should be empowered. The U.S. has blundered in its foreign policy for the past eight years. A new Trump administration has an opportunity to reverse those blunders by building bridges to Russia, and it seems to be moving in that direction.

“..Ronald Reagan and Herbert Hoover also began their tenures with huge rallies, followed by crashes…”

• Trump Rally May Not Last Long – Marc Faber (CNBC)

If President-elect Donald Trump’s rhetoric ends up fueling a trade war with China, it’s the U.S. that will take it on the chin, Marc Faber, the publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report, told CNBC on Friday. “Mr. Trump is not particularly keen on China,” Faber told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday. “There may be some trade war escalation or trade restrictions with China, which in my view would rather be negative for the U.S. than for China.” Trump has certainly set his sights on China. On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly accused China of manipulating its currency in order to give its exports an advantage over U.S.-made goods, and he threatened to slap a tariff of up to 45% on Chinese imports.

While China’s yuan has fallen against the U.S. dollar in recent months, policymakers on the mainland have been intervening to support the currency, not weaken it. But Faber, who is also known as Dr. Doom for his usually pessimistic predictions, noted that China wouldn’t be easily cowed. “China does not depend on the U.S. The U.S. is still its largest export destination as a country, but taken together, all the emerging markets are for China much more important,” Faber noted. China exported about $482 billion in goods to the U.S. last year, more than any other country exported to the United States, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative. The U.S. exported about $116 billion in goods to China in 2015, putting its goods trade deficit $366 billion.

[..] “We have a credit bubble in China, like, by the way, everywhere else in the world. It’s just bigger in China and that, in my view, will have to be deflated,” he said. Dr. Doom also wasn’t trusting Wall Street’s rally since Trump’s election, nothing that Presidents Ronald Reagan and Herbert Hoover also began their tenures with huge rallies, followed by crashes. On Thursday, the Dow Jones rose 59.71 points, or 0.3%, to close at 19,858.24, after climbing at one point to a mere 50 points away from hitting the 20,000 mark. Faber said that the U.S. market was getting toppish. “If you want to be in equities, the U.S. market is now at the most expensive level compared to Europe, Japan and emerging economies it’s ever been,” he said.

Despite Thursday’s gains, “there were more new 12-month lows than new highs.” He wasn’t optimistic on how much further the market can run. “In March 2017, the U.S. bull market will be eight years old. By any standard, this is a very aging bull market. By June 2017, the economic recovery will be eight years old. By any standard, a recovery that is very mature,” he noted. Faber was also pessimistic about the market’s prospects under the Trump administration. “We have to be very careful when we talk about investments. We have a lot of volatility coming toward us. I think that in general people are far too optimistic about the U.S. becoming again a great country,” he said. “I doubt that one man alone can do it.”

“When you have an adrenaline rush you don’t feel pain. It’s when the adrenaline wears off that you feel it.”

• This Stock Rally Is More Hope Than Substance (WSJ)

Janet Yellen may not have an armored horse, but her effect on the bull market looks very like the ineffective stab of a picador. The stock market bull seemed to be badly hurt after the U.S. Federal Reserve chairwoman’s words on Wednesday. The Fed raised interest rates and said policy makers expected three rate increases next year, while Ms. Yellen said the economy is near full capacity and doesn’t need fiscal stimulus—suggesting rates will rise even faster if president-elect Donald Trump goes ahead with promised tax cuts. But after their stumble, stocks regained their feet on Thursday, with the S&P 500 recovering to where it was before Fed Day. A mere picador is never enough to take down a bull.

The true danger to this latest bull run—the Trump rally—comes from itself. The genius of a matador is to wear out the bull by persuading it to keep charging, entrancing the audience in the process. The stock market has been attracted by the flourishes of Mr. Trump, the appealing prospect of tax cuts and infrastructure spending. The question for the next month is whether the bull will be worn out before Mr. Trump even takes office. When markets move a long way very fast, they become vulnerable. Late investors who pile on to little more than momentum have less confidence in their positions. The more momentum builds, the more it hurts if the bull trips and those momentum investors jump off. This market has moved very fast indeed.

The post-election rotation from defensive stocks to economically sensitive cyclical shares has been the biggest of any similar period since the bounce back after the Lehman crash. The 10-year bond’s losses have almost matched the selloff of the 2013 taper tantrum. And the dollar has surged 9% against the yen, taking it to its strongest since 2002 against a basket of currencies. There are plenty of reasons to worry about whether Mr. Trump’s policies will be implemented quickly, or will be as big-league as he has said. So long as those remain worries for another day, the market can keep rising. David Bloom, head of foreign-exchange strategy at HSBC, says investors who missed out on the fast moves in stocks, bonds and the dollar after the election are now being sucked into the trade to avoid missing out. “We’re in a euphoric time,” he said. “When you have an adrenaline rush you don’t feel pain. It’s when the adrenaline wears off that you feel it.”

We can only imagine where the dollar would be without this mass sell-off.

• China, Others are Dumping US Treasurys as Never Before (WS)

All kinds of things are now happening in the world of bonds that haven’t happened before. For example, authorities in China today halted trading for the first time ever in futures contracts of government bonds, after prices had swooned, with the 10-year yield hitting 3.4%. Trading didn’t resume until after the People’s Bank of China injected $22 billion into the short-term money market. What does this turmoil have to do with US Treasurys? China has been dumping them to stave off problems in its own house…. The US Treasury Department released its Treasury International Capital data for October, and what it said about the dynamics of Treasury securities is a doozie of historic proportions. Net “acquisitions” of Treasury bonds & notes by “private” investors amounted to a negative $18.3 billion in October, according to the TIC data.

In other words, “private” foreign investors sold $18.3 billion more than they bought. And “official” foreign investors, which include central banks, dumped a net $45.3 billion in Treasury bonds and notes. Combined, they unloaded $63.5 billion in October. In September, these foreign entities had already dumped a record $76.6 billion. They have now dumped Treasury paper for seven months in a row. Over the past 12 months through October, they unloaded $318.2 billion. A 12-month selling spree in this magnitude has never occurred before. There have been a few months of timid net selling in 2012, and some in 2013, and a few in 2014, but no big deal because the Fed was buying under its QE programs. But then, with QE tapered out of the way, the selling picked up in 2015, and has sharply accelerated in 2016.

This chart (via Trading Economics), going back to the early 1980s, shows just how historic this wholesale dumping (circled in red) of US Treasury bonds and notes by foreign entities has been: The chart is particularly telling: It shows in brutal clarity that foreign buyers funded the $1 trillion-and-over annual deficits during and after the Financial Crisis, with net purchases in several months exceeding $100 billion. The other big buyer was the Fed. But since last year, the world has changed. China, once the largest holder of US Treasurys, has been busy trying to keep a lid on its own financial problems that are threatening to boil over. It’s trying to prop up the yuan. It’s trying furiously to stem rampant capital flight. It’s trying to keep its asset bubbles, particularly in the property sector, from getting bigger and from imploding – all at the same time. And in doing so, it has been selling foreign exchange reserves hand over fist.

Beijing’s own policies come back to bite it hard. Fully predictable too.

• The Longer China’s Record M&A Spree Lasts, The Stranger The Deals Get (BBG)

It’s no wonder the country’s regulators are getting concerned. This month, Chinese agencies including the National Development and Reform Commission said they’re closely watching “irrational” outbound purchases in sectors including entertainment and real estate, without naming specific deals. The heightened scrutiny coincides with a broader government effort to limit capital outflows, posing a risk to global takeover volumes after Chinese firms began rivaling their U.S. counterparts as the biggest buyers of overseas assets this year. For the Wall Street bankers helping to sell Western companies, the changing regulatory environment could make a delicate balance even trickier. Advisers need to court a widening pool of Chinese acquirers while at the same time making sure the companies are savvy enough to complete their deals.

“The M&A landscape has shifted focus to Chinese buyers,” said Brian Gu at JPMorgan Chase, the top-ranked adviser on Chinese outbound acquisitions tracked by Bloomberg this year. “How to solicit credible potential Chinese buyers now becomes an essential part of a pitch for any global sell-side mandates.” More than 360 Chinese companies announced their first cross-border acquisitions in the initial 11 months of this year, with the combined size of the transactions more than doubling from the full year 2015, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Sifting through those new ranks of Chinese acquirers takes some work. When EQT Partners decided to sell Germany’s EEW Energy from Waste, its bankers at Morgan Stanley arranged for executives to meet potential buyers in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong weeks before it began soliciting bids.

[..] While Chinese policy makers have been supportive of outbound acquisitions that help domestic companies gain foreign technology and strengthen industries seen as important drivers of economic growth, the worry is that some deals are being used as a way to move money offshore or make quick profits by re-listing acquired businesses at higher valuations in China. “Some of these companies invest outside of their core competency because they want to get money out of China, as they see the Chinese yuan will continue to depreciate,” said Christopher Balding, a professor at Peking University’s HSBC Business School in Shenzhen, without naming any specific deals.

Nice piece of research from Don Quijones. Title is mine, couldn’t help myself.

• ECB Bond Buying Props Up Oil, Cars, Guns, Drones, Gambling, Handbags (DQ)

In June 2016, the ECB activated its corporate bond buying program, ostensibly to revive the Eurozone’s stalled economy. The program has been shrouded in secrecy, as the ECB has refused to reveal the identity of most of the companies, divulging only the International Securities Identification Number (ISIN) of the bonds, but not the amounts. The ECB coordinates the overall effort, but the actual buying is done by the national central banks. Now the non-profit Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has cracked the code, so to speak: Finding the names via the ISIN code is a simple job. CEO has looked them all up to see what investments the ECB has found worthy of public money. Unfortunately, a lack of transparency at the ECB means the amounts held in bonds of individual corporations are not revealed.

While many pension funds do release this information, it seems that the common national bank for hundreds of millions of European citizens is unable to! Nevertheless, a lot can be learned from the lists… For instance, the fact that Europe’s oil majors have been particularly spoiled, with the ECB splurging on bonds issued by Shell no less than 11 times. The central bank bought bonds from Italian oil company Eni 16 times, Spain’s Repsol six times, Austrian OMV six times, and Total 7 times. Gas companies have also fared remarkably well. When counting the purchase of bonds in Spain, for example, 53% are from companies involved in the natural gas sector. The corresponding number in Italy is an astounding 68%. Also well favored are Europe’s biggest car companies, in particular those from Germany, with Daimler and BMW tied in top spot with 15 purchases apiece. The ECB also bought seven times bonds issued by Volkswagen, despite the reputational and financial fallout from its emissions scandal.

And it bought Renault bonds three times. Other companies on CEO’s list of coddled giants include Thales, a French producer of missiles, rifles, armored vehicles, and military drones, which has been engulfed in a spate of corruption scandals in recent years; France’s three major water corporations, Suèz, Vivendi, and Veolia; Novomatic, an Austrian-based gambling company owned by billionaire Johan Graf; and luxury goods companies like LVMH, producer of Moët & Chandon champagne, Hennessy cognac, and Louis Vuitton women’s handbags. These are just some of the corporations benefiting handsomely from a bond-buying binge that has already reached some €46 billion (as of Nov. 25, 2016). When the ECB buys these bonds, it inflates the bond prices and pushes their yields down, which is the purpose, and it thus lowers the cost of capital for this companies even further. By the end of the program, which is “scheduled” to finish in September, 2017, the ECB is expected to have lavished around €125 billion on them.

But that’s not the worst of it. As we reported in August, the ECB has admitted that it is not only buying already-issued bonds trading in secondary markets, as the public was initially led to believe; it is also buying bonds from companies via so-called “private placements.” These debt sales are not open to the broader market, so there’s no need for a prospectus. Only a small number of institutional investors participate. Private placements are not unusual. What’s new is that the ECB is using them to buy bonds. This was done discreetly, but it was leaked – and the ECB had some explaining to do. The central bank’s new role as “debt-buyer of first resort” raises a whole litany of concerns. It grants the ECB an almost god-like grip over Europe’s financial markets. And according to The Wall Street Journal, Citigroup figured “that bonds eligible for ECB purchases have already outperformed ineligible bonds by roughly 30% since the bond-buying program was announced in March.”

A Dutch referendum in April voted down the EU association deal with Ukraine. PM Rutte now pretends that with a few minor tweaks it’s acceptable regardless. Rutte will now take it to his parliament for approval, which would overwrite the referendum result. Democracy. They’re handing the entire continent to Wilders and Le Pen on a platter. Oh, and who does Rutte blame for his behavior? You got it, Russia.

• EU Agrees Dutch Demands On Ukraine Deal To Avoid ‘Present For Russia’ (R.)

EU leaders agreed on Thursday to additional Dutch demands over a landmark deal establishing closer ties with Ukraine, Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said. The EU’s so-called association agreement with Ukraine is central to the former Soviet republic’s efforts to move closer to the West. Mass street protests toppled a pro-Russian Ukrainian president in 2014 after he tried to ditch it. The Netherlands is the only EU country that has not ratified the deal, which fosters closer political ties and aims to free up trade between Ukraine and the bloc, after Dutch voters rejected it in a referendum last April. The Hague has asked the EU for additional guarantees to ensure the deal does not lead to EU membership for Ukraine.

Asked if all 28 EU leaders have arrived to a common position on the Dutch demand, Muscat said: “Yes, there is agreement.” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte will now take it to his parliament for approval, which would overwrite the referendum result. Rutte told reporters before the talks that it was crucial to get a united European stance in the face of an emboldened Russia. “Russia is an increasing risk, look what happened in Crimea and eastern Ukraine and rockets being placed between Poland and Lithuania. You cannot, as the Netherlands … break this unity, that is why I’m so motivated to get this done,” he said.

Justin is trying to make me believe that building pipelines is the way to go towards a “carbon-free economy”. Sure. He’s turning into soundbite man.

• Justin Trudeau: ‘Globalisation Isn’t Working For Ordinary People’ (G.)

[..] A silver lining for Trudeau may lie in Trump’s pledge to resurrect plans for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline. When the Obama administration rejected the plan last year, Trudeau said in a statement he was “disappointed” in the decision. When Trudeau called Trump to congratulate him after the election, the two briefly spoke about Keystone, said Trudeau, adding that it remains to be see how the US will move forward with plans for the pipeline. Any reluctance to move forward on climate change south of the border could be a boon for Canadian companies across various sectors, said Trudeau. “I know Canada is well positioned to pick up some of the slack and when people finally realise that it’s a tremendous business opportunity to lead on climate change, Canada will already have a head start.”

[..] Last week’s announcement of a national carbon price is a key part of Trudeau’s environmental policy – one that has been derided by environmentalists for enabling the expansion of fossil fuels, compensated by initiatives that include investments in clean tech and promises to phase out federal subsidies for oil and gas companies. The policy saw Trudeau recently approve a liquefied natural gas project in British Columbia as well as two pipelines that will offer Alberta’s oil sands nearly a million barrels a day in increased capacity. The approvals have sparked broad opposition among environmentalists, some First Nations and several of the communities affected by the planned infrastructure projects. “There is a number of people out there who’ve always [believed] if you stop pipeline, you stop the oil sands,” said Trudeau. “Well, actually as we’ve seen, it doesn’t work that way and what we end up with is much more oil by rail.”[..]

The government’s environmental policy takes a long view on the transition to a carbon-free economy, said Trudeau. “It’s not going to happen in a day, or in a week, but it will happen over years and perhaps a decade or two,” he said. “I know there are people out there extremely passionate about the environment, who don’t think I made the right decision on approving a couple of pipelines. But I think that everyone can see at least what it is we’re trying to do and that we’re consistent with what I’ve always said which is, you protect the environment and you build a strong economy at the same time.” The double-barrelled approach, said Trudeau, echoes his government’s broader effort to address the tensions currently wreaking havoc on the political status quo around the world. “People get that we need jobs, we need a protected environment,” he said. “On the other hand, if people have no jobs, if they have no opportunity, they’re not going to worry about protection of the air and water if they can’t feed their kids.”

I don’t know that throwing in the drug legalization topic is very relevant. Just ‘hands off!’ should do it.

• Crackdown On Cash Is An Attack On The Poor And A Reward For Banks (Soos)

The Coalition government recently announced a taskforce to investigate and recommend ways to deal with the so-called black economy. This primary revolves around business transactions conducted in cash to evade taxes. Other justifications concern the illicit drug trade and welfare fraud. The plan is to clamp down on this aspect of the black economy to make it more difficult for workers, businesses and households to evade tax, boosting taxation revenue. It is estimated the black economy accounts for about 1.5% of GDP or $21bn. There is also speculation that the $100-dollar bill may be removed from circulation. The Coalition government’s explanations seem sensible, with the mass media generally supportive. Yet, there are robust arguments why the Australian public should oppose this move – mostly because the government is trying to deal with problems it created itself.

The drug trade in Australia is thriving and constitutes a considerable portion of the black economy. This illegal trade, however, only exists because the government criminalises it. The primary reason offered is that it prevents the production and consumption of dangerous substances for recreational purposes. It clearly does nothing of the sort. By criminalising drugs, product is manufactured in unregulated and uncertain conditions, leading to vastly inferior quality relative to that in the legal and regulated pharmaceutical industry. Huge monopolistic profits are reaped by drug cartels and those in the supply chain, leading to a significant loss of taxable income. None of this would happen if the drug trade was legalised – and there is growing acceptance that it should be.

In short, the government cannot use the pretext of clamping down on an industry which is presently illegal by claiming the cash transactions facilitates the existence and growth of it when it is the government’s own criminalisation policy which brought it into existence. By legalising, billions of dollars of taxes could be raised through the GST, income tax and externality/sin taxes. Another area of alleged concern is welfare fraud. Recipients of welfare payments can work in the black economy, making a modest income without reporting it. If this were properly reported, welfare payments would be reduced. Again, this is a problem government has itself created. While the government and certain sections of the mass media pretend Australia has an out-of-control welfare system, the facts demonstrate Australia has some of the smallest welfare expenditures relative to GDP, easily the most well-targeted and has the highest “target-efficiency” (each dollar in spending reduces income inequality the most) in the OECD.

I’d like to ignore this tale (who reads the WaPo anymore), but the Nation has a passable one: “..the CIA has “(1) attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of which were democratically-elected, (2) attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries, (3) grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries, (4) dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries, (5) attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.”

• Why Are the Media Taking the CIA’s Hacking Claims at Face Value? (Nation)

In 1977, Carl Bernstein published an exposé of a CIA program known as Operation Mockingbird, a covert program involving, according to Bernstein, “more than 400 American journalists who in the past 25 years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency.” Bernstein found that in “many instances” CIA documents revealed that “journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.” Fast-forward to December 2016, and one can see that there isn’t much need for a covert government program these days.

[..] The high-profile anchors and analysts on CNN, CBS, ABC, and NBC who have cited the work of The Washington Post and The New York Times seem to have come down with a bad case of historical amnesia. The CIA, in their telling, is a bulwark of American democracy, not a largely unaccountable, out-of-control behemoth that has often sought to subvert press freedom at home and undermine democratic norms abroad. The columnists, anchors, and commentators who rushed to condemn Trump for not showing due deference to the CIA seem to be unaware that, throughout its history, the agency has been the target of far more astute and credible critics than the president-elect.

In his memoir Present at the Creation, Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson wrote that about the CIA, “I had the gravest forebodings.” Acheson wrote that he had “warned the President that as set up neither he, the National Security Council, nor anyone else would be in a position to know what it was doing or to control it.” Following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President John F. Kennedy expressed his desire to “to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” The late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan twice introduced bills, in 1991 and 1995, to abolish the agency and move its functions to the State Department which, as the journalist John Judis has observed, “is what Acheson and his predecessor, George Marshall, had advocated.”

[..] To see what a corrosive effect outside powers can have on democratic processes, one need look no further than the 1996 Russian presidential election, in which Americans like the regime-change theorist Michael McFaul (later US Ambassador to Russia from 2012–14) interfered in order to keep the widely unpopular Boris Yeltsin in power against the wishes of the Russian people. For its part, the CIA has a long history of overthrowing sovereign governments the world over. According to historian William Blum, the CIA has “(1) attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of which were democratically-elected, (2) attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries, (3) grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries, (4) dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries, (5) attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.”

Yada yada

• Turkey Has Back-Up Plans If EU Fails To Keep Visa-Free Travel Promises (AFP)

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday Turkey had back-up plans if the EU failed to keep its promise over visa-free travel for Turks to the passport-free Schengen zone. Turkey and the EU signed a controversial deal in March, in which Ankara agreed to take back Syrian migrants landing on Greek islands in return for incentives including €3 billion in funds and visa-free travel. “If we do not get the expected outcome regarding the visa issue… if promises are not fulfilled, Turkey will no doubt have a plan B and it will have a plan C,” Erdogan warned during a news conference with his Slovenian counterpart in Ankara.

“We do not have to say ‘yes’ to every decision made about us. The EU has given us nothing so far,” he added, without elaborating. Ties between Brussels and Ankara have been strained since a failed July 15 coup in Turkey. The rocky relationship worsened after the European Parliament voted last month in favour of halting long-stalled membership talks with Turkey over its post-coup crackdown, a non-binding vote which Erdogan branded worthless. Turkey accuses the EU of failing to show enough solidarity after the failed putsch while Brussels has repeatedly urged Turkey to act within the rule of law as it arrests tens of thousands of people suspected of links to coup plotters.

Horror story.

• “Without Antibiotics, Essentially You Do Not Have Modern Medicine” (R.)

For nearly two years, a killer stalked the patients of Providence Alaska Medical Center. It was a bacteria called Acinetobacter baumannii, a common cause of infections in hospitals. This one was different. After a rash of mild cases in early 2011, doctors began seeing highly drug-resistant infections in patients, said Dr Megan Clancy, an infectious-disease specialist at the Anchorage, Alaska, hospital. And the bacteria was attacking more patients than just the severely ill ones who are the usual victims of drug-resistant “superbugs.” Clancy took emergency measures. Infected patients were isolated. Staff and visitors had to adhere to strict hand-washing and other infection-control protocols. Furniture and equipment were scrubbed to remove a microbe that can stubbornly persist on all sorts of surfaces.

Clancy also contacted outside researchers for help. They found that a strain of the bacteria had acquired a rare combination of traits. Bacteria typically are either highly resistant to drugs or highly virulent. This strain was both. Doctors quickly burned through the antibiotics used as the second and third lines of defense against superbugs. This strain shook them off. “When you start running out of medications, it gets pretty desperate,” Clancy said. Eventually, they turned to colistin. This powerful antibiotic was largely abandoned in the 1960s for its toxic side effects. Out of necessity, it has become in recent years a weapon of last resort against the worsening superbug scourge.

But in some of the Alaska cases, even colistin didn’t work. For public health officials, that’s the nightmare scenario. “It’s the worst of all possible worlds: You have a bacteria that is good at establishing infection, and it can’t be treated with antibiotics,” said Dr Robert Clifford, a microbiologist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research who studied the outbreak.

Needs much more attention. This is how we kill the living world.

• The Shattering Effect Of Roads On Nature (G.)

Rampant road building has shattered the Earth’s land into 600,000 fragments, most of which are too tiny to support significant wildlife, a new study has revealed. The researchers warn roadless areas are disappearing and that urgent action is needed to protect these last wildernesses, which help provide vital natural services to humanity such as clean water and air. The impact of roads extends far beyond the roads themselves, the scientists said, by enabling forest destruction, pollution, the splintering of animal populations and the introduction of deadly pests. New roads also pave the way to further exploitation by humans, such as poaching or mining, and new infrastructure.

An international team of researchers analysed open-access maps of 36m km of road and found that over half of the 600,000 fragments of land in between roads are very small – less than 1km2. A mere 7% are bigger than 100km2, equivalent to a square area just 10km by 10km. Furthermore, only a third of the roadless areas were truly wild, with the rest affected by farming or people. The last remaining large roadless areas are rainforests in the Amazon and Indonesia and the tundra and forests in the north of Russia and Canada. Virtually all of western Europe, the eastern US and Japan have no areas at all that are unaffected by roads. The scientists considered that land up to a kilometre on each side of a road was affected, which they believe is a conservative estimate.

Debt Rattle December 5 2016

Dec 052016

December 5, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:38 am Finance Tagged with: Austria, cash, China, Greece, John Key, Monte Paschi, pensions, pipeline, Renzi, Schäuble, Trump 3 Responses »

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out..

• Bloody Hell, John Key Just Quit As Prime Minister (Spinoff)

• Trump Picks Twitter Fight With China (AFP)

• Italy PM Renzi Quits After Crushing Referendum Defeat (AFP)

• Italy Bank Recapitalizations A Harder Road After Referendum Flop (CNBC)

Austria Rejects Far-Right Candidate In Presidential Election (G.)

• Greece Must Reform Or Leave Eurozone – Schäuble (G.)

• Greece Sees Final Solution On Debt Crisis Amid Euro Uncertainty (R.)

• Money-Laundering Networks Thrive Amid India’s Cash-Ban Chaos (BBG)

• China Regulator Slams Leveraged Stock Acquirers as ‘Robbers’ (BBG)

• Vancouver Housing Tax Pushes Chinese Into $1 Million Seattle Homes (BBG)

• Pensions Time Bomb Spells Disaster For US Economy (RVTV)

• US Reshaping Budget To Account For Russian Military Threat (R.)

• Army Denies Dakota Pipeline Permit (R.)

“John Key took New Zealand, a nation of just 4.5m people, from almost no debt to $100 billion debt.” – Kim Dotcom

• Bloody Hell, John Key Just Quit As Prime Minister (Spinoff)

It is one of the hoary rules of politics that leaders never – almost never – go of their own accord. But John Key, not for the first time, has proved his resistance to the forces of political gravity, announcing on Monday afternoon he will exit on his own terms. “For me this feels the right time to go,” the prime minister of New Zealand said. Already the conspiracy theorists are in full flight but there is no evidence to suggest he is doing anything but that: going on his own terms, sitting as strongly as ever, a year out from the next election. He’s only 55. A spring chicken in political terms.

Key said he “feels like I am going out on top”, that he had “never seen myself as a career politician” and “didn’t want to find myself in the position many leaders around the world find themselves, which is disgruntled and unhappy”. Some media are reporting he’s leaving “for family reasons”. But while he did say he’d made sacrifices on that front and family was “a factor”, this wasn’t a “spend more time with my family” exit, or not with that euphemistic freight. The National party under Key has been lauded, rightly, for its ability to renew, with underperforming MPs finding themselves nudged out or shouldered towards retirement. But now the prime minister has performed the biggest renewal of the lot. “To be blunt, I’ve taken the knife to some other people, and now I’ve taken the knife to myself.”

Got to admit he’s way more entertaining in person than Saturday Night Live’s impression of him is. And these numbers are real:

“China charges an average 15.6% tariff on US agricultural imports and 9% on other goods [..] Chinese farm products pay 4.4% and other goods 3.6% when coming into the United States.”

• Trump Picks Twitter Fight With China (AFP)

US President-elect Donald Trump fired a Twitter broadside at China on Sunday, accusing the Asian giant of currency manipulation and military expansionism in the South China Sea. The taunt came two days after Trump risked offending Beijing by accepting a call from the Taiwanese president, and heralded the prospect of a trade battle between the world’s largest economies. China was a frequent target of Trump’s during his presidential campaign and, as he prepares to take office next month, every sign points to his taking an aggressive line with Beijing. “Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into their country (the US doesn’t tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea?” he demanded, adding: “I don’t think so!”

China is the United States’ largest trading partner, but America ran a $366 billion deficit with Beijing in goods and services in 2015, up 6.6% on the year before. US politicians often accuse China of artificially depressing its currency, the renminbi, in order to boost its exports – its value has fallen by around 15% in the past two-and-half years. Trump has vowed to formally declare China a “currency manipulator” on the first day of his presidency, which would oblige the US Treasury to open negotiations with Beijing on allowing the renminbi to rise. With China holding about a trillion dollars in US government debt, Washington would have little leverage in such talks, but the declaration would harm ties and boost the prospect of a trade war. China charges an average 15.6% tariff on US agricultural imports and 9% on other goods, according to the WTO. Chinese farm products pay 4.4% and other goods 3.6% when coming into the United States.

“Five Star founder and leader Beppe Grillo called for an election to be called “within a week”..” Not going to happen say the tea leaves.

• Italy PM Renzi Quits After Crushing Referendum Defeat (AFP)

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announced his resignation on Monday, hours after it was confirmed he had suffered a crushing defeat in a referendum on constitutional reform. “My experience of government finishes here,” Renzi told a press conference, acknowledging that the No campaign had won an “extraordinarily clear” victory in a vote on which he had staked his future. Interior Ministry projections suggested the No camp, led by the populist Five Star Movement, had carried the vote by a margin of almost 60-40 with a near 70% turnout underlining the high stakes and the intensity of the debate. Markets seemed to take Renzi’s departure in their stride. Stocks and the euro fell in early trading in Asia but there were no signs of panic with the possibility of his resignation having already been largely factored in.

Renzi said he would be visiting President Sergio Mattarella on Monday to hand in his resignation following a final meeting of his cabinet. Mattarella will then be charged with brokering the appointment of a new government or, if he can’t do that, ordering early elections. Five Star founder and leader Beppe Grillo called for an election to be called “within a week” on the basis of a recently adopted electoral law which is designed to ensure the leading party has a parliamentary majority – a position Five Star could well find themselves in at the next election. [..] Most analysts see early elections as unlikely with the most probable scenario involving Renzi’s administration being replaced by a caretaker one dominated by his Democratic Party which will carry on until an election due to take place by the spring of 2018. Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan is the favourite to succeed Renzi as prime minister and the outgoing leader may stay on as head of his party – which would leave him well-placed for a potential comeback to frontline politics at the next election, whenever it is.

Monte dei Paschi down 7.5% this morning. “Monte Paschi’s shares are trading at a 94% discount to the value of its assets.” “Italian households have highest share of wealth invested in bank bonds in the developed world..”

But Draghi to the rescue!

• Italy Bank Recapitalizations A Harder Road After Referendum Flop (CNBC)

Recapitalization of Italy’s troubled banks will be harder following the failure of a referendum pushed by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, with ratings agencies among key actors to watch as delays may loom as the country likely heads to early polls next year. Renzi resigned after failing to win a mandate to curb the powers of the upper house legislature, throwing into questions steps such as plans by Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena to conduct a €5 billion capital increase this week, a solution backed by the outgoing premier. Barclays Economics Research, in a note to clients following the defeat, suggested that concerns surrounding Italian banks are growing.

“This outcome is likely to exacerbate concerns about the Italian banking sector and increase downgrade risks from rating agencies such as DBRS, although we do not expect rating agencies to act anytime soon, as they are likely to wait for political developments before taking any rating decision,” Barclays said in the Dec. 5 note. Italy’s banking sector has struggled with toxic debts as 14 of the largest banks sit on €286 billion of bad loans, debt securities and off-balance sheet items. Asset managers, insurers and banks had agreed earlier this year to set up a euro fund to bail out the weaker Italian lenders.

But other analysts suggest after the referendum result, investors might pull out. “[Investors] are now drawing back, they think the situation is too volatile both in Italy and in the European Union,” said Mark Grant, chief strategist at Hilltop Holdings, in a Squawk Box interview. “It’s going to be very difficult to do a raise of capital for Monte Paschi and the regional investment banks, and I think then what happens is Italy is going to be at loggerheads with the EU and the ECB,” Grant said.

“.. a “small global turning of the tide in these uncertain, not to say hysterical and even stupid times..”

• Austria Rejects Far-Right Candidate In Presidential Election (G.)

Austria has decisively rejected the possibility of the EU getting its first far-right head of state, instead electing a former leader of the Green party who said he would be an “open-minded, liberal-minded and above all a pro-European president”. Alexander Van der Bellen, who ran as an independent, increased his lead over the far-right Freedom party candidate, Norbert Hofer, by a considerable margin from the original vote in May, which was annulled by the constitutional court due to voting irregularities. Hofer conceded his defeat within less than half an hour of the first exit polls on Sunday, writing on Facebook: “I congratulate Alexander Van der Bellen for his success and ask all Austrians to pull together and work together.”

The 45-year-old, who said he was “endlessly sad” and “would have liked to look after Austria”, confirmed that he would like to run again for the presidency in six years’ time. The Freedom party secretary, Herbert Kickl, who has acted as Hofer’s campaign manager, said: “The bottom line is it didn’t quite work out. In this case the establishment – which pitched in once again to block, to stonewall and to prevent renewal – has won.” Speaking in front of international press at the end of the evening, a visibly emboldened Van der Bellen said the election had not just been a repeat, “but a new election after the world around us has changed” with the Brexit vote in June and Donald Trump’s win in November.

Referring to the colours of the Austrian flag, he described the result as “a red-white-and-red signal of hope and change to all the capitals in Europe”. Werner Kogler, a Green party politician, described the result as a “small global turning of the tide in these uncertain, not to say hysterical and even stupid times”. The endorsement of the retired economics professor was particularly emphatic in urban areas, with all of Vienna’s 23 districts showing up in Van der Bellen’s green than Hofer’s blue at the end of the night.

The kind of headline where you really have to check the date of the article. But this is why Renzi lost, and this is why the EU will soon fall to bits.

• Greece Must Reform Or Leave Eurozone – Schäuble (G.)

Greece must implement economic reforms if it is to keep its place in the eurozone, Germany’s finance minister has insisted, ruling out debt relief for the country ahead of a crucial euro group meeting on Monday. As the finance ministers of member states using the single currency prepared to discuss fiscal plans for the coming year, Wolfgang Schäuble in effect presented Greece with an ultimatum: either it must enforce unpopular structural reforms or exit the bloc. “Athens must finally implement the needed reforms,” he told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag in an interview published on Sunday. “If Greece wants to stay in the euro, there is no way around it – in fact completely regardless of the debt level.” Asked if German voters should be prepared for the inevitability of debt relief in the run-up to national elections next year, Schäuble quipped: “That would not help Greece.”

Schäuble, who also asserted the Greek budget was not burdened by debt servicing because interest rates were now so low, made the comments as speculation mounted over how best to put the thrice-bailed-out nation back on the road to economic recovery. On Friday the German finance ministry announced that short-term measures to lighten Greece’s debt load would be among the proposals up for discussion at the euro group meeting. Athens’s leftist-led government has long argued that the country’s staggering €330bn debt load is the single biggest impediment to sustainable growth. It is an argument that has won backing from the IMF. Time is of the essence. The economic crisis enveloping Greece is far from over despite more than €300bn of emergency loans since 2010 when, after its first brush with bankruptcy, it received its first EU-IMF sponsored bailout.

Never let a good crisis go to waste.

• Greece Sees Final Solution On Debt Crisis Amid Euro Uncertainty (R.)

Political uncertainty in Europe has created fresh momentum for a “comprehensive and permanent” solution to the Greek debt crisis before the year ends, a government spokesman said on Sunday. Eurozone finance ministers will meet in Brussels on Monday to discuss short-term debt relief for Greece, and Germany’s Wolfgang Schaeuble said it must implement reforms instead of hoping for further debt forgiveness. Greece remained optimistic for a final debt deal, however, just as Italians were voting on a constitutional referendum on Sunday and a victory for the opposition “No” camp may push the eurozone toward fresh crisis.

“Everyone realizes that Europe cannot stand a rekindling of the Greek crisis, when there are issues with Italy and amid a pre-election period in many European countries,” Dimitris Tzanakopoulos told Athens 9,84 radio. “The general uncertainty which prevails in Europe – which is both political and financial – creates … a momentum for a comprehensive and permanent solution for the Greek issue.” Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras said new measures were needed to lighten Athens’s debt burden. One option would be to extend the maturity of already granted long-term aid loans by some 20 years. “Greece needs debt sustainability and more realistic fiscal targets after the completion of the current adjustment program [in 2018],” Stournaras told German business daily Handelsblatt in an interview to be published on Monday.

China and India, the world’s most populous countries, are both ruled by megalomaniacs. Thinking they are in full control.

• Money-Laundering Networks Thrive Amid India’s Cash-Ban Chaos (BBG)

As Indians struggle with the chaos caused by last month’s sudden banning of their 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, money-laundering networks are spreading across the country, seizing on a new market in helping people turn their cash hoards into legal tender. While people have until year-end to deposit old notes in their bank accounts, the government has said it will scrutinize large cash deposits and money with undeclared origins — and will tax or penalize depositors. That’s created a scramble for ways to turn so-called black money, the local term for cash that has evaded taxation, into white.

Agents offering to launder money are using creative means, including flying banned cash by the planeload to northeastern states exempt from restrictions as well as connecting people to high-turnover businesses that can deem old cash as revenue, keep a portion of it, and return the rest, according to people involved in the networks. Premiums range from 10% to 50%, depending on the difficulty, they say. At least one property brokerage is offering to arrange the sale of apartments using banned money in an upscale suburb of Mumbai that’s popular with Bollywood movie stars.

While the government has been working to close loopholes – which Prime Minister Narendra Modi decried as people’s “illegal means to save their ill-gotten wealth” in a radio address last week – new ones are opening even faster. So far, the policy aimed at reducing the scale of the black economy and bringing more people into the tax net is, in the short term, leading to just the reverse: money-laundering, tax-avoidance, and new opportunities for existing organized crime, the evolution of the long-standing hawala money-transfer system, and the start of new illicit networks.

“..you’ve gone from strangers at the gate, to barbarians and eventually robbers of the industry..”

• China Regulator Slams Leveraged Stock Acquirers as ‘Robbers’ (BBG)

China’s top securities regulator resorted to unusually harsh language to denounce leveraged acquisitions of listed companies, as officials move to rein in financial risks associated with a surge in dealmaking. China Securities Regulatory Commission Chairman Liu Shiyu also questioned the legitimacy of the funding sources at acquirers that he didn’t identify, saying their behavior challenges the nation’s rules, as well as their own professional ethics. Such acquisitions show “retrogress and decay in humanity and commercial morals, and is by no means financial innovation,” Liu said. “By using improperly obtained money to conduct leveraged acquisitions, you’ve gone from strangers at the gate, to barbarians and eventually robbers of the industry, ” he said at a meeting of the Asset Management Association of China in Beijing on Saturday, a transcript of which was posted on the regulator’s website. “That’s not allowed.”

The comments came after China Evergrande Group, the country’s largest property developer, last month stepped up a buying spree of shares in rival China Vanke in the weeks after a warning from the Shenzhen stock exchange that it is closely monitoring Evergrande’s investments in listed companies. The bourse said it strengthened supervision after finding “abnormal trading behaviors” that affected share prices of Vanke and others. [..] Evergrande joined the fray in a tussle for control at Vanke, which has been trying to fend off advances from the Baoneng Group. Vanke labeled Baoneng “hostile” after it emerged last year as the developer’s largest shareholder, amassing a 24% stake by borrowing from brokers and fund managers who raise the money selling private high-yield instruments to wealthy clients.

There once was a time when homes were places that offered shelter.

• Vancouver Housing Tax Pushes Chinese Into $1 Million Seattle Homes (BBG)

Just a few days after Vancouver announced a tax on foreign property investors, Seattle real estate broker Lili Shang received a WeChat message from a wealthy Chinese businessman who wanted to sell a home in Canada and buy in her area. After a week of showings, he purchased a $1 million property in Bellevue, across Lake Washington from Seattle. He soon returned to buy two more, including a $2.2 million house in Clyde Hill paid for with a single cashier’s check. Shang says she’s been inundated with similar requests from China and Hong Kong after Vancouver’s provincial government enacted a 15% tax on foreign homebuyers in August to help cool soaring real estate values.

With Chinese investors – the largest pool of foreign capital – looking for a place to put their cash, the unintended consequence of the fee has been to push demand to cities such as Seattle and Toronto. “The tax was the trigger of this new wave of investment now coming to Seattle,” Shang said. “Why pay more for the same thing?” Vancouver, which has seen detached-home prices double in a decade, joined areas including Australia and Hong Kong in taking steps to slow housing demand after an unprecedented surge of foreign investment. Chinese buyers, in particular, are accelerating purchases overseas, spurred by a weakening yuan, rising prices at home and the perceived safety of real estate. They’re also venturing farther afield as costs soar in some of their favored markets.

“..the physiological decision to stay in the workforce won’t work for much longer….”

• Pensions Time Bomb Spells Disaster For US Economy (RVTV)

The $1.3 trillion pensions deficit just takes into account state and municipal obligations and with promised returns of 8% and funds compounding at 3% for decades it will take nothing short of an economic miracle to recover. “The average state pension in the last fiscal year returned something south of 1%. You cannot fill that gap with a bulldozer, impossible,” DiMartino Booth said. “Anyone who knows their compounding tables knows you don’t make that up. You don’t get that back unless you get some miracle.” The last time we saw significant market weakness, the baby boomers pretty much accepted that they would be retiring at 70 instead of 65, she added. “Well, guess what? They’re turning 71. And the physiological decision to stay in the workforce won’t work for much longer. And that means that these pensions are going to come under tremendous amounts of pressure.”

“And the idea that we can escape what’s to come, given demographically what we’re staring at is naive at best. And it’s reckless at worst,” DiMartino Booth said. “And when you throw private equity and all of the dry powder that they have – that they’re sitting on – still waiting to deploy on pensions’ behalf, at really egregious valuations, yeah, it’s hard to sleep at night.” “This is where the smile comes off my face. We are an angry country. We’re an angry world. The wealth effect is dead. The inequality divide is unlike anything we’ve seen since the years that preceded the Great Depression,” she told Real Vision TV. “Where’s the money going to come from? And the answer is, for now, they cut services. I’ve just written about the Winter of Discontent and the rubbish piled up in central London streets in 1979, as Thatcher was coming in. I worry about the ambulance not getting there in time. I worry about firefighters being cut to the bone and policemen.”

Russia is not the no. 1 threat. These people are.

• US Reshaping Budget To Account For Russian Military Threat (R.)

Russia’s increasing military activities around the world have unsettled top U.S. military officials, who say they are reshaping their budget plans to better address what they now consider to be the most pressing threat to U.S. security. “Russia is the No. 1 threat to the United States. We have a number of threats that we’re dealing with, but Russia could be, because of the nuclear aspect, an existential threat to the United States,” Air Force Secretary Deborah James told Reuters in an interview at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum. James, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson and Pentagon chief arms buyer Frank Kendall, all voiced growing concern about Russia’s increasingly aggressive behavior in interviews late on Saturday.

Their comments come as the Pentagon finalizes a classified security assessment for President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to both pump up U.S. defense spending and build closer ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. European diplomats fear Moscow could use the time before Trump’s inauguration to launch more offensives in Ukraine and Syria, betting that President Barack Obama will be loathe to response forcefully so soon before he hands off power on Jan. 20. Kendall said U.S. policy had been centered on threats in the Asia-Pacific region and Middle East, but was now focused more on Russia. “Their behavior has caused us … to rethink the balance of capabilities that we’re going to need,” he said.

None of the officials gave details about how the concerns would affect the fiscal 2018 budget request, but defense officials have pointed to the need to focus on areas such as cyber security, space, nuclear capabilities and missile defense, where Russia has developed new capabilities in recent years.

Washington better back down. Trump can’t afford this fight either.

• Army Denies Dakota Pipeline Permit (R.)

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said on Sunday it turned down a permit for a controversial pipeline project running through North Dakota, in a victory for Native Americans and climate activists who have protested against the project for several months. A celebration erupted at the main protest camp in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, where the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and others have been protesting the 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline for months. It may prove to be a short-lived victory, however, because Republican President-elect Donald Trump has stated that he supports the project. Trump takes over from Democratic President Barack Obama on Jan. 20 and policy experts believe he could reverse the decision if he wanted to.

The line, owned by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners, had been complete except for a segment planned to run under Lake Oahe, a reservoir formed by a dam on the Missouri River. That stretch required an easement from federal authorities. The Obama administration delayed a decision on the permit twice in an effort to consult further with the tribe. “The Army will not grant an easement to cross Lake Oahe at the proposed location based on the current record,” a statement from the U.S. Army said. Jo-Ellen Darcy, the Army’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Works, said in a statement the decision was based on a need to explore alternate routes for the pipeline, although it remains unclear what those alternatives will be. Protesters have said the $3.8 billion project could contaminate the water supply and damage sacred tribal lands.

Debt Rattle December 3 2016

Dec 032016

December 3, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: bonds, cash, China, debt, fake news, fear, Italy, leverage, shorts, Taiwan, Trump, veterans 1 Response »

DPC “Car ferry Michigan Central turning in ice, Detroit River” 1900

• Italian Stock Exchange CEO: There Are ‘Colossal’ Short Positions On Italy (R.)

• Markets Eye Europe’s ‘Fear Gauge’ As Italian Referendum Approaches (CNBC)

• Is the Yellen Fed TRYING to Crash Stocks To Hurt Trump? (Summers)

• China Blames Taiwan For President’s ‘Petty’ Phone Call With Trump (R.)

• China Bond Yields Jump As Investors Head For Exit (MNI)

• China’s ‘Extraordinary Leverage’ Tops BOE List Of Concerns (CNBC)

• Do We Want House Prices Up Or Down? (AFR)

• Cash Is Still King In Eurozone – Deutsche (CNBC)

• Iceland Pirate Party To Try To Form Government (BBC)

• UK Politicians Exempt Themselves From New Wide-Ranging Spying Laws (Ind.)

• The New American Dream – A Life In Hock (Peters)

• California Pensions Underfunded By $1 Trillion Or $93k Per Household (ZH)

• Why US ‘News’ Media Shouldn’t Be Trusted (Zuesse)

• Everything You Read About The Wars In Syria And Iraq Could Be Wrong (Ind.)

• US Veterans Build Barracks For Pipeline Protesters In Cold (R.)

By Monday morning, Europe could be shaking on its brittle foundations.

• Italian Stock Exchange CEO: There Are ‘Colossal’ Short Positions On Italy (R.)

Big international investors are holding huge short positions on Italian assets, the CEO of the Italian exchange said on Tuesday, days before the country holds a referendum on constitutional reform that could unseat Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. “There are colossal short positions on Italy from the U.S. and other countries where big investors are based,” said Raffaele Jerusalmi during a conference in Milan. Opinion polls conducted until a blackout period began last week showed the “no” vote comfortably in the lead, raising concerns of a political crisis and fueling market volatility. Renzi has said he would resign if Italians reject the reform.

Spread with Bunds.

• Markets Eye Europe’s ‘Fear Gauge’ As Italian Referendum Approaches (CNBC)

The Italian referendum is the current hot concern for investors, who are worrying and waiting to see if voters will reject government attempts to reform the country’s political system. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has staked his reputation and job on the outcome, arguing a change in the legislature will usher in a nimbler, more productive Italy. However some see the predicted rejection of Renzi’s wishes as a potential opportunity for anti-European populist to gain momentum. Jan Randolph, Director of Sovereign Risk at IHS Markit said in an email Friday that worries over a potential European break-up can be measured by Europe’s “fear gauge”: The difference in yield between Italian and German debt.

“The markets are certainly focusing on this ‘spread’ – what we used to call in the old British banking days the ‘country risk spread’ as viewed by the financial markets,” Randolph said. In recent weeks, the yield spread between Italian and German 10-year government bonds has risen by more than 60 points in 60 days. Last week the spread hit a two-and-a-half year high of 188 basis points, however Reuters reported Friday that investors may be short covering as the gap between Italian and German bond yields has narrowed to 167 basis points. Jan Randolph said any blow-out of Italian yields may well be prevented by the poker hand being played by ECB President Mario Draghi’s massive bond-buying program, which many analysts expect to be extended next year.

Entertaining ideas.

• Is the Yellen Fed TRYING to Crash Stocks To Hurt Trump? (Summers)

Is Janet Yellen trying to crash stocks to screw Trump? Ever since the $USD began its bull market run in mid-2014, the Fed, lead by Janet Yellen, has intervened whenever the $USD cleared 98. The reason for this was the following… Over 47% of US corporate sales come from abroad. With the $USD spiking, pushing all other major currencies generally lower, US corporate profits began to implode. As we write this today, profits have fallen to 2012 levels. Note when this whole profit massacre began. Because of this, the Fed has “talked down” the $USD anytime it began to push higher. Until today…

Since it was announced that Trump won the Presidency, the Fed has allowed the $USD to ramp straight up. It is currently over 101…and the Fed hasn’t said a word. So we ask again… is Janet Yellen trying to crash stocks to screw Trump? We all know the Yellen Fed is one of the most political in history with Fed officials openly donating money to the Clinton campaign. Now Trump has won… the $USD soars to 101… and suddenly the Fed is silent? Not one Fed official has appeared to talk about putting off a rate hike or some other statement that might push the $USD lower…

Entire books have been written about this in the past 12 hours or so. That, too, is fake news.

• China Blames Taiwan For President’s ‘Petty’ Phone Call With Trump (R.)

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump spoke by phone with President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan, the first such contact between the two sides in nearly four decades, but China dismissed the call as a “petty action” by the self-ruled island it claims as its own. The 10-minute telephone call with Taiwan’s leadership was the first by a U.S. president-elect or president since President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, acknowledging Taiwan as part of “one China”. Hours after Friday’s call, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi blamed Taiwan for the exchange, avoiding what could have been a major rift with Washington just before Trump assumes the presidency. “This is just the Taiwan side engaging in a petty action, and cannot change the ‘one China’ structure already formed by the international community,” Wang said at an academic forum in Beijing, state media reported.

“I believe that it won’t change the longstanding ‘one China’ policy of the United States government.” In comments at the same forum, Wang noted how quickly President Xi Jinping and Trump had spoken by telephone after Trump’s victory, and that Trump had praised China as a great country. Wang said the exchange “sends a very positive signal about the future development of Sino-U.S. relations”, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s website. Taiwan was not mentioned in that call, according to an official Chinese transcript. Trump said on Twitter that Tsai had initiated the call he had with the Taiwan president. “The President of Taiwan CALLED ME today to wish me congratulations on winning the Presidency. Thank you!” he said. Alex Huang, a spokesman for Tsai, said: “Of course both sides agreed ahead of time before making contact.”

“When everyone heads for the exit at the same time, there’s a risk of injury in the stampede.”

• China Bond Yields Jump As Investors Head For Exit (MNI)

When everyone heads for the exit at the same time, there’s a risk of injury in the stampede. Chinese bond investors are getting a taste of just how that feels as they scramble to offload their holdings in what could turn out to be a nasty correction. Some investors have already been dumping their government bonds as yields started to rebound from record lows, while others, who only got in recently when yields were around 2.8-2.9%, been holding on in the hope that bond yields will fall back soon. In the secondary market, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Chinese Government Bond (CGB) broke above 3% on Thursday for the first time since early June and was at 2.995% in Friday morning trade, up nearly 15 basis points for the week, the biggest weekly rise since May 2015.

For November as a whole, the yield jumped 8.88%, the biggest monthly gain since October 2010. Treasury futures also plunged this week with March contracts for 10-year CGB and five-year CGB both having their biggest weekly loss since the contracts started trading in June. A Shanghai-based trader with a joint stock bank said he believes the yield on the 10-year CGB could rise as high as 3.2% before falling back. The brutal sell-off has been triggered by a triple whammy – expectations of tighter liquidity conditions and higher inflation on the domestic front, and externally, rising bond yields in the U.S.

A surge in redemptions from worried investors has hit the market hard. One major state-owned bank is said to have redeemed around CNY200 billion from money market funds while the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the country’s largest commercial bank, is also said to have told fund managers managing some of its money to cut bonds holdings and stockpile cash in line with ICBC’s own liquidity management. Domestic investors have swarmed over China’s bond market like bees around a honey pot over the last couple of years amid a dearth of more attractive investment opportunities as economic growth slowed. The stock market rout in the summer of 2015 only encouraged investors to move more funds to fixed income products.

Sounds about right.

• China’s ‘Extraordinary Leverage’ Tops BOE List Of Concerns (CNBC)

China, euro zone sovereign debt and the potential fallout from Brexit top the escalating list of concerns for the Bank of England (BOE), according to a report published on Wednesday which warns that risks to global stability have spiked in the past six months. The U.K.’s central bank’s semi-annual Financial Stability Report states, “Vulnerabilities stemming from the global environment and financial markets, which were already elevated, have increased further since July.” China’s burgeoning debt levels and rapid rate of credit expansion are singled out as significant red flags, with the report noting a 100 percentage point spike in the country’s non-financial sector debt relative to GDP since the 2008 financial crisis. The ratio currently stands at around 260% of GDP.

“This is extraordinary leverage for an advanced, let alone, an emerging economy,” the BOE Governor Mark Carney said at a press conference to launch the report. The “near-record” pace of net capital outflows from China during the third quarter and a 3% depreciation in the Chinese renminbi against the U.S. dollar since the publication of the BOE’s July report were also highlighted as reasons for concern. Turning to nearer neighbors, the governor broke down the key risks emanating from some euro area economies into, firstly, existing sovereign debt dynamics and, secondly, threats to the resilience of parts of the trading bloc’s banking system.

Carney noted the vulnerability of elevated sovereign debt levels to a leap in borrowing costs or diminished growth prospects on the back of either trade or political headwinds. Moving even closer to home, the governor raised the looming specter of the U.K.’s impending departure from the EU, noting banks located domestically currently supply over half of the debt and equity issuance from continental firms and account for over 75% of foreign exchange and derivatives activity in the U.K.

“We” can’t make up our minds about this one. Because our minds are stuck in a bubble.

• Do We Want House Prices Up Or Down? (AFR)

Just as market forces were about to push the price of housing down in Australia, the Treasurer stepped in with some new regulation. Phew. Some first home buyer’s nearly snatched a good deal, but luckily the Treasurer was there to protect the property developers from the oversupply their building bonanza created. No issue creates a bigger flood of nonsensical econobabble in Australia than “housing affordability”. It’s a meaningless term engineered for the sole purpose of allowing politicians to pretend they are simultaneously on the side of home buyers and home sellers. What’s remarkable is the willingness of the media and others to play along. Most politicians are adamant that they want petrol, fresh food and health insurance to be less expensive.

We talk about the price of petrol and the price of milk. We don’t talk about “petrol affordability” or “bread affordability” let alone create an index of the price of bread divided by median household income. Talking endlessly about “housing affordability” allows politicians to duck the simple question of whether house prices are “too high”, “too low” or “just right”. The absurdity of this situation was revealed during the federal election campaign when the Coalition attacked the ALP’s plans to reform negative gearing on the basis that such changes would, wait for it, put downward pressure on house prices. Oh, the humanity! The Coalition’s rhetorical solution to the imaginary issue of housing affordability is to reject changes to the tax treatment of investment houses and instead blame environmentalists and state governments for “restricting the supply of housing”.

Of course this week’s redefinition of “second-hand property” by Treasurer Morrison makes a mockery of such a position. Having spent years pretending that increasing the housing supply would make housing “more affordable” the Treasurer has now acted to prevent an increase in apartment supply from pushing apartment prices down. The Coalition playbook makes clear that when it’s not the environmentalists’ fault, it must be the unions’ fault. On cue Malcolm Turnbull recently empathised with the terrible plight of “young Australian couples that can’t afford to buy a house because their costs are being pushed up by union thuggery”. A quick look at the data suggests no such link, but if Donald Trump taught conservatives anything it’s that data is for losers.

And it should be.

• Cash Is Still King In Eurozone – Deutsche (CNBC)

While cash is facing several challenges in the euro area with an increasing number of people moving towards cashless payments and digital banking, the reports of the demise of cash are greatly exaggerated, Deutsche Bank has said in its latest research note. “Cash is facing many challenges in the euro area. The ECB has decided to cease production of the €500 ($532) note due to concerns over its facilitation of illicit activities,” the bank said while adding that the cash in circulation is three times more than what it was in 2003.

While many would attribute this to the never-ending stream of money that the central banks have been pumping into the economy through QE and ultra-low interest rates, Deutsche Bank’s Heike Mai believes that most of the increase in cash since 2008 comes from abroad and hoarders. Cash held outside the euro area was worth €80 billion and cash hoarded domestically by the real economy is estimated to be valued at €120 billion. “There are good reasons to believe that cash won’t disappear anytime soon from the euro area. First, it is debatable that a cashless society would mean less crime,” Mai said, adding, that the ratio of damage caused by card fraud to the value of counterfeit notes in circulation is more than 10 to 1.

“Second, the political value of cash should not be underestimated. Some economies like using cash, for example, Germany, Spain, Italy and Austria. The most robust data protection is provided by cash,” Mai, an economist at Deutsche Bank, said in the note. The research note that focuses on Europe argued that by the end of third-quarter of 2016, euro currency in circulation amounted to €1.1 trillion, three times as much as in the first quarter of 2003. While small-value notes such as €5, €10 and €20 are used to a great extent for day-to-day payments, bigger-value notes such as €50 and €100 are used for both payments and cash hoarding.

Beware of frozen quicksand. Everyone wants the Pirates to fail.

• Iceland Pirate Party To Try To Form Government (BBC)

Iceland’s anti-establishment Pirate Party has been asked by the president to try to form a new government, following October’s snap elections. President Gudni Johannesson made the announcement after talks with Pirates head Birgitta Jonsdottir. The Pirates, who vowed radical reforms, came third in the elections in which no party won an outright majority. Two earlier rounds of coalition talks involving first the Independence Party and then the Left-Greens failed. “Earlier today, I met the leaders of all parties and asked their opinion on who should lead those talks. After that I summoned Birgitta Jonsdottir and handed her the mandate,” President Johannesson said on Friday.

Ms Jonsdottir said afterwards she was “optimistic that we will find a way to work together”. In the elections, the Pirate Party – which was founded in 2012 – more than tripled its seats to 10 in the 63-member parliament. The election was called after Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson quit in April in the wake of the leaked Panama Papers, which revealed the offshore assets of high-profile figures. The Pirates want more political transparency and accountability, free health care, closing tax loopholes and more protection of citizens’ data.

Color me stunned.

• UK Politicians Exempt Themselves From New Wide-Ranging Spying Laws (Ind.)

Politicians have exempted themselves from Britain’s new wide-ranging spying laws. The Investigatory Powers Act, which has just passed into law, brings some of the most extreme and invasive surveillance powers ever given to spies in a democratic state. But protections against those spying powers have been given to MPs. Most of the strongest powers in the new law require that those using them must be given a warrant. That applies to people wanting to see someone’s full internet browsing history, for instance, which is one of the things that will be collected under the new law. For most people, that warrant can be issued by a secretary of state. Applications are sent to senior ministers who can then approve either a targeted interception warrant or a targeted examination warrant, depending on what information the agency applying for the warrant – which could be anyone from a huge range of organisations – wants to see.

But for members of parliament and other politicians, extra rules have been introduced. Those warrants must also be approved by the prime minister. That rule applies not only to members of the Westminster parliament but alos politicians in the devolved assembly and members of the European Parliament. The protections afforded to politicians are actually less than they had hoped to be given. Earlier in the process, the only amendment that MPs had submitted was one that would allow extra safeguards for politicians – forcing any request to monitor MP’s communications to go through the speaker of the House of Commons as well as the prime minister.

Eric Peters sells cars. And he’s right that cheap credit drives car sales and gadgetry. But not about the need for cars in the first place.

• The New American Dream – A Life In Hock (Peters)

We live in a society driven by debt. Cars, for example, have become hugely expensive (even on the low end) relative to what people can afford – because of the easy availability of credit. Which is the nice word used to speak about debt, intended to encourage us to get into it. It takes at least $15,000 or so to drive home in a “cheap” new car, once all is said and done. And the “cheap” car will have to be registered, plated and insured. It runs into money. And most new cars cost a lot more money. Which most people haven’t got. So they get debt. A loan. Which, when it becomes commonly resorted to as a way to live beyond one’s means as a lifestyle, drives up the cost of life for everyone. Including those who try to live within their means – or better yet, below them.

When most people (when enough people) are willing – are eager – to go into hock for the next six years in order to have a car with an LCD touchscreen, leather (and heated) seats, six air bags, a six-speaker stereo, electronic climate control AC and power everything – which pretty much every new car now comes standard with – the car companies build cars to satisfy that artificial demand. Artificial because based on economic unreality. That is a good way to think about debt. It is nonexistent wealth. You are promising to pay with money you haven’t earned yet. And maybe won’t. The car market has become like the housing market – which has also been distorted by debt to a cartoonish degree. The typical new construction home is a mansion by 1960s standards.

Not that there’s anything wrong with living in a mansion. Or driving a car with heated leather seats and climate control AC and a six-speaker surround-sound stereo and six air bags and all the rest of it. Provided you can afford it. Most people can’t. Normally, that fact would keep things in check. There would be mansions, of course – and high-end cars, too. But only for those with the high-end incomes necessary to afford them. Everyone else would live within their means. We wouldn’t be living in this economic Potemkin village that appears prosperous but is in fact an economic Jenga Castle that could collapse at any moment. There would be a lot less pressure to “keep up with the Joneses”… as they head toward bankruptcy and foreclosure.

As society heads that way. Like the housing industry, the car industry has ceased building basic and much less expensive cars because of easy and grotesque debt-financing. Which is tragic. There ought to be (and would be) a huge selection of brand-new cars priced under $10,000 were it not for the ready availability of nonexistent wealth (.e., debt and credit). Cars many people could pay cash for.

Still waiting for a politican or government to come clean about the Pension Ponzi.

• California Pensions Underfunded By $1 Trillion Or $93k Per Household (ZH)

Earlier today the Kersten Institute for Governance and Public Policy highlighted an updated pension study, released by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, which revealed some fairly startling realities about California’s public pension underfunding levels. After averaging $77,700 per household in 2014, the amount of public pension underfunding for the state of California jumped to a staggering $92,748 per household in 2015. But don’t worry, we’re sure pension managers can grow their way out of the problem…hedge fund returns have been stellar recently, right?

Stanford University’s pension tracker database pegs the market value of California’s total pension debt at $1 trillion or $93,000 per California household in 2015. In 2014, California’s total pension debt was calculated at $77,700 per household, but has increased dramatically in response to abysmal investment returns at California’s public pension funds that hover at or below 0% annual returns.

Looking back to 2008, the underfunding levels of California’s public pension have skyrocketed 157% on abysmal asset returns and growing liabilities resulting from lower discount rates. Perhaps this helps shed some light on why CalPERS is having such a difficult time with what should have been an easy decision to lower their long-term return expectations to 6% from 7.5% (see “CalPERS Weighs Pros/Cons Of Setting Reasonable Return Targets Vs. Maintaining Ponzi Scheme”)…$93k per household just seems so much more “manageable” than $150k.

Oddly enough, California isn’t even the worst off when it comes to pension debt as Alaska leads the pack with just over $110,000 per household. Of course, at this point the question isn’t “if” these ponzi schemes will blow up but rather which one will go first? We have our money on Dallas Police and Fire…

Oh, there are thousands of reasons.

• Why US ‘News’ Media Shouldn’t Be Trusted (Zuesse)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb headlined on November 22nd a devastating takedown of U.S. ‘news’ media and academia, «Syria and the Statistics of War», and he began there by exposing the highly honored Harvard fraud, Dr. Steven Pinker, but then went pretty much through the entire U.S. ‘intellectual’ Establishment, including all of its major ‘news’ media, as being untrustworthy on the part of any intelligent person. (Regarding Professor Pinker specifically, Taleb linked to a scientific paper that Taleb had co-authored, which shredded one of Pinker’s highly honored and biggest-selling books. Taleb and his colleague mentioned there an article that had appeared in Britain’s Guardian raising serious questions about Pinker’s work, and they were here offering statistical proof of the fraudulence of that work.)

The scenario of exposing intellectual fraud is so common: the only reason why it’s not better known among the public is that usually the disproofs of highly honored work have no impact, and fail to dislodge the prejudices that the given established fraud has ‘confirmed’. Another good example of that occurred when the University of Massachusetts graduate student Thomas Herndon issued his proof of the fraudulence of the extremely influential economics paper by Kenneth Rogoff and Carmine Rinehart, «Growth in a Time of Debt», which had been widely cited by congressional Republicans and other conservatives as a main ‘justification’ for imposing draconian economic austerity on the U.S. and other nations during the recovery from the 2008 economic crash.

Years later, that graduate student is still a graduate student (i.e., unemployed), while Kenneth Rogoff remains, as he was prior to his having been exposed: one of Harvard’s most prominent professors of economics, and a member of the Group of 30 — the world’s 30 most influential and powerful economists. Carmen Rinehart likewise retains her position also as a Harvard Professor. Previously, the Harvard Economics Department had guided communist Russia into a crony-capitalist (or fascist) ‘democracy’, but then Vladimir Putin took over Russia and got rid of the worst excesses of Harvard’s «capitalism» and so became hated by the U.S. aristocracy and its ‘news’ media — hated for having tried to establish Russia’s national independence, Russia’s independence from the U.S. aristocracy (which expected, and still craves, to control Russia).

And now after Donald Trump’s victory against the super-neoconservative hater of Russia, Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Establishment, through its voices such as the Washington Post, is trying to smear — like Joseph R. McCarthy smeared America’s non-fascists back in the 1950s — the tiny independent newsmedia that had been reporting truthfully about U.S.-Russian relations and America’s coups and invasions trying to weaken and ultimately to conquer Russia even if that means nuclear war.

Fake news as far as the eye can see. Next up: Putin eats babies.

• Everything You Read About The Wars In Syria And Iraq Could Be Wrong (Ind.)

The Iraqi army, backed by US-led airstrikes, is trying to capture east Mosul at the same time as the Syrian army and its Shia paramilitary allies are fighting their way into east Aleppo. An estimated 300 civilians have been killed in Aleppo by government artillery and bombing in the last fortnight, and in Mosul there are reportedly some 600 civilian dead over a month. Despite these similarities, the reporting by the international media of these two sieges is radically different. In Mosul, civilian loss of life is blamed on Isis, with its indiscriminate use of mortars and suicide bombers, while the Iraqi army and their air support are largely given a free pass. Isis is accused of preventing civilians from leaving the city so they can be used as human shields.

Contrast this with Western media descriptions of the inhuman savagery of President Assad’s forces indiscriminately slaughtering civilians regardless of whether they stay or try to flee. The UN chief of humanitarian affairs, Stephen O’Brien, suggested this week that the rebels in east Aleppo were stopping civilians departing – but unlike Mosul, the issue gets little coverage. One factor making the sieges of east Aleppo and east Mosul so similar, and different, from past sieges in the Middle East, such as the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982 or of Gaza in 2014, is that there are no independent foreign journalists present. They are not there for the very good reason that Isis imprisons and beheads foreigners while Jabhat al-Nusra, until recently the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, is only a shade less bloodthirsty and generally holds them for ransom.

These are the two groups that dominate the armed opposition in Syria as a whole. In Aleppo, though only about 20 per cent of the 10,000 fighters are Nusra, it is they – along with their allies in Ahrar al-Sham – who are leading the resistance. Unsurprisingly, foreign journalists covering developments in east Aleppo and rebel-held areas of Syria overwhelmingly do so from Lebanon or Turkey. A number of intrepid correspondents who tried to do eyewitness reporting from rebel-held areas swiftly found themselves tipped into the boots of cars or otherwise incarcerated.

Experience shows that foreign reporters are quite right not to trust their lives even to the most moderate of the armed opposition inside Syria. But, strangely enough, the same media organisations continue to put their trust in the veracity of information coming out of areas under the control of these same potential kidnappers and hostage takers. They would probably defend themselves by saying they rely on non-partisan activists, but all the evidence is that these can only operate in east Aleppo under license from the al-Qaeda-type groups.

Could get tricky for Trump. Luckily for him, there’s still 7 weeks to go until January 20.

• US Veterans Build Barracks For Pipeline Protesters In Cold (R.)

U.S. military veterans were building barracks on Friday at a protest camp in North Dakota to support thousands of activists who have squared off against authorities in frigid conditions to oppose a multibillion-dollar pipeline project near a Native American reservation. Veterans volunteering to be human shields have been arriving at the Oceti Sakowin camp near the small town of Cannon Ball, where they will work with protesters who have spent months demonstrating against plans to route the Dakota Access Pipeline beneath a lake near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, organizers said. The Native Americans and protesters say the $3.8 billion pipeline threatens water resources and sacred sites.

Some of the more than 2,100 veterans who signed up on the Veterans Stand for Standing Rock group’s Facebook page are at the camp, with hundreds more expected during the weekend. Tribal leaders asked the veterans, who aim to form a wall in front of police to protect the protesters, to avoid confrontation with authorities and not get arrested. Wesley Clark Jr, a writer whose father is retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, met with law enforcement on Friday to tell them that potentially 3,500 veterans would join the protest and the demonstrations would be carried out peacefully, protest leaders said. The plan is for veterans to gather in Eagle Butte, a few hours away, and then travel by bus to the main protest camp, organizers said, adding that a big procession is planned for Monday.

[..] The protesters’ voices have also been heard by companies linked to the pipeline, including banks that protesters have targeted for their financing of the pipeline. Wells Fargo said in a Thursday letter it would meet with Standing Rock elders before Jan. 1 “to discuss their concerns related to Wells Fargo’s investment” in the project. There have been violent confrontations near the route of the pipeline with state and local law enforcement, who used tear gas, rubber bullets and water hoses on the protesters, even in freezing weather. The number of protesters in recent weeks has topped 1,000. State officials on Monday ordered them to leave the snowy camp, which is on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land, citing harsh weather, but on Wednesday they said they would not enforce the order. “There is an element there of people protesting who are frightening,” North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said on Thursday. “It’s time for them to go home.”

Debt Rattle December 1 2016

Dec 012016

December 1, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:40 am Finance Tagged with: car loans, cash, debt relief, homeless, NWO, OPEC, Ponzi, tax cut, Trump 2 Responses »

NPC K & W Tire Co. Rainier truck, Washington, DC 1919

• Oil Price Surges As OPEC Agrees First Output Cut Since 2008 (G.)

• Preet Bharara to Stay On as Manhattan US Attorney Under Trump (WSJ)

• Trump’s Tax Cut Means Billion-Dollar Writedowns for US Banks (BBG)

• 6 Million Americans Are Delinquent On Auto Loans (MW)

• ‘Classic Ponzi Scheme’: Sydney House Prices 12 Times Annual Income (SMH)

• Melbourne Apartment Prices Drop by Most Since 2014 (BBG)

• Greece Isn’t ‘Crying Wolf’ on Debt Relief (BBG)

• Angry Mobs Lock Up Indian Bankers As Cash Chaos Soars (ZH)

• The Pillars Of The New World Order (Pieraccini)

• More Than 250,000 People Are Homeless In England (BBC)

• Climate Change Will Stir ‘Unimaginable’ Refugee Crisis, Says Military (G.)

How long will the illusion last?

• Oil Price Surges As OPEC Agrees First Output Cut Since 2008 (G.)

The price of oil has surged by 8% after the 14-nation cartel Opec agreed to its first cut in production in eight years. Confounding critics who said the club of oil-producing nations was too riven with political infighting to agree a deal, Opec announced it was trimming output by 1.2m barrels per day (bpd) from 1 January. The deal is contingent on securing the agreement of non-Opec producers to lower production by 600,000m barrels per day. But the Qatari oil minister, Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada, said he was confident that the key non-Opec player – Russia – would sign up to a 300,000 bpd cut. Russia’s oil minister, Alexander Novak, welcomed the Opec move but said his country would only be able to cut production gradually due to “technical issues”. A meeting with non-Opec countries in Moscow on 9 December has been pencilled in.

Al-Sada said the deal was a great success and a “major step forward”, but the news that Saudi Arabia had effectively admitted defeat in its long-running attempt to drive US shale producers out of business was enough to send the price of crude sharply higher on the world’s commodity markets. Brent crude was trading at just over $50 a barrel following the completion of the Opec meeting in Vienna – an increase of almost $4 on the day. Saudi Arabia will bear the brunt of Opec’s production curbs, having agreed to a reduction in output of just under 500,000 bpd. Iraq has agreed to a 210,000 bpd cut, followed by the United Arab Emirates (-139,000), Kuwait (-131,000) and Venezuela (-95,000). Smaller countries are also reducing output, but Iran – which has only recently returned to the global oil market after the lifting of international sanctions – has been allowed to continue raising output.

Let’s say that the jury’s out.

• Preet Bharara to Stay On as Manhattan US Attorney Under Trump (WSJ)

Preet Bharara, the Manhattan U.S. attorney, has agreed to stay in his current role under the Trump administration, a surprise move that could signal the president-elect is serious about cracking down on Wall Street wrongdoing. Mr. Bharara, famous for his aggressive prosecutions of insider trading and corruption in New York, met with President-elect Donald Trump in Trump Tower on Wednesday. Afterward, Mr. Bharara told reporters that Mr. Trump asked whether he was prepared to remain as U.S. attorney, and Mr. Bharara said he was. “We had a good meeting,” Mr. Bharara said. “I agreed to stay on.” Since 2009, Mr. Bharara has served as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, one of the highest-profile U.S. attorney’s offices in the country.

An appointee of President Barack Obama, he rose to prominence after pursuing dozens of insider-trading cases, leading to his moniker as the “sheriff of Wall Street.” The office is also seen as a leader in public corruption, cybercrime and terrorism prosecutions. His office has brought corruption charges against a dozen state lawmakers in New York and convicted the leaders of both legislative houses. Keeping Mr. Bharara appears to be at odds with other picks Mr. Trump has made. Despite campaigning against Wall Street excesses and the largest banks, Mr. Trump has tapped Wall Street investors for key positions in his cabinet, including a former Goldman Sachs executive, Steven Mnuchin, for Treasury Secretary and a billionaire private-equity investor, Wilbur Ross, to run the Commerce Department.

Partly as a result, financial services executives have quickly warmed to the prospect of a Trump presidency. His team has promised to roll back parts of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law enacted in the wake of the financial crisis, saying it has cut back on lending. But the decision to keep Mr. Bharara is likely to temper speculation that a Trump administration might focus less on corporate wrongdoing, white-collar lawyers said.

“In one fell swoop, a significant part of their net worth goes up in smoke.”

• Trump’s Tax Cut Means Billion-Dollar Writedowns for US Banks (BBG)

Donald Trump’s planned U.S. corporate tax cuts could translate to a big one-time earnings hit for many of the biggest U.S. banks, thanks to tax benefits they generated during the 2008 financial crisis. Citigroup would take the deepest earnings hit – perhaps $12 billion or more, according to recent estimates by the bank’s chief financial officer and several banking analysts. Others, including Bank of America and Wells Fargo could face multibillion-dollar writedowns. The banks might have to write down deferred tax assets, which often pile up when a company loses money and can’t immediately enjoy the tax benefits of those losses.

Any writedowns won’t have much impact on capital levels for the banks for regulatory purposes, and lower taxes will allow for higher earnings in the long run. But a one-time hit to earnings can make for a bruising quarter – and even year – for a bank’s results. “It’s a traumatic experience for companies with large” amounts of such assets, said Robert Willens, an independent tax and accounting expert in New York. “In one fell swoop, a significant part of their net worth goes up in smoke.” Deferred tax assets, as disclosed in securities filings, consist of benefits that companies expect to use to cut their future tax bills.

For most companies, the bulk of their value is tied to the current U.S. corporate tax rate of 35%. (Assets stemming from, say, state tax bills are tied to state tax rates.) The assets include unused credits for foreign taxes companies have paid; deductions they’re allowed to take in future years for prior losses; and future tax advantages that stem from so-called “timing differences” – or gaps between when income or expenses are reported to shareholders and to the Internal Revenue Service. Analysts say that calculating the value of assets associated with timing differences can be as much an art as a science.

America without a car.

• 6 Million Americans Are Delinquent On Auto Loans (MW)

The number of subprime auto loans sinking into delinquency hit their highest level since 2010 in the third quarter, with roughly 6 million individuals at least 90 days late on their car-loan payments. It’s behavior much like that seen in the months heading into the 2007-2009 recession, according to data from Federal Reserve Bank of New York researchers. “The worsening in the delinquency rate of subprime auto loans is pronounced, with a notable increase during the past few years,” the researchers, led by Andrew Haughwout, said Wednesday in a blog on their Liberty Street Economics site. Weakness among the lowest-rated borrowers plays out against a robustly growing vehicle lending market.

Originations of auto loans have continued at a brisk pace over the past few years, with 2016 shaping up to be the strongest of any year within the NY Fed’s data, which began in 1999. It’s worth noting that the majority of auto loans are still performing well—it’s the subprime loans, those with associated credit scores below 620, that heavily influence the delinquency rates, the researchers said. Consequently, auto finance companies that specialize in subprime lending, as well as some banks with higher subprime exposure are likely to have experienced declining performance in their auto loan portfolios. Credit officials have stressed that the contagion risk to the financial system from poor auto loans isn’t like the risk posed when subprime mortgage lending pushed the U.S. into the Great Recession.

That’s in large part because repossessed cars are easier to resell than bank-owned homes. Cars can’t sink whole neighborhoods with foreclosure blight. Subprime mortgage lending remains at very low levels since the financial crisis. But as the financial system has recovered, subprime auto lending has ramped up with little hesitation. New auto loans to borrowers with credit scores below 660 have nearly tripled since the end of 2009. So far in 2016, about $50 billion of new auto loans per quarter have gone to those borrowers and about $30 billion each quarter has gone to borrowers with scores below 620, according to data the Fed provided, citing credit-score tracker Equifax.

WHAT? “Property experts disagree furiously about whether prices are in a bubble..”

• ‘Classic Ponzi Scheme’: Sydney House Prices 12 Times Annual Income (SMH)

Sydney houses now cost 12 times the annual income, up from four times when Gough Whitlam was dismissed. As many first time buyers turn to the bank of mum and dad to top up their deposits, a new report “Parental guidance not recommended” warns Australians are being caught up in a classic “Ponzi scheme”. The report by economic consultancy LF Economics – which has previously sensationally warned of a “bloodbath” when Sydney’s property bubble bursts – estimates it will now take the average first time buyer in Sydney nine years to save a deposit, up from three years in 1975. Baby boomers, who have benefited from skyrocketing prices, are increasingly able to fast track their children’s path to property ownership by either stumping up part of the deposit or putting up their own homes as collateral.

LF Economics, founded by Lindsay David and Philip Soos, warns this may be helping a new generation to over-leverage into mortgages they can’t afford, leaving their parents’ homes exposed. “Unfortunately, this loan guarantee strategy in a rising housing market for securing ever-larger amounts of debt is essentially pyramid or Ponzi finance. This leaves many parents in a dangerous predicament should their children experience difficulties making loan payments, let alone defaulting and suffering foreclosure.” “In reality, many parents – the Baby Boomer cohort – are asset-rich but income-poor. The blunt fact is few parents have enough savings and other liquid assets on hand to meet their legal obligations without selling their home if their children default,” the report warns.

Property experts disagree furiously about whether prices are in a bubble and about the best measure of housing affordability. Treasury secretary John Fraser has said that Sydney house prices are in a “bubble”. But many economists remain wary of the term and point out that supply constraints and strong population growth will underpin prices, even if slower wages growth inhibits further price gains. LF Economics argues that price gains have outstripped the fundamental worth of properties. “Financial regulators have ignored the Ponzi lending practices by lenders, believing the RBA will have the adequate ability to bail them out at taxpayers’ expense the day this classic Ponzi lending scheme breaks down.”

Bailout?

• Melbourne Apartment Prices Drop by Most Since 2014 (BBG)

Apartment prices in Melbourne fell at the fastest pace in more than two years in November, reinforcing concerns about a looming oversupply of units in Australia’s second-largest city. The 3.2% month-on-month drop is the largest such decline since May 2014, according to figures from data provider CoreLogic Inc. This dragged down the overall increase in dwelling values across the nation’s state capitals to 0.2%, the smallest rise since March this year. Record low interest rates put in place by the Reserve Bank of Australia to help ease the economy’s shift away from mining investment and combat low inflation have helped to spur a housing boom in the nation’s biggest centers and the central bank has repeatedly voiced concern that apartment gluts are developing in central Melbourne and Brisbane.

“Risks around the projected large increases in supply in some inner-city apartment markets are coming to the fore,” the RBA said in its quarterly financial stability review in October. Shayne Elliott, CEO of Australia and New Zealand Bank, said Wednesday that the lender had become increasingly cautious about parts of the housing market. He warned about pockets of over-building, particularly in the small apartments segment. “There are emerging signs of stress” in the economy, the head of Australia’s third-biggest bank told a Reuters event in Sydney. The difficulty for both the RBA and commercial lenders in judging the state of the market is that in other areas house prices have been accelerating. In Sydney, where auction clearance rates have been around the 80% mark for the past three months, the median dwelling price has risen to A$845,000 ($625,000).

Schäuble invites in the vultures.

• Greece Isn’t ‘Crying Wolf’ on Debt Relief (BBG)

Paul Kazarian says he’s spent “tens of millions of dollars” mobilizing a team of a hundred analysts to scrutinize Greece’s assets and liabilities. According to him, everyone else – including the IMF, the credit-rating agencies, the EU and the Greek government itself — is massively overstating the problem of the nation’s debt burden relative to economic output. The problem is, the more he tries to convince the world to accept his version of the numbers, the harder it may get for Greece to win the additional debt relief that most economic observers agree is vital to its recovery. Kazarian, an alumnus of (where else) Goldman Sachs, says the investment firm he founded in 1988, Japonica Partners, is the largest private holder of Greek government debt.

Since he first made his interest known about four years ago, he’s declined to be specific about how much he’s invested, or what prices he paid, or whether he’s up or down or sideways on the trade. This isn’t just your standard tale of a bondholder trying to boost the value of his investments by talking his book. What Kazarian has tried to do for the past four years is treat the sovereign nation of Greece the same way he might a private company he’d taken over: by detailing its assets and liabilities, looking for ways to enhance asset value while reducing liabilities, and, most importantly, seeking to install his own managers to take charge. The more you reflect on that latter notion, the more disturbing Kazarian’s larger-than-life presence on the Greek financial scene becomes.

As the keynote speaker at a conference organized by the American-Hellenic Chamber of Commerce in Athens on Monday, the bespectacled, straight-talking American succeeded in turning the afternoon into The Paul Kazarian Show, berating his audience and his fellow speakers with an odd combination of derision and self-effacing charm and dominating the proceedings by sheer force of personality. (In a previous existence, he gained notoriety for firing BB guns into the empty executive chairs in the boardroom of a company he’d seized control of, accompanying the shots with shouts of “Die!”) Presenting a selection of gems from a presentation that runs to more than 110 slides (Kazarian clearly knows them all by heart), the financier leveled a damning accusation against his hosts: Greece, he said, is “crying wolf for debt relief.”

Payday coming up.

• Angry Mobs Lock Up Indian Bankers As Cash Chaos Soars (ZH)

India’s demonetization campaign is not going as expected. Overnight, banks played down expectations of a dramatic improvement in currency availability, raising the prospect of queues lengthening as salaries get paid and people look to withdraw money from their accounts the Economic Times reported. While much of India has become habituated to the sight of people lining up at banks and cash dispensers since the November 8 demonetisation announcement, bank officials said the message from the Reserve Bank of India is that supplies may not get any easier in the near future and that they should push digital transactions. “We had sought a hearing with RBI as we were not allocated enough cash, but we were told that rationing of cash may continue for some time,” said a banker who was present at one of several meetings with central bank officials.

“Reserve Bank has asked us to push the use of digital channels to all our customers and ensure that we bring down use of cash in the economy,” said a banker. This confirms a previous report according to which the demonstization campaign has been a not so subtle attempt to impose digital currency on the entire population. Bankers have been making several trips to the central bank’s headquarters in Mumbai to get a sense of whether currency availability will improve. Some automated teller machines haven’t been filled even once since the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes ceased to be legal tender, they said. Typically, households pay milkmen, domestic helps, drivers, etc, at the start of the month in cash. The idea is that all these payments should become electronic, using computers or mobiles.

This strategy however, appears to not have been conveyed to the public, and as Bloomberg adds, “bankers are bracing for long hours and angry mobs as pay day approaches in India.” “Already people who are frustrated are locking branches from outside in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu and abusing staff as enough cash is not available,” said CH Venkatachalam, general secretary of the All India Bank Employees’ Association. The group has sought police protection at bank branches for the next 10 days, he added. Joining many others who have slammed Modi’s decision, the banker said that “this is the fallout of one of the worst planned and executed government decisions in decades.”

He estimates that about 20 million people – almost twice the population of Greece – will queue up at bank branches and ATMs over the coming week, when most employers in India pay their staff. In an economy where 98% of consumer payments are in cash, banks are functioning with about half the amount of currency they need. As Bloomberg notes, retaining public support is crucial for Modi before key state elections next year and a national contest in 2019, however it appears he is starting to lose it. “We are bracing ourselves for payday and fearing the worst,” said Parthasarathi Mukherjee, CEO at Laxmi Vilas Bank. “If we run out of cash we will have to approach the Reserve Bank of India for more. It is tough.”

It’s kind of funny that Trump is seen as the end of a 70-year era.

• The Pillars Of The New World Order (Pieraccini)

Looking at US history over a fairly long period of time, it is easy to see the destructive path that has accompanied the expansion of the American empire over the last seventy years. While World War II was still raging, US strategists were already planning their next steps in the international arena. The new target was immediately identified in the assault and the dismemberment of the Soviet empire. With the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet economic model as an alternative to the capitalist system, the West found itself faced with what was defined as ‘the end of’ history, and proceeded to act accordingly. The delicate transition from bipolarity, the world-order system based on the United States and the Soviet Union occupying opposing poles, to a unipolar world order with Washington as the only superpower, was entrusted to George H. W. Bush.

The main purpose was to reassure with special care the former Soviet empire, even as the Soviet Union plunged into chaos and poverty while the West preyed on her resources. Not surprisingly, the 90’s represented a phase of major economic growth for the United States. Predictably, on that occasion, the national elite favored the election of a president, Bill Clinton, who was more attentive to domestic issues over international affairs. The American financial oligarchy sought to consolidate their economic fortunes by expanding as far as possible the Western financial model, especially with new virgin territory in the former Soviet republics yet to be conquered and exploited. With the disintegration of the USSR, the United States had a decade to aspire to the utopia of global hegemony. Reviewing with the passage of time the convulsive period of the 90’s, the goal seemed one step away, almost within reach.

The means of conquest and expansion of the American empire generally consist of three domains: cultural, economic and military. With the end of the Soviet empire, there was no alternative left for the American imperialist capitalist system. From the point of view of cultural expansion, Washington had now no adversaries and could focus on the destruction of other countries thanks to the globalization of products like McDonald’s and Coca Cola in every corner of the planet. Of course the consequences of an enlargement of the sphere of cultural influence led to the increased power of the economic system. In this sense, Washington’s domination in international financial institutions complemented the imposition of the American way of life on other countries. Due to the mechanisms of austerity arising from trap-loans issued by the IMF or World Bank, countries in serious economic difficulties have ended up being swallowed up by debt.

Not surprised. A country that needs to refind itself.

• More Than 250,000 People Are Homeless In England (BBC)

More than a quarter of a million people are homeless in England, an analysis of the latest official figures suggests. Researchers from charity Shelter used data from four sets of official 2016 statistics to compile what it describes as a “conservative” total. The figures show homelessness hotspots outside London, with high rates in Birmingham, Brighton and Luton. The government says it does not recognise the figures, but is investing more than £500m on homelessness. For the very first time, Shelter has totted up the official statistics from four different forms of recorded homelessness. These were: • national government statistics on rough sleepers • statistics on those in temporary accommodation • the number of people housed in hostels * the number of people waiting to be housed by social services departments (obtained through Freedom of Information requests).

The charity insists the overall figure, 254,514, released to mark 50 years since its founding, is a “robust lower-end estimate”. It has been adjusted down to account for any possible overlap and no estimates have been added in where information was not available. Charity chief executive Campbell Robb said: “Shelter’s founding shone a light on hidden homelessness in the 1960s slums. “But while those troubled times have faded into memory, 50 years on a modern-day housing crisis is tightening its grip on our country. “Hundreds of thousands of people will face the trauma of waking up homeless this Christmas.

Just in case you thought things are bad now.

• Climate Change Will Stir ‘Unimaginable’ Refugee Crisis, Says Military (G.)

Climate change is set to cause a refugee crisis of “unimaginable scale”, according to senior military figures, who warn that global warming is the greatest security threat of the 21st century and that mass migration will become the “new normal”. The generals said the impacts of climate change were already factors in the conflicts driving a current crisis of migration into Europe, having been linked to the Arab Spring, the war in Syria and the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency. Military leaders have long warned that global warming could multiply and accelerate security threats around the world by provoking conflicts and migration. They are now warning that immediate action is required.

“Climate change is the greatest security threat of the 21st century,” said Maj Gen Munir Muniruzzaman, chairman of the Global Military Advisory Council on climate change and a former military adviser to the president of Bangladesh. He said one metre of sea level rise will flood 20% of his nation. “We’re going to see refugee problems on an unimaginable scale, potentially above 30 million people.” Previously, Bangladesh’s finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, called on Britain and other wealthy countries to accept millions of displaced people.

Brig Gen Stephen Cheney, a member of the US Department of State’s foreign affairs policy board and CEO of the American Security Project, said: “Climate change could lead to a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. We’re already seeing migration of large numbers of people around the world because of food scarcity, water insecurity and extreme weather, and this is set to become the new normal. “Climate change impacts are also acting as an accelerant of instability in parts of the world on Europe’s doorstep, including the Middle East and Africa,” Cheney said. “There are direct links to climate change in the Arab Spring, the war in Syria, and the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Debt Rattle November 29 2016

Nov 292016

November 29, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:08 am Finance Tagged with: Antarctic, austerity, Canada, cash, Great Barrier, Hooverville, left, recount, Trump Towers 4 Responses »

NPC Skating night, Washington DC 1919

• How The Global Left Destroyed Itself -Or, All Sex Is Not Rape- (DLS)

• Of Hoovervilles and Trump Towers (Thomas)

• The Blinkered Elite Who Still Think Austerity Works (Aditya Chakrabortty)

• Athens Fears IMF, Berlin Will Reach Deal For Further Austerity (Kath.)

• Where Are We In The Business Cycle? (ZH)

• Cash is for Criminals – Taxing Cash Withdrawals from ATMs (Armstrong)

• Canada Watchdog Warns Lenders Face Big Losses If Housing Market Turns (FP)

• Canada House Price Bubble Threatens ‘Financial Stability’ (WS)

• Security Experts Join Jill Stein’s ‘Election Changing’ Recount Campaign (G.)

• France and Britain In Danger of Winter Power Shortages (BBG)

• Pressure Grows As Athens Eyes Faster Asylum Process (Kath.)

• West Antarctic Ice Shelf Breaking Up From The Inside Out (AGU)

• Scientists Record Biggest Ever Coral Die-Off On Great Barrier Reef (R.)

“..the same unreconstructed global capitalism that was still sucking the life from the lower classes that it always had. Only now it was doing so with explicit public backing and with an abandon it had not enjoyed since the roaring twenties.”

• How The Global Left Destroyed Itself -Or, All Sex Is Not Rape- (DLS)

With a Republican Party on its knees, Obama was positioned to restore the kind of New Deal rules that global capitalism enjoyed under Franklin D. Roosevelt. A gobalisation like the one promised in the brochures, that benefited the majority via competition and productivity gains, driven by trade and meritocracy, with counter-balanced private risk and public equity. But instead he opted to patch up financialised capitalism. The banks were bailed out and the bonus culture returned. Yes, there were some new rules but they were weak. There was no seizing of the agenda. No imprisonments of the guilty. The US Department of Justice is still issuing $14bn fines to banks involved yet still today there is no justice. Think about that a minute. How can a crime be worthy of a $14bn fine but no prison time?!?

Alas, for all of his efforts to restore Wall Street, Obama provided no reset for Main Street economics to restore the fortunes of the US lower classes. Sure Obama fought a hostile Capitol but, let’s face it, he had other priorities. And so the US working and middle classes, as well as those worldwide, were sold another pup. Now more than ever, if they said say so they were quickly shut down as “racist”, “xenophobic”, or “sexist”. Thus it came to pass that the global Left somehow did a complete back-flip and positioned itself directly behind the same unreconstructed global capitalism that was still sucking the life from the lower classes that it always had. Only now it was doing so with explicit public backing and with an abandon it had not enjoyed since the roaring twenties.

Which brings us back to today. And we wonder how it is that an abuse-spouting guy like Donald Trump can succeed Barack Obama. Trump is a member of the very same “trickle down” capitalist class that ripped the income from US households. But he is smart enough, smarter than the Left at least, to know that the decades long rage of the middle and working classes is a formidable political force and has tapped it spectacularly to rise to power. And, he has done more. He has also recognised that the Left’s obsession with post-structural identity politics has totally paralysed it. It is so traumatised and pre-occupied by his mis-use of the language of power – the “racist”, “sexist” and “xenophobic” comments – that it is further wedging itself from its natural constituents every day.

Don’t get me wrong, I am very doubtful that Trump will succeed with his proposed policies but he has at least mentioned the elephant in the room, making the American worker visible again.

I like this: in the 1930s you had “Hoover blankets” for newspapers and “Hoover leather” for cardboard, and now there’s “Trump Towers” for shantytowns.

• Of Hoovervilles and Trump Towers (Thomas)

In 1928, Republican Herbert Hoover was elected as president of the US. He took office in March of 1929. The following October, the stock market crashed, heralding in the Great Depression. Millions of Americans lost their jobs and homes and/or starved in the ensuing years. Countless people, having nowhere to live, set up shantytowns that came to be known as “Hoovervilles.” Their new residents relied for the most part on public charities or begging for whatever income they could attain. Was Mister Hoover responsible? Well, no. When elected, he had never held public office before and had not contributed to the cause of the depression. So why was he blamed? Well, whenever there’s disaster, it’s human nature to want to put a face on the cause of the problem. We tend to need to have someone at whom we can point our angry finger.

(Almost immediately after the shooting of John Kennedy, the public were shown a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald holding a rifle; the day after the destroying of the Twin Towers, the television news showed a photo of Osama bin Laden. The viewers didn’t question whether these were indeed the culprits; they simply accepted them, as their need to have someone to blame was greater than their need to have truth.) As a Republican, Mister Hoover became an easy target for Democrats seeking to further their own careers. Although the events that led up to the depression were caused by both Democrats and Republicans, both within politics and without, Mister Hoover was a convenient target for Democrats. In fact, the term “Hooverville” was created by Charles Michelson, publicity chief of the Democratic National Committee. Democrats also came up with other pejoratives, such as “Hoover blankets” for newspapers and “Hoover leather” for cardboard used in a shoe when the sole had worn through.

Throughout the 1930s, hundreds of Hoovervilles sprang up, housing hundreds of thousands of recently homeless people. There was even one in New York’s Central Park. By ascribing the Great Depression and everything that went with it to Mister Hoover, it was a foregone conclusion that in the next presidential election, the Democratic candidate would win by a landslide. For the next 20 years, Democrats held the US presidency and, in that time, the government made a major transformation towards collectivism. In spite of the fact that the Great Depression dragged on for around a decade, few Americans grasped the fact that collectivist policies prolonged the depression, rather than alleviated it.

[..] If history were to repeat, Mister Trump would find that, within months of his ascendancy to the throne, market crashes would occur, followed by monetary collapse, diminishment of entitlements, loss of homes and jobs and a return to Hoovervilles. It wouldn’t be surprising if the present generation of collectivist spin doctors choose to call the new shantytowns “Trump towers.” There can be no doubt that it would be a successful political move and, along with other pejoratives, would be extremely likely to result in a one-term presidency for Mister Trump, followed by a landslide victory in 2020 for the Democratic Party. [..] Mister Trump will be no more to blame than Mister Hoover but, as the present economic cycle will reach the tipping point on his watch, there can be little doubt as to who will receive the blame. Just as in 1929, the tail will blindly be pinned on the elephant, not the donkey, and a long era of increased collectivism will be heralded in.

“The end had come, but it was not yet in sight”.

• The Blinkered Elite Who Still Think Austerity Works (Aditya Chakrabortty)

On 11 September 1929 the Wall Street Journal quoted Mark Twain for its thought of the day: “Don’t part with your illusions; when they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.” Whatever that day’s subeditors thought they were doing, their choice now sounds as falsely confident as a rambler about to step off a ledge. Markets were already in turmoil, America was sinking into economic depression and running through the daily news was a thin, high note of hysteria. Still, Irving Fisher and the other wise men foresaw only the slightest of setbacks, and the brokers couldn’t take the cash fast enough. As John Kenneth Galbraith writes in his classic, The Great Crash 1929: “The end had come, but it was not yet in sight”.

Just six weeks later shares nosedived, countless families had their life savings destroyed, and an entire ruling class was stripped of its illusions. It took another 25 years, the Great Depression, the New Deal and a world war before stocks regained their 1929 levels. Look around today: the political class of 2016 is stuffed with people firmly clinging on to their illusions. Come Brexit, come Trump, come possible break-up of Europe: no lessons will be learned, barely an inch will be deviated from the ordained course. For some, the best pose is an uncomprehending defiance. Taking a break from tending to his £27m property portfolio, Tony Blair tells the New Statesman, “I can’t come into front-line politics. There’s just too much hostility.” Thus does the patron saint of exasperation inform his ex-voters: it’s not me, it’s you.

Others are smart enough at least to pay lip service to the new times. A couple of months ago George Osborne told the Financial Times how much he’d learned from Brexit: “There’s a pretty profound sense out there that the system’s not working for people, and instead of telling people, ‘Shut up, you’ve never had it so good,’ you’ve got to respond to that … I want to use this time out of office to try and understand it better.” Trouble is, lip service doesn’t pay so well. Days after that interview, the recently ejected chancellor began a speaking tour of America. In just a month, it was revealed last week, he raked in £320,400. Osborne made more from five speeches (nearly all to the finance industry, naturally, and putting in what his parliamentary register records as a total of 13 and a half hours’ work)than the average British worker will earn in over 11 years.

Good cop, bad cop. Rinse and repeat.

• Athens Fears IMF, Berlin Will Reach Deal For Further Austerity (Kath.)

With the government banking on securing a “political decision” at Monday’s Eurogroup – as the conclusion of the bailout review is now seemingly out of reach – the prospect of further austerity as demanded by the International Monetary Fund remains the biggest thorn in its side. Indeed, Athens’s biggest fear is that the IMF and Berlin will strike a deal demanding more measures as highlighted in comments by Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos Monday that the government cannot accept “compromise deals made between the IMF and the European countries on the back of Greece.” Tsakalotos criticized the IMF for pressuring Greece to implement more measures while failing to urge European countries to grant the country debt relief, and aimed fire at the eurozone for agreeing to discuss labor measures that stray beyond accepted European principles.

Referring to the labor regulation demands, he said: “Those institutions should not consider a country that is in a [bailout] program to have lesser rights. I think it’s not right, not morally right.” Government aides Monday, meanwhile, said the review would have already been concluded had it not been for the IMF’s demand for more measures in exchange for its participation in the bailout. However, Athens’s case for debt relief received a boost Monday after senior European officials said a solution was overdue. ECB executive board member Benoit Coeure, who was in Athens Monday, said the ECB was “looking forward to a solution” and “all stakeholders in the Greek adjustment program must realize that there are serious concerns about the sustainability of the Greek public debt.”

Really? There’s a business cycle left?

• Where Are We In The Business Cycle? (ZH)

On the bullish side, MS writes a trend of rising yields, steeper curves and better earnings has been in place for months. It forecasts that this trend will continue through 1Q17, as still-easy year-over- year comparisons mean headline inflation and global earnings continue to rise. The bank also points out something the Fed is well aware off: avoid giving the market much, if any, information. Namely, “an initial lack of policy clarity from the Trump administration may actually be helpful allowing investors to believe that the US ultimately will pursue ‘good’ projects (e.g., infrastructure spending) and avoid ‘bad’ ones (trade protectionism), while dangling the possibility of large corporate tax cuts. ”

However, shortly thereafter the initial optimism will fade and by 2Q17, this picture is set to change: global yields and USD to rise in 1Q as markets anticipate that better growth and inflation will cause the Fed to hike twice later in the year. That will mean a material tightening in financial conditions. [..] Around the same time, China growth will slow as credit-fueled stimulus is dialed back. And high expectations that the new US administration will be market-friendly raise the likelihood of disappointment. Even with expectations of fiscal stimulus, Morgan Stanley’s full year 2017 GDP forecast is just 2%. More troubling is that the expansion, already the 4th longest in US history, and set to be the third longest by the time Trump is inaugurated… is very long in the tooth.

Which brings us to the most concerning observation by Morgan Stanley, according to which 2017 is a year in which the bank’s odds of a boom and bust have materially increased, a finding consistent with a late-cycle US environment. So late, in fact, that one look at the chart below shows the US cycle has not only plateaued but is now stalling and is turning over. This, as Morgan Stanley writes, “is a change. Our long-running narrative had been “slow growth, slow reflation, and slow policy normalization”, a backdrop that we’ve seen as favorable to credit. The prospect for more fiscal stimulus in the US and elsewhere affects all three. Our new forecasts call for higher growth, inflation and policy rates than before, an uncertain cocktail for an expansion that is already one of the longest on record.”

Martin rants: “..even the Ten Commandments state clearly that socialism is wrong..”

• Cash is for Criminals – Taxing Cash Withdrawals from ATMs (Armstrong)

We are entering a very dark phase in this battle to retain our liberty. A proposal now being whispered behind the curtain in Europe is to impose a tax on withdrawing your own money from an ATM. The banks support this measure as a whole because they see this as preventing bank runs. Nobody will look at the direction we are headed. I am deeply concerned that these type of proposals will send the West in a real revolution not much different from that of Russia in 1917. The divide between left and right is getting much deeper and the left is hell bent on stripping those who produce of their liberty and assets. This type of confrontation is in line with our War Cycle, which we will update in 2017.

This is the most dangerous period we are heading into for governments will respond only in their own self-interest to survive. The socialists hate those who produce. That is just the bottom line. Nobody should have wealth more than they and this is the same human emotion that has cost tens of millions of lives in civil conflicts through out the centuries. Proof this is a persistent problem is the fact that even the Ten Commandments state clearly that socialism is wrong: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house … or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17). Nevertheless, this is repuidiated by socialists who say it’s not fair that anyone has something more than they do.

This material jealousy has been the source of so much death throughout the centuries because it has been exploited by the ruling class to justify their thievery. We will review all our models and update this after the U.S. inauguration since the socialists are trying to figure out how to steal the election from Trump. There is no way to overturn Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania without fraud and they need all three overturned to claim victory. This will not end nicely. The divide will only get bigger. The future is anything but stable and safe.

Only China can save the day now?!

• Canada Watchdog Warns Lenders Face Big Losses If Housing Market Turns (FP)

Recent increases in mortgage interest rates should be a wake-up call that lenders and borrowers should not be making decisions based on a short-term ability to repay, particularly given the risks created by high house prices and a long period of record low rates, Canada’s top banking regulator said Monday. “The recent uptick in mortgage interest rates should serve as a reminder that low rates are not a given, especially over longer periods of time,” Jeremy Rudin, head of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), told an audience of mortgage professionals in Vancouver. In prepared remarks for the Mortgage Professionals Canada National Conference, Rudin said risks in the market include rising rates and falling house prices.

“A pronounced or prolonged economic downturn could well involve a meaningful housing price correction. This could translate into significant losses for lenders and insurers,” he said. Moody’s Investors Service has estimated that a U.S.-style housing meltdown with home prices falling by as much as 35% could result in combined losses of more than $17 billion for the Canadian banks and mortgage insurers. “Given the risks and vulnerabilities arising from the current environment, sound underwriting is now more important than ever,” Rudin said. This month, Canada’s banks started raising their mortgage prime rates or posted variable rates in what market watchers said was a response to moves by the federal government to cool the housing market. On Nov. 11, mortgage tracker RateSpy.com said the typical five-year discretionary variable rate for Canada’s six largest banks had increased to 2.3% from 2.25%.

Warnings from all sides now.

• Canada House Price Bubble Threatens ‘Financial Stability’ (WS)

In its economic outlook released today, the OECD is generally gung-ho about the Canadian economy, and practically bubbling over with new enthusiasm for the global economy. It now expects global growth to accelerate from 2.9% this year to 3.3% in 2017 and to 3.6% in 2018. Call it the “Trump effect” gone global. But for Canada, despite its hunky-dory economy due to the “moderately expansionary policy stance in the 2016 federal budget,” the OECD has a stark warning: “House prices, housing investment and household debt are very high, posing financial stability risks.” The OECD’s chart shows the house price indices for Vancouver and Toronto, which make up about one-third of the national housing market, versus the index for the rest of Canada. Note the hook at the top of the red line: a feeble sign that house prices in Vancouver might be heading south:

A “disorderly housing market correction,” as envisioned by the OECD, would reduce residential investment, which has become a key in the Canadian economy. Through the reverse “wealth effects,” private consumption would take a hit, and in the end the banks are on the line, and it “could threaten financial stability.”The indebtedness of Canadian households, when measured against disposable income, continues to “edge up from already high levels,” encouraged and enabled by low interest rates. Of the OECD member states, only six have higher debt-to-disposable income ratios: Ireland, Sweden, Australia, Norway, the Netherlands, and Denmark (the last two with a ratio of over 250%). All of them have majestic government-aided and abetted housing bubbles. For American debt slaves, this measure is just over 100%, below where Canada’s was in 2000!

Strange circus.

• Security Experts Join Jill Stein’s ‘Election Changing’ Recount Campaign (G.)

More election security experts have joined Jill Stein’s campaign to review the presidential vote in battleground states won by Donald Trump even as she sues Wisconsin to secure a full recount by hand of all of its 3m ballots. Half a dozen academics and other specialists on Monday submitted new testimony supporting a lawsuit from Stein against Wisconsin authorities, in which she asked a court to prevent county officials from carrying out their recounts by machine. Stein argued that Wisconsin’s plan to allow automatic recounting “risks tainting the recount process” because the electronic scanning equipment involved may incorrectly tally the results and could have been attacked by foreign hackers.

“There is a substantial possibility that recounting the ballots by hand will produce a more correct result and change the outcome of the election,” Stein argued in the lawsuit in Dane County circuit court. A copy was obtained by the Guardian. Stein, the Green party’s presidential election candidate, is working to secure full recounts in the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Trump surprised pollsters by narrowly beating Clinton on his way to a national victory in the electoral college. A petition from Stein requesting a recount was accepted by Wisconsin last Friday.

Her efforts to obtain a recount in Pennsylvania met serious difficulties on Monday as it became clear she needed three voters in each of the state’s 9,163 voting precincts to request a recount on her behalf, and that deadlines to do so had passed in many precincts. Wisconsin also told Stein on Monday that the recount, which was previously estimated to cost $1m, would actually cost her $3.5m and that the funds must be produced by the end of Tuesday. Stein has raised more than $6m for the three-state recount effort using online crowdfunding.

One of these years….

• France and Britain In Danger of Winter Power Shortages (BBG)

France and the U.K. are the two nations in Europe most at risk of power shortages this winter, particularly if there is a cold snap in early December or January. With availability of Electricite de France’s French nuclear fleet at the lowest level in a decade, the nation will need to rely on imports during several weeks and adding a cold spell to that could make the situation “tense,” according to European grid group Entsoe’s Winter Outlook report. Britain may face a power deficit in early January if temperatures fall below average, it said in the report. The Entsoe analysis indicated that even under severe conditions, demand can be met and reserves maintained across nearly all of Europe, thanks to surpluses in most regions and available interconnector capacity.

The U.K. potentially needs high imports from all neighboring countries in the week from Jan. 9. A combination of low wind and cold temperatures means there might be a deficit. Delays to restarts of several French reactors undergoing safety checks at the request of regulator ASN will mean “significantly” decreased margins in the first three weeks of December. French electricity demand is highly sensitive to cold weather and a drop of 1ºC below normal can add 2,400 megawatts, according to Entsoe. Reseau de Transport d’Electricite, the French grid operator, earlier this month warned of an increasing risk of power shortages in Europe’s second-biggest market. It has several options to reduce demand if needed, including the last-resort possibility of rolling blackouts. The U.K. has a reserve of power stations it can activate and National Grid has described this winter as “tight but manageable.”

The EU has so far sent 35 of 500 promised ‘staffers’ for asylum proceedings. Slow it down and they don’t have to resettle refugees. Convenient.

• Pressure Grows As Athens Eyes Faster Asylum Process (Kath.)

The municipal council on the Aegean island of Chios has voted against a government proposal to create a new reception center for migrants and refugees on the site of a former landfill with the aim of easing congestion at the existing Souda facility. Adding to the strain, heavy rainfall Monday flooded the Souda camp, forcing local authorities to transfer some 800 migrants and refugees into public buildings. On Lesvos, migrants and refugees marched in the island capital of Mytilene in protest at conditions at Moria camp, while demanding that they be allowed to leave the island. Meanwhile, Migration Minister Yiannis Mouzalas visited Germany to discuss ways of accelerating Greece’s asylum procedures within the framework of EU rules on refugee protection. According to official data, an additional 268 individuals arrived on Greece’s islands over the weekend.

Obviously.

• West Antarctic Ice Shelf Breaking Up From The Inside Out (AGU)

A key glacier in Antarctica is breaking apart from the inside out, suggesting that the ocean is weakening ice on the edges of the continent. The Pine Island Glacier, part of the ice shelf that bounds the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is one of two glaciers that researchers believe are most likely to undergo rapid retreat, bringing more ice from the interior of the ice sheet to the ocean, where its melting would flood coastlines around the world. A nearly 225-square-mile iceberg broke off from the glacier in 2015, but it wasn’t until researchers were testing some new image-processing software that they noticed something strange in satellite images taken before the event. In the images, they saw evidence that a rift formed at the very base of the ice shelf nearly 20 miles inland in 2013.

The rift propagated upward over two years, until it broke through the ice surface and set the iceberg adrift over 12 days in late July and early August 2015. Their findings were published today in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. “It’s generally accepted that it’s no longer a question of whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will melt, it’s a question of when,” said Ian Howat, associate professor of Earth sciences at Ohio State and lead author of the new study. “This kind of rifting behavior provides another mechanism for rapid retreat of these glaciers, adding to the probability that we may see significant collapse of West Antarctica in our lifetimes.”

No return.

• Scientists Record Biggest Ever Coral Die-Off On Great Barrier Reef (R.)

Warm seas around Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have killed two-thirds of a 700-km (435 miles) stretch of coral in the past nine months, the worst die-off ever recorded on the World Heritage site, scientists who surveyed the reef said on Tuesday. Their finding of the die-off in the reef’s north is a major blow for tourism at reef which, according to a 2013 Deloitte Access Economics report, attracts about A$5.2 billion ($3.9 billion) in spending each year. “The coral is essentially cooked,” professor Andrew Baird, a researcher at James Cook University who was part of the reef surveys, told Reuters by telephone from Townsville in Australia’s tropical north. He said the die-off was “almost certainly” the largest ever recorded anywhere because of the size of the Barrier Reef, which at 348,000 sq km (134,400 sq miles) is the biggest coral reef in the world.

Bleaching occurs when the water is too warm, forcing coral to expel living algae and causing it to calcify and turn white. Mildly bleached coral can recover if the temperature drops and the survey found this occurred in southern parts of the reef, where coral mortality was much lower. While bleaching occurs naturally, scientists are concerned that rising sea temperatures caused by global warming magnifies the damage, leaving sensitive underwater ecosystems unable to recover. UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee stopped short of placing the Great Barrier Reef on an “in danger” list last May but asked the Australian government for an update on its progress in safeguarding the reef.

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