detention Archives - The Automatic Earth

US junk-bond issuance in June plunged 31% from a year ago to just $14.5 billion, the lowest of any June in five years, according to LCD of S&P Global Market Intelligence. During the first half of the year, junk bond issuance dropped 23% from a year ago to $110.6 billion. Is investor appetite for risky debt drying up? Have investors given up chasing yield? On the contrary! They’re chasing harder than before, but they’re chasing elsewhere in the junk-rated credit spectrum: leveraged loans. Leveraged loans are another way by which junk-rated companies can raise money. These loans are arranged by banks and sold either as loans or as Collateralized Loan Obligation (CLOs) to other investors, such as pension funds or loan funds.

They’re a $1 trillion market and trade like securities. But the SEC, which regulates securities, considers them loans and doesn’t regulate them. No one regulates them. In the first half, companies issued $274 billion of non-amortizing leveraged loans, and $97 billion in revolving and amortizing leveraged loans, according to LCD, for a total of $371 billion, on par with the record set in the first half last year. This is well over triple the amount of junk bonds issued in same period ($110 billion). Many of these loans have floating interest rates, typically pegged to the dollar-Libor. And in an investment environment where the Fed has been trying to push up interest rates, Libor has surged, and floating-rate loans, whose interest payments increase as Libor ratchets higher, are very appealing to investors – despite the additional risks these higher interest payments pose for the companies that are already struggling with negative cash flows.

[..] Leveraged loans come with covenants that are supposed to protect investors during the term of the loan and in case of default. With strong covenants and good collateral, leveraged loans tend to be less risky than junk bonds issued by the same company. Alas, investors have the hots for this debt, and companies are taking advantage of it by weakening covenants, giving investors fewer protections and the company more leeway – such as paying interest with more debt rather than cash if it runs out of cash (payment-in-kind or PIK); normally, not being able to pay interest would constitute a default, but not with these “covenant lite” or “cov-lite” loans. The boom in cov-lite has started years ago and has surged to massive record proportions. When these loans default, investors are exposed to much greater losses.

Interesting idea. Decades too late though.

• UK House Prices Should Be Frozen For Five Years – Think Tank (Ind.)

UK house prices should be frozen for five years to help prevent another financial crisis, the think tank IPPR has said. The group has urged the Bank of England to freeze property prices under a separate new inflation target and said this could lead to house prices falling by around 10 per cent in real terms as other prices and wages continue to rise, making homes more affordable. Under the IPPR’s proposals, house prices would be allowed to increase “only after expectations of constantly rising house prices have been ‘reset’”. The think tank also said prices would be allowed to grow “no faster than the general consumer price inflation target of 2 per cent, meaning no further growth in the real value of people’s homes”.

The IPPR said its recommendations were part of a wider plan to “rebalance the UK economy away from finance” so as to avoid another financial crisis. According to the IPPR, the financial sector’s “dominance” since the 1980s has contributed to a strong pound, which has hurt exporters, and has attracted surplus money from other countries, which has been channelled into loans for speculative investors, including mortgage lending. This speculation over house prices, the think tank said, has helped drive up prices and at the same time made the economy more vulnerable to a crisis, because it has reduced funds available for more productive investment, created regional inequalities with disproportionate growth in London and the South East, and “concentrated market power into the hands of a small number of large banks”.

[..] Grace Blakeley, IPPR research fellow, said: “Since the 1980s, the UK’s business model has rested on attracting capital from the rest of the world, which it has channelled into debt for UK consumers. The 2008 crisis proved that this is unsustainable. “We need to move towards a more sustainable growth model, one built on production and investment rather than debt and speculation. To do this, we must break the cycle of ever-rising house prices driving property speculation, crowding out investment in the real economy.”

A confidence vote looks inevitable.

• 24 Hours of Brexit Mayhem (Ind.)

Theresa May is clinging on to power following the dramatic resignation of Boris Johnson and a bruising 24 hours of conflict with Tory Brexiteers. Mr Johnson became the third minister to quit in the space of a day, accusing Ms May of pursuing a Brexit that would lock Britain into “the status of colony”. In a scathing letter, he said her plans for negotiating with Europe decided at Chequers last week equated to going into battle with “white flags fluttering”. But despite the resignations and the looming threat of a “vote of no confidence”, Ms May survived the day and finished it with a swipe at Mr Johnson, in which she appeared to question his motives for quitting.

After David Davis left his job as Brexit secretary just before midnight on Sunday, speculation grew as to whether there would be a slew of resignations, bringing down the government. He had been followed by fellow Brexit minister Steve Baker, but it was not until 3pm on Monday, when it emerged that Mr Johnson was walking, that Ms May looked at her most precarious. It was claimed that Downing Street leaked news of his resignation before he could write his letter, which the prime minister’ aides guessed would be wounding. When it came it said: “Brexit should be about opportunity and hope. It should be a chance to do things differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximise the particular advantages of the UK as an open, outward looking global economy. “The dream is dying, suffocated by needles doubt.”

“Instead of the Star Trek vision of boldly going where no imperial nostalgic society had gone before, this Brexit would not have enough thrust to get the UK out of the gravitational pull of the European Union”

• Britain Has Gone To Huge Trouble To Humiliate Itself (Fintan O’Toole)

The best headline about British prime minister Theresa May’s short-lived triumph over the hard Brexiteers last Friday was undoubtedly the one on Pádraig Collins’s report in the Guardian: “Possum rescued after getting head stuck in Nutella jar”. Admittedly, Collins was actually reporting, not from Chequers, but from Brisbane, Australia. Yet the accompanying photograph was the perfect image of what May is trying to do. It showed the furry creature all curled up and immobilised with its head completely encased in a glass jar streaked with visible residues of sticky brown stuff. As a spokesman for the Australian RSPCA explained, the dumb animal “managed to get his head in the jar, but obviously couldn’t get it out”.

The rescuer put “towels around the possum so she could get him out of the jar without getting scratched by his claws”. The story saves me the trouble of thinking up a metaphor. The Brexiteers have their heads stuck in a jar of sticky brown stuff that seemed so sweet and enticing. May’s compromise deal and the White Paper she is still expected to publish this week are the towels wrapped round the Brexiteers’ claws so that their heads can be pulled out of the jar without her premiership getting scratched to death.

The only problem is that David Davis and Boris Johnson, having been successfully extracted, decided to bare their claws again. As any possum or two-year-old child will tell you, sticking your head inside a glass jar is quite a thrill. You get to see the world through a distorting lens that creates a comforting distance between you and reality. You can’t hear unwanted voices raising awkward questions. Brexit has so far been conducted through a glass darkly. It has been seen through glorious fantasies of imperial revival and layers of self-pity about imaginary oppression. What May has been attempting, very late in the day, is to force her more deluded colleagues to get their heads out of the jar and look directly at Brexit.

The story is the two have been exposed to high dose of novichok. That is not possible; they would have died in instants.

• Novichok In Wiltshire Death ‘Highly Likely’ From Batch Used On Skripals (G.)

Britain’s counter-terrorism chief has said it is highly likely the novichok that killed Dawn Sturgess in Wiltshire came from the same batch used four months earlier to attack a former Russian spy and his daughter at their Salisbury home. The Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Neil Basu also said the substance that led to Sturgess and her partner Charlie Rowley falling ill on Saturday was in a vessel or container when the couple came across it. Police have opened a murder investigation after Sturgess died in hospital on Sunday at 8.26pm. Basu said: “It is both shocking and utterly appalling that a British citizen has died having being exposed to a Novichok nerve agent.

“But make no mistake, we’re determined to find out how Dawn and her partner, Charlie Rowley, came into contact with such a deadly substance; and we will do everything we possibly can to bring those responsible to justice.” Basu said Sturgess and Rowley got a high dose of novichok after handling a container containing the nerve agent. It was most likely that the container police are hunting for was linked to the attack four months earlier on the Skripals. [..] “In the four months since the Skripals and Nick Bailey were poisoned, no other people besides Dawn and Charlie have presented with symptoms. Their reaction is so severe it resulted in Dawn’s death and Charlie being critically ill. This means they must have got a high dose. Our hypothesis is they must have handled the container we are now seeking.”

“The carmaker blamed staffing shortages for the scandal..”

• Nissan Says Emissions And Fuel Economy Tests Were Falsified (R.)

Nissan has said it has found evidence of misconduct relating to exhaust emissions and fuel economy measurements for 19 models sold in Japan. The Japanese carmaker said on Monday it had discovered the testing environments for emissions and fuel economy in final vehicle inspections at most of its factories in Japan were not in line with requirements, and inspection reports were based on altered measurements. “A full and comprehensive investigation of the facts … including the causes and background of the misconduct, is under way,” Nissan said. The problems were found during voluntary compliance checks following an improper vehicle inspection scandal last year.

In October, a recall of 1.2m vehicles was triggered after Nissan said uncertified inspectors had signed off on final checks for cars sold in Japan. The carmaker blamed staffing shortages for the scandal, which caused annual operating profit to slide. Nissan said the latest misconduct did not compromise the safety of the affected models, and mileage readings were in line with levels presented in product catalogues. It was in the process of compiling data for the GT-R sports car to confirm it satisfied safety standards. The carmaker said it would take appropriate action to prevent similar problems in future.

Time to keep promises.

• Trump Slams Pfizer After July 1 Drug Price Hikes (R.)

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday took aim at Pfizer Inc and other U.S. drugmakers after they raised prices on some of their medicines on July 1, saying his administration would act in response. “Pfizer & others should be ashamed that they have raised drug prices for no reason.” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter on Monday. “We will respond!” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar followed up with his own tweet saying that drugmakers who have raised prices have created a tipping point in U.S. drug pricing policy. “Change is coming to drug pricing, whether painful or not for pharmaceutical companies,” Azar wrote. Neither Trump nor Azar detailed what policy changes would be implemented to decrease prices.

Trump had said in May that some drug companies would soon announce “voluntary, massive” cuts in prices, but none have materialized yet. During his presidential campaign, he promised lower U.S. drug costs. Pfizer raised list prices on around 40 medicines earlier this month. Those include Viagra, cholesterol drug Lipitor and arthritis treatment Xeljanz, according to Wells Fargo. List prices do not include rebates and discounts drugmakers may offer. “The list price remains unchanged for the majority of our medicines. Our portfolio includes more than 400 medicines and vaccines. We are modifying prices for approximately 10 percent of these, including some instances where we’re decreasing the price,” Pfizer spokeswoman Sally Beatty told Reuters.

Enough of this already. Stop it.

• Judge Rejects Trump Request For Long-Term Detention Of Immigrant Children (R.)

A U.S. federal judge on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s request to allow long-term detention of illegal immigrant children, a legal setback for President Donald Trump’s push to detain immigrant families taken into custody at the U.S.-Mexico border. Los Angeles U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee dismissed as “dubious” and “unconvincing” the U.S. Justice Department’s proposal to modify a 1997 settlement known as the Flores Agreement, which says that children cannot be held in detention for long periods. The government made its request in June after public outcry over its policy of separating children from parents who entered the United States illegally.

A judge in a different case in San Diego ordered the government last month to reunite the families it had separated. The government asserted in its Flores filing that the San Diego ruling would necessitate longer-term detention of children, since that would be the only way to both reunite them with their parents and keep the parents incarcerated during their immigration proceedings. Gee rejected that argument. “Defendants advance a tortured interpretation of the Flores Agreement in an attempt to show that the … injunction permits them to suspend the Flores release and licensure provisions,” she wrote.

“The solution to the problem will be to resettle these refugees in their countries..” “This can only happen when the conflicts raging in these countries are settled.”

• Egypt Rejects Europe’s Intent To Set Up ‘Regional Disembarkation Centres’ (AW)

Egypt’s opposition to establishing camps for screening migrants heading to Europe has made the European Union’s “regional disembarkation centres” proposal seem even more implausible. Cairo’s stand has underscored the deep worries in the Egyptian administration about the country’s increasing refugee responsibilities, analysts said. “This is a burden Egypt shoulders alone, without any support from the international community,” said MP Ghada Agamy, a member of the Egyptian parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee.

Egypt said it would not be able to accommodate “regional disembarkation centres” for migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe just hours after European leaders reached a controversial migration deal that included refugee centres in North Africa and “controlled centres” in European countries. Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria have rejected the idea of regional disembarkation centres. The Egyptian government said establishing refugee camps would violate the Egyptian constitution. Refugees, Egyptian parliament Speaker Ali Abdel A’al said, can live wherever they want in Egypt. “We do not establish camps here,” he said. Egyptian officials are concerned about Cairo’s ability to shoulder refugee-related burdens, analysts said, particularly at a time of economic transition.

[..] Instead of asking economically struggling countries to act as refugee hosts, European leaders need to solve the problems that cause these refugees to leave their countries in the first place, particularly the unrest that has engulfed many countries, Egyptian specialists said. “The solution to the problem will be to resettle these refugees in their countries,” said Youssef al-Metany, a refugee lawyer at local NGO Egyptian Network for International Law. “This can only happen when the conflicts raging in these countries are settled.”

Zoe Konstantopoulou is the former president of the Hellenic parliament.

• If You Love Greece, Help Us Get Rid Of Alexis Tsipras And His Zombie Party (G.)

Last week was the third anniversary of the 2015 referendum, in which the Greek people voted no to more austerity, and no to the violation of democracy by the creditors. The week before Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister who betrayed the brave no of the Greek people, visited London to present his capitulation to the troika of the European commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank as an achievement.

Imagine how the British people would view a prime minister elected to end privatisation, and who instead privatised almost every piece of public property; who was elected to serve peace, and who instead facilitated military action against targets in Syria and agreed to sell weapons to countries accused of committing international crimes; who was elected to protect people’s homes, and who stood by while banks seized them, leaving people homeless; who was elected to serve democracy and the independence of his country, and who instead turned it over to the EU, the IMF and the ECB. This is what Tsipras did to the Greek people.

I was a Syriza MP and president of the Greek parliament during the seven months of the first Syriza government. When Tsipras signed the toxic third memorandum in 2015, I fought hard to protect our parliamentary procedures that he and the troika violated. In spite of continuous pressure, I refused to bend our democratic rules and accept more illegal debt for our people. Together with dozens of other Syriza MPs, I voted against the monstrous agreement. Tsipras then dissolved parliament prematurely to get rid of me and the dissenting MPs.

Three years on, his capitulation to the troika has proved the disaster many of us predicted. People’s lives have become unbearable. Youth unemployment has become the norm and an estimated 8% of the population has left in search of work. The minimum salary doesn’t pay the bills, and hundreds of thousands of families go without electricity for extended periods of time. This tragedy began in 2010, but Tsipras’s so-called left government has done everything to prove that it can implement austerity better than its predecessors. It even brags about exceeding the troika’s cruel targets in cuts and taxes.

“..the landscape as demolition derby..”

• When Collapse Goes Kinetic (Kunstler)

I suppose many who think about the prospect of economic collapse imagine something like a Death Star implosion that simply obliterates the normal doings of daily life overnight, leaving everybody in a short, nasty, brutish, Hobbesian free-for-all that dumps the survivors in a replay of the Stone Age — without the consolation of golden ages yet to come that we had the first time around. The collapse of our techno-industrial set-up has actually been going on for some time, insidiously and corrosively, without shattering the scaffolds of seeming normality, just stealthily undermining them. I’d date the onset of it to about 2005 when the world unknowingly crossed an invisible border into the terra incognito of peak oil, by which, of course, I mean oil that societies could no longer afford to pull out of the ground.

It’s one thing to have an abundance of really cheap energy, like oil was in 1955. But when the supply starts to get sketchy, and what’s left can only be obtained at an economic loss, the system goes quietly insane. In the event, popular beliefs and behavior have turned really strange. We do things that are patently self-destructive, rationalize them with doctrines and policies that don’t add up, and then garnish them with wishful fantasies that offer hypothetical happy endings to plot lines that do not really tend in a rosy direction. The techno-narcissistic nonsense reverberating through the echo-chambers of business, media, and government aims to furnish that nostrum called “hope” to a nation that simply won’t admit darker outcomes to the terrible limits facing humanity.

Thus, we have the Tesla saga of electric motoring to save the day for our vaunted way of life (i.e. the landscape as demolition derby), the absurd proposals to colonize distant, arid, frigid, and airless Mars as a cure for ruining this watery blue planet ideally suited for our life-form, and the inane “singularity” narratives that propose to replace grubby material human life with a crypto-gnostic data cloud of never-ending cosmic orgasm. The psychological desperation is obvious. Apparently, there are moments in history when flying up your own butt-hole is the most comforting available option.

But how do you prove it?

• As Trial Opens, Man Dying Of Cancer Blames Monsanto’s Roundup (AFP)

A lawyer for a California groundskeeper dying of cancer took aim at Monsanto Monday as a jury began hearing the lawsuit accusing the chemical giant of ignoring health risks of its top-selling weed killer Roundup. “For the past 40 years, Monsanto has known the primary ingredient in Roundup can produce tumors in lab animals,” attorney Brent Wisner told a California state court. A jury is hearing the case brought by Dewayne Johnson, a 46-year-old father of two. Diagnosed in 2014 with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that affects white blood cells, Johnson used a Monsanto generic version of Roundup called “Ranger Pro” repeatedly in his job at a school in Benicia, California, after being promoted to groundskeeper in 2012.

In his opening statement, Wisner said Monsanto opted against warning consumers of the risks and that instead “they have fought science” by playing down the suspected link between the chemical herbicide and cancer. “Monsanto has gone out of its way to bully scientists and fight researchers,” he told the jury. The case in California Superior Court is the first trial in which Roundup is said to have caused cancer, a claim repeatedly denied by the chemical company. If Monsanto loses, the case could open the door to hundreds of additional lawsuits against the company recently acquired by German-based pharmaceutical and chemical group Bayer.

Johnson had little warning about the risks of Roundup, his lawyer said. “He was told you could drink it, it was completely non toxic,” Wisner said with his client sitting in the San Francisco courtroom. “You will hear testimony from him that he got drenched in it, repeatedly.” The lawyer said Johnson, who is between rounds of chemotherapy, “is actually on borrowed time, he is not supposed to be alive today.” A key to Johnson’s case will be convincing jurors that Monsanto’s pesticide — whose main ingredient is glyphosate — is responsible for the illness. Wisner contended glyphosate combined with an ingredient intended to help it spread over leaves in a cancer-causing “synergy.”

Debt Rattle May 26 2017

May 262017

May 26, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:34 am Finance Tagged with: ban, Brexit, detention, G7, IMF, Moody’s, NATO, NSA, Romer, Toronto, Troika, Trump 1 Response »

Henri Matisse Le Bonheur de Vivre 1906

• Trump Directly Scolds NATO Allies, Says They Owe ‘Massive’ Sums (R.)

• Trump Joins New-Look G7 Amid Trade, Climate Discord (AFP)

• US Appeals Court Refuses To Reinstate Travel Ban (R.)

• NSA Under Obama Secretly Spied On Americans For Years (Circa)

• UK Labour Party Slashes Tory Lead To Just Five Points In Latest Poll (Ind.)

• UK Election Campaign Resumes After Manchester Attack (AFP)

• Not A Little List: EU Draws Up Brexit Bill (R.)

• China’s Reforms Not Enough To Arrest Mounting Debt – Moody’s (R.)

• Toronto Area Home Sales Sink After Cooling Measures (G&M)

• World Bank Star Economist Paul Romer Sidelined in War Over Words (BBG)

• Fed Faces A ‘Surprise’ Problem On US Inflation (R.)

• No-Nonsense Finns Ready to Rain on Franco-German Euro Parade (BBG)

• Greece Debt Talks Remain Fraught Despite IMF Optimism (AFP)

• Unease On Greek Island of Chios Over New Migrant Detention Center (K.)

It’s an anti-Trump love fest.

Spending $1 billion on a new building that you will never be able to visit tells you what these people think of you. But the, NATO is the ideal vehicle for the arms industry: no democracy anywhere in sight.

• Trump Directly Scolds NATO Allies, Says They Owe ‘Massive’ Sums (R.)

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday intensified his accusations that NATO allies were not spending enough on defense and warned of more attacks like this week’s Manchester bombing unless the alliance did more to stop militants. In unexpectedly abrupt remarks as NATO leaders stood alongside him, Trump said certain member countries owed “massive amounts of money” to the United States and NATO – even though allied contributions are voluntary, with multiple budgets. His scripted comments contrasted with NATO’s choreographed efforts to play up the West’s unity by inviting Trump to unveil a memorial to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States at the new NATO headquarters building in Brussels.

“Terrorism must be stopped in its tracks, or the horror you saw in Manchester and so many other places will continue forever,” Trump said, referring to Monday’s suicide bombing in the English city that killed 22 people, including children. “These grave security concerns are the same reason that I have been very, very direct … in saying that NATO members must finally contribute their fair share,” Trump said. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg defended Trump, saying that although he was “blunt” he had “a very plain and clear message on the expectations” of allies. But one senior diplomat said Trump, who left the leaders’ dinner before it ended to fly to Italy for Friday’s Group of Seven summit, said the remarks did not go down well at all. “This was not the right place or time,” the diplomat said of the very public harangue. “We are left with nothing else but trying to put a brave face on it.”

In another unexpected twist, Trump called on NATO, an organization founded on collective defense against the Soviet threat, to include limiting immigration in its tasks. And Trump did say that the United States “will never forsake the friends who stood by our side” but NATO leaders had hoped he would more explicitly support the mutual defense rules of a military alliance’s he called “obsolete” during his campaign. Instead, he returned to a grievance about Europe’s drop in defense spending since the end of the Cold War and failed to publicly commit to NATO’s founding Article V rule which stipulates that an attack on one ally is an attack against all. “23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying for their defense,” Trump said, standing by a piece of the wreckage of the Twin Towers. “This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States, and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years,” Trump said as the other leaders watched.

It’ll give the press some more material to talk about on handshakes; it’s all they do these days anyway.

• Trump Joins New-Look G7 Amid Trade, Climate Discord (AFP)

G7 leaders meet Friday determined to put on a display of united resolve in the fight against jihadist terrorism, despite deep divisions on trade and global warming. The two-day summit in Sicily’s ancient hilltop resort of Taormina kicks off four days after children were among 22 people killed in a concert bomb attack in Manchester. British Prime Minister Theresa May will lead a discussion on terrorism in one of Friday’s working sessions and is expected to issue a call for G7 countries to put more pressure on internet companies to remove extremist content. “The fight is moving from the battlefield to the internet,” a senior British official said ahead of the talks.

With May and Donald Trump among four new faces in the club of the world’s major democracies, the gathering in Italy is being billed as a key test of how serious the new US administration is about implementing its radical policy agenda, particularly on climate change. Senior officials are preparing to work through the night of Friday-Saturday in a bid to bridge what appear to be irreconcilable differences over Trump’s declared intention of ditching the US commitment to the landmark Paris according on curbing carbon emissions. Officials acknowledge the summit, one of the shortest in the body’s history, is effectively about damage limitation against a backdrop of fears among US partners that the Trump presidency, with its ‘America First’ rhetoric, could undermine the architecture of the post-World War II world. Summit host Paolo Gentiloni, a caretaker Italian prime minister also making his G7 debut, acknowledged as much on the eve of the meeting.

Long dead. It was supposed to be for 30 days only anyway, and those are long gone.

• US Appeals Court Refuses To Reinstate Travel Ban (R.)

In a stinging rebuke to President Donald Trump, a U.S. appeals court refused on Thursday to reinstate his travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority nations, calling it discriminatory and setting the stage for a showdown in the Supreme Court. The decision, written by Chief Judge Roger Gregory, described Trump’s executive order in forceful terms, saying it uses “vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement that the government, which says the temporary travel ban is needed to guard against terrorist attacks, would seek a review of the case at the Supreme Court. “These clearly are very dangerous times and we need every available tool at our disposal to prevent terrorists from entering the United States and committing acts of bloodshed and violence,” said Michael Short, a White House spokesman.

He added that the White House was confident the order would ultimately be upheld by the judiciary. In its 10-3 ruling, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said those challenging the ban, including refugee groups and individuals, were likely to succeed on their claim that the order violates the U.S. Constitution’s bar against favoring one religion over another. Gregory cited statements by Trump during the 2016 presidential election calling for a Muslim ban. During the race, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslim’s entering the United States” in a statement on his website. The judge wrote that a reasonable observer would likely conclude the order’s “primary purpose is to exclude persons from the United States on the basis of their religious beliefs.”

Where’s the anger?

• NSA Under Obama Secretly Spied On Americans For Years (Circa)

The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community. More than 5%, or one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011, according to one classified internal report reviewed by Circa. The Obama administration self-disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing Oct. 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that set off alarm.

Trump was elected less than two weeks later. The normally supportive court censured administration officials, saying the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an “institutional lack of candor” and that the improper searches constituted a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue,” according to a recently unsealed court document dated April 26, 2017. The admitted violations undercut one of the primary defenses that the intelligence community and Obama officials have used in recent weeks to justify their snooping into incidental NSA intercepts about Americans. Circa has reported that there was a three-fold increase in NSA data searches about Americans and a rise in the unmasking of U.S. person’s identities in intelligence reports after Obama loosened the privacy rules in 2011. Officials like former National Security Adviser Susan Rice have argued their activities were legal under the so-called minimization rule changes Obama made, and that the intelligence agencies were strictly monitored to avoid abuses.

May was losing a lot of votes before AMnchester.

• UK Labour Party Slashes Tory Lead To Just Five Points In Latest Poll (Ind.)

Labour has slashed the Conservatives’ lead in the polls to just five points, the latest YouGov/Times results show. The party has made consistent gains in recent weeks as leader Jeremy Corbyn claimed his message was finally getting through to voters. The results show a four point change since last week when the Tories were leading by 9 percentage points – the first time Labour had narrowed the gap to single figures since Theresa May called the snap election on 18 April. The latest poll comes after the Prime Minister made an unprecedented U-turn over her “dementia tax” plans, just four days after making them the centrepiece of her election manifesto.

A separate poll, conducted after the Tory manifesto launch, found 28% of voters said they were less likely to vote Conservative because of the social care package. It comes as Mr Corbyn prepares to take the hugely controversial step of blaming Britain’s foreign wars for terror attacks such as the Manchester suicide bombing. The Labour leader will claim a link between “wars our government has supported or fought in other countries and terrorism here at home”, as he relaunches his party’s election campaign on Friday after the three-day pause. Mr Corbyn will stress his assessment is shared by the intelligence and security services and “in no way reduces the guilt of those who attack our children”. The Independent understands Mr Corbyn wishes to draw attention to his March 2011 vote against the Libya bombing – when he was one of just 13 MPs to oppose David Cameron.

May will use Manchester and fear for all she can suck out of it. Corbyn will be portrayed as incapable leader for the country, in the same way he has been called unfit to lead his party. He would have been way ahead in the polls if his own party had not turned on him. Re: Bernie.

• UK Election Campaign Resumes After Manchester Attack (AFP)

Britain’s politicians resume campaigning in earnest on Friday with national security in the spotlight, as police scramble to bust a Libya-linked jihadist network thought to be behind the Manchester terror attack. Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had suspended campaigning after Monday’s bombing at a Manchester pop concert, which killed 22 people, including many teenagers, and wounded dozens more. Eight suspects are currently in detention on UK soil in connection with the blast, for which the Islamic State group has claimed responsibility, while police in Libya have detained the father and brother of 22-year-old suicide bomber Salman Abedi. Washington’s top diplomat Rex Tillerson is due to visit London on Friday in an expression of solidarity, after Britain reacted furiously to leaks of sensitive details about the investigation to US media.

Opposition leader Corbyn in a speech in London later on Friday is expected to say it is the “responsibility” of governments to minimise the risk of terror by giving police the funding they need. A YouGov poll published in Friday’s edition of The Times put Conservatives on 43% compared to Labour on 38%, far better for Labour than the double-digit margin that had previously separately it from the ruling party. YouGov polled 2,052 people on Wednesday and Thursday. But analysts said that the Conservative prime minister – who previously served as interior minister for six years – could benefit at the polls from the shift in focus ahead of the general election on June 8. “If security and terrorism become more prominent then I can only see one winner from this – Theresa May,” said Steven Fielding, a professor of politics at the University of Nottingham. The YouGov poll also found that 41% of respondents said that the Conservatives would handle defence and security best, compared to 18% who said the same of Labour.

Will May be part of these discussions?

• Not A Little List: EU Draws Up Brexit Bill (R.)

The EU will next month demand Britain agree to pay a fixed percentage of the EU’s outstanding obligations on the day it leaves the bloc, in defiance of a British rejection of that logic as “preposterous”. A draft EU negotiating paper, seen by Reuters, that will be put to London when Brexit talks begin following a national election in Britain on June 8 makes clear that suggestions from Prime Minister Theresa May’s government that the Union might end up owing rather than getting money cut no ice in Brussels. The paper on principles of the financial settlement that the EU wants from London on departure in March 2019 sets no figure, and chief negotiator Michel Barnier has made clear it cannot be calculated until the end as it depends on the EU’s spending.

However, he wants an agreement on how the “Brexit bill” will be calculated, perhaps by late this year, before the Europeans agree to launch talks that May wants on a free trade agreement. EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker has said Britain may have to pay its 27 allies some €60 billion on departure and some experts estimated the up-front cost, before later refunds, could be nearly double that – suggestions May’s foreign minister Boris Johnson called “absolutely preposterous”. The paper to be discussed among diplomats next week before Barnier presents the opening demands to London in the week of June 19, spells out that while Britain will get some credit – notably its €39 billion share of the capital of the European Investment Bank.

But the list of what it must pay, and go paying for some years after Brexit, is much longer. Four pages of appendix details list more than 70 EU bodies and funds to which Britain has committed payment in a budget set out to 2020. Yet the three-page main document made no mention of Britain getting credit for a share of, say, EU buildings, as British ministers have said it should have. EU officials argue Britain was not asked to pay extra for existing infrastructure in Brussels when it first joined the bloc in 1973. Among obligations Britain will be asked to cover are the funding until summer 2021 of British teachers seconded to schools catering to the EU’s staff and diplomats.

Other payments include promises to fund Syrian refugees in Turkey, aid for the Central African Republic, the EU aviation safety agency and the European Institute for Gender Equality. “The United Kingdom obligations should be fixed as a percentage of the EU obligations calculated at the date of withdrawal in accordance with a methodology to be agreed in the first phase of the negotiations,” the paper states. It adds that people, businesses and organizations in Britain would continue to benefit from some EU funds for some time after Brexit. Britain has about 13% of the EU’s 507 million population and accounts for some 16% of its economy. Its net contribution to the EU’s €140 billion annual budget has typically been roughly €10 billion in recent years.

CHina is not in good shape. Moody’s diagnosis came late.

• China’s Reforms Not Enough To Arrest Mounting Debt – Moody’s (R.)

China’s structural reforms will slow the pace of its debt build-up but will not be enough to arrest it, and another credit rating cut for the country is possible down the road unless it gets its ballooning credit in check, officials at Moody’s said. The comments came two days after Moody’s downgraded China’s sovereign ratings by one notch to A1, saying it expects the financial strength of the world’s second-largest economy to erode in coming years as growth slows and debt continues to mount. In announcing the downgrade, Moody’s Investors Service also changed its outlook on China from “negative” to “stable”, suggesting no further ratings changes for some time.

China has strongly criticized the downgrade, asserting it was based on “inappropriate methodology”, exaggerating difficulties facing the economy and underestimating the government’s reform efforts. In response, senior Moody’s official Marie Diron said on Friday that the ratings agency has been encouraged by the “vast reform agenda” undertaken by the Chinese authorities to contain risks from the rapid rise in debt. However, while Moody’s believes the reforms may slow the pace at which debt is rising, they will not be enough to arrest the trend and levels will not drop dramatically, Diron said. Diron said China’s economic recovery since late last year was mainly thanks to policy stimulus, and expects Beijing will continue to rely on pump-priming to meet its official economic growth targets, adding to the debt overhang.

Moody’s also is waiting to see how some of the announced measures, such as reining in local government finances, are actually implemented, Diron, associate managing director of Moody’s Sovereign Risk Group, told reporters in a webcast. China may no longer get an A1 rating if there are signs that debt is growing at a pace that exceeds Moody’s expectations, Li Xiujun, vice president of credit strategy and standards at the ratings agency, said in the same webcast. “If in the future China’s structural reforms can prevent its leverage from rising more effectively without increasing risks in the banking and shadow banking sector, then it will have a positive impact on China’s rating,” Li said. But Li added: “If there are signs that China’s debt will keep rising and the rate of growth is beyond our expectations, leading to serious capital misallocation, then it will continue to weigh on economic growth in the medium term and impact the sovereign rating negatively.”

Down 26% yoy.

• Toronto Area Home Sales Sink After Cooling Measures (G&M)

House sales fell 26% in the Toronto region in the month following the Ontario government’s introduction of a foreign-buyer’s tax as many potential purchasers stepped back and waited to assess the market impact. In the 30 days after the province announced the immediate introduction of a 15-per-cent foreign-buyer’s tax on April 20, the number of houses sold in the Greater Toronto Area fell 26% compared with the same period last year, according to data compiled by Toronto realtor John Pasalis, president of Realosophy Realty Inc. Communities north of Toronto saw the greatest declines between April 20 and May 20, with sales falling 61% in Richmond Hill, 46% in Markham and 44% in Newmarket. The City of Toronto recorded a 23% drop in the number of homes sold, while Brampton and Mississauga west of Toronto had sales declines of 16% and 27%, respectively.

The sales review looked only at freehold homes, including detached and semi-detached houses, but did not include condominiums. The drop in selling activity is part of a broad cooling in the Toronto region market that began in April as buyers moved to the sidelines while home owners rushed to list their houses to try to cash in before the market peaked. In the first two weeks of May alone, sales of all types of homes in the GTA fell 16% compared with the same period in May last year, while the number of new listings soared 47%, according to data compiled by the Toronto Real Estate Board. The average GTA home sold for $890,284 in the first two weeks of May, a 17-per-cent increase from a year earlier, primarily because of large gains earlier this year. But the price was down 3% compared with April, when the average sale price for all types of GTA homes was $920,791.

Mr. Pasalis said he does not believe the new foreign-buyer’s tax is directly responsible for much of the drop in sales since April 20 because foreign buyers were not a large enough part of the market to cause such a significant decline, and many foreign buyers will qualify for rebates of the tax. Instead, he believes the drop is a result, in part, to a decline in demand from domestic investors who were purchasing second properties to rent or flip. Most investors have stopped buying as they wait to see the impact of a suite of new measures announced by the province in April, including the foreign-buyer’s tax, he said. “They disappeared – no one is talking about buying money-losing rental properties any more,” Mr. Pasalis said. “The whole excitement and euphoria is kind of gone right now.”

The fight over conventional economic theories.

• World Bank Star Economist Paul Romer Sidelined in War Over Words (BBG)

The World Bank’s chief economist has been stripped of his management duties after researchers rebelled against his efforts to make them communicate more clearly, including curbs on the written use of “and.” Paul Romer is relinquishing oversight of the Development Economics Group, the research hub of the Washington-based development lender, according to an internal staff announcement seen by Bloomberg. Kristalina Georgieva, the chief executive for the bank’s biggest fund, will take over management of the unit July 1. Romer will remain chief economist, providing management with “timely thought leadership on trends directly affecting our client countries, including the ‘future of work,’” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in the note to staff dated May 9.

Romer said he met resistance from staff when he tried to refine the way they communicate. “I was in the position of being the bearer of bad news,” he said in an interview. “It’s possible that I was focusing too much on the precision of the communications and not enough on the feelings my messages would invoke.” [..] But in recent years, his attacks on the credibility of macroeconomic models irritated many of his peers. His combativeness didn’t endear him to some of the more than 600 economists who work in DEC, according to people familiar with the matter. Romer wanted DEC to set the intellectual agenda among those who think deeply about how to help the world’s poorest countries, said one of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The World Bank is already considered a major source of development research, ranking first among institutions in terms of the number of times its work is cited, ahead of Brown University, the London School of Economics and Harvard University. But Romer expressed to those around him that the department should communicate more clearly, dive right into public debates, and align its work with the institution’s goals of ending extreme poverty and reducing inequality. It didn’t take him long to shake things up. He declared several positions redundant and enforced term limits on senior managers. In the interview, Romer said he cut more than $1 million in annual expenses from the group’s budget.

A fight between fabricated numbers.

• Fed Faces A ‘Surprise’ Problem On US Inflation (R.)

Recent data on the performance of the U.S. economy has been generally on the soft side, a sore point discussed at length by Federal Reserve officials at their latest meeting, minutes of the gathering released on Wednesday showed. In fact, measures developed by Citigroup economists to track how incoming economic data stacks up against market expectations show the latest numbers from the United States have been falling persistently short of forecasts. Meanwhile, Citi’s comparable “economic surprise” indexes for other regions show just the opposite: upside surprises. Of particular concern for the Fed are recent undershoots on key gauges of inflation that have been lagging the central bank’s stated target of 2% annualized consumer price growth.

Market-based measures of long-term inflation expectations have also weakened substantially, enough so that Fed policymakers agreed at their last meeting that before raising rates again they would need stronger data to confirm recent weakness was not a new trend. With doubts rising over U.S. President Donald Trump’s ability to deliver policies to promote faster economic growth, many of these gauges have fallen back to near Election Day levels. Citi’s inflation surprise indexes underscore the Fed’s anxiety. [..] recent U.S. inflation readings have returned to their long-term trend of underperforming against forecasts after a brief run of upside surprises earlier this year.

Meanwhile, inflation reports from Europe have topped expectations by the widest margin on record. The rest of the so-called Group of 10 largest developed economies are meanwhile beating forecasts by the most since the financial crisis nearly a decade ago, even after taking into account the drag from U.S. numbers. Even Japan, notorious for its decades-long struggles against deflation, is posting inflation data notably above forecasts.

Will France and Germany push through a closer union despite the protests? They could….

• No-Nonsense Finns Ready to Rain on Franco-German Euro Parade (BBG)

The euro area should focus on implementing its banking union and consigning bailouts to the history books, rather than exploring ambitious ideas such as a common budget or shared liabilities, according to Finland’s finance minister. “We’re willing to engage in a discussion on different scenarios on the future of European Monetary Union,” Petteri Orpo said in an emailed response to questions Wednesday. “I would be cautious about proposals that aren’t consistent with the current stage of political union in Europe, such as eurobonds.” The debate over the future of the EU has received new impetus following the U.K.’s decision to leave, with the European Commission outlining five possible scenarios.

Those hoping for a re-start in the integration drive in response to populist criticisms have drawn new energy from the lovefest on display in Berlin when German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted a first meeting with Emmanuel Macron, the new French president. Italy and Spain, meanwhile, are renewing their push for mutually-backed debt. The priorities of Finland’s finance minister are not as lofty. “The banking union is by far the most important element,” Orpo said. “Risk reduction must come before risk sharing.” Finland may have a special interest in boosting the banking union now that the largest Nordic lender, Nordea Bank, is considering relocating its headquarters to Helsinki from Stockholm.

My long-term point exactly: “Greece cannot grow while maintaining such a high surplus,” Rice said.”

• Greece Debt Talks Remain Fraught Despite IMF Optimism (AFP)

Critical talks on easing Greece’s massive debt burden remain fraught with conflict, despite assurances from the IMF on Thursday that the sides are closer to an agreement. A deal to secure debt relief for Athens from the eurozone is the missing piece to unlocking loans the country needs to make debt payments and begin to recover from the years-long crisis. But transcripts of part of the recent discussions between the IMF, the ECB and eurozone finance ministers published by Greek financial website Euro2day on Thursday show many disputes remain and few of the participants are satisfied, least of all Greece Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos. He slammed one of the proposals floated in the discussions the “worst of all worlds” for Greece. “I don’t think anyone here can say that is a good deal for us, who have negotiated in good faith.”

This seems to contradict comments from an IMF official Thursday, who said the differences are narrowing even though the fund needs more specifics on a debt relief plan before it can agree to release more financing. “Everyone is optimistic that agreement can be reached and hopefully can be reached at the next Eurogroup meeting” in mid-June, IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters. In contrast, the IMF’s main negotiator, Poul Thomsen, said he was “very far away from being able to tell our board that we are close to a strategy we can agree to” on debt relief, according to the transcripts. [..] Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem floated the possibility of the IMF approving a loan for Greece, but withholding disbursement of the funds until it had sufficient details on the debt relief — something virtually unheard of in IMF aid programs.

Thomsen said it was an “interesting proposal” that he could raise with the management, even while Tsakalotos slammed the idea. One advantage to the unusual arrangement, were the IMF to agree, is that it would take the discussion of Greek debt relief out of play in Germany’s election in September. The German public is hostile to more financial support for Athens. Rice vehemently denied doing any political favors for Germany. “We are exploring all options within our existing practices and rules,” he said. IMF lending depends on each country’s circumstances “but we try to be as flexible as we can,” he added. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called the lack of a deal at Monday’s talks “a major failure,” and said “I’m not very optimistic that things will improve.”

The IMF also disagrees with Europe’s forecasts for Greek growth and primary fiscal surplus which are key to the debt discussions, Rice said. Europe continues to forecast a surplus excluding debt payments of 3.5% of GDP even after 2022, which the IMF believes is not sustainable and would impose undue hardship on the country. Athens could better use its budget to fuel growth and “Greece cannot grow while maintaining such a high surplus,” Rice said. “It does not help anyone to have assumptions that are overly optimistic.”

Detention centers for people fleeing western-induced misery and chaos breaks so many international laws that these laws are invalidated in one fell swoop.

• Unease On Greek Island of Chios Over New Migrant Detention Center (K.)

People living near the location of a new migrant detention center on the island of Chios say they will fight its construction. The facility will be used as a holding center for those who have had their asylum requests rejected and are due to be deported. A high-ranking police official, Nikolaos Zisimopoulos, informed authorities on Chios that construction of the new center would begin immediately, and containers carrying building materials arrived on the island Thursday. The municipal council called an emergency meeting last night to discuss the matter, as residents say their patience is reaching breaking point and that they will take action to fight the center’s construction.

Chios Mayor Manolis Vournous has asked for more time to allow the island’s residents to discuss the location of the new center. The Hellenic Police (ELAS), however, says there is no more time for any further discussion as the situation on the island’s existing camps is dire. ELAS also notes that a shift in the main flow of migrants toward Chios and away from Lesvos is adding fuel to the fire. Authorities say this shift can be attributed to the migrants knowing Chios does not have a closed facility like Lesvos does. So far this month more than half of all refugee and migrant arrivals in Greece have come to Chios.

Debt Rattle March 19 2017

Mar 192017

March 19, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:35 am Finance Tagged with: detention, Greece, Kurds, land tax, Merkel, refugees, stamp duty, Turkey, Yellen Comments Off

DPC Broadway from Chambers Street, NYC 1910

• More Proof of Janet Yellen’s Idiocy (David Stockman)

• How The Bosses ‘Game’ Workers (Moore)

• Oz Parliamentary Budget Office Costs Plan To Kill Off Stamp Duty (SMH)

• Russian Parliament Backs Investigation Into US Media (R.)

• German Foreign Minister: Turkey Further Away From EU Membership Than Ever (R.)

• Turkey Furious As Kurds Rally In Frankfurt With PKK Insignia (AFP)

• Fear Stalks Refugees Huddled Along Hungary’s Border (G.)

• Dirty Deals Done Dirt Cheap (ECRE)

• Desperate Conditions In Greece’s Migration Jails (AlA)

• ‘Exiles in the Aegean’: A Year After The EU–Turkey Deal (Christopoulos)

“..corporate America will desperately unload inventories, workers and assets to appease the robo-machines of Wall Street.”

• More Proof of Janet Yellen’s Idiocy (David Stockman)

During the last 129 months, the Fed has held 86 meetings. On 83 of those occasions it either cut rates or left them unchanged. So you can perhaps understand why Wednesday’s completely expected (for the last three weeks!) 25 bips left the day traders nonplussed. The Dow rallied over 100 points that day. Traders understandably believe that this monetary farce can continue indefinitely, and that our Keynesian school marm’s post-meeting presser was evidence that the Fed is still their friend. No it isn’t! Janet Yellen’s sing-song gibberish was the equivalent of a monetary DEFCON 1, alerting all except the most addicted Kool-Aid drinkers to get out of the casino.

Our monetary politburo has expanded its balance sheet by a lunatic 22X during the last three decades and in the process has systematically falsified financial asset prices and birthed a mutant debt-fueled of simulacrum of prosperity. But once it begins to withdraw substantial amounts of cash from the canyons of Wall Street as per its newly reaffirmed “normalization” policy, the whole house of cards is destined to collapse. There will be a stock market implosion soon, and that will in turn generate panic in the C-suites as the value of stock options vanish. Like in the fall of 2008 — except on an even more sweeping and long-lasting scale — corporate America will desperately unload inventories, workers and assets to appease the robo-machines of Wall Street. But there is nothing left to brake the casino’s fall.

If the money market rate conforms to the Fed’s latest command and settles at 88 basis points, it is still effectively at the zero bound. Our monetary politburo is thus still out of dry powder — except for the nuclear option of QE4, which Yellen herself made quite clear would never happen until after the next recession is already underway. Yet by then it will be too late — way too late. That’s because the market is priced as if the business cycle has been outlawed and as if the feckless band of Keynesian pretenders who have seized control of financial markets have ushered in the Nirvana of permanent full-employment. World without end. Needless to say, they haven’t because they haven’t repealed the law of supply and demand. That is, if the Fed plans to keep raising until rates until they reach 3.0% by 2019, it will have to suck massive amounts of cash out of the financial markets.

So doing, it will drive long-term yields substantially higher and thereby obliterate the ultra-low cap rate delusion on which the entire regime of Bubble Finance is based. In fact, in a blathering response at her presser about the pace by which the Fed intends to shrink its bloated $4.4 trillion balance sheet, Yellen proved she is clueless about the financial firestorm our rogue central bank is about to unleash. She claimed that the Fed could implement 3-4 money market rate increases a year, while deferring the shrinkage of its balance sheet into the indefinite future. But that it most assuredly cannot do. With a staggering overhang of $2.1 trillion of excess reserves in the financial system, even our vaunted monetary politburo cannot command the tides to recede. If it wants the money rate to rise on its appointed path through 2019, it must drain loads of cash from Wall Street.

“In Australia, the bottom 3.9 million people share the same level of wealth as the top 10 individuals. And the gap is growing.”

• How The Bosses ‘Game’ Workers (Moore)

When was the last time we heard someone talking about economic sustainability? When was the last time an economist was heard talking about equitable sharing of the economic growth? Australia “averted a recession” with 1.1 per cent growth in the December quarter. Let’s celebrate! Good news. Well, good for some. Not so good for others. Increasing disparity! The good news: company profits are “at record levels”. In the December quarter company profits rose by a whopping 20.1 per cent. One of the big winners is mining. Mining! Those same companies who were crying doom and gloom a few years ago when they defeated the government’s attempt to apply some level of taxation on their “super profits”. The bad news: well, that is for wage earners. While profits grew by 20 per cent, average wages dropped.

Tom Kennedy, of JP Morgan, explained to the ABC: “Some of the support for profits in the non-mining economy seems to be from weaker wage payments, which fell 0.5 per cent quarter-on-quarter (annual run rate slowed further to 1 per cent year-on-year) on the precarious combination of weaker wage growth, fewer hours and elevated underemployment.” In simple language Kennedy could have said: business increased profits by cutting workers’ wages, reducing hours and by employing less people. Any number of economic inquiries or reports suggest good ideas about taxation, employment and economic growth. A much smaller number examines what is equitable sharing of wealth. Even in the current climate, where the government is constantly bombarding the community about living within our means, Turnbull’s government is determined to deliver a $50 billion tax break for the corporate sector.

They have a good return on investment for political party donations. In Australia, the bottom 3.9 million people share the same level of wealth as the top 10 individuals. And the gap is growing. Sensible taxation measures are just one method of reducing the disparity by applying straightforward rules that are not subject to exemptions. In a globalised environment, corporations avoid current tax measures by moving money around the world at a touch of a button. One alternative, to provide a fair way to levy the corporate sector and one that is difficult to “game”, is a tax on gross turnover within a country. Such a tax is simple. It is hard to avoid. Big business would pay their share and contribute to community infrastructure from which they draw significant advantage.

Personal income is also “gamed”. American tycoon Warren Buffett noted his secretary paid a higher percentage of income tax than him simply because he could afford better accounting advice. The answer is to apply a “floor level” for high-income earners. It would catch the 77 individuals, identified by the Australian Tax Office in 2015, who earned over $1 million and paid NO tax. With the “Buffett Rule”, this group of selfish leeches would not have been able to avoid their fair contribution to the education, health and infrastructure that they all use. The Australia Institute identifies an injection of $2.5 billion if a 35 per cent “Buffet Rule” level was applied to just the top 1 per cent of salary earners. Surely good government means finding ways to reduce disparity. Inequality is fodder for populist movements around the world. A disparity index is just one way to remind our politicians of their responsibilities.

Thinking about land tax is not a bad thing. But using it to lure more people into mortgage debt is.

• Oz Parliamentary Budget Office Costs Plan To Kill Off Stamp Duty (SMH)

The Parliamentary Budget Office has costed a proposal that would kill stamp duty and replace it with land tax, saving home buyers up to $40,000 in Sydney and $55,000 in Melbourne, while delivering billions of dollars to fund schools and hospitals. The costing will put land tax back up for debate when Parliament returns next week as the government looks to mark its authority on the housing affordability crisis less than two months out from the federal budget. Both the NSW and Victorian governments have thrown their weight behind broader stamp duty tax reform and Treasurer Scott Morrison has indicated his support for a transition to taxing land. “When you talk about tax reform, this is far and away the biggest prize on offer,” said John Daley, the chief executive of independent think tank the Grattan Institute.

Under current regulations, home buyers pay tens of thousands of dollars in stamp duty, creating an additional hurdle for people looking to enter the market amid soaring property prices in Sydney and Melbourne. Removing stamp duty and implementing an annual land tax on all newly purchased homes would help level the playing field and generate billions of dollars in annual returns to the NSW and Victorian budgets, while also relieving federal government spending over a 15-year-period. Under the policy submitted by the Greens and backed by the Grattan Institute and the Council of the Ageing, home buyers would no longer stump up to $40,000 in stamp duty when purchasing a property worth $1 million in Sydney. In Melbourne, a home buyer would save $55,000 stamp duty on a property of the same value.

Research from the Grattan Institute shows an annual tax of $1 per every $1000 of a home’s value would cost the median Sydney household $845 a year in tax and the median Melbourne home $623 a year. To offset the cost of losing lucrative stamp duty payments, the Commonwealth would have to loan money to the states. The loans would peak in 2020 when the hit to the budget bottom line would grow to $800 million. Rising land tax revenues would enable the states to pay back the loan by 2030. The Parliamentary Budget Office estimates that in the next four years alone the tax would generate $2.3 billion in revenue for the states, but warned the overall costings were of low reliability due to the variations in number of properties sold across Australia each year.

“..the senator should have included a clause drawing up a list of books for burning..”

• Russian Parliament Backs Investigation Into US Media (R.)

The Russian lower house of parliament, the State Duma, has approved a proposal to launch an investigation into U.S. media organizations that operate in Russia, it said in a statement posted on its web site late on Friday. The investigation, which will be conducted by the Duma’s information policy, technologies and communications committee, will check whether CNN, the Voice of America, Radio Liberty and “other American media” are complying with Russian law. The statement said the Duma backed the move on Friday evening after Konstantin Zatulin, an MP from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, proposed an investigation to retaliate for what he called a “repressive” U.S. move against Russian state-funded broadcaster RT.

He said he was referring to an initiative by U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who has introduced a bill to empower the Justice Department to investigate possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act by RT. Shaheen, a Democrat, cited a U.S. intelligence agency assessment that suggested RT was part of a Russian influence campaign to help Donald Trump win the White House last year. The Kremlin and RT have strongly rejected that allegation. Foreign media in Russia are overseen by the Russian Foreign Ministry, whose spokeswoman Maria Zakharova this week singled out Shaheen’s demarche for criticism, quipping ironically that the senator should have included a clause drawing up a list of books for burning. The U.S. move also solicited the ire of Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief, who on Wednesday told the daily Izvestia it had echoes of the activities of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy..

EU nations would never have accepted a nation of 82 million muslims as a member. Turkey’s as far away as ever, not more, not less.

• German Foreign Minister: Turkey Further Away From EU Membership Than Ever (R.)

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said in an interview with news magazine Der Spiegel published on Saturday that Turkey has never been less likely to join the European Union than now, as relations between Ankara and Berlin hit a low point. “Today Turkey is definitely further away from becoming a member of the European Union than ever before,” Gabriel said in the interview. He also said that he always had doubts about whether Turkey should join the EU but found himself in the minority in his Social Democrat (SPD) party. Before taking power in Germany in 2005, Chancellor Angela Merkel was an outspoken opponent of Turkey’s membership and instead called for a “privileged partnership”.

Gabriel disliked that idea because he thought it would make Turks feel like second-class Europeans but he said his opinion had changed since Britain’s decision to leave the EU. “Today the situation is totally different due to Brexit. We’d be well advised to bring about a ‘special relationship’ with Great Britain after its exit from the EU,” Gabriel said. “That will be an important learning process for the EU and perhaps some of it can serve as a blueprint for other countries in the long term,” Gabriel said. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is courting Turks abroad for support in an April 16 referendum that would grant him sweeping new powers. He infuriated Germany and the Netherlands by describing bans on planned rallies by Turkish ministers as “fascist”. The arrest of a Turkish-German journalist in Ankara has also caused upset.

EU and US still define PKK as a terrorist organization. That should be reconsidered.

• Turkey Furious As Kurds Rally In Frankfurt With PKK Insignia (AFP)

Some 30,000 pro-Kurdish demonstrators rallied in the German city of Frankfurt on Saturday calling for “democracy in Turkey” and urging a “no” vote in an upcoming referendum on expanding Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s powers. Turkey angrily denounced the demonstration as “unacceptable”. Many demonstrators carried symbols of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has battled the Turkish state for over three decades in a continuing insurgency. Tensions are already running high between Berlin and Ankara after German authorities refused to allow some Turkish ministers to campaign in the country for a “yes” vote in the April 16 referendum that would hand Erdogan an executive presidency. Significantly more people turned up than organisers had been expecting for the rally, which took place ahead of the annual Newroz festival when Kurds mark the traditional New Year.

Saturday’s protest march in Frankfurt went off peacefully, a police spokesman said. Some of the participants carried flags and banners of the outlawed PKK, as well as portraits of the group’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence in Turkey, calling for his release. Police said no banners or flags were confiscated so as to not provoke the crowd, but added that photos had been taken which could lead to future prosecutions. Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said in a statement that the presidency “condemned in the strongest terms” the fact that the rally had been allowed to go ahead. “It is unacceptable to see PKK symbols and slogans… when Turkish ministers and lawmakers are being prevented from meeting their own citizens,” he said. He said the “scandal” of the Frankfurt demonstration showed that some EU countries were actively working in favour of a “no” vote in the critical referendum.

For those hailing Merkel for her dealings with Trump, and calling her the leader of the western world: this is what she produced in Europe, where she really is the leader.

• Fear Stalks Refugees Huddled Along Hungary’s Border (G.)

Behind a high metal fence topped with loose curls of barbed wire, the newly positioned blue shipping containers lined neatly along Hungary’s southern border at Röszke provide a glimpse of the new plans of the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, to detain thousands of asylum seekers, including children. Construction on Hungary’s new detention camps and a second electrified fence, which stretches 108 miles along its border with Serbia, are now under way despite virulent opposition from the UN, human rights groups and a European court ruling which it was hoped might halt the country’s determination to imprison refugees. President János Áder signed the bill, which will allow all asylum seekers to be locked up in detention camps, and will also permit police to return asylum seekers from anywhere in the country back to Serbia.

Orbán, leader of the rightwing populist Fidesz party, has described migration as the “Trojan horse for terrorism” and considers Muslim migrants a threat to European identity and culture. More than 7,000 asylum seekers trying to reach western Europe are stuck in Serbia, outside the EU, following Hungary’s decision last summer to introduce strict limits on the number of refugees allowed to enter and began patrolling the borders with a controversial new wing of its police force known as Határvadász, or border hunters. At an open transit camp in Subotica, Serbia, 15 miles from the border crossing, where families and unaccompanied children wait to have their asylum claims processed in Hungary, officials say the new law will cause trouble for Serbia and more hardship for people here.

“We are like storage for the Hungarians,” said Nikola Ljubomirovic, coordinator at the camp, run by Serbia’s commissariat for refugees and migrants. [..] The majority of families at this camp are fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. They have made arduous journeys but are out of funds which would enable them to try other routes to Europe. Their only option is to claim asylum in Hungary. They face a long wait. Hungary has reduced the number of asylum seekers it accepts per day from Serbia from 200 in 2015 to 10 in January this year. The decision as to which 10 people can enter the country every weekday via two transit zones, Horgos and Kelebija, is arbitrary, far from transparent, and appears to be managed in part by refugee community leaders, leading to uncertainty and confusion among already desperate families.

“..a legitimate objective for the EU Member States to pursue is undermining rather than ensuring the right to asylum..”

• Dirty Deals Done Dirt Cheap (ECRE)

The impact of the EU Turkey – Deal is widely debated and often misrepresented. The triumphant progress reports of the Commission hail the drop in numbers of refugees arriving in Greece and people drowning in the Aegean, but ignore the wider devastating impact of Europe’s containment policy on the international protection regime and beyond. If anything, one-year into its existence the deal has “succeeded” in contributing to problematic developments in four inter-linked ways: It is a key factor in the transformation of the political debate at EU level, which moves towards a consensus that a legitimate objective for the EU Member States to pursue is undermining rather than ensuring the right to asylum (enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights) is.

By endorsing this deal, the EU has jeopardized not only its own credibility as a global human rights actor but also the values of democracy, respect for fundamental rights and the rule of law upon which it is based. It has become the blueprint for outsourcing Europe’s protection responsibility to third countries often characterized by instability and with problematic human rights records in exchange for development aid or political favours as if refugees were tradable commodities. Finally, it has transferred substantial political capital from the EU to the regimes in question, leaving the EU beholden –with Turkey itself as the most obvious example of the increasing ability of these third countries to influence Europe rather than the other way around. No, for Europeans who believe in universal human rights there is nothing to celebrate but lots to regret at the one-year anniversary of the EU-Turkey Deal!

There needs to be an EU summit on this, and a UN summit on the whole refugee issue. But I’ve been saying that for a long time, and it still has not happened. It will be done only when chaos rules and it’s too late.

• Desperate Conditions In Greece’s Migration Jails (AlA)

Greece has struggled to implement the controversial EU-Turkey deal agreed last March, and many who arrived on the islands after March 19, 2016, ended up being held in closed detention facilities for months on end. This treatment of new arrivals is likely to only become even more strict. Greek authorities are building new detention facilities for irregular migrants on Samos, Lesvos and Kos, while looking for spaces in the islands of Leros and Chios. Maarten Verwey, coordinator for the implementation of the EU-Turkey agreement, said that new detention facilities in Greece would be temporary. But a year ago, the UN’s refugee agency decided not to back Greek authorities. “We will not provide support to mandatory ‘detention centers’ for refugees in Greece,” said an official announcement from the UNHCR.

Greece is using ex-military camps, police stations and specially built detention centres to house those seeking refuge in the medium term. These are different from the reception and identification centres at the hotspots where newly arrived refugees and migrants are initially held. There are currently six detention centres with a total of 5,215 places in Amygdaleza, Petrou Ralli, Corinth, Paranesti, Xanthi and Orestiada. A new report, titled Forgotten, by Aitima, an Athens-based NGO, says there are some 2,000 “irregular migrants” now detained in Greece – but this number might increase fast in the next few months as pre-departure facilities on the islands are completed. Officials believe that the creation of “closed-structure facilities”, each with a capacity of 150-200 people, will be the key to easing pressure on islands where more than 10,000 new arrivals are stranded.

Conditions inside existing detention facilities in Greece continue to be alarming. Most are without hot water, reports Aitima. They have no heating, there are no interpreters, no social workers and no psychologists. Detained migrants complain about inedible food. No provisions of clothes and shoes from the authorities are given. Doctors visit detention areas only in very urgent cases.

History repeating.

• ‘Exiles in the Aegean’: A Year After The EU–Turkey Deal (Christopoulos)

Bert Birtles, an Australian journalist and poet, arrived in Athens in the fall of 1935 to meet Dora “at sunset under the Parthenon”. Very soon, the interest of the young devoted admirers of classical Greece shifted from the archaeological ruins to contemporary politics. In 1936, following a fascist coup, Bert and Dora started visiting islands of the Aegean that were used as destinations for exiles. In 1938, Birtles published Exiles in the Aegean, his “personal narrative of Greek politics and travel”. The book offers an exciting first-hand chronicle of the experiences and lives of the exiled leftists on the islands of Anafi and Gavdos, but also Leros, Karpathos and Lesvos. These islands continued to operate as spaces of “administrative displacement” throughout the twentieth century, and it was only in 1974, after the end of the colonels’ dictatorship, that this practice came to an end.

Even for my generation, born in the late 1960s, the phrase “to the dry islands” was the synonym of isolation, just as the phrase “to the mountains” was the synonym of resistance against the Axis forces in the 1940s. And then, in the 1980s, the “dry islands” became the ideal tourist resort, one of the must-see destinations of the world: a synonym of pleasure and relaxation. At the dawn of the 21st century, the islands of the eastern Aegean, close to the Turkish coast, became the first entry point to the EU for the thousands fleeing their countries, either for fear of being persecuted, or just in search of a decent life in Europe. Islands became the stepping stone to Athens, and, in turn, Athens a stepping stone to northern Europe. Islands offer a prototype for an exercise in control and biopolitics, as Foucault would put it.

The pre-1974 Greek state, which was not exactly famous for its democratic culture, knew this well. The European Union, on the other hand, only really realised this a year ago, with the infamous EU-Turkey statement addressing what the Europeans labelled a “migration crisis”, i.e. the arrival of a million refugees in a continent of half a billion inhabitants… Islands, both now and then, are regarded as the ideal quarantine zone: first it was for communists so they wouldn’t intoxicate their environment with their ideas, now for migrants and refugees, with a twofold objective. First, to send the message that this is what lies ahead for those who intend to make their way across the Aegean. Second, to send a message to European citizens and to address their primary fear: the buffer zone at the periphery of the EU ensures that no more refugees and immigrants can enter the ‘promised land’.

Debt Rattle March 23 2016

Mar 232016

March 23, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:37 am Finance Tagged with: bubble, central banks, China, debt, deficit, detention, leverage, parasite, refugees, stock rally 5 Responses »

Jack Delano Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, Sibley, Missouri 1943

• Bank Earnings Get Mauled by “Leveraged Loan” Time Bomb (WS)

• Former Stock Darlings Japan, Europe Rebuked as Stimulus Gets Costly (BBG)

• Technical Analysts Warn This Stock Rally Is Not Going to Last (BBG)

• London House Prices Rose Almost £500 A Day In January (Guardian)

• Property Bubble Ghost Haunts Central Bankers Trying to Boost Prices (BBG)

• US Mining Losses Last Year Wipe Out Profits From Past Eight Years (WSJ)

• Mounting Debts Derail China Plans To Cut Steel, Coal Glut (Reuters)

• China May Adopt Tobin Tax on Short-Term Capital Flows (BBG)

• Trade Deficits Come Due Someday (BBG)

• Michael Hudson On Killing The Host (NC)

• What Happens When The US Dollar Is No Longer A Hedge Fund Hotel? (BBG)

• French Central Banker Wants Eurozone Finance Minister With Sweeping Powers (FT)

• It’s Not Going To End Well BUT Central Banks Have Plenty Of Ammo Left (Faber)

• Plant-Growing Season In UK Now A Month Longer Than In 1990 (Guardian)

• A Violent Coming-of-Age For Europe (Papachelas)

• NGOs Withdraw As Greece Refugee Camps Turn Into Detention Centers (Kath.)

• UN Slams Refugee ‘Detention Facilities’ In Greece (AFP)

From junk bonds to junk loans.

• Bank Earnings Get Mauled by “Leveraged Loan” Time Bomb (WS)

Banks have a few, let’s say, issues, among them: a source of big-fat investment banking fees is collapsing before their very eyes. S&P Capital IQ reported today that there was an improvement in the “distress ratio” of junk bonds, after nearly a year of brutal deterioration that had pushed it beyond where it had been right after Lehman’s bankruptcy. The recent surge in oil prices seems to have lifted all boats for a brief period. But not “leveraged loans.” Their distress ratio spiked to the highest levels since the Financial Crisis! Leveraged loans are the loan-equivalent to junk bonds. They’re issued by junk-rated companies to fund M&A, special dividends to the private equity firms that own the companies, or other “general corporate purposes.” They form an $800-billion market and trade like securities.

But the SEC, which regulates securities, considers them “loans” and doesn’t regulate them. No one regulates them. This gives banks a lot of leeway. But they’re too risky for banks to keep on their balance sheet. Instead, they sell them to loan mutual funds or ETFs, or they slice and dice them and repackage them into Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLO) to sell them to institutional investors, such as mutual-fund companies. Regulators have been exhorting banks to back off. Banks can get stuck with them when markets get woozy just when the loans blow up, as they did during the Financial Crisis – or as they’re doing right now…. The S&P/LSTA Leveraged Loan Index Distress Ratio for February spiked to 12.96 from 11.13 in January, from 9.07 in December, from 7.77 in November… from 1.06 just last June!

It was the highest level since February 2010, when distress was on the way down from the Financial Crisis. It’s where it had been in June 2008, when distress was blowing out as the Financial Crisis was cracking the slick veneer of the banks. Lehman went bankrupt in September 2008. By December, the distress ratio had reached a catastrophic 79.8. This chart, based on data from S&P Capital IQ, shows that before the Financial Crisis, as the bubble was reaching its final stages, the distress ratio was near zero! This happened again in 2014. Even in 2015, leveraged loans held up well, as junk bonds were already falling apart. The happy times lasted till July, when the distress ratio began to spike relentlessly:

Extend and pretend.

• Former Stock Darlings Japan, Europe Rebuked as Stimulus Gets Costly (BBG)

Japan and Europe, former darlings of stock investors, are now bottom of the heap. The Topix index lost 13% from the start of the year through last week and foreign investors have yanked $10.7 billion out of Japanese equities. The world’s worst-performing developed markets are found in Tokyo and across Europe, where a regional benchmark gauge lost 6.8% and strategists expect shares to tread water for the rest of 2016. For Tatsushi Maeno at Pinebridge Investments Japan, it’s no coincidence that those are the two regions where central banks have established negative interest rates. “The feeling is that we can’t ride our hopes on the monetary easing policies of the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan any more,” Maeno said.

“They want to continue with negative interest rates, but there’s push back. They want additional easing, but we’re beginning to see the limits to that too.” As company profits decline and the yen and euro strengthen, investors are questioning the effectiveness of the stimulus that’s underpinned Japanese and European equities since 2012. In contrast, the easing is working elsewhere around the world, including emerging markets where equities are staging a 20% rally and as shares in the U.S. have erased losses for the year. The moves so far this year are a stark reversal of 2015’s investment trends, which saw shares in Japan and Europe rise 9.9% and 6.8%, respectively, while global equities fell 4.3% and emerging markets tumbled 17%. Bank of America’s monthly survey of fund managers consistently showed Europe and Japan as one of the most preferred markets throughout last year.

The latest example of diverging reactions to stimulus was on display this month, when the ECB’s decision to cut all three key rates and boost bond buying did little to spur a strong rebound. In Japan, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s suggestion on Wednesday that he could cut interest rates to as low as 0.5% sent the nation’s banks and insurers tumbling, which weighed on the overall market. “Equities cannot really rally on monetary stimulus anymore,” Stephen Jen of SLJ Macro Partners and a former IMF economist, wrote in an e-mail. “As long as the earnings outlook continue to deteriorate, the basis for additional multiples expansion is not compelling.”

“..the S&P 500 has reached its most overbought position since 2009..”

• Technical Analysts Warn This Stock Rally Is Not Going to Last (BBG)

U.S. stocks are up a stunning 12% from their February depths, yet plenty of doubts persist about the strength of the recent rally. Some have attributed the recent increase to a need by investors to buy equities to cover so-called short positions. Others have warned that corporate buybacks have pushed the market to unsustainable price levels. Meanwhile, technical analysts who look at charts to divine the direction of stocks have joined the doubters; some are urging clients to proceed with caution when it comes to U.S. equities. Analysts at Bespoke Investment Group noted that while the latest rally has pushed more than 93% of stocks in the S&P 500-stock index above their 50-day moving averages—which smooths out price moves over the past 50 days—there may yet be cause for concern.

The strongest moving average reading since the start of the bull market in 2009 is not necessarily a bullish sign for markets, they warned, as it could indicate that stocks have surged past fair value. “In the coming weeks we expect this breadth measure to cool off a bit as the market works off extreme overbought measures. If you’ve been waiting to buy and haven’t yet, it’s best to wait for a pullback at this point,” Bespoke analysts wrote in a note. Still, Bespoke is far from bearish. The research firm points out that greater breadth is positive for the market’s strength over a longer-term time frame. “Strong breadth is a sign that all stocks are participating instead of just a few,” the team said. “This action is the complete opposite of the weak breadth we saw in the early part of last year when the S&P 500 was making new highs but fewer stocks were doing the same. Eventually, we saw a significant correction later in the year.”

Technical Analysts at UBS AG seem far less optimistic. “With the rally of the last few weeks and looking at our daily trend work, the S&P 500 has reached its most overbought position since 2009!!” wrote analysts Michael Riesner and Marc Muller, with added grammatical emphasis. “We see the market vulnerable for a significant reversal this week, which we would see as the beginning of a tactical top building process and subsequent correction into deeper [second quarter]. We reiterate … [that we] would not chase the market on current elevated levels.” They recommend that investors sell now, rather than await further price increases.

Be afraid.

• London House Prices Rose Almost £500 A Day In January (Guardian)

London house prices increased by almost £500 a day in January, according to government figures that provide fresh evidence of a “two-speed” property market. The latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveals that while London and the south-east are powering ahead with double-digit annual growth rates, the property markets in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland appear to have stuttered to a halt. Overall, the average price of a UK home had just under £4,000 added to its value during January, lifting the typical figure to £291,504. This is almost £40,000 higher than the figure of £251,935 recorded two years earlier, in January 2014. The average London house price hit a record £551,000, said the ONS. This was £15,000 up on December’s figure of £536,000 and translates into an increase of £484 a day.

Annual house price growth in the south-east, London and the east of England is running at 11.7%, 10.8% and 9.8% respectively. By contrast, prices fell in Wales over the same period – by 0.3% – and notched up rises of just 0.1% in Scotland, 0.8% in Northern Ireland and 0.9% in north-east England. The strong price growth in the south-east may reflect the fact that growing numbers of homeowners in the capital are cashing in on London’s turbo-charged performance and buying properties in commuter belt towns and cities. Jonathan Hopper, the managing director of Garrington Property Finders, said that “seldom has the gulf between Britain’s two-speed property market been so stark”. However, he added that it was likely that the numbers were given a boost by a last-minute “stamp duty stampede”, as buy-to-let investors rushed to complete purchases before April’s 3% hike in stamp duty.

You can’t taper a Ponzi.

• Property Bubble Ghost Haunts Central Bankers Trying to Boost Prices (BBG)

The property market is an animal almost every central banker is worried about and hardly anyone can control. As the Federal Reserve downshifts into go-slow mode while the ECB and other monetary authorities ease, expect to hear a lot of concern about property prices. Here’s the dilemma: How do you cut rates to goose too-low inflation and support growth without lighting a fuse under real estate? The U.S. is still feeling the consequences of a housing-market collapse that is widely blamed for triggering the Great Recession. The world’s largest economy stopped contracting in the second quarter of 2009, but house prices continued to fall over the next three years.

While property costs since then have risen at a faster annual pace than an aggregate of 23 countries tracked by the Dallas Fed, prices are still 3.8% below their peak. Since the global property market bottomed out at the start of 2012, house prices have risen most in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. Increases of more than 30% in the three countries compare with an average gain of 11% in the sample. Prices are still declining in some of Europe’s largest economies. One exception is Germany, where property costs have surged more than 17% after prices slid for a decade and a half starting in the mid 1990s.

Central bankers want to see their low rates transmit into economic activity. Prices and transactions in real-estate markets can serve as indicators for buyers’ confidence in the economy, the strength of the labor market and spending prospects.
Too much froth in property markets can also be an obstacle to cutting rates further.

“..a collective $227 billion after-tax loss last year..”

• US Mining Losses Last Year Wipe Out Profits From Past Eight Years (WSJ)

The U.S. mining industry—a sector that includes oil drillers—lost more money last year than it made in the previous eight. Mining corporations with assets of $50 million or more recorded a collective $227 billion after-tax loss last year, according to Commerce Department data released Monday. That loss essentially wipes out all the profits the industry had made since 2007. A crash in oil prices last year caused significant losses for what had been an upstart domestic energy industry propelled by petroleum reserves accessed via fracking. Crude oil prices fell from above $100 a barrel in the middle of 2014 to less than $40 by the end of last year.

That meant many of those new wells were suddenly operating at a loss. What’s more, other types of mining operations were stung by falling commodity prices tied to weak demand from China and other parts of the globe. Mining revenues also fell sharply, down 38% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier. A faltering global economy also stung the manufacturing sector, though the industry remained profitable. The sector recorded a $510 billion annual profit, down from $609 billion in 2014. But manufacturing revenue declined 7.8% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier. Falling revenues suggest weaker global demand for U.S.-made goods. That’s likely a symptom of a stronger dollar making American products relatively more expensive overseas.

Not good. Too much debt to lay off workers. Or dispose of bad loans.

• Mounting Debts Derail China Plans To Cut Steel, Coal Glut (Reuters)

China’s campaign to slim down its bloated industries could be derailed by more than $1.5 trillion of debt in its steel, coal, cement and non-ferrous metal sectors, which threatens to overwhelm local banks. Tackling industrial overcapacity has become a priority for Beijing to make its slowing economy more efficient and address a supply glut that has hammered coal and steel prices. China is providing more than 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) in the next two years to handle layoffs from coal and steel, but that will only be made available once debts have been settled. Critics say there is no clear mechanism for tackling the debt burden, which will put huge strain on the weakest sections of the banking sector. The debt figures, revealed in papers submitted to China’s parliament this month, highlight the dilemma facing state firms grappling with surplus capacity and how difficult it will be to pull off this central plank of Beijing’s economic reform plans.

Costs for the estimated 1.3 million coal-sector layoffs alone are as much as 195 billion yuan, and coal industry delegates attending parliament urged government to provide more support to deal with the mounting debts of hundreds of stricken “zombie” firms. The four sectors targeted in the battle against overcapacity owe around 10.2 trillion yuan ($1.56 trillion), according to documents submitted to parliament by Wang Mingsheng, head of coal firm Huaibei Mining. China’s statistics bureau puts coal and steel debts alone at 8 trillion yuan, of which about a third is bank debt. If 20% of that were to go bad in 2016, which industry analysts say is not unrealistic, it would raise Chinese banks’ non-performing loans by nearly half. Bankers say city and regional banks set up by party or provincial government officials are most exposed, and that official NPLs, which already doubled last year, underestimate the scale of their problem lending.

“China needs to set up a new organization, a special bank just to take over these debts in order to avoid the local banks going bankrupt,” said steel industry consultant Xu Zhongbo. China’s banking regulator didn’t return a request for comment, though earlier in March sent notices to joint-stock banks and city commercial lenders to boost risk assessment and collateral valuations to control exposure to industries suffering overcapacity. A lawyer who handles steel industry non-performing loans for mid-sized Chinese banks said: “Banks’ fear is not without reason. The steel sector’s continued slump increases the difficulty of disposing of outstanding non-performing loans.”

It doesn’t matter what Beijing tries anymore, money will find a way to flow out.

• China May Adopt Tobin Tax on Short-Term Capital Flows (BBG)

China may impose a tax on currency trading to manage short-term cross-border capital flows as the U.S. Federal Reserve raises interest rates, the country’s foreign-exchange regulator said Tuesday. Interest rate hikes by the Fed will spur capital outflows and add pressure on yuan management, Wang Yungui, a director with the State Administration of Foreign Exchange’s General Affairs Department, told a news briefing in Beijing. A levy on trading is one of several tools under consideration to cope with the situation, Wang said. China’s central bank has drafted rules for a tax on foreign-exchange transactions that would help curb currency speculation, people with knowledge of the matter have said.

UBS has said a so-called Tobin tax would be a step back for China’s credibility on currency management, while Citi Private Bank said the proposal was “short-sighted” and would drive away foreign investors. Imposing a levy on foreign-exchange trading would be one of the most extreme steps yet by policy makers to prevent speculative bets against the Chinese currency, after state-run banks intervened repeatedly to prop up the yuan and the government intensified a crackdown on capital outflows. People’s Bank of China Deputy Governor Yi Gang said Saturday the tax is currently an academic subject. While SAFE last week said capital outflows have eased significantly, China is still grappling with economic data pointing to a deepening slowdown. Exports slumped 25% in February from a year earlier and the trade surplus almost halved from January’s level, making a case against yuan gains.

Ain’t that the truth: “..at some point, someone is going to decide to use the dollar-valued asset to get something of real, usable value. And where do you spend dollars? In the U.S.”

• Trade Deficits Come Due Someday (BBG)

In a recent interview on the EconTalk podcast, Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist David Autor said that a trade deficit represents a loan that has to be paid back. This is an important issue, since the U.S. has run a large trade deficit for several decades now. I was happy to hear someone talk about this fact, which is rarely acknowledged. But not everyone was pleased. When I repeated Autor’s statement, Dan Ikenson, director of the Herbert A. Steifel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, said that I don’t understand how trade works, and that a trade deficit isn’t a loan. Ikenson is wrong, and this provides an important opportunity to explain how trade deficits work.

Suppose there are two countries, Germany and the U.S. And suppose that one fine day, Germany gives the U.S. a car. But Germany isn’t running a charity; it doesn’t just go around handing out cars – the U.S. has to give something in return. If the U.S. gets the car from Germany for free, it’s called aid, not trade. So what does the U.S. give Germany in exchange? It could send over a real, usable good or service – some bushels of corn, perhaps, or some copies of Windows 10. If the U.S. gives corn and software equal to the value of the car, that’s called balanced trade. Alternatively, if the U.S. doesn’t feel like growing any corn or writing any software today, it could write Germany an IOU. The U.S. could pay for the car not with corn or software, but with dollar bills.

The Germans might then use the dollar bills to buy some long-term American financial asset, such as a U.S. Treasury bond or some shares of Apple stock. In this case, we say that the U.S. ran a trade deficit with Germany, because it got something of real value from Germany (a car), while all Germany got in return was a slip of paper. But at some point, Germany is going to want to exchange its slip of paper for something of real value – something some German person can use and enjoy. Whoever in Germany is holding onto the American financial asset can’t use it within his or her own country – Germany uses euros, not dollars! He or she could sell the dollar-valued asset to another German for a euro-valued asset, but that just delays the issue – at some point, someone is going to decide to use the dollar-valued asset to get something of real, usable value. And where do you spend dollars? In the U.S.

“..finance and property ownership claims are not “factors of production.” They are external to the production process. But they extract income from the “real” economy.”

• Michael Hudson On Killing The Host (NC)

The financial sector today is decoupled from industrialization. Its main interface with industry is to provide credit to corporate raiders. Their objective isasset stripping, They use earnings to repay financial backers (usually junk-bond holders), not to increase production. The effect is to suck income from the company and from the economy to pay financial elites. These elites play the role today that landlords played under feudalism. They levy interest and financial fees that are like a tax, to support what the classical economists called “unproductive activity.” That is what I mean by “parasitic.” If loans are not used to finance production and increase the economic surplus, then interest has to be paid out of other income. It is what economists call a zero-sum activity.

Such interest is a “transfer payment,” because it that does not play a directly productive function. Credit may be a precondition for production to take place, but it is not a factor of production as such. The situation is most notorious in the international sphere, especially in loans to governments that already are running trade and balance-of-payments deficits. Power tends to pass into the hands of lenders, so they lose control – and become less democratic. To return to my use of the word parasite, any exploitation or “free lunch” implies a host. In this respect finance is a form of war, domestically as well as internationally. At least in nature, “smart” parasites may perform helpful functions, such as helping their host find food. But as the host weakens, the parasite lays eggs, which hatch and devour thehost, killing it.

That is what predatory finance is doing to today’s economies. It’s stripping assets, not permitting growth or even letting the economy replenish itself. The most important aspect of parasitism that I emphasize is the need of parasites to control the host’s brain. In nature, a parasite first dulls the host’s awareness that it is being attacked. Then, the free luncher produces enzymes that control the host’s brain and make it think that it should protect the parasite – that the outsider is part of its own body, even like a baby to be specially protected. The financial sector does something similar by pretending to be part of the industrial production-and-consumption economy.

The National Income and Product Accounts treat the interest, profits and other revenue that Wall Street extracts – along with that of the rentier sectors it backs (real estate landlordship, natural resource extraction and monopolies) – as if these activities add to GDP. The reality is that they are a subtrahend, a transfer payment from the “real” economy to the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate Sector. I therefore focus on this FIRE sector as the main form of economic overhead that financialized economies have to carry. What this means in the most general economic terms is that finance and property ownership claims are not “factors of production.” They are external to the production process. But they extract income from the “real” economy.

Any USD downturn is temporary.

• What Happens When The US Dollar Is No Longer A Hedge Fund Hotel? (BBG)

In the wake of last week’s dovish decision from the Federal Reserve, investors have been throwing in the towel on the U.S. dollar. But Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s proprietary positioning data suggests there’s still another major shoe to drop for the greenback. In a note to clients, FX Strategists Myria Kyriacou and Athanasios Vamvakidis illustrate that hedge funds’ long position in the U.S. dollar remains substantial relative to the past 12 months and to other investors. “Real money is now short USD for the year, but hedge funds remain long, pointing to risks for a further squeeze USD lower,” they conclude. Real money, in this case, refers to pension funds, real estate investment trusts, smaller asset managers, and the like.

The strategists note that these parties often use foreign exchange positions to carry out trades in equities or debt, and therefore they may not be expressing a view on the currency itself. However, the positioning of this ‘real money’ does imply something about the appetite for assets denominated in U.S. dollars, an important factor for the currency. During an interview on Bloomberg TV, Vamvakidis said that any advances in the U.S. dollar going forward, both against other developed market currencies and their emerging market peers, would not be broad based. “We’re not going to see an overall strengthening trend of the dollar across the board,” he said. “We do expect the dollar to be stronger against the euro, not against the yen.”

Centralization is the biggest threat to the EU and the eurozone.

• French Central Banker Wants Eurozone Finance Minister With Sweeping Powers (FT)

France’s central bank governor has attacked the country’s government over its botched attempt to overhaul its labour markets, saying President François Hollande’s backtracking on vital measures has threatened growth. François Villeroy de Galhau, who succeeded Christian Noyer at the Banque de France last November, said officials across the eurozone needed to build trust by passing much-needed economic reforms. More trust between Germany and other member states would pave the way for the economic integration that he said was essential to improve the region’s longer-term economic prospects. Mr Villeroy de Galhau said the nascent recovery in the French economy, the second largest in the eurozone, was partly down to previous pro-business measures, such as €40bn in tax credits, introduced by Mr Hollande two years ago.

But a retreat by the French president, triggered by union opposition and student protests, had undermined businesses’ faith. “Confidence is a key issue for entrepreneurs,” Mr Villeroy de Galhau said in the palatial surroundings of the Banque de France’s headquarters in central Paris. “This question is very often raised: how can we better translate the favourable economic conditions created by the ECB’s monetary policy and low oil prices into a sustainable recovery? The key for that is investment, especially corporate investment, and the key for corporate investment is confidence. The method used for this labour market law didn’t help confidence.” Describing France’s labour market, he said: “The status quo is not an option.”

The reproach directed at Mr Hollande, who picked Mr Villeroy de Galhau for the Banque de France’s top job, comes as the president is battling unions and his own majority over a bill that hands companies more power to negotiate longer working hours with employees and facilitate lay-offs. Mr Villeroy de Galhau, a former banker at BNP Paribas, is more in line with Mr Hollande when it comes to eurozone integration. He is pushing for the creation of a eurozone finance ministry with sweeping powers to exert control on fiscal spending and “sanction” countries that refuse structural reforms.

Helicopter money will not be accepted in quite a few economies.

• It’s Not Going To End Well BUT Central Banks Have Plenty Of Ammo Left (Faber)

The magicians at central banks, they always come out with a new trick and these negative interest rates that we have today, this is for the first time in recorded human history from the times of Babylon up to today that we have negative interest rates, and it’s not going to end well. That, I can tell you. But the sequence of how it will not end well, I’m not so sure. But they still have a lot of ammunition. What they can do is helicopter money. In other words, they can send you and Mr. Bloomberg and me and everybody, say a check for $10,000, and that is like throwing gasoline into a fire…. will it help the economy? That is the question. It won’t help in the long run. You cannot grow an economy by just throwing money at people.

That’s crazy.

• Plant-Growing Season In UK Now A Month Longer Than In 1990 (Guardian)

The growing season for plants has become a month longer than it was a few decades ago, Met Office figures show. In the last 10 years, the growing season, measured according to the central England temperature daily record, which stretches back hundreds of years, has been on average 29 days longer than in the period 1961-1990, the data show. And while more of the year is warm enough for plants to grow, there has also been a decline in the number of frosty days in recent decades, the Met Office said. Between 2006 and 2015, the plant growing season, which begins and ends with periods of consecutive days where daily temperatures average more than 5C (41F) and is without any five-day spells of temperatures below 5C, averaged 280 days.

Figures also reveal that six of the 10 longest growing seasons have occurred in the last 30 years, with 2014 topping the list at 336 days, or about 11 months of the year, while 2015 was 10th, with 303 days – about 10 months. Only three of the 10 shortest growing seasons have taken place in the last century – in 1979, 1941 and 1922 – while the years with the shortest season were in 1782 and 1859, at just 181 days. Mark McCarthy, manager of the Met Office’s national climate information centre, said: “Between 1861 and 1890, the average growing season by this measure was 244 days, and measuring the same period a century later, the average growing season had extended by just over a week. For the most recent 10 years, between 2006 and 2015, the average growing season has been 29 days longer at 280 days, when compared with the period between 1961 and 1990.”

Nice try, but I think Europe has a lot more, and deeper problems. The deepest of all is that it has no heart and no soul.

• A Violent Coming-of-Age For Europe (Papachelas)

The most serious problem right now is that the West appears helpless in the face of major threats and challenges. Not that it is about to come tumbling down like a paper tower. The continent has been through too much for a hasty futurologist to discard it. But Europe does face two crucial issues: the flows of refugees and migrants and Islamic extremism. Large movements of populations are a recurring phenomenon throughout history. It’s hard to stop them. Europe is currently trying to do this through NATO and the closing of borders. NATO, however, is operating more along the lines of a think tank, as opposed to a military alliance. The alliance’s frigates may be state-of-the-art and look very threatening, but in reality they do not have the authority to halt a boat carrying refugees or migrants.

This is becoming evident to the rest of the world and paints a picture of weakness. The same is true of terrorism. Every time a terrorist attack occurs, the streets of Brussels are flooded by military vehicles and armed commandos. So what? They might offer a sense of security to passers-by or tourists visiting the city, but they are clearly not capable of deterring terrorists attacks. Watching footage of soldiers walking the streets, while we know that they merely give the impression of safety, is like watching a tragicomedy. Europe became very spoilt over the last decades. The Cold War brought the continent under the safety umbrella of the US. European governments, with very few exceptions, did not have to deal with security concerns.

They felt they could go on living the good life, which they became accustomed to after WWII, without spending energy, time and money on security issues. They are now realizing that the American umbrella no longer provides the continent with a shield and that, at the same time, the world has suddenly become far more dangerous and unpredictable. Europe has been coming of age in a violent way in the last few years. There’s another thing. Europe cannot handle both the refugee crisis and terrorism as it gradually enters a period of cold war conflict with Russia. This is a recipe for disaster for both Russian and European interests. Europe and Russia are natural allies in the war against terrorism and should work together to rebuild the broken puzzle in the Middle East.

You lock ’em up? Tsipras should have said no to this.

• NGOs Withdraw As Greece Refugee Camps Turn Into Detention Centers (Kath.)

Staff from non-governmental organizations were being withdrawn from the Idomeni refugee camp in northern Greece on Tuesday as the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) also said it would be taking a less active role in providing assistance on the Greek islands in the wake of the European Union’s agreement with Turkey. NGOs began withdrawing their personnel from Idomeni due to rising tension at the camp, where refugees had been protesting since the morning about not being able to continue their journey north. The aid organizations deemed that they would not be able to continue their work in the current circumstances. Their withdrawal came as the UNHCR also distanced itself from the deal to return refugees to Turkey, which has led to the agency scaling down its operations in places such as Lesvos. “Under the new provisions, these so-called hot spots have now become detention centers,” said UNHCR spokewoman Melissa Fleming.

“Accordingly, and in line with UNHCR policy of opposing mandatory detention, we have suspended some of our activities at all closed centers on the island.” Until Sunday, refugees arriving on Lesvos had been free to leave the Moria hot spot and continue their journeys but under the terms of the agreement with Turkey, Greek authorities now have to hold them there or at one of four other centers set up on the Aegean islands of Samos, Chios, Leros and Kos, pending the outcome of their asylum applications. The returns are due to begin on April 4. Part of the process involves Greece and Turkey exchanging police officials who will monitor the process. Six Turkish policemen have already arrived on Lesvos, while two Greek officers traveled to Cesme yesterday. Another four will follow. Also yesterday, Greece’s public broadcaster ERT began news bulletins in Arabic aimed at keeping refugees informed about developments.

Europe is busy creating an ever bigger mess.

• UN Slams Refugee ‘Detention Facilities’ In Greece (AFP)

The UN refugee agency on Tuesday harshly criticised an EU-Turkey deal on curbing the influx of migrants to Greece, saying reception centres had become “detention facilities”, and suspended some activities in the country. “Under the new provisions, these sites have now become detention facilities”, the UNHCR said in a statement. “Accordingly, and in line with our policy on opposing mandatory detention, we have suspended some of our activities at all closed centres on the islands,” it added. The EU and Ankara struck a deal on Friday aiming to cut off the sea crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands that enabled 850,000 people to pour into Europe last year, many of them fleeing the brutal war in Syria. The agreement, under which all migrants landing on the Greek islands face being sent back to Turkey, went into effect early on Sunday.

“UNHCR is not a party to the EU-Turkey deal, nor will we be involved in returns or detention,” the agency said Tuesday, adding though that it would “continue to assist the Greek authorities to develop an adequate reception capacity.” It pointed out that Greece currently “does not have sufficient capacity on the islands for assessing asylum claims, nor the proper conditions to accommodate people decently and safely pending an examination of their cases.” The UN agency said 934 refugees and migrants had landed on Lesbos alone since the accord took effect. “They are being held at a closed registration and temporary accommodation site in Moria on the east of the island,” it said, adding that the 880 others who arrived before Sunday were being hosted separately at the Kara Tepe centre, which is run by the local municipality and “remains an open facility”.